Beautiful Horizons

Film Review - The Year My Parents Went on Vacation

The Year My Parents Went On Vacation

Young Mauro's parents are leftists in Brazil in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in 1970. It was a year of lows and highs in Brazil; the principal high being Brazil's win in the World Cup, making it the first nation to win the World Cup for the third time and the principal low being the rule of Emílio Garrastazu Médici, whose leadership of the nation was without question the most brutal of the twenty-five year military dictatorship that the nation endured.

This was not a good time to be a leftist in Brazil: it was dangerous as the implementation of Institutional Act 5, which unleashed a series of brutal, repressive actions against dissent involving torture and disappearances,  was complete.  Mauro is an eleven-year-old boy whose parents decide to leave him with his paternal grandfather in Bom Retiro, a a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Sao Paulo while they flee for their lives. What they don't know is that in a tragic coincidence, his grandfather has died that same day. The community rallies around Mauro, especially Shlomo, the Polish, Orthodox Jewish immigrant who lives next door and all are enriched by the experience.

You'll be enriched by this film as well. The director, Cao Hamburger, knows the value of understatement in his actors. Michel Joelsas as Mauro gives what may be one of the best performances by a child actor since Brigitte Fossey in Forbidden Games.

Treason?

This may very well be just that. The italicized part below just happens to be asinine:

Brazil's 1988 constitution declared that all Indian ancestral lands must be demarcated and turned over to tribes within five years. While that process has yet to be completed, today about 11 percent of Brazilian territory and nearly 22 percent of the Amazon is in Indian hands.

But as logging, ranching and farming expand into the Amazon, there has been increasing conflict with the Indians and pressure on the government to limit the size of reservations. Earlier this summer, government anthropologists revealed photos of one of the world's last uncontacted tribes fleeing logging near the Peruvian border. In May, Indians protesting a proposed hydroelectric dam on the Xingu River in Para state machete-slashed a government official who came to speak to the group.

Top military generals warn that too much land in Indian hands, especially along Brazil's borders, threatens national security and could lead to tribes unilaterally declaring themselves independent nations. They compare the situation to Kosovo, which broke away from Serbia in February. [my emphasis]

Here's the treasonous comment:

At a raucous seminar on national sovereignty at Rio de Janeiro's Military Club, the head of Army's Amazon command, Gen. Augusto Heleno Pereira, attacked the federal government's indigenous policy as ''regretful and chaotic.'' He even suggested that the army would refuse to remove the settlers.

''The Brazilian army does not serve the government but rather the Brazilian state,'' Pereira said.

Pereira should be stripped of his command and cashiered out of the military. As the article notes, Brazil's constitution calls for all ancestral indigenous lands to be demarcated and turned over to their respective tribes. Pereira serves the Brazilian state and the state is defined by the constitution. A military man who doesn't understand that has no business being in the military.

Apparently the hysteria even extends to the Supreme Court:

"If we take the concept of prior occupation too far,'' said Supreme Court Justice Marco Aurelio Mello, ``we will have to hand my marvelous city of Rio de Janeiro over to the Indians.''

Does he honestly think that the government would demarcate an indigenous territory that would include Rio de Janeiro? That's the sort of statement that is beyond disingenuous; it's willfully dense.

It's the Impunity - More Than Anything Else

When Mercia and I were not yet married, we went to a birthday party for a friend of hers. At the party was a woman who, in commenting on the Candelaria Massacre, said "They should kill them all! They're no longer children anyway." I made a point of leaving the room, albeit loudly as I did not want to make a scene.

While both Boz and Mr. Trend posted (and I agree with them) about the horrific incident that just occurred in which it appears that Rio police were involved in the kidnapping and torture of two journalists working undercover in a favela, clearly the two primary issues at play here, as Trend notes are as follows:

1. Societal acceptance of brutality among the poorest in Brazilian society - for no other reason except for the fact that they live in a favela.
2. Impunity.

The comments of the woman at the party exemplify the first part of the problem. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard similar comments in Brazil.

