Brazil's Gang Violence, Caught On Film, Sparks Calls For Change

Bloomberg

May 16, 2006

By Telma Marotto

May 16 (Bloomberg) -- In 1998, Alex Pereira Barboza began filming the lives of 17 ``falcons,'' teenage boys who work as lookouts for drug dealers in Brazil's shantytowns. By the time the documentary opened in March, 16 of them were dead -- killed in gang warfare or by police. The 17th was in jail.

``I thank God that he was put in jail, because that's probably why he is still alive,'' Barboza, a 31-year-old rap musician who goes by the name MV Bill, said in an interview in Sao Paulo.

The documentary underscores how violence has spun out of control in Brazilian shantytowns such as the one where Barboza has lived his whole life, Cidade de Deus, a run-down housing project minutes from the beach in Rio de Janeiro. Dozens of people were killed in attacks on police in Sao Paulo and other Brazilian cities during the past three days, in reprisal for more than 700 inmates being transferred to break up prison gangs. Barboza is using his fame as a rapper to bring attention to the plight of the 6.5 million poor Brazilians who live in the favelas, pockets of crime and drugs that mar the nation's economic expansion. After releasing the 58-minute documentary and companion book -- both called ``Falcao -- Meninos do Trafico,'' or ``Falcon -- The Trafficking Boys'' -- Barboza embarked on a nationwide campaign that has taken him from President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's office to corporate board rooms to press for funding to curb crime. Barboza, following U2 singer Bono's quest to persuade governments to forgive developing-nation debt, is beginning to sense a change in Brazilians' attitudes.

Corporate Meetings

After an April 5 presentation at Sao Paulo's Daslu luxury department store, the company helped arranged for him to meet next month with the chief executive officers of 60 Brazilian banks and corporations. The goal of the meeting: To get the executives to commit money to development projects already under way in the favelas, according to CUFA, an association of Brazilian favelas that Barboza helped found.``We either have to share the wealth,'' Barboza said, ``or we will have to share the consequences of violence.'' Those consequences are already being felt. In 2002, 20 out of every 100,000 Brazilians were murdered, a rate second only to Venezuela's among 57 countries surveyed by the United Nations. In Brazil's favelas, the homicide rate is more than seven times higher than the national rate -- 150 per 100,000 people, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Brazil.

`No Magical Solution'

``The problem can only be resolved in the medium to long term,'' Giovanni Quaglia, the representative for the UN drug and crime office in Brazil, said in a telephone interview from Brasilia. ``There's no magical solution, I'm afraid.'' Crime has soared as the country's boom-and-bust cycle has left more Brazilians in poverty. Half of the 170 million people in Latin America's biggest economy live on less than $2 a day, according to the World Bank. Brazil's gross domestic product per capita grew only 11 percent in the 15 years through 2004 to $7,679, according to the World Bank. That's a fraction of the growth in other developing countries: Chile's GDP per capita rose 83 percent, while South Korea's rose 107 percent. A rap song Barboza wrote in the 1990s called ``Soldier on the Hill'' tells the story of a boy who turned to working as a falcon because he grew tired of being unemployed.``I know that the life I live is wrong, but when I was in need, no one stood by me,'' the song says.

`City of God'

In 1998, Barboza made a music video for the song by filming a falcon in Cidade de Deus -- a favela that would gain fame years later for the 2004 Oscar-nominated movie ``City of God.'' Shooting the video gave Barboza, one of Brazil's three top-selling rap artists, and his producer Celso Athayde the idea to do the documentary and the book. The book is second on Veja magazine's non-fiction bestseller list, behind ex-President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's memoir about his eight years in office. Athayde, 43, and Barboza filmed falcons in cities across the country including Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre and Salvador. The death toll among the boys quickly rose. They were killed by rival gangs, their own gangs and the police. One boy, called Sabugo, was killed by a leader of his gang for leaving his post at night. Athayde, who was in the favela that night, pleaded with the gang leader to spare Sabugo's life, according to the book. The leader, unswayed, burned the boy alive.

Last Falcon

Carmen Oliveira, who works in the government's child protection department and attended a presentation by Barboza, said the documentary is prompting the government to seek new ways to pull children out of the circle of violence.``What is being done so far is not producing the necessary effects,'' Oliveira said in a telephone interview from Brasilia. By 2003, Barboza had received word -- erroneously -- that the 17th and last of the falcons they were filming, Sergio Claudio Teixeira, was dead.``I went into a state of depression,'' said Barboza, whose arms are covered with tattoos, including one that says ``My Weapon'' below a microphone. ``And I came to the conclusion that the project had lost its meaning. There was no point in going on if all the kids were dead.''

Teixeira turned up alive two years later in a prison in Rio, prompting Barboza to finish the documentary and make plans for a full-length feature film on the boy.

Now 21 and recently released from jail, Teixeira first appears in the documentary at age 17, holding his post through the night on a favela rooftop. A rifle slung over his shoulder, he tells the camera in a quiet voice of his lifelong dream: to be a clown.

--Editor: Papadopoulos (lsz/bab/jto)