--Concentrating some 60% of the national sugarcane production, São Paulo state doesn’t share the riches from the ethanol boom with its 135,000 cutters, who often live in precarious conditions

Mário Magalhães and Joel Silva

(translated from Brazilian Portuguese)

Sharply at 4:42, sugarcane worker Ilma Francisca de Souza leaves for work with her lunch box containing rice covered with sliced sausage. In Serrana, another neighborhood, even before the sun rises, Rosimira Lopes leaves for the sugarcane fields carrying rice with only one side dish: beans.

During the day, they will make use of the food, which will already be cold. Despite the noteworthy progress arising from ethanol plants with astounding technology, Brazil still does not serve hot meals to sugarcane workers.

The lunch box remains cold.

For two months, Folha investigated living and working conditions for sugarcane cutters in the state that has 60% of production in the nation which is the biggest producer on the planet.

People like Ilma and Rosimira.

In one of the steps for gathering this story, during 15 days we traveled 3,810 kilometers by car, the equivalent of nine trips between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. A map (see page 6) shows the location of the towns we visited.

For the first time in five centuries, since the samples of the crop were brought by Portuguese pioneers, in 2008 at least half of the sugarcane in São Paulo will not be collected by hand, but by machine. This is what the mills announced.

Just as it was at the turn between the 16^th and the 17^th centuries, when the country was the world leader in sugar production, sugarcane now offers immense opportunities to Brazil with the ethanol, for which cane is the prime material. Ethanol can be transformed into a commodity, with prices in international markets. The mills generate electrical energy.

The wealth of the ethanol industry, which must yield R$ 40 billion (R$ 25 billion) this year, didn’t reach the workers. In 1985, a sugarcane cutter in São Paulo earned R$ 32.70 per day on average (at current values). In 2007, they earned R$ 28.90. Their incomes fell, but the toughness of the work increased. In 1985, workers used to cut 5 tons of cane per day. In the current harvest, the average is 9.3 tons.

In 19 towns in the countryside of São Paulo State – at the capital, we spoke to an industry representative – the reporters sought to understand why, among nine agricultural products, sugarcane attracts the youngest workers.

It demands a great deal of physical effort: it is necessary to swing a machete 3,792 times and bend the back 3,994 times to collect 11.5 tons per day. In recent years, deaths of sugarcane workers have been associated with excessive work.

There is a case of an itinerant laborer who died weeks after collecting 16.5 tons. There is no parallel in any region to such huge profits.

On the highway, we saw rickety buses; in the fields, lacking safety equipment. We saw dwellings with no hygiene, workers who earned less than the minimum wage, communities of sugarcane cutters who depend on government food subsidies, migrants who try their luck and workers who want to get rid of the addiction to crack and other drugs.

Documents prove the existence of fraud in weighing sugarcane, hurting workers.

At the peak and decadence of the sugarcane cycle (16^th-18^th centuries), slaves worked the fields and put the mills to work. The startup of Brazil’s ethanol industry was set upon mostly by black workers.

As slaves were left out of the works of some historians, sugarcane cutters are a invisible species in the trade journals of the sugarcane industry. They show high-tech mills, but manual laborers in the countryside are hidden.

The similarity of the symbols of work today with those of pre-abolition is very impressive, when one’s traveling the world and underworld of sugarcane. An inspector in the mills is called a foreman (“feitor” in Portuguese).

Complaints about slave workers accumulate. It is a mistake to assume that accusations of degradation are far from the richest state in Brazil and limited to the “Deep Brazil”, the most remote areas.

One of them is narrated here. In São Paulo, they are found in Riberão Preto, a center of the sugarcane industry considered our “California.”

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been understating the reports about work in sugarcane farms. Last year, he said mill owners “are becoming national and world heroes because everyone has an eye in ethanol”.

The fear of retaliations is huge among sugarcane workers. No name was changed in these stories, but some people, by request, are identified only by their first names or not even that. The interviews were recorder, under consent.

Those anti-heroes are many: according to mill owners, there are 335,000 sugarcane cutters in Brazil, including the 335 thousand in São Paulo. On the state, the industry intends to abolish hand cutting by 2015, alongside with the burnings which make harvest easier.

Ilma and Rosimira are an endangered species. For half a millennium, the cutters – enslaved or hired – have lived through tough times. In the next years, it will not be different: with low qualification, they’ll have to look for other ways of survival.

All the unions see a drop in recruiting.

The sugarcane fields are not as distant as it seems: when one fills his tank with 49 liters of ethanol, he consumes one ton of cane; when he sweetens with sugar his coffee for breakfast, thousands of Brazilians are in the fields with their machetes in hand.

With production on the rise and falling wages, excessive work surrounds plantations

If money goes to money, as they say, then poverty goes to poverty – and tragedy forebids tragedy. Sought in Guariba to talk about her husband, who died after feeling ill in the sugarcane fields in 2005, Maildes de Araujo gets to talk about someone who died two weeks earlier: her brother-in-law, also a cane cutter.

José Pindobeira Santos was 65. He reaped cane until last year. "He complained of pains in the belly, of colic”, says his daughter Ivanir, a maid. He returned from the fields with pain in the groin. He never looked for treatment, and was not treated.

Pindobeira died of intestinal obstruction and bronchial aspiration. No one knows how far the toil in the farm affected his health. In the 1960s, he was already cutting cane on the outskirts of Guariba.

Maildes’ husband Antonio Lopes Ribeiro came into this world in July of 1950, three days before the supreme shame of this country’s soccer, the final of the World Cup in Rio. He migrated from Berilo (MG), a city in the extremely poor region of Vale do Jequitinhonha.

In the reporter accidents – and underreporting is considerably high –, the cleaver tore her leg and knee. Pains in right shoulder took him away from the ranch. He suffered with a headache. His efforts at work triggered cramps in his stomach, legs and arms. Suffering of Chagas disease, but he didn’t get a leave.

He worked at the Moreno mill. He collapsed on the field and was taken to the hospital. Cause of death: "chagasic uncompensated cardiopathy."

Lopes is part of a list with the names two dozen canavieiros who died in the countryside of São Paulo from 2004 to 2007 – the youngest among them aged 20. The list was prepared by the Pastoral Care for Migrants and Refugees. There are more deaths, but they haven’t been reported as deaths by exhaustion.

This list doesn’t include labor accidents – in 2005, out of each thousand workers in the cultivation of sugar cane, 48 suffered occupational accidents, according to University of São Paulo researchers Marcia Azanha Ferraz Dias de Moraes and Andrea R. Ferro.

That year, according to the Labor Ministry, 84 people died in accidents in the sugar and ethanol industry, which includes farms and industrial plants (which accounts for 3.1% of all deaths from labor accidents in Brazil). Labor prosecutors investigate the causes of death and their association with the tough nature of manual cutting.

A 2006 report by the Secretary for Inspection at the Labor Ministry lists dozens of irregularities in companies which had hired those farmers who died.

One of them is the non-compliance with an hour break for lunch. The cutters eat in 10 or 20 minutes, so they can once again wield the machete. They are paid by production. No files say the work was decisive for the deaths. It would be difficult to state that: out of the eight cases inspected by the ministry, only two had autopsies.

The report by the Secretary of Inspection says: “Sudden malaise, cardiorespiratory arrest and stroke, described in certificates as causes of death, are not sufficient to justify natural death, as the companies claim”.

There are indications about why the canavieiros die.

In 1985, São Paulo cutters reaped a daily average of 5 tons of cane. In 2008, the average is 9.3 tons – or 86% more. 23 years ago, a farmer received R$ 6.55 per tonne and R$ 32.70 per day. In 2007, cutting 1,000 kg of cane pays them R$ 3.29. Daily, they get R$ 28.90 (12% less).

Productivity went high up and the wages fell. With the mechanization of cutting and accelerated expansion of unemployment, only the most efficient stay. The man competes with the combine.

Figures for 1985 and 2007 come from the Institute for Agricultural Economics. Upgraded to August 2007 prices, they are mentioned in an article by researchers Rodolfo Hoffmann (UNICAMP) and Fabíola C. R. de Oliveira (USP).

Working since he was 13, former cane-cutting champion has, at 35, a hernia and his spine feels “locked”

 Valdecir da Silva Reis, the skinny man who consumes his days lying in bed to watch TV, was once a champion. No one had a chance near him. In the fields, he beat record upon record. 

On March 20, 2006, he cut 21 tonnes. On May 17, another 28. Eight days later, he tore 560 meters of plantation, cutting five lines of cane to be paid for only one line – that’s the law. Strictly speaking, he brought down 2.8 km of cane. 

The salary stub printed by his employer, Meia Lua, shows that day’s record: 52.47 tons. That was nearly one tonne for each kilo of his body, since he weighed 56 kg. Today, he says he weighs 49 kg. It seems to be less than that. 

The cutter who caused sighs of disbelief in his colleagues is now languishing in a house in Engenheiro Coelho city, where he lives with relatives. 

In the fields, he felt no pain. In 2006, though, his backbone "hung" and he did not return to the sugarcane field. At 35, he dreams of a day when he will return to the job where he became the hero of friends. 

As great as his will may be, he suspects he will not wield the machete again. The diagnosis shows problems in the lumbar spine, esophageal hernia and imbalances in the urinal signs. 

Valdecir complains of pain in his head, stomach, chest (he didn’t check his heart), scrotum, the right shoulder, arms, knees and legs; he complains of lacking of strength to lift a bottle of water; of feeling tired after walking 800 meters; of hearing badly in one ear. 

The left side of his chest is more developed, with his left arm, he used to throw the cane at the “leira”, the hall opened in the land where sugar cane is harvested.

Even if the human rag who speaks low and puffing about his misfortune was the creation of a masterly and ultra-realistic stanislavskian actor, not even then it would be possible to make up a story with beginning, middle and end as his story – the reporters dug into the case with basis in plenty of documents and testimonies. 

Valdecir began to cut cane at 13. His employers awarded his prowess with gifts like a bicycle and a stereo system. 

After "locking" in 2006, he received aid from Social Security. Last May 5, though, a medical evaluation considered him fit for the job and the aid was cancelled. His income now is zero. 