While the acceptance of brutality is disturbing, impunity is, in my opinion, the greater evil. Police in Rio commit such acts simply because they know they will probably not have to answer for it. trend is absolutely correct to note that the reason why this incident garnered so much attention is because the victims were not poor and obviously more prominent. While such an incident impacting a member of the middle or upper class was not a matter of if, but when, the greatest, most disturbing shame here is that there is probably no way of knowing how many of the poor have paid the ultimate price for society's indifference towards justice for all.

Business as Usual in Para

It's hard not to despair over this:

A jury in Brazil on Tuesday convicted in a retrial a man accused of murdering a U.S.-born nun but acquitted a previously convicted rancher accused of ordering the killing in a land dispute in the Amazon rain forest in February 2005, a court said.

It's not hard to believe the fix was in:

The jury on Tuesday also convicted Rayfran Neves das Sales, who had confessed to firing six, close-range shots at Stang on a muddy road deep in the Amazon rainforest in 2005.

Prosecutors said he had been offered US$25,000 (euro16,100) to kill the nun after she fought to preserve a patch of jungle that ranchers wanted to raze for logging and cattle ranching.

Sales told the court that he had acted alone and in self-defense, contradicting previous testimony in which he said he had used Moura's gun.

Are we to believe that this young man feared for his life from a 73 year old nun? I think it's pretty obvious who he fears.

The More Things Change in Brazil . . .

Sadly, the more they remain the same. Here's some of the latest:

Pará remains a den of corruption and impunity:

Emival Barbosa Machado, 50, was shot three times Friday in the eastern city of Tucurui, the Globo TV network said. No arrests have been made.

Machado had often reported illegal logging and shipments of lumber in Para, a largely lawless state where American nun and rain forest defender Dorothy Stang was killed in 2005.

Machado told the environmental protection agency Ibama that locals were forced to deliver wood to loggers and were killed if they refused.

"He made various complaints to us, and we seized lumber and boats thanks to his reports," Anibal Picanco, Ibama's superintendent in Para, said in a televised interview.

The police in Rio are still trigger happy:

Police combed the alleyways of a Rio de Janeiro slum on Saturday in search of an alleged gang leader who escaped a raid that killed 11 people, including a 70-year-old woman.

Friday night's bloody operation failed to turn up the suspected head of the drug trade in the City of God shantytown, a man known as Tota, said a policeman who gave his name only as Sgt. Freitas in accordance with police policy.

"He's in hiding," Freitas said. "But we're there and looking for him.

Police said 10 of those killed on Friday were alleged drug gang members. Seventy-year-old bystander Jocelia Afonso was killed by a stray bullet, and two other elderly residents were wounded in the crossfire, Freitas said.

Sorry, but I don't believe them, As the article notes, 1,260 civilians were killed by police last year. That number  should be unacceptable.

I suppose the people in Rio can some comfort in this news about Recife, but any such comfort should be cold:

This seaside city, a favourite of European tourists, gets much more attention for the shark attacks that have killed 18 people since 1992 than for its human killings - at least 2,617 in the metropolitan area last year. While tourists are warned not to take valuables to the beaches, as in most Brazilian cities, little is said about the murder rate mostly because the violence largely stays in the poor areas.

While Rio de Janeiro's bloody drug war makes international headlines, this balmy city of 1.5 million has a homicide rate of 90.9 per 100,000 - more than twice as deadly as Rio, according to the Latin American Technological Network's Map of Violence.

That last sentence in the first paragraph goes to the core of the problem. As the article notes, some journalists are trying to put faces on these victims here (link in Portuguese). I wish them much success, but they have a difficult struggle to really make a difference.

More Horror From Para

The State of Para in the North of Brazil has a deservedly ugly reputation. It is notoriously corrupt, infamous for incidents of modern-day slavery, the vicious murder of the landless by the police, and the murder of American-born Maryknoll sister, Dorothy Stang. This, however, may rank among the most horrific things to have occurred that I can recall:

Authorities in Brazil are investigating reports that a young woman was left in a police cell with some 20 men for a month and repeatedly sexually abused.

The governor of the state of Para, where the reported case took place, has promised a full inquiry.

