Seleta de Legumes

International New York Times
February 20th, 2014

Vanessa Barbara
Contributing Op-Ed Writer

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — In Brazil, police officers kill an average of five people every day. In 2012, according to a security report from the Brazilian Forum on Public Security, 1,890 Brazilians were killed by the police, 351 here in São Paulo. That was around 20 percent of all homicides in the city. At the same time, 11 police officers were killed on duty here and around 100 were executed off-duty, allegedly by organized crime. Police officers are three times more likely to be murdered than the average Brazilian.

David Plunkert

I once complained about being a writer in Brazil, but it seems our police officers are in considerably worse shape. In São Paulo, lower ranked military police officers earn an annual salary of $15,248, including benefits and danger pay allowances. They work in 12-hour shifts, night and day, for an average of 42 hours a week. But only in theory. Officers claim the rules are often ignored, with extended overtime, short notice of scheduling changes and irregular or no lunch breaks. Some take on additional jobs to supplement their wages, not only as private security guards (which is illegal), but also in a program called “Atividade Delegada,” through which the city hires policemen in their spare time, offering the equivalent of $64 for eight extra hours patrolling the streets.

There are two main kinds of police in Brazil. The civilian police concentrate on criminal investigations, while the military police have the duty of maintaining public order and working to prevent crimes.

The military police are not part of the armed forces, and yet they operate according to military principles of rank and discipline. They cannot strike or unionize, and are subject to a military-style penal code (meaning transgressions at work can be treated as mutiny or treason, and officers are tried in a special court). They are prohibited from “revealing facts or documents that can discredit the police or disrupt hierarchy or discipline.”

They also can’t openly disapprove of the acts of civilian authorities from the executive, legislative or judicial branches of government, and are forbidden to express their personal political opinions. Last year, eight officers from Ceará, in northeastern Brazil, were discharged after taking part in a political meeting. Three others were arrested upon returning from a public meeting to discuss police demilitarization.

As if that weren’t enough, the same Brazilian Forum on Public Security report found that 70 percent of Brazilians distrusted the police. In other words, our police have lost their legitimacy.

“I love my job, I really do,” one member of the military police recently told me. “But our work goes unrecognized. Our errors are scrutinized. We have fractions of a second to decide between accelerating or braking, shooting or retreating; either way we are blamed.”

Another officer complained that the news media gave more attention to cases of police brutality than to the killings of officers. He noted that police officers were sometimes the only agents of the state stationed in poor neighborhoods dominated by organized crime. “Everything is on us.”

But their main complaint is the impunity of criminals. Many believe Brazil’s judicial institutions are too lenient and inefficient. Officers are tired of arresting the same suspects over and over.

According to Adilson Paes, a retired police lieutenant colonel who conducted a study on police brutality, some officers turn vigilante as a result. This was also the conclusion of an investigation into policing in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo conducted by Human Rights Watch: Many deaths of civilians “resisting arrest” are in fact extrajudicial killings, the report found, and “some police officers are members of ‘death squads,”’ which are “responsible for hundreds of murders each year.”

This often leads to a cycle of retribution between the police and organized crime. Just a month ago, in Campinas, a city 60 miles from São Paulo, a policeman was killed in front of his wife during a robbery; within a few hours, 12 people were found executed — apparently by the police, as revenge. And sometimes corrupt police officers themselves are involved in organized crime.

“We are one of the most violent countries in the world, and the military police are part of that universe,” José Vicente da Silva Filho, a retired police colonel, told TV Folha. “So it would seem difficult to have a much better police force than we have now.”

In São Paulo, many attribute a recent drop in killings by the police to a new rule that forbids officers to transport wounded suspects to the hospital or offer them first aid. It turns out that police officers had been picking up people who had been wounded by the police officers themselves, and then executing them on the way to the hospital. Five months ago, a young man allegedly committed suicide in the back of a police car, after being arrested for robbery. If that’s true, he somehow managed to shoot himself in the head while his hands were cuffed behind his back.

Two years ago, the United Nations Human Rights Council recommended that Brazil abolish its military police; other international groups have criticized the force for beating and torturing detainees. But the discussion here has been polarized. Human rights organizations are often seen as apologists for criminals: “Some believe that investigating and prosecuting police abuses would weaken the hand of law enforcement, and thereby strengthen criminal gangs,” says Human Rights Watch.

But lately, more Brazilians have been taking notice, as police brutality is increasingly directed against journalists and political protesters (many from the middle class), instead of just the same old black and poor citizens who live in favelas.

As a regular attendee of the mass demonstrations that have swept the country since last June, I have witnessed acts of unnecessary violence against unarmed protesters. In that period, a student and a professional photojournalist were both blinded after being hit by flash bombs and rubber bullets. Three weeks ago, the police shot a man who was protesting against the World Cup. He allegedly threatened an officer with a box cutter.