He lives with a daughter from his previous marriage and his wife, Helen. A maid, she earns R$ 30 per cleaning. She cleans two houses per week. 

The job for which the INSS [the Brazilian social security system] does not see "serious problem" for Valdecir to exercise "is not comparable to that of a clerk," says a mill executive. Clerical positions are announced with a workload of 30 to 40 hours a week. In a similar time frame, a cane cutter in São Paulo state works, officially, 44 hours in six days. 

Clerks and cutters have to work for 35 years to be able to retire. Most of the cutters, though, work only during the harvest: eight active months a year. They never count 12 months of contribution in a row.

The performance of some of them is so exuberant that the famous Cuban champions of cane-cutting campaigns would be considered second-rate players. In 1965, Fidel Castro awarded five of them, who cut from 14 to 19.7 tonnes in one day. At the Meia Lua mill, which formerly employed Valdecir, a cutter hit 35 tonnes on June 20. The reporters tried to talk to the company, but did not find their address and telephone number. 

The champions, as the holders of the best performances are called in the field, tend to be lean and strong. Valdecir is 1.65 m tall. 

Samuel Gomes, 38, is one of the champions in Guariba. He’s 1.85 m tall. Barack Obama is 1.86 m. The U.S. senator weighs something between 77 kg and 82 kg. Samuel, with his 68 kg, tells he has cut to 27 tonnes in a day, this year, in a plant in São Carlos. 

With so much physical demand, there are nine men (92%) per woman in Brazil's sugarcane fields. In nine relevant agricultures, the workers with lower average age are those of cane: 35.5 years, according to data compiled by researchers Rodolfo Hoffmann (UNICAMP) and Fabíola C.R. Oliveira (USP).

The company’s buses pick the cutters at home between 5 AM and 6 AM. In the field, the journey begins at 7am. Many have their "lunch" before starting the harvest. There are entitled to ten-minute intervals in the morning and evening. By 10 or 11 AM, there’s one hour for lunch – but few of the workers use all that time. The journey ends at 3 or 4 PM, but there are excesses. Workers arrive to their homes between 5 and 7 PM. They sleep by 8 or 9, to wake up between 3:30 and 4:30 AM.

An ongoing ergonomic analysis research, funded by the Fapesp (São Paulo state support to research foundation) and coordinated by researchers Rodolfo Vilela and Erivelton de Laat, describes the movements of cutters. 

One of these workers, who reaped 11.5 tons, gave 3,792 machete blows in one day and bent his backbone 3,994 times. The machete weighs 600 grams. They strike the cane at the bottom, where the saccharose concentrates. A right-hander cutter hugs the beam of about ten canes with his left arm (or, stick by stick, with his hand), then he curves up and strikes with the right arm. With the left arm, he throws the cane in the “leira”, from where a machine will pick it later. 

In one group, the average heart rate at rest was 57.4 beats per minute. At work, the rate was 112 per minute – an excessive variation, say the researchers (the difference should be limited to 35). 

The activity of the cutters is compared to that of marathoners, with tiresome repetition of moves. Maria Zeferina Bandaia, champion at the Sao Paulo Marathon in 2008, was once a cane cutter in the countryside. "One thing has a lot to do with the other," she confirms. 

Unions of employees call for the reduction of weekly workload to 40 hours, with two days of rest. Cristina Gonzaga, a researcher at Fundacentro, a research foundation at the Ministry of Labor, advocates 30 hours, with five days of six hours per week. 

The companies reject the claims. 

That is the life Valdecir fancies to live again. He hides at home. "People see us on the street and say we’re bums. They don’t see what we have inside, what we feel.

In the past 10 years, the AUC has abducted more than 1,000 people – several of whom have disappeared.

(Translated from Spanish) 

RAÚL ALEJANDRO RIAÑO RUBIANO, a cadastral engineering student at the District University who worked with his family's cargo transport company, was kidnapped by the AUC (Colombian United Self-Defense Groups) on 25 August 2005 at the corner of 30^th Street and Primero de Mayo Avenue in Bogotá. At that time, the paramilitaries had already declared a cessation of hostilities.

Rubiano was 25 when he was abducted. His family received news from him one month later when an uncle got a phone call. The hoarse voice on the other end told him:  "Raul says hello and to please do everything you can to put together 5 billion pesos to give to them. For now, we are asking for a 50 million peso advance to send you proof of life and to keep him alive."

Raul's sister, Sandra Riaño, tells the story. His family always feared the guerrillas because the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) came calling in 2000 to extort them. "They never did it again and we were at ease," she says. "Imagine our surprise when we learned that the kidnappers were from the paramilitaries!" They notified the Gaula (Unified Action Groups to Rescue Kidnap Victims) to ask for support and a few days after the phone call, they got an ID and some documents as proof of life. "The police told us that the calls came from Villavicencio," Sandra said as she gazed at her brother's most recent photo. "In Villavicencio they found the black pickup truck that he was driving the day they took him – which led them to think that this could have been the work of the Centauros (paramilitary) bloc, which did not demobilize. But we didn't rule out another bloc. The problem is that they haven't called back."

Since then, the Riaño family knows nothing about Raúl. Still, despite the captors' silence, Sandra is not losing faith. The same cannot be said of his mother, Carmenza Rubiano, who could not endure her son's kidnapping and died on 18 February 2007. "My mom began to deteriorate, her defenses were all down and that sped up her pulmonary hypertension," Sandra says. "Before dying she told us that she felt Raul was dead, that she would not see him again and that there was no use fighting anymore."

Sandra had posters and T-shirts made with her brother's picture and name for a 6 March demonstration against the paramilitaries and in tribute to their victims. "I hope that my case will at least resonate in the hearts of the kidnappers," she said. "Even though we're not prepared for the worst – to receive a body – we need a signal that he's alive...or dead."

On 27 July 2001, men from the AUC operating under the command of "Gato" summoned several residents of Cabuyaro (Meta Department) to a meeting at a farm on the La Embajada trail. The residents were to arrive on the 28^th at 8:00 a.m. Wiliam Hernando Murad Sánchez – a 51 year-old municipal employee with two sons – was among those summoned. His wife Leonor remembers that he was very pensive that night:  "William told me:  'He who owes nothing fears nothing; it'll be worse if I don't go because they'll come for me." That is why he got up early, took his daughter's bicycle and headed for the appointment at the farm that the paramilitaries had seized months ago and which they used as a base. He was the only resident of Cabuyaro who decided to go to the meeting.

His relatives say that they asked around and were told that nobody heard screams or gunshots and that there was no torture on the farm. Since then, his mother and sister joined the search. They met with AUC bosses from the region, including Gato. He told them:  "We didn't summon anyone around here; don't ask about him."

But the two women continued asking from farm to farm and then went to the police, who refused to go to the site. William's sister, Aydée, recalls that "the only lead we have is the testimony of Emilio – the owner of the farm. He told us that William left there alive; that they kept him at night and gave him food, and then Gato took him to the school and also held him there." William's mother, Teresa, interrupts to add a detail to the story:  "Don Emilio said that Gato kept my son's watch."

The two women believe that William was kidnapped. For that reason, they hope that the depositions of paramilitary bosses who have laid down their arms will provide some clues. "We know who he went to, but it's going to be seven years and they still haven't returned him," Aydée says. "As an attorney, I have gone through all the possible legal channels but nobody tells me anything," she says. Even more serious, Teresa got a phone call at her home in Bogotá:  "They told me not to go back there and to stop asking so many questions, then they hung up." The search has been suspended since then.

Meantime, rumors were circulating in Cabuyaro that William was "departed" and that he had been thrown into a lagoon full of piranhas. Still, Aydée pays that no mind and continues waiting for the conclusions of the Prosecutor General's report. "As long as there is no body, he is not dead," she says. The sister adds:  "I'm going to fight this battle; especially because I have dreams about him and he tells me:  'You idiot! Why aren't you doing anything for me? Why aren't you looking for me?'"

On 11 May 2002, two men and one woman from the AUC took Pedro Octavio Franco Bernal – a 36 year-old father of two sons – off a bus belonging to the Macarena bus line that was traveling from Bogotá to Vistahermosa, where he worked as a technician for the Agriculture Secretariat. His mother, Marina, says:  "They took him and they still have not called." "I say he's kidnapped because I see no other motive; but I got a message that they held him for some time, killed him, and threw his body in the Lagoon of the Dead – there in San Juan de Arama. The people at País Libre insist that he could have disappeared because there hasn't been a single phone call in six years."

There are many more stories like those involving Raúl, William, and Octavio; but relatives do not disclose their names out of fear. The wife of a businessman told Cambio magazine:  "We paid the ransom and they already told us he's dead." "They haven't given us the body," she added. Another victim said:  "Some people from the Central Bolivar bloc kidnapped one of our uncles. They asked for the farm and two apartments that we were renting out. Who could stand up to them?"

Kidnapping is, in general, associated with guerrillas; but according to the National Fund for Personal Freedom (Fondelibertad), which compiles kidnapping statistics from intelligence agencies, the AUC abducted 1,163 people between 1996 and 2996.

The AUC, then, are not only guilty of murder, massacres, forced disappearances, atrocities, displacements, and seizure of land; they are also guilty of kidnapping for extortion, for political reasons, or to extract favors from relatives of their victims. Even for purposes of forced recruitment of children – 99 in the past 10 years, according to authorities – and for sexual exploitation.  

One of the most publicized political kidnapping cases was that of Victor Ochoa Daza, a political leader from Cesar Department.  In February of 2007, he testified before the Colombian Supreme Court that he was abducted by Jorge 40 in January 2002 as part of a strategy to change the regional electoral map. According to Ochoa, Senator Alvaro Araujo – currently under arrest for suspected ties to the paramilitaries – instigated the plot. "My 80 days in captivity were part of that deal with the Devil that made Alvarito Araujo into the foremost electoral force in Cesar," Ochoa said. He was kidnapped on 13 January 2002 as he was inspecting his farms. The Prosecutor General subsequently dropped the kidnapping charges against Senator Araujo.