Don't hold your breath. This part fills me with a white-hot rage:

They say that she was raped relentlessly and forced to have sex in order to obtain food.

The girl's father has now alleged that he has been threatened by police who tried to force him to provide a birth certificate showing that the girl was 20 years of age - a document which he said did not exist.

What is even more distressing is how horrible the situation with prisons is all over Brazil. As recently as August twenty-five prisoners died in a prison in Minas Gerais from a fire deliberately set by rivals. Whether it's the Carandiru Massacre, or brutality in youth detention centers, Brazil has major, deeply rooted problems in its prison system. Given the fact that under the law, no one serves more than thirty years in jail in Brazil, some serious thought and effort must be given to improving conditions, even if only for the sake of enlightened self-interest.

Something I Had Been Meaning to Post About

There is probably no greater need for humankind to survive than regular access to clean water. Whenever one hears of a major disaster such as a tsunami or a hurricane in the developing world, with good reason there are fears of cholera epidemics. There are any number of diseases that could be prevented with clean water or regular access to water that can be made clean.

Which is why when I first heard this report on NPR about the Rio Sao Francisco, I got angry. Here's why:

But the bounty of this great waterway passes by thousands of poor families. In the area around the city of Petrolina in the distressed state of Pernambuco, 90 percent of the water from the river goes to large-scale agriculture, according to officials from the federal agricultural research agency. And the agriculture is not for for local consumption but for export. One official said with a tinge of bitterness, "Brazil is exporting its water."

Lush fields of irrigated grapes, mangoes, and melons destined for the United States and Europe shimmer like a mirage across the highway from where Jose de Sousa, 30, lives with his wife and seven children. But in his bleak settlement of cinder-block homes ironically called "Living Waters," there is only an intermittent supply of running water.

De Sousa's eldest child, 12-year-old Gessia, died in February when she fell from a leaking irrigation canal while trying to collect water. A makeshift altar marks the spot where she fell. De Sousa says his children routinely climb the 30-foot-high concrete canal to get water for their families. His daughter died making her third trip of the day.

Families shouldn't have to count on their twelve-year-old daughters to get water for the family, nor should anyone have to maneuver along a 30 foot high leaking irrigation canal to get water. It gets worse:

Less than an hour away, outside the town of Lagoa Grande, there appears to be no shortage of water for one of Brazil's most successful wineries. A home worthy of Architectural Digest stands on the riverfront beside the fields of grapes soaking up the sunshine. The churning waters of the Sao Francisco flow passed 500-acre vineyard. Owner Joao Santos, a native of Portugal, says the river is the lifeblood of his business.

"Each of the plants requires some 400 liters of water a year," or about 90 gallons, Santos says. He says he pays about $2,000 a year for water rights. At that rate, he's paying virtually pennies for millions of gallons of water.                   

In 1999 I went to a small town in the state of Minas Gerais called Catas Altas. My most vivid memories of this visit were the two locations in which anyone could go and help themselves to water that descended from the nearby mountains. This, despite the fact that as far as I could tell anyone in town who had a roof over their head had running water.

I remember leaving with the feeling embedded in mind that water was life, purely and simply. Getting it shouldn't have to involve risking your life.

Officially Documenting the Atrocities

This is small progress, but I guess it's better than nothing:

Brazil has for the first time published an official document detailing atrocities said to have been committed during the military dictatorship. 

The country was under military control from 1964 to 1985.

The book was launched at a ceremony attended by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who was himself briefly imprisoned under the dictatorship.

It accuses federal agents of rape, torture, executing prisoners, and concealing bodies of victims.                              

They are also alleged to have decapitated people.                   

The new book, "The Right to Memory and to Truth", was published on the anniversary of Brazil's amnesty law passed in 1979.

Where this falls so horribly short is on prosecuting those responsible. Compared to Argentina and Chile, precious little has been done in this regard. The only thing I can think of is the revocation of the licenses of a few doctors for assisting in torture. As time goes on, it becomes less and less likely that anyone will face justice for any of this.

This, of course, makes it all the more likely for it to recur. Torture continues to be practiced by the police in an unofficial capacity and extrajudicial executions continue to take place with precious few prosecutions.

If one believes as I do that one of the consistent problems facing Latin America and holding the region back is corruption, then attention must be paid to corruption's equally evil twin, impunity. Not just impunity for acts of corruption, but impunity for all criminal acts.

Something is Rotten in the State of Pará

This is good news, but it certainly doesn't surprise me that this took place in Pará state in Brazil:

Brazilian authorities said they raided an Amazon plantation where more than 1,000 laborers were found working 13-hour days in horrendous conditions cutting sugar cane for ethanol production.

Authorities said the raid would be Brazil's biggest to date against debt slavery if preliminary findings by investigators are confirmed.

Under the practice, common in the Amazon, poor laborers are lured to remote spots where they rack up debts to plantation owners who charge exorbitant prices for everything from food to transportation.

But the Amazon plantation's owner — the biggest ethanol producer in the northeastern state of Para — vigorously denied the charges Tuesday and said the workers make good money by Brazilian standards.

Good money? Judge for yourself:

Police found 1,108 poor workers working from 4:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. with only a short break for lunch, the statement said. They complained of paying exorbitant prices for food and medicine, and many walked kilometers (miles) to get to work while others were transported in ramshackle vans.

Many were sick from spoiled food or unsafe water, slept in cramped quarters on hammocks and did not have proper sanitation facilities, Humberto Celio, coordinator of the Labor Ministry's special unit that frees debt slaves, told the government news service Agencia Brasil.

[...]

The company has 1,800 employees, Zancaner said. Sugar cane cutters receive between 700 to 800 reals (US$368 to US$421) per month, far above the nation's minimum wage of 380 reals (US$200). In the Amazon region, many workers make less than the minimum.

The AP report left out the following:

Once the company they worked for had deducted “debts” that it claimed the workers owed, they were being paid £2.50 a month. Some said that they received nothing at all. “We found many people sick with diarrhoea and nausea because of the rotten food and bad water,” said Humberto Célio, the official in charge of the operation. Officials are calculating what the company owes the workers in back pay.

This is too common an occurrence in Brazil, especially in the states that comprise Amazonia and in the less populated areas of the Northeast. All credit to Lula for cracking down on this.

The problem, however, is this: finding and cracking down on these debt-slavery operations is like killing cockroaches; if you see one, odds are that there are many more that you miss. In a country the size of Brazil, fighting this problem is daunting.

Modern Day Quilombos

I truly enjoyed reading this article about legal recognition being given to the descendants of the escaped slaves who formed quilombos, the communities established by the escaped slaves based on their traditional communities in Africa, the most famous of which was Palmares in what is now part of the states of Alagoas and Pernambuco . I had no idea that legal recognition could be  granted to the quilombos, but apparently it was written into the 1988 constitution.

Much of the progress in recognizing the quilombos has come during Lula's presidency:

Since taking office in 2003, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has jump-started the quilombo movement, and upset powerful landowners, by streamlining the process for granting the settlements official recognition and land rights.

Rolf Hachbart, head of the country's land-reform agency, said that helping quilombos is one way the government is paying a historical debt for slavery. More than half of the 63 settlements with land titles nationwide received them under Lula da Silva's government.

The Brazilian government estimates that as many as two million people live in recognized and unrecognized quilombos that total about 116,000 square miles of land.

''These people came here as slaves and never had the right to land,'' Hachbart said. "They were poor and excluded, and we are trying to fix what was a historical wrong.''

Despite complaints from landowners, it is less an issue of land ownership than honoring their traditions:

Quilombo leaders said their fight wasn't just about land. Many also keep alive the traditions of their communities' founders, including growing the same foods and practicing the same religions.

''The difference between us and other communities is that people are preserving the customs of our ancestors, of the people who came in the 18th century,'' said Ananias Nery, a leader of a group of quilombos near the northeastern Brazilian town of Cachoeira.

There is no question that land reform is needed in Brazil and that it is one of the most intractable issues in the country. It's certainly encouraging to see one very small measure taking place, especially through legal means.