Many officers at the protests work without identification tags and inhibit journalists from filming and taking pictures. It is wise to approach them with your hands in the air, speaking in a reassuring way. In a recent poll, 64 percent of police officers claimed to be unprepared to deal with mass demonstrations.

Now, with the World Cup fast approaching and more demonstrations on the way, there’s a lot of talk about demilitarizing the police. This would grant more labor rights to our officers, releasing them from a military code of conduct and discipline that often involves humiliation and training infused with a war mentality. It would also mean conferring on the civilian justice system the authority to judge all crimes committed by police officers.

This would be a step back from our military dictatorship years and a step toward creating a legitimate police force where officers deal with the civilians not as their enemies but as fellow citizens — even if they have broken the law.

Vanessa Barbara, a novelist, edits the literary Web site A Hortaliça and is a columnist for the newspaper Folha de São Paulo.

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The New York Times
January 16th, 2014

by Vanessa Barbara
Contributing Op-Ed Writer

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — LAST Saturday, security officers stopped two tall young black men at the entrance of JK Iguatemi, a luxury shopping mall in São Paulo. The young men were wearing flashy tennis shoes and brand-new soccer jerseys. “What are you doing here?” I heard the guards ask. “We came to buy something,” explained one. “My cousin here is a soccer player. From Bragantino.”

The guards didn’t seem impressed (Bragantino is a lower-division team), but eventually let them inside, where they bought a pair of flip-flops and then left. The whole time they were shopping, they stuck to their story — my cousin is a soccer player, sir, so we’re entitled to be here.

That afternoon, JK Iguatemi had established a tight security zone at the entrance. Guards were asking for the documents of those who “looked like unaccompanied minors.” A second checkpoint was directed at those who, well, looked definitely suspicious but not underage. Some visitors were asked their intentions, or to show an ID if they claimed to work at the mall. As far as I could tell, older people with whitish skin and richer looks weren’t stopped.

The mall’s security had been stepped up because of an event that had been publicized on Facebook: the “rolezinho,” or little strolling — a gathering of teenagers from the poor suburbs for the purpose of “kissing, enjoying, taking photos and scoring some babes.” The rolezinho is a recent phenomenon, dating from early December, when some 6,000 young people turned out at the Metrô Itaquera mall. One week later, something similar happened at the Guarulhos International mall; 23 people were arrested (and later released without charges).

Now, as if in response to the crackdown, rolezinhos are spreading fast: There are five more scheduled in São Paulo over the next two weeks, and other cities are planning solidarity events. On Tuesday, President Dilma Rousseff convened an emergency staff meeting on the issue.

All this because some young people wanted to (as they wrote on Facebook): “go up the down escalator,” “press all the elevator buttons” and “enter the movies through the exit door.” Some predicted a food fight. “Let’s show up at the mall tomorrow ’cause we’ve got nothing else to do,” they wrote, all of it in a messy mix of capital letters and slang.

From the beginning, the middle class has panicked. Shopkeepers have called 911. Restraining orders have been issued, even though there was no actual organized movement — nothing related to the political protests that swept across Brazilian cities in June. Just a lot of youngsters walking around and singing.

The poor suburbs where many of them live are roughly two hours by bus from downtown, and they offer few free opportunities for entertainment. São Paulo has 64 parks and squares for a population of 10.8 million; 13 of the 96 city districts don’t have any green spaces at all. There are 40 cultural centers, 41 recreation centers and 23 public pools. Number of shopping malls: 79.

Many of the teenagers are fans of a Brazilian funk music called “funk ostentação,” whose lyrics speak of expensive clothes, cars, watches, women and money. Wearing flashy baseball caps, colorful tennis shoes, soccer jerseys, sunglasses and rings, they aspire to be part of the very consumer society that excludes them.

At JK Iguatemi, a man was approached and asked to show his employee ID. “This is absurd, I work here,” he told me angrily. He defended the rolezinho: “People from the suburbs really need to start invading everywhere.” I heard someone saying, sarcastically, “Look, he’s wearing a flat-brimmed cap! Arrest him.”

In the end, the strolling at JK Iguatemi never happened — it turned out to be a prank. The real rolezinho took place 16 miles away, at the same mall where it had all started — Metrô Itaquera, in the heart of the suburbs. Little by little, some 3,000 young people filled the corridors, outnumbering security officers and the military police. Some were detained and searched, but officers found nothing illegal. I went to Metrô Itaquera in the afternoon, and didn’t witness a single robbery or act of violence by the teenagers. There was only a growing tension between the police and the participants, who became increasingly cornered within the building, as shops were closed and escalators shut down.

At one point, a policeman passed by me saying, “I’m gonna beat you all up,” then kicked a boy for no apparent reason. When I approached him and asked his name, saying I had seen what he did, he promptly tore off his name tag. He said I should be writing about “important people.” Another officer told a reporter she’d better keep away from the police if she didn’t want to “tomar pedrada” (be hit by a stone). Later that day, the police tossed stun grenades to disperse the crowd in the mall parking lot.

At least six malls have gotten restraining orders against rolezinhos, and the majority of the public favors drastic action by the police. Some say these teenagers are favela-dwelling vagrants who should find a job and stop frightening decent people. They are seen as criminals and treated accordingly — hence the rush to identify yourself (or your cousin) as a soccer player from the Bragantino team, as if that were the only way to be seen as a real citizen.

At one point, I saw a bunch of youngsters detained and searched in the parking lot. They acted as if they were accustomed to this, and were expressionless, even numb. “Can we go now, sir? Are we released?” one of them asked. I surely wouldn’t be so polite.

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International New York Times
December 16th, 2013

by Vanessa Barbara
Contributing Op-Ed Writer

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — First came “Granta 121: The Best of Young Brazilian Novelists,” a 2012 edition of the British literary magazine. Then Brazil was the guest of honor at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, held in October and attended by some 90 authors representing the country’s literary diversity. Next year we will perform a similar role at the Goteborg Book Fair in Sweden and at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in Italy.

Tim Lahan

And yet, despite all this fanfare, when in Brazil, do not tell anyone you’re a writer. Not only will they deny you credit at the grocery store, but almost certainly they will laugh at you, asking right away: “No, seriously. What do you do for a living?”

Unless your name is Paulo Coelho, writing is seen as about as useful and profitable as whale-snot collecting.

At least writers are not alone in their disgrace. According to the 2013 Global Teacher Status Index, Brazil ranks next to last in a list of 21 countries regarding the social status of teachers. Our average teacher salary is $18,550 per year (compared with $44,917 in the United States), but the actual annual base salary at public schools is around $8,000. Only 2 percent of secondary students want to pursue a career in teaching.

Like in the United States, entertainers, athletes and business executives are among our highest earners. Unlike in the United States, here the average mathematician, philosopher or historian earns less than $12,000 per year. Don’t ask about writing; it’s not considered a career at all.

One explanation is this: The average Brazilian reads just over four books a year, two of them only partially. The main reasons people don’t read: lack of time (53 percent), lack of interest (30 percent) and preference for other activities (21 percent) — overwhelmingly, for watching television.

In line with this general shortage of readers, the initial print run for new novels in Brazil is often 3,000 copies, and it’s unusual to sell that many.

Let me give you some personal numbers. I wrote a book in 2008 that won a literary prize and recently sold its 3,000th copy. The book retails for around $15, the author’s royalty rate is 5 percent, so I earned $0.75 from each copy. So for the book that took me one year to write and four more years to sell, I earned a total of around $2,250 (and a bout of depression). I’d have done better donating my body to science.

But if, as I have, you decide that writing is still your dream and eating isn’t that important, then you’d better find some other source of income.

So you decide to be a journalist. Not the wisest of ideas at the moment, since lots of publications are being closed. We have almost no titles publishing short stories or excerpts from novels, and every magazine and newspaper seems to be reducing the size of its articles to an average of 350 words, allegedly because the reader doesn’t have the patience to read anything longer.

Those who are still lucky enough to be employed are increasingly being turned into temporary or freelance workers. Only 59.8 percent of Brazilian journalists are formally employed with proper registration under the labor laws, while 26.8 percent work as various kinds of freelancers or independent contractors — as I do. The average salary for journalists is around $19,000 a year, although I never seem to be paid that much. I have never been formally employed, either.

An alternative is working for a publishing house. I started as a copy editor, making $3.44 per page, which for a standard 200-page novel could result in $688 for three weeks of work. Later I became a translator — and got $2,552 for the three months I spent translating “The Great Gatsby” into Portuguese. More recently I’ve earned $1,144 for working on “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” which is full of puns and untranslatable rhymes.

But there are plenty of other ways to use a flexible mind. In one adult decade of surviving, I’ve managed to correct movie subtitles (especially those translated from languages I don’t speak, like Polish); rewrite celebrity gossip news; produce various types of essays for lazy students; create publicity pieces on ice creams; answer sentimental questions on a website using a Russian persona; and make up short and funny quizzes for an entertainment website.

I wrote a children’s book about bellybutton lint; a graphic novel on Rube Goldberg machines; and lots of reported articles about subjects no one else wanted to approach. I did a hypnosis course, went to a samba marathon, met palindromists, watermelon sculptors and the world’s smallest couple. I traveled to China twice and got to learn about astronomy, depression, sleep disorders, turtle caring, tap dancing and grief.

That last one was easy; every Brazilian writer is an expert in it.

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Vanessa Barbara, a novelist and columnist for the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo, edits the literary website A Hortaliça.

Go to Author Page: Vanessa Barbara

A version of this op-ed appears in print on December 16, 2013, in The International New York Times.

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