Ochoa recalls that it was 8:30 a.m. when a member of an armed group stepped out in front of him and told him:  "I have to take you; orders from the 40^th Command." Danilo, the first man responsible for his captivity, warned him to prepare for a long stay. "This is a political matter and you probably already know that the 40^th Command does not back down from anything," he told him. At that moment, Ochoa recalled that on 3 January, Jorge 40 had forced the leadership of the Valledupar City Council to resign and that his men had spread the story that the list of Congressional hopefuls would require his blessing.

This story touched off a scandal that led to the resignation of then Foreign Minister Maria Consuelo Araujo, sister of the senator, today under house arrest, and daughter of Alvaro Araujo Noguera – a fugitive from justice in connection with the same case.

Salvatore Mancuso admitted to other kidnappings in a deposition:  those of Leonor Palmera -- sister of Simon Trinidad – taken hostage between 1996 and 1997, Hilda Rodriguez – sister of Nicolas Rodriguez Bautista (AKA "Gabino"), head of the Army of National Liberation (ELN), and who was abducted with her husband Libardo Acevedo in 1997 and subsequently killed together with him, and of Senators Zulema Jattin and Juan Manuel Lopez Cabrales, kidnapped in 2000.

Colombians also remember the kidnappings of Senator Piedad Cordoba on 21 May 1999 in Medellín under orders of Carlos Castaño. The senator was freed in Necoclí on 4 June 1999. Similarly, former Senator Jorge Eduardo Gnecco was taken hostage in Magdalena Department by the Northern bloc on 27 June 2004 and released three days later because the case jeopardized the AUC demobilization process.

The only public kidnapping for extortion was that of Venezuelan Richard Boulton, son of aviation executive Henry Boulton. The younger Boulton was abducted on 15 July 2000 and freed in 2002 following the payment of a USD 4 million ransom.

Until now, few have been able to tell their tale, because as Mancuso coldly told a prosecutor from the Peace and Justice Commission in Medellín in January 2007, "we didn't keep hostages. Most of those held were taken out." He justified the killings with the argument that the victims were guerrillas or aided the guerrillas. The truth will never be known.

And where are the rest – which, according to Fondelibertad total 254? Fondelibertad Director Harlan Andres Henao says:  "It is not known if they died or if they are somewhere (alive)." That answer does not please the relatives who will not rest until they know the fate of their loved ones. If they are alive, they want them returned. If they are dead, they want to be told where the bodies are to bury them and mourn.

Henao is confident that the Justice and Peace Law will help ascertain the truth about those who have been kidnapped and/or disappeared, and that testimony will provide some clues. And that has been the case:  until now, demobilized bosses have confessed to 39 kidnappings. It is still necessary to check whether the names coincide with those on Pais Libre's and Fondelibertad's list of 254.

Most of the abductions took place in areas marked by heavy paramilitary presence. Authorities say that the numbers may be underreported, because for every case that is publicized, it is estimated that two never are. Gaula managed to rescue 187 of the 1,163 hostages. Thirteen captives escaped, and 129 families received a body – in some cases after paying a ransom.

According to the País Libre Foundation, "there was negligence during the demobilizations when it came time to ask about those hostages." Mancuso himself acknowledged in an interview with transitional justice expert Natalia Springer that he never checked on the situation of the more than 550 individuals – according to him – who are registered as "kidnapped by the self-defense groups."

Nevertheless, little is mentioned in Colombia about those abducted by the AUC. Most families keep silent out of fear that they will be identified as having links to the guerrillas or that they will suffer retaliation from members of that armed organization. The sister of a hostage missing for nine years and who waits to at least be told where the body is, tells Cambio:  "In this country, they stigmatize people like us who have somebody abducted by the paramilitaries." "We know who took him and why, but at this point we do not know why they haven't returned him," she adds.

She blames the Northern bloc of the self-defense groups, which is under the command of Rodrigo Tovar (AKA "Jorge 40") and warns:  "Regrettably, we have had to feel the silent commentary that if they took him it was because he owed them something; there is a certain complicity with the paramilitaries on the part of society."

Olga Lucía Gómez asserts:  "There cannot be top-tier and second-tier victims. Kidnapping is despicable, regardless of who perpetrates it. Our concern is for all the hostages – of the guerrillas and of the paramilitaries – so that the situation of those families who don't know what to expect can be resolved."

The Office of the Prosecutor General has registered 306 reported victims of kidnapping by the AUC; 113 of whom are being held for ransom. According to investigators, it will be difficult to find any of them alive because demobilized paramilitary chiefs have, in testimony, confessed to having killed those who were "retained." For example, Freddy Rendon (AKA "El Alemán"), former head of the Élmer Cárdenas bloc, admitted that Jorge Yabur Espitia and his brother Rodolfo were abducted and killed in Dabeiba (Antioquia Department) on 29 April 2005.

Juan Francisco Prada Márquez (AKA "Juancho Prada") former AUC boss in southern Cesar Department, revealed that his men kidnapped and murdered former Administrative Department of Security (DAS) agent Henry Ancízar Vanegas on 16 December 1994. One of Prada's men disposed of the body.

Arley Hernando Benítez, a demobilized member of the Cacique Nutibara bloc, recounted that the order was to kill those who had been kidnapped. He added that Hernán Eusebio Tovar and Joana Janeth Mosquera were kidnapped in San Félix and El Bosque near Medellín and that the order was that the two be executed.

“I would have liked a happy life”

(Translated from Spanish)

Text and photos: Fátima Monterrosa, Special Correspondent

Acteal, Chiapas.- At the age of 10, Ernestina Pérez Luna became mother of two little girls. Her dolls, toys, friends, and school were all left behind. At her young age, she learned to cook beans, toss tortillas, wash clothes, gather firewood and plant vegetables and corn.

After 22 December 1997, she devoted herself to caring for her two little sisters, who were orphaned just like her: Zenaida, 4 years old, and Rosella, 2.

Ernestina’s studies were cut short in her fourth year of elementary school, where she only learned to draw a few doodles.

A radical change in her life, which made her sick with sadness in her heart.

“That pain marked me, and so far I have not been able to relieve it,” confesses this Tzotzil native who still lives in the Acteal Alto community.

Men carrying powerful weapons—R-15s, AK-47s, sawed-off .22-caliber rifles—who wore navy blue uniforms and covered their faces with red handkerchiefs, killed five members of her family: her father, Miguel Pérez Jiménez, and her mother, Marcela Luna Ruiz, as well as her brother Alejandro and her sisters Juana and Silva, respectively 15, 8 and 6 years old.

Of the Pérez Luna family, only Ernestina, Zenaida, who was left blind by a bullet shard to her head, and Roselia, who was grazed by a bullet in her mouth, survived. 

Ten years have passed since Ernestina took charge of them. Thus, she was forced to give up what remained of her childhood, of her adolescence.

“I suffered greatly. It was very difficult, because I didn’t know how to take care of the baby while by grandparents were taking care of my other sister in the hospital. I had to make an effort. My heart was sick. I had been orphaned.”

Now, at the age of 20, she is an expert in the kitchen and in fieldwork. Though ready for marriage, she is not interested in getting married; she has other concerns.

For Ernestina, there are no weekends or holidays. Every day is the same: she gets up at 4:00 in the morning, stokes the fire, tosses tortillas, heats the beans and prepares coffee in her house of wooden planks, blackened by the firewood that burns on the ground, where they cook on a grill and on very rare occasion eat chicken or beef.  She does not even know the taste of milk.

She tends to her sisters and then goes to work in the field, accompanied by her grandfather, Antonio Luna Santiz.

For Ernestina—fair skin, big brown eyes, long, straight hair that goes down to her calves because it has never been cut—the illnesses that have weakened her grandparents are a concern, since she has no money to buy medicines, much less to provide for Zenaida and Roselia. 

“We don’t know how we’re going to live in the coming years. We have no money or mom or dad. I don't know what I’m going to do with my sisters in order to feed them.”

“And you don’t plan on getting married?”

“I don’t plan on abandoning my sisters. I’m going to keep taking care of them. I’m not interested in getting married.”

“Do you think fate has been unfair with you?”

“I feel that life has treated me poorly. I would have liked a happy life with my parents, getting to be like other kids who walk and play with their parents. If my father were living, I wouldn’t work like a man in the field, and he would be in charge of us.”

Ernestina has a very vague memory of them. Of her father, she has only a small photograph that has started to fade, while of her mother she does not even have that.

“What goes through your head each day? What do you think about?”

“I worry about my grandparents, who are sick and don’t receive medical care. If they die, I’m going to be orphaned all over again.”

“Would you like to keep studying?”

“No, because I have to go to the cornfield and take care of my sisters.”

During the coffee seasons, Ernestina and her grandfather harvest up to 120 kilos, for which they are paid between 10 and 15 pesos per kilogram.

Ernestine’s heart grows even sadder when she hears what they will receive for their harvest. Barely 1,800 pesos to survive for an entire year.

* * 

Many Mexicans perhaps do not remember it. Still others have wanted to bury that part of our history. But the memory of Acteal will be difficult to silence. It remains there, still awaiting justice to be served for the murder of 45 Tzotzil natives shot down one December day ten years ago: 21 women, four of them pregnant, 15 children and nine men.

It happened on a cold and rainy morning on the 22^nd of December, 1997, nights before the celebration of the advent of the Son of God.

An armed, priista-affiliated group invaded that community of the Chenalhó municipality, in the heights of Chiapas, and attacked men, women and children while they were praying for peace in a chapel.

Dozens of native families held wakes for their dead on Christmas Eve and buried them on Christmas Day.

A decade has gone by since that vigil which abounded with children. Along with them, the future of those who escaped the killing was also buried.

They are the children of Acteal, today adolescents and youths who survive abandoned to their luck in poverty and marginalization.

The furrows of land that were bathed in native blood continue to call out for justice. The wound remains open, latent.

The victims who did not die, warn: “If Acteal remains in impunity, sooner or later another massacre may take place."

The growth of the paramilitary groups that intended to curb the presence of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in indigenous communities, culminated in the homicide of 45 natives. Acteal was the population chosen by the Máscara Roja group to perpetrate its attack.

The men, who carried high-caliber weapons for the Army’s exclusive use, arrived at the community in three freight trucks. They descended stealthily, surrounded them and opened fire.

Everyone, regardless of age or sex, was grazed by bullets from AK-47s. And as if that were not enough, some received the coup de grâce, and still others were mutilated at the point of a machete.

The dead: 33 women, ranging in age from 65 to 11 months, four of them pregnant; four children between the ages of four and 15, and eight men between 25 and 68 years of age. Furthermore, a score of injured men and women.

“How did we survive? I was stranded after the gunfire and until everything was over. I saw how those who fired were lifting the skits of the women, dead or alive. They were laughing. Those who were alive, were crying,” recounted Erasto Ruiz Pérez three days after the paramilitary raid.

The 18-year-old youth had received a gunshot in the stomach and was convalescing in the San Cristóbal de las Casas Hospital. He had lost his mother and two-year-old brother.

The attack had been announced in advance in the media. And no authority stopped it. Weeks after the tragedy, armed civilians linked with the PRI (the Institutional Revolutionary Party) had expelled natives from their communities who sympathized with the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and formed part of the Las Abejas Civil Society.

They robbed them of their few belongings, burned their homes and took over the lands. “The priistas wanted to force me to burn my companions’ house, and I didn’t want to. So, I left my home in Quextic, went to Acteal and prayed,” explained Erasto, who fled his community for fear of being killed.

Like him, some 6,000 indigenous peoples took refuge in Acteal, X’oyep and Polhó, where they set up camp with branches, banana leaves and plastic remnants. They were barely sheltered from the rain and the cold.

The destination held hundreds of displaced natives, who had fled from the paramilitary groups.

Many were stranded in a muddy hollow in an attempt to save their lives. Today their bodies remain in the same place, but in wooden coffins.

Before the Acteal massacre, the acts of violence that had taken place in various communities of Chenalhó had left a balance of 62 dead, 42 injured and more than 6,000 injured, as documented by the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Center for Human Rights.

* * *

The almond-shaped eyes of Zenaida Pérez Luna lost their glimmer, and her face lost its joy.

The shard from a bullet that was lodged in her head robbed her of her sight when she was four years old.

She is tiny, fragile and pale, condemned to live as an orphan, just like her two sisters who survived the bullets of an AK-47.

She cannot distinguish colors, only shades. She cannot see the stars, those diamonds that line the Acteal night and which make crickets and cicadas harmonize symphonies during the frozen twilight of winter.

Ten years in the darkness have turned her into a tormented, quiet girl. Zenaida is already 14 and has began adolescence, but still does not know, does not feel it; in her confusions, she continues to be a child.

She has great difficulty in the sixth grade at Vicente Guerrero Elementary School, where she struggles to distinguish a few scrawls on the chalkboard. She does not have three-dimensional vision. The teachers have been passing her because she has the hope of finishing school.

Her grandmother Catarina Ruiz Pérez became her guide: she takes her to school and returns her home, because Zenaida trips over things while walking.

No matter how much she strives to take part in household chores, she cannot embroider or make tortillas.

In 2008 she will turn 15, and fantasizes about three wishes: recovering her sight, that her grandmother heals from the illnesses she has acquired over the years, and that someone gives her a skirt.

For now, a worn and discolored skirt is her everyday outfit. Her slender body and ashen skin, tanned by the sun and mud, shiver with the cold that falls over these mountains.

There is no furniture or beds in her home. Only a few small circular benches that are used when they make tortillas.

At dinner time, along with her grandparents, sisters and cousins, Zenaida sits around a bonfire that burns on the ground. They share bean soup and a few tortillas. Six kilos of corn are enough for 12 people everyday.

At night, they use a few planks on the floor as a bed. They huddle their bodies to shelter themselves from the wind that slips in through the cracks of the wooden house.

They do not have drinking water or sewage.

They receive no minimal benefits from government programs: neither Progresa or Oportunidades, neither Seguro Popular or Procampo, neither Alianza para el Campo or support for the elderly or grants. Nothing of that kind.

Zenaida’s grandmother laments that the girls have ended up in destitution and do not receive the aid that authorities have promised. “They are suffering greatly… Who is going to take care of them, since I am already old and can no longer work? I am getting weaker and weaker, and I don't have money, and we hardly have enough to eat. We need someone to support us. Coffee leaves us with little, and the corn and bean crops are what we eat.”

Zenaida is hopeful that her eyes will recover sight, but she has no hope of escaping the poverty in which she lives.

* * *

After the mass burial, the Attorney General of the Republic implemented an ostentatious mechanism for detaining those responsible for the killings in the communities of Los Chorros, Puebla, La Esperanza and Quextic, considered to be bases of the priista paramilitaries.

Dozens of natives were detained, among them the mayor of Chenalhó, Jacinto Arias Cruz, accused of having distributed weapons to civilians linked to the PRI and the Cardenist Front, which were lead by Manuel Anzaldo Meneses and Juana García Palomares. Then-state governor, Julio Cesar Ruiz Ferro, tried to shirk from his liability, but against pressure from civil society and international organizations, he resigned from office 16 days after the massacre in Acteal.

The government of Ernesto Zedillo, for the purpose of confronting the scandal that has crossed borders, created the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Addressing Crimes Committed in Chenalhó on March 12, 1988.

This office began nine trials and issued arrest warrants against 135 suspects, 84 of which went to jail, among which were a mayor, a soldier and 12 state policemen. All were accused of homicide, injuries and bearing arms without a license.

Various arrest warrants remained pending and, for better or for worse, ceased to exist on April 17, 2000.

Jorge Madrazo, then-Attorney General of the Republic, affirmed that the massacre had three causes: historical confrontations, the illegal creation of the Autonomous Municipal Council of Polhó, and the non-existence of a state of law.

Twenty-seven natives received sentences of 35 years in prison; recently another 49 received sentences of 26 years. On the other hand, the public servants detained received a sentence only three and seven years in prison, and today they are free.

Five years ago, the Second District Court released six of the accused for lacking legal elements to hold them responsible. It ruled that the evidence contributed by the Attorney General’s Office lacked legality.

Two natives sentenced to 25 years in prison were released for reasons of humanity (for age and health). One of them just died.

No high-ranking official was punished, despite a recommendation from the National Human Rights Commission that indicated that several were responsible by omission. Among them was the then-Secretary of State of Chiapas, Homero Tovilla Cristiani.

Gonzalo Ituarte, at that time member of the National Intermediation Commission (CONAI), revealed that, hours before the armed group finished the massacre, the Secretary of State was notified of the violent events that were taking place in Acteal. The official answered that nothing was happening there.

* * *

Seven bullets destroyed the life of Catarina Méndez Paciencia without killing her: they left her handicapped, unfit for marriage and unable to conceive children.

The bursts from the AK-47s also caught her mother, Manuela Paciencia Moreno, her sister Margarita, her sister-in-law Marcela Capote and her five-year-old nephew Vicente Méndez Capote.

Catarina is 30 today and has lost all hope of forming a family, like she used to dream of a decade ago.

Today, Catarina can barely walk. One of the projectiles that hit her pierced her hip, another pierced an ankle, another four pierced her right arm, and one more opened her left hand.

She was bedridden for more than five years. After multiple surgeries and rehabilitation sessions financed by civic organizations, she learned to take her first steps once again.

Her legs rapidly tire; as she cannot walk long distances, she does not go to the cornfield or the coffee plantations.

The plate and three screws she has in her ankle bother her; she feels as though they are burning her skin.

She tried to hide the scars that mark her body and soul with a large, navy blue skirt and a red blouse that she embroidered. But her face shows her despair, which cannot be hidden.

When she was 16-years-old, she rejected a marriage proposal; she did not want to get married before her two older sisters, Ana and Margarita. She begged her father, Antonio Méndez Hernández, not to force her to get married to the man who had set his eyes on her, because he had a bad reputation: he had abandoned a woman and liked to drink hard liquor.

Antonio handed over his firstborn. So it was that Ana gave birth to eight children with that man. The youngest of her children was born four months ago.

Luck did not smile on Margarita, either: the bullets of the paramilitaries cut her life short on December 22, 1997.

And that day Catarina became a woman who would find it difficult to find a husband.

Since then, she has been passed from hospital to hospital. Her situation keeps her from doing household chores, loading firewood and going to the field, as Tzotzil women customarily do. At the age of 30, it is impossible for her to compete with the young singles of her community.

Catarina asked the Virgin of Guadalupe to close all her wounds. The tragedy still hurts her as if it had taken place yesterday.

“What were you doing that day?”

“When the paramilitaries arrived, we were praying in church. We had been fasting for three days. They came firing, so I ran with my sister-in-law to a ravine. My mom and my sister left for somewhere else and, after a while, came out of hiding. They were maybe four meters away from where we were hidden, and I saw when they killed them… There was a boy with us named Ricardo; he was a year and a half old. He cried with fear. His cry gave us away to the armed men, who fired at us. That was when they injured me.”

The bullets knocked down the Tzotzil native. She crawled among the red clay and the thickets until she came across an injured woman and lay down beside her. Then she covered her face with her face with the bloodied clothing of her companion, who had just passed away.

“I pretended to be dead. I was very frightened. I tried not to move. My heart beat very strongly. The woman was bleeding a lot, and her blood was getting in my face. I was afraid that the men would see that I was alive and would finish me off.”

Three hours after the armed group had perpetrated the attack, Catarina was losing strength and prepared to die. One of the Red Cross ambulances that arrived at that moment transferred her to the San Cristóbal de las Casas Regional Hospital.

“What has your life been like all these years?”

“I have a lot of pain and fear. I’m afraid that the killers will return. Now nothing is the same. I remember when I went to cut coffee; now I can’t go anywhere, just to hospitals. My life isn’t normal. I can’t work like before.”

Catarina’s deep black eyes begin to tear up. She tries to dry her tears with her hands.

She wants to forget. But she smiles when I ask her if she wants to get married. Her thick lips allow a glimpse of a row of platinum teeth while she fixes her braided hair with green and purple ribbons.

Catarina lives in Quextic, three kilometers away from Acteal, amongst ravines, muddy hollows and streams. She shares a small wooden shack with her father, her sister Ana, Ana’s husband and her eight children.

The therapies she undergoes at the National Rehabilitation Institute have allowed her to walk again. She receives free medical assistance, but must pay for her medicines. On many occasions, she has stopped taking them because she does not have enough money to buy them.

The Ministry of Health pays for her transportation, food and lodging when she comes for rehabilitation in the Federal District. They examine her and write the prescription, but they do not provide her with the medications. Every time she is in the Federal District, she goes to the Basilica to entrust herself to the Virgin of Guadalupe and ask that she heal her wounds.

 * * *

The attack carried on for several hours. The natives who managed to flee hid themselves in a deep trench, without imagining that there they would be gunned down at point-blank range by the armed men.

“The priistas came dressed as soldiers. “They killed everyone who had hidden in the caves,” told Catarina Vázquez Gómez shortly after having escaped the massacre.

The Red Cross reported that the deceased suffered from gunshot wounds, dismemberment of legs, arms and other parts of the body due to machete strikes.

International organizations and civil society make an extreme effort with the Acteal community to assist the survivors.

Ten years after the tragedy, they have ended up alone. The aid slowly disappeared, just like the 35,000 pesos that the state government handed over to the family members of victims. That was the price that it allotted to the life of each Chiapaneco native killed: 35,000 pesos.

Ten years after the tragedy, ex-President Ernesto Zedillo stated from abroad his “sadness” for the 45 dead natives and defended the investigation carried out by the Attorney General’s Office during his term.

“I remember this event with great sadness, and I also remember that the Attorney General of the Republic carried out some serious investigations… But my conclusion is that it is something that should still sadden us and that all of us must continue to lament,” stated Zedillo in Madrid, Spain.

* * *

The majority of the victims were members of Las Abejas, an organization created by catechists of the diocese of San Cristóbal de las Cases in the municipality of Chenalhó in 1992.

Las Abejas define themselves as pacifists, defend human rights in communities and seek peace with justice and dignity. They have played an important role in recent years, upon extending their activities to the municipalities of Tenejapa, Chalchihuitán and Simojovel.

In February 2005, Las Abejas and the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Center for Human Rights brought a complaint before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights against the Mexican government for the Acteal killings. “Many years have gone by, and we have not found justice in this country; thus, this petition,” they indicated.

With support of donations, they built the Indigenous Ceremonial Center and the Open Ecumenical Chapel. A galley of iron and sheets that they mounted over the 45 graves.

They created the Mayavinic Coffee Producers Union, which exports its production abroad.

They founded a community radio station. From 4:00 in the morning until 8:00 at night, nine native presenters broadcast programs in Tzotzil and Tzeltal to promote the defense of collective and individual human rights. Radio Abejas Chapul Pom has other programs and broadcast traditional music of indigenous peoples, ranchera songs, cumbias and duranguenses. They send out messages of peace and tell Tzotzil stories. For its peaceful fight and defense of rights, it was awarded by the Republic of France.

* * *

José Alfredo Jiménez forms part of the Indigenous Communicator Network, which is in charge of giving community and popular communication workshops in rural areas. He made a documentary about the indigenous radio that secretly operations in the ravines, which was selected at three national and international film festivals. Currently, he is preparing a video with testimonies of the survivors of the Acteal killings.

José Alfredo personally experienced the violence of the paramilitaries, who attacked his community, Yibeljo, burning houses and beating the inhabitants. He took refuge with his family in the X’oyep camp for the displaced. They lived in exile for three years.

Saint Death protects little Efraín Gómez Luna. The same one who took away his mother and whom he forgave ten years ago.

He was two years old when he was saved from dying at the hands of the Máscara Roja group in Acteal.

Efraín survived because his mother, Irma Luna Pérez, who was five months pregnant, protected him with her body. She received the rain of projectiles. But a bullet reached the boy and destroyed his jaw.

The doctors gave him a plate and did little else to reconstruct that part of his face. A scar 15 centimeters long crosses from his chin down to his throat.

On his neck, near the injury, hangs a plastic medal with the image of Saint Death that he bought at a fair. And on his left hand he wears a wooden bracelet with the same image.

He is 12 years old, but he looks like a child of 8, on account of his stature. He is short and thin. And he no longer lives in Acteal.

Along with his father, his stepmother and his three new siblings, Efraín took a bus and arrived at Tuxtla Gutiérrez in search of better life opportunities. Eight hours of work in the field cutting coffee and cleaning corn only leaves them with 20 pesos a day. His father, Victorio Gómez Pérez, does not have enough to support his family.

In the capital of Chiapas, Efraín and his father sell chilies, sweets, peanuts and cigarettes wherever they can: park, cafeterias, and snack centers of the San José Terán district.

Efraín became a “little kangaroo,” as indigenous children who sell sweets in Tuxtla Gutiérrez are called.

When his father works as a construction worker, the small Tzotzil carries 15-kilogram wooden box that displays a great variety of candies. On other occasions, he shines shoes at five pesos per pair.

“I leave at 10:00 in the morning to sell sweets. I come back to eat around 4:00 in the afternoon. I leave again and get back to the room around 11:00 or 12:00 at night,” he tells.

The fact of the matter is that Efraín likes to earn money to contribute to supporting his family. “When it goes well for me, I get around a hundred pesos selling sweets, and then shining and polishing shoes, I earn around fifty pesos,” he says with enthusiasm.

Despite the fact that he cannot read or write, he gets by with ease in the city. He learned to speak Spanish very quickly.

“What do you like to do?”

“Work. Well, I also like to watch soccer and westerns on TV. As we can’t buy a television, sometimes I go to the man’s house who rents us the room, and he lets me watch TV with them.”

“What team do you root for?”

“I like the Pumas. I hope they win the championship.”

Efraín likes to sell in the cafeterias, because that way he can watch the games that are broadcast pay-per-view.

His family rents a small terrace room for 500 pesos a month on 2^nd Avenida Norte Oriente, number 299, in the Terán district.

In that same room, the owner keeps old and useless things that Efraín’s sisters play with. Another room is inhabited by eight youths, all relatives of victims of Acteal who also left the community to sell sweets and gum.

“It’s going well for us here, selling candy. It’s not much, but it’s enough to support the family in Acteal. It makes us want to leave for the other side,” remarks Juan Guzmán Gutiérrez, Efraín’s uncle, speaking of immigrating to the United States, “but they charge a lot, and we’re also afraid that the coyotes will abandon us in the desert.”

Efraín’s cheerful expression changes when he is asked about his recovery. He complains that he has not received rehabilitation in one year.

“I no longer go to the doctor. There is no one to help me. I want to go to Mexico City so they can see me, but nobody helps us. This piece of iron that they put in my mouth hurts me when I eat.”

The metal plate is already small for him, due to the fact that his bones are growing.

His memories of Acteal are few: “My mom is buried there. My house was locked up there, and it makes me sad, because they stole my bicycle.”

Nothing seems to have changed in the 3,650 days that have passed since the killings in this community in the heights of Chiapas.

Here, the future simply does not exist. Poverty is everywhere. And the government’s promises to tend to the most urgent needs of the indigenous people have never become reality. The carts full of resources that would arrive ten years ago, who knows where they went?

In accordance with the National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples, the municipality of Chenalhó registers a very high index of marginalization. The statistic will remain there. Just like the nearly 30 collapses on the highway that connects San Juan Chamula with Chenalhó that cleanly cuts off passage. For years the highway has shown faults, and nobody bothered to repair it.

Last year, the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples announced the reconstruction of the 59.9-kilometer road. Today, the Tzotzil natives are still waiting on the repair of the only asphalt road that they have in the municipality.

The orphans and survivors of the massacre also keep hoping that government support will arrive.

During Pablo Salazar’s administration, the state government signed an agreement with the Las Abejas Civic Organization by which the authorities committed to support the victims of the massacre through education, medical assistance, housing and food.

Nothing has been accomplished.

And the wounds remain open.

Without economic rights, slums move billions

Carla Rocha and Dimmi Amora

(translated from Brazilian Portuguese)

At least one in each four Rio residents lives in a lawless, wild capitalism, outside the state. Such parallel market, which boils at the city's slums, has generated businesses which increased their price so much in recent years that, in an imaginary stock exchange, their shares would be disputed under the most deafening screams of a trading session. Far from the laws enforced in the asphalt, pulsates a rich, dynamic and, in some respects, chaotic market, which reaps more than R$ 3 billion per year. Fighting for a chunk of that little known fortune, are formal, informal and illegal activities, in a heterogeneous environment that extends from small grocery stores to banks, from drug trafficking “firms” to the militias [paramilitary groups formed generally by current or former policemen, who take traffickers out of slums and take over with their own violent methods]. The residents form a mass of potential consumers estimated at something between 1.3 million and two million people, with annual income reaching somewhere between R$ 5 billion and R$ 10 billion. In spite of statistical differences, those figures make dollar signs clink in the eyes of any entrepreneur. Whether in retail or in bulk, official or parallel, the holding company Favela, Inc. makes a few rich, explores thousands and swindles the State.

O GLOBO followed the money trail to try to measure such emerging economy, despite the few data available, and publishes, a series of reports that will reveal who profits from these businesses. The mass of salaries was obtained updating Census data which showed a family income of R$ 634.50 in those areas, according to the Pereira Passos Institute, at the city hall. The turnover in trade was calculated from estimates by entrepreneurs from many industries and by public officials, in addition to a census conducted in 2000 in 44 slums included in the Favela-Bairro program [an urbanization program for favelas, enterprised by the Rio city hall], which showed an average of 91 businesses per shantytown, with average annual revenues around R$ 15 thousand. These are R$ 3 billion, which do not include the billionaire and still unknown profits obtained from trafficking.

This X-ray shows that, contrary to the government, which has not yet been effectively present there, the market has appropriated the dynamics of slums and made them a powerful machine to generate wealth. Such phenomenon has left behind some old concepts and a romantic image of shantytowns. The social inequality and lack of popular housing projects are no longer sufficient to explain them. Today, slums concentrate one fourth to one third of the population of the capital and, contrary to self-fulfilling assumptions, they are no longer the stronghold of the miserable.

Pereira Passos Institute estimates that 5% to 8% of the slum residents are the so-called middle class, with incomes between R$ 1,064 and R$ 4,051. The calculation was based on 2000 national census, the latest major survey with data on slums. In 2000, only one third of Rio's poor population lived in slums. The rest was in the formal part of the city. With the growth of income among the lower classes in the past three years, economists believe the participation of people of middle and upper classes is now much bigger in slums – and lower the number of poor and miserable.

Without freedom to express politically and under constant threat, as O GLOBO revealed in 2007 in the series "The Brazilians who still live under the dictatorship," residents of these areas also do not have full freedom to enjoy the growth in the local economy and their income. It is common that criminals catch hold of businesses, charge tolls and fees. On the other hand, with the informality, most businessmen and residents avoid spending on some items they’d have to pay in the formal city: taxes and fees for water and electricity.

-- These are very entrepreneurial areas, but the trafficking and militias act as predatory economic agents. These criminal groups appropriate the profits of virtually every business in slums – says sociologist Paulo Magalhaes, who represents Caixa Econômica Federal [a national state-owned bank] and monitoring the construction works in the Program to Accelerate Growth (PAC, in the Brazilian acronym). -- It is a kind of wild capitalism that enhances all the bad that happened in the Brazilian economy in recent years.

The desire to own a house won’t account for all the occupation of shacks in slums. In 2000, 12.2% of the buildings in these areas were rented. And the trend for those figures is to increase. Studies show that, on average, almost 30% of real estate transactions in the slums are rentals, a percentage that is increasing. This informal market created real estate "sharks", former residents who now live in the luxury condominiums. In the shantytown, they left roughly built buildings and still continue to pour hundreds of two-room apartments to be rented.

Slums are very different among themselves. Even though a few still are, as they all were in the past, small cities where workers only go to sleep, Rocinha [the biggest favela in Brazil] has already three bank agencies – among them, one of Bradesco and one of Itau, the largest private banks in the country – restaurants, gyms, tuck shops, big stores, cybercafes, bars, grocery stores, minimarkets and supermarkets. In Rio das Pedras (Jacarepaguá), a factoring company exchanges future claims for cash, like any other in the financial market. But it has a competitive advantage: the payment is guaranteed by the strong arm of the militia, where defaulting means to be under a death threat. In the Complexo do Alemão, stores from big chains are just a few meters away from drug dealing hotspots.

The removal of slums is no longer part of public policy. Since the Favela-Bairro program, the government has prioritized infrastructure work to integrate shantytowns to formal neighborhoods. These works, however, have not yet managed to integrate shantytowns to the city in the political, social and economic aspects. A sign of this is the fact that the state has been replaced by the action of populist politicians, who also profit from Favela, Inc. The vote market is also profitable and promotes, in some cases, the association between politicians and organized crime. Sociologist Marcelo Burgos, a professor at PUC-RJ, has no doubt that the economic strengthening of the residents of these areas will also generate social change:

-- The old system, which has always been successful in the slums, which have "owners", is in agony. I have no doubt that there will be a radicalization of democracy in such areas with the economic development.

A professor at the Institute of Economics of UFRJ, Ronaldo Fiano remembers that the modern economy is characterized by anonymous relationships between dealers, granted by clear laws, which does not happen in the slums. According to him, negotiations in those areas always need the support of the "owners" – which means higher costs and affect the business.

André Urani, director of the Institute for the Study of Labor and Society (IETS), wrote a study based on 2006 data from the National Survey of Sample Households (PNAD), from the national statistics bureau – partially covering the slums in the Metropolitan Region of Rio – and found out that the quality of life improved more in the formal areas of the city than in the informal ones. For him, informality and crime may be behind the result.

The slower pace in improving the quality of life is also noticed in practice by those who live in slums. A member of the Rio Forum, an entity which aims to reduce informality in the city and stimulate development, Cezar Vasquez, a director of the Sebrae-RJ [a reference center for small entrepreneurs], noted in interviews that traders and slum leaders considered informality as an obstacle to their activities:

- Historically, it was as if our society, which went through a process of shrinking in the last three decades, had told those people: "go about however you want." Now, we need to develop an appropriate model to bring formality to those areas. But nothing can be done without solving, first, the problem of violence.

The militia in Campo Grande neighborhood drained economically everything it could from the area’s slums. Investigations showed that the militia controlled the sale of kitchen gas and the distribution of pirate cable TV signal, as well as influenced in public transportation, sometimes acting as entrepreneurs, sometimes as public officials – charging fees or deciding who may or may not operate a service. The ownership made it possible for them to elect a councilman and a state legislator. In the same fashion as in the actions to combat the mafia, the police understood that it could only beat them through breaking their businesses, which began to be done. The first action, last June, was a sting in a huge illegal warehouse of kitchen gas in Campo Grande, which delivered gas cylinders to slums across the city and had reaped R$ 970 thousand in only ten days.

Understanding what happens in the rich and diverse market of slums, which is continually growing despite the poor infrastructure and absence of state, may be the way to integrate them in fact to the city – politically, socially and economically. After all, everyone remembers the famous quote said by marketer James Carville, in 1992, while pointing out the engine that actually moves the world and could make then presidential candidate Bill Clinton win the election:

-- It's the economy, stupid!  

At least 12% of the houses in slums are not owned by their residents

Carla Rocha and Selma Schmidt

(translated from Brazilian Portuguese)

Every day, Antônio, 70, works for 12 hours watching more than 40 buildings. He is not a guard. For 30 years, Antonio (fictitious name) builds and keeps houses for rent – with great profits – at the Maré complex. Building "condominiums" where the owners at the same time explore and have to ensure the integrity of property and tenants is one of the peculiarities of the dangerous activity of construction in poor communities of Rio. Profits are fat, especially in the South of the city, in slums like Rocinha, where the verticalization industry provides for the emergence of new-rich. Yesterday, O GLOBO initiated the series of stories about who profits from the business in so-called Favela, Inc.

This informal market in slums moves at least R$ 107 million a year in rents. The estimate comes from economist Ib Teixeira, based on the 2000 Census, which revealed the existence of 35,500 leased houses (12% of total) in slums.

Ib estimates that the real estate assets of 307,500 buildings in Rio slums is worth R$ 7.3 billion. A gigantic sum, which doesn’t include the favelized housing projects and irregular lots. Just to illustrate, the figures represent more than 6% of Rio’s GDP and 67% of Rio's city hall budget for this year.

This reality is very different to the faded idea that all the problems of slums have a social origin. The market for buying and selling in these communities is enough to overcome the prices of real estate in the “asphalt” (slum slang for the legal city), often curiously devalued by conflicts in slums.

-- At Tijuca, a house with 30 square meters in the Morro do Turano can be sold for R$ 60 thousand, while in the asphalt a larger apartment can cost little more than half of that – says Ib

Whoever adventures himself constructing in slums knows the risk. Mr. Antonio can’t remember how many times has been called into drug dealing places to answer questions, and he says there were times in which he had to scare bandits off the ceiling of his tenants’ houses:

-- When the traffickers invade the houses, I have to defend my tenants, sometimes physically.

The lack of rules and verbal contracts affect the residents, who stay without legal protection, at the mercy of the will of the owner, be it traffickers or militiamen. In slums, contracts can be canceled without any reason, as it was possible under a law enforced by the military dictatorship between 1964 and 1979 – the “empty complaint”.

-- What happens in the slums is worse than the old “empty complaint”. It is the law of the jungle. Those who can rule will rule, and those who have reason will obey – says Arnon Velmovitsky, chairman at the Real Estate Law commission at the Rio de Janeiro Bar Association. He remembers the empty complaint was reinstated in 1991, but subject to a 36-month contract.

Even without being a great builder, Maurício (fictitious name), 33, decided to leave the Barreira of Vasco, where he maintains business and a rented house, afraid of trafficking:

-- No one can do anything, become an entrepreneur or earn money in a slum without the approval of trafficking.

Manoel Grova is a successful trader: he has two furniture stores at the Maré and one in Rio das Pedras, as well as two in the asphalt, in Taquara and Madureira. He spends R$ 3 thousand a month to rent his branch at Roquete Pinto, at the Maré – a store with 3,000 square meters. That’s more expensive than what he pays for his branches in the asphalt.

-- It’s worse in Rio das Pedras, where I pay R$ 2,100 for 150 square feet – he tells.

Despite Manoel’s complaint about costs, his financial situation improved greatly since she started to invest in trade in slums, 12 years ago. Four years ago, he moved from the slum to a house in Taquara.

In slums, residents' associations act as notaries, to give the appearance of legality to real estate transactions, charging fees that can reach 10% or a fixed value when the deal is closed. That’s more expensive than the 2% charged by city hall in the tax for transfer of ownership.

Flavio Minervino, president of the Center for Support of Residents of Santa Teresa Slum, shows that Morro dos Prazeres charges 5%. Residents of Vila Esperança, in Gardenia, say the association keeps R$ 100 from the seller and R$ 100 from the buyer.

In Rio das Pedras, the real estate business spread to Orkut [a Facebook-like social network website, owned by Google and very popular among Brazilians]. In one ad, Allan Farias, 21, tries to attract not a simple candidate to buy his house, but investors who are interested in making money from rent. Claiming that a property bought for R$ 30,000 can be rented out for R$ 400, he says the buyer will have a salary for the rest of his life, in a violence-free area near Barra.

-- We sell 80% of the apartments to investors – says Allan, over the phone, without knowing he was talking to a reporter.

During the conversation, Allan reminds the potential client that he will not pay taxes for the construction or water fees:

-- All the communities reached by Favela-Bairro are exempted from paying for water – he says, adding that, in contrast, the tenant has obligations. -- If you do not pay in ten days, you have to leave. If you do not leave, we’ll go there and take you out.

In Rio das Pedras, a stand displays models of buildings under construction. One of them, which is already under construction, will have 10 floors, including a penthouse.

According to residents, militiamen are behind the real estate business in Rio das Pedras. On the road to Jacarepaguá, at the Curva do Pinheiro, apartments are being sold in three buildings under construction, on invaded land. Two of the four owners – colonel Geudo Gomes de Moraes and lawyer Rolim de Abreu – went to court claiming reintegration of possession. The other owners allegedly were police inspector Felix dos Santos Tostes, murdered in 2006, and Washington Luiz de Souza, who is missing. Despite the dispute, there is a sign at the site with a phone to contact the brokers of the property. Ricardo Ramos da Silva, a settler who’s 75 years old, owner of a stretch of land alongside that lot, also went to justice, having seen his restaurant demolished. Now, he only has a workshop left:

-- I walk with God and I have no fear - he says.

Group that operates at the Gardênia Azul is investigated for exploiting child prostitution

Sergio Ramalho

(translated from Brazilian Portuguese)

At 13 years, Maria (fictitious name) is very thin and has the body of a child, still showing no signs of adolescence. The lack of physical attributes led her to the “queue of the infants”. The phrase is common in meetings organized by members of the militia that operates in the Gardênia Azul favela, in Jacarepaguá. In a house on Canal do Anil Avenue, the militia selects children and teenagers, between 9 and 14 years old, which will be negotiated in wild nights of drinks and drugs. After taking over slums with a “shock of order” marketing, attracting residents with the promise of putting an end to the drugs trafficking, the militia is being investigated by state prosecutors for the practice of one of the most cruel of all crimes: the exploitation of child prostitution.

Since Sunday, the series Favela, Inc. has shown who profits with business in poor communities of Rio. The militia now discovered that sexual exploitation of children and teenagers may be another niche. Previously, cases of child prostitution happened in dens of trafficking, being common in “funk” dances.

The investigation of the state prosecutors is based on a document of the Center for Support to Promoting Children and Youth. In it, there are reports by relatives and by victims lured into orgies. The first complaints were pressed in August last year. Last week, prosecutors were beginning to identify the militia, so they can be criminally punished. The accused may be charged with operating child prostitution – which leads to sentences of four to ten years in jail – and rape, which is classified as a heinous crime, because there is presumption of violence, as the victims, at the time, were less than 14 years old. With this, the maximum penalty can reach 15 years of incarceration.

About the practice of such crimes in slums, attorney Helio Bicudo says the exploitation of child prostitution, historically, tends to be more intense in poor areas:

-- The poorer the place, there are more cases of exploitation of child prostitution. Although that is not classified as a heinous crime, Brazilian judges usually opt for the maximum possible punishment when determining the sentence. It is a tradition in the courts - explains the lawyer.

For anthropologist Alba Zaluar, the proposed shock of order offered by the militia to conquer the slums is a trick to lure the local population. She points out that these paramilitary groups are involved in a series of crimes, from economic fraud to murder:

-- Militiamen present themselves as enforcers of order and morality, but we know that they commit all types of crimes, they attack, they humiliate, they kill. And the worst part is this: the militiamen belong or have belonged to the very institutions of the state that should enforce the law. From a social point of view, exploiting of child prostitution and rape is a crime that can’t be forgiven. It’s so unforgivable that, when those who are convicted for these types of crime reach the prisons, they are punished by other inmates.

The luring of the girls was revealed by a testimony, in August 2007, by the mother of Ana (also a fictitious name), age 12. According to the woman, her daughter ran away from home one night to be part of the "queue of infants". The girls selected by militiamen were paid one real to participate of the orgies.

Ana's mother said she had discovered the existence of orgies on the night her daughter and a friend of hers, Maria, came home dirty. Maria had hemorrhage, because she had had sex repeatedly. The girl told her she had received R$ 1 after making sex with 23 men – without condoms. At the time, Ana's mother said that she would press charges with the police, but the girls said they would deny everything. According to testimonies at the juvenile justice and at the Center of Support to Prosecutors of Children and Youth Issues, the girls showed a certain pride in having been chosen by militiamen.

The paramilitaries would give preference to girls aged under 14. The older, according to reports, began to work as prostitutes for a woman identified only as Beatriz. In such cases, they were carried in the trunk of the car to motels in the region, being paid R$ 20 per appointment. To avoid drawing the attention of receptionists, Beatriz and the client pretended to be dating so they could enter the premises. In the garage, the girl was removed from the trunk. In their testimonies, some girls said the "work" with Beatriz was better because they earned much more than at the "queue of the infants".

The seriousness of the complaint made by Ana’s mother resulted in the admission of two girls into a shelter, where they are receiving medical and psychological care. Three administrative cases are under way in a court specialized in child issues at Cascadura. The cases are being investigated under secrecy, such as is established by the Statute of the Child and Adolescent (ECA), and the mothers can lose the guard of the girls.

No operation was made so far to curb child sexual exploitation in Gardênia Azul. The testimonies were not even taken to the police station or the police branch which investigates crimes committed against young people. Contacted by O GLOBO, prosecutors Marcia Velasco and Christiane Monnerat confirmed that there is an ongoing investigation, but said they could not comment on the case because it involves children.

Despite the anger they feel, the mothers of sexually exploited children rarely press charges against the criminals. In one of the cases mentioned at the juvenile justice office, the mother told her daughter escaped at night to take part in the "queue". For many of the girls, being one of the militiamen’s chosen ones is a sign of power and status. In one occasion, a mother assaulted one of the exploiters, whose sons are members of the militia in the region. Police was called – but, despite the evidence against the man, they told the woman she would be arrested for assault. Afraid, the girl's mother withdrew from pressing charges.

The mothers are not alone in facing difficulties in combating this crime. The investigation by the prosecutors shows that professionals like social workers, psychologists and members of the juvenile justice offices classify sexual exploitation of girls at Gardênia Azul as an epidemic. Little they can do to inhibit the action of exploiters. The justification is emphasized in a document attached to the research. "Would like to help in investigations, so that the gang can be arrested, but also fears for its own safety and for the continuation of its work in the community, since it must have the endorsement of the bosses of the area, which is known to be ruled by a militia," says the report about a professional.

Trafficking and militias were born, grew up and remain in the slums of Rio based on the same fact: the absence of the rule of law in these areas. The monopoly of force and the planning of social and economic practices in those territories, which are essentially roles of the state, were taken over by criminal gangs.

-- The state gave up its sovereignty in the slums. The only kind of public policy at these sites has always been the contention of trafficking by force, to isolate it. Investments in health or education are rare – examines geographer Fernando Lannes, coordinator of the Observatório das Favelas (Observatory of Slums).

The absence of the rule of law is a major reason for the fact that, today, at least 66% of the Rio slums are dominated by armed groups, according to a research made by the Department of Public Safety in 326 communities. The oldest gang of traffickers occupies 26% of the slums, such as the Complexo do Alemão. The other two factions together have 20% of them in their hands, the same share the militias have.

In three years, the militias were able to expand enough to approach the same amount of slums controlled by the oldest faction, which exists for three decades.  

An interview by Glenda Girón; Photos by Edu Ponces

(translated from Spanish)

The only thing that shines today at the jeweler’s house is the memory of the daily $5.15 he used to earn by picking watermelons, tomatoes, cucumbers and onions in Texas, United States. When Francisco Linares was deported, in 2007, all he could do was return to his goldsmith trade, working other people’s gold. And so it was until, after suffering a second burglary, he was left with nothing but his tools: a darkened table and a pile of twisted junk. From that moment on, he was no longer able to pay the $17 monthly fee for the house in the outskirts of Santa Ana. The $4 a day that Delmy de Linares earned with her job as a housekeeper was barely enough to pay for the food of their three children and the couple, and the deallocation orders that were slid under the door had started to put pressure on them. At 44, the United States was as necessary to Francisco as a life-jacket to a shipwrecked person. He convinced Delmy to join him in a trip with no guide and no guarantees, in which the only advantage was that he had made it once in the past. Working with watermelons in the North, he must have thought, is more dignifying than working gold in El Salvador.

They said goodbye to their children and to their house on Tuesday, March 26, of the present year. Two days later, they entered Mexico. They were on a bus, travelling down a road in Chiapas, when some agents of the Preventive Federal Police appeared. They made the bus stop and what happened then was that she hesitated, she got nervous, and she wasn’t able to answer the agents’ questions with the necessary promptness. They made her get off the bus. Francisco saw her face of concern and, after thinking about it for a few seconds, he decided to confess about his origin. They were both forced to get off the bus, same as others who did not carry their documents with them and, once stripped of their flags, coats of arms, governments and nationalities, were put all together in one big bag: Central Americans.

It wasn’t that bad this time. They were sent back to Guatemala thanks to the fact that, foreseeing the possibility of being arrested, Francisco had recommended Delmy to say she was from that country. He claimed the same. And, as the Mexican authorities did not bother to confirm the veracity of the statements, they were left in a border point that the Mexicans call Talismán and the Guatemalans call El Carmen. Before that, they had to spend the night in the police station, where he stayed with the men and she stayed with the women. They suffered from hunger and never stopped worrying about each other, but in the end it wasn’t so bad.

It was not a significant setback, and it did not undermine the Linares’ intentions. The same day the Mexican agents left them at the border point, Delmy and Francisco took a bus and made a half an hour trip to the following border point, which is called Tecún Uman and, as opposed to the previous one, is open 24 hours a day. That way, they went on the route that Francisco knew well.

On Saturday, March 1st, they were on a bus again. It was early. At 6 in the morning, they had crossed the Suchiate river, the one that links and, at the same time, separates the two countries, and since the sun was just starting to rise, he thought there would be no one there willing to surprise them. She didn’t speak this time. It was him who, with a fake Mexican accent, asked the driver to let them get off before arriving at the customs control. “Are you going to avoid it?”- Francisco says the driver asked him. An affirmative answer was not enough to quench curiosity. “You don’t have documents?”, the driver asked again; to which Francisco remembers having answered with an irritated: “And why do you think I’m asking you to leave me here?” The driver stopped and the couple got off.

Until that trip, Delmy had never been to the capital city of her own country, San Salvador, which is located only 65 kilometres from her place of residence. But when the sun finally rised on that Saturday, she and her husband had left El Salvador behind, had traveled across Guatemala and were walking through a place known as La Arrocera, in Huixtla (Chiapas). They got off the bus about 500 metres away from the customs control and walked about four blocks in order to avoid it. This is where the darkest part of their story began. Here begins the episode that the Linares couple decided to call “the incident”.

Francisco says that they hurried, and almost ran, in order to escape from them. It didn’t work. In a split second, one of the three uniformed officers jumped in front of them and asked them where they came from, where they were going, whether they were upset, whether they carried any money, whether the ‘old woman’ had any money. They were three. They had shotguns.

In Linares’ house there are several chairs, a couple of beds, a partition wall, and behind the partition wall, a paltry kitchen. Francisco agreed to tell this story on April 22, when the memories were still like open sores. He spoke because he wanted to demand justice. He had spent less than 48 hours in El Salvador. And he kept going back to his part of the incident with gestures and anger.

The agent asked Francisco whether he was upset. “No, I’m happy; I’m happy because I see you. That makes me feel there are no thieves here, nothing bad can happen to me. And at the same time, I’m worried, because you can hand me over to the Immigration Police”, he remembers having answered.

At the beginning, there were three agents, two with “navarone” hats and one with a regular cap. One of them, who had the face covered, passed his gun from one hand to the other. And the one who was talking to Francisco ordered other three men to get closer with a sign. These were wearing dark green shirts and trousers; army green. The last ones stayed with Delmy. The other three, the first men, took Francisco away. They said they would let Delmy go in about 10 minutes and that she would join him then.

With a diplomatic courtesy, Gustavo Gutiérrez, officer in charge of migration affairs in the state of Chiapas, admits that the respect of the immigrants’ rights and the purging of the police forces are “a challenge”, a big one. This way, turning actions into words, what the Linares called “the incident” works for Gutiérrez to size up his challenge. “This is not a case that we could consider as extraordinary; unfortunately, it shows the size of the challenge we are facing”, said the officer.

Francisco ran away from the uniformed men of the Preventive Federal Police. He escaped and hid in a gully. Like in a movie, he says he heard his chasers walking above his hideout, and he heard them say “That guy has gone”. And he stayed there, awake, stucking his head out to see if Delmy appeared. He waited for one day and a half, and she didn’t appear.

Francisco assures he searched for her. He says he wandered around the place where they had been intercepted, and he didn’t find any trace of who had been his wife for more then 25 years. He decided to go on, but the weight of sorrow became too heavy for him to continue toward his dream of working in the picking of watermelons, tomatoes, cucumbers and onions in Texas, United States.

He hung off the south train –which travels through the states of Chiapas and Oaxaca– and managed to get off safe and sound. Without a cent in his pocket (the six uniformed officers had kept it all), he decided to accept the shelter and food offered by the house “Hogar de la misericordia”, administered by a Mexican priest called Alejandro Solalinde, in the Ixtepec municipality. The nights became tears in there. He spent time alone, because he didn’t like it when his travel mates, who were also broken and exhausted, tried to cheer him up.

His relationship with lights and cameras began in that house. Solalinde gathered his guests and encouraged them to tell their experiences, as in a group therapy. Francisco requested permission to speak, but only to tell the priest that he wanted to talk to him in private. Solalinde is not an unknown person for the media. In the last months, he has been cited by Prensa Libre, Reforma, El Universal, Vanguardia, Noticias de Oaxaca, El Periódico de México and Gatopardo. In all the interviews he talks about violations to the immigrants’ rights, and he has always referred to the immigrants themselves as a source for his complaints. The priest, however, took two days to receive Francisco in private; and Francisco still complains about that.

The chat with Solalinde not only worked as a relief. It also planted the seed of complaint in Francisco’s heart. And the Salvadoran man, who had no news about his wife since the encounter with the uniformed officers, who didn’t have a cent in his pocket and felt totally confused, let that seed grow.

Opening the denunciation process meant going back in his trip to the North. And going back, especially when each step forward has hurt so much, is not easy. Francisco had to come back from Ixtepec, in the state of Oaxaca, to the state of Chiapas. “I agreed to do it only because I had no news about her, and that was a total injustice”, he remembers.

Francisco is a dark-skinned man –as dark as the police officers who took money and wife from him, he says–, with strong convictions, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), father of three children and married to a woman of his same age, 44, who he met when they were small kids and used to play in the España colony, in Santa Ana, also known as La Sucursal del Cielo (a Branch of Heaven).

On March 14, 14 days after the incident, Francisco took part in a press conference. The “Santaneco” goldsmith was sat in front of who knows how many journalists. Because Francisco’s stay in Mexico coincided with that of Jorge Bustamante, Minister-Reporter of migration affairs for the United Nations. After answering to the journalists’ questions, they met in private.

Since December 2006, Bustamante has visited the Republic of Korea, Indonesia, the United States, Guatemala and Mexico as a UN special rapporteur on immigrants’ rights. Bustamante has a PhD. in Sociology and Political Sciences, and has participated in the writing of books like “Decadencia y auge de las identidades”, “Economía fronteriza y libre comercio” and “Frontera y migraciones”. Francisco, for his part, went to school until first grade, was deported from the United States, was eventually part of the Cuerpo de Agentes Metropolitanos de Santa Ana, and owes $1,100 to a friend. With those credentials, they sitted one in front of each other.

“Now go ahead, disguise a couple of your officers with a backpack and make them walk by a customs control with me, and let’s see what happens to them, let’s see if they get robbed or not. You know what happens, but you profit from that. You know that our only crime is to cross through Mexico, and you know we come to make a contribution to your country, because Salvadoran people bring dollars and leave dollars”, Francisco remembers having told the reporter.

Bustamante issued a report of his visit to Mexico. “The special reporter expresses his profound shock before the increasing abuses against immigrant people, especially against those of Central American origin”, are the lines of the document that can be applied to what the Linares went through.

After the meeting with Bustamante in Tapachula, still in the state of Chiapas, Francisco made a formal complaint. At that time, his thirst for justice was huge. That was when missing Delmy appeared.

Delmy arrived at her home on Monday, March 10. She was alone, wearing clothes that someone (who knows who) had given her. The trip from La Arrocera, in Huixtla, to her modest house in Santa Ana took her five days. She had spent the other four days in the jungle.

Delmy starts with her account from the moment the men left her lying on the floor. She went back, undoing the steps she had done with her husband. She walked as far as she could, and then she started asking for money.

She, who had never been outside Santa Ana, had to find a way to survive alone. There was no sorrow to be ashamed of or known people to rely on. “I paid the buses with what the people gave me. Some of the buses charged me and some didn’t”, she says in a low voice.

Unlike her husband, she doesn’t speak much, and she barely smiles. She dries her tears before they start rolling down her cheeks.

The ones who separated her from her husband (the uniformed ones, the ones in green, the ones who had shotguns) held her for four days. They raped her for four days.

She remembers having been fed, but she doesn’t remember what. She remembres having been beaten, but she doesn’t know how much. She knows she was sexually abused, but she knows she wouldn’t be able to reconstruct a face, a scene or a name. She knows about the scar, but not about how they wounded her. “The problem is that when I get cut, I faint instantly”, she explains as if she was talking about a manufacturing defect.

In her hand, Delmy has a golden ring that her husband Francisco forged for her, and she still keeps it because she never took it out of her house in Santa Ana. The place she returned to on March 10: “The first thing I did after getting home was asking whether he had already spoken”.

What Mexican authorities said about Delmy’s whereabouts was that she had been “assured” in a Preventive Federal Police operation and that she had already been released, according to the information gathered by the local media. Solalinde was not satisfied with that explanation. “How can there be a migrations operation without Migration Agents? Or do Migration agents use balaclava? And also, they threatened them with powerful weapons, they insulted them, they threatened them, they robbed them and they kidnapped the lady”, were the words of the religious man before the journalists.

Once the Linares’ experience attracted the cameras and the pens, the Chiapas authorities committed themselves to research and to respond for what had happened. The case was put in the hands of Gustavo Gutiérrez, officer in charge of migration affairs.

Movilidad Humana is the name of the NGO that documented the Linares case and caused it to reach the ears of Bustamante, the United Nations’ reporter. Solalinde works in Movilidad Humana, and it was him who, on March 18, received the news from the state authorities: Delmy was in her home. They knew it eight days after she managed to come back to her country.

Solalinde is a usual source for journalists. An article that cites his name says that he interceded to avoid the beating of 22 Central Americans one morning; another article reports that the authorities didn’t do anything to investigate the whereabouts of 12 kidnapped Guatemalan people; another note claims that 700 undocumented immigrants arrived at his house hanging off the train. All was in big numbers, with countless testimonies of human rights violations. To find, amidst that sea of tragedies, someone willing to demand justice through the institutional channel is not something that occurs everyday. That is why it was important.

Francisco not only was exhorted to dare to make a complaint before the corresponding entities. He also received offers to accompany the whole process until the end. Gustavo Gutiérrez assured Francisco, on behalf of the state of Chiapas, that he, Delmy and their three children would be helped with a home, work and studies if they returned to Mexico to live legally. If they accepted the benefits, of course, they also had to agree to go on with the process, which required a statement ratification on his part and a first statement on hers.

Francisco returned to his home in the outskirts of Santa Ana on April 20. He had spoken to Delmy the day before. It was their first conversation since the incident. They reached an agreement beforehand. He would call her as soon as he arrived at El Salvador so that she moved with their children to a place near the spot where the bus would drop him. They wanted to meet as soon as possible. But the plans were nothing but that, plans. Because Francisco ran out of money and couldn’t call his family. They met at their home.

Francisco returned to El Salvador through the legal way, not through deportation. The Salvadoran consulate in Tapachula helped him to get a temporary passport. He received the document on April 18.

El Salvador’s consul in Tapachula is Nelson Cuéllar. According to him, this office’s obligations towards Francisco were clearly delimited and they consisted in helping him with the obtaining of the documents, like the granting of the permission from the Migration office to stay in Mexico without problems, the processing of a certificate of origin and the approval of a temporary passport.

Since the incident, he spent a month and a half in Mexico. During that time, he became the main concern and the center of attention for the State of Chiapas. Gustavo Gutiérrez was the person in charge of the case from the beginning.

Francisco is a man with strong convictions. So strong that they cause him trouble. “I have always been fond of eating herbs and vegetables. That’s why we got together with some ‘brothers’ there and we cooked soups for ourselves, so that the people from the shelter didn’t have to feed us and could give the food to those who really needed it”; that is how Francisco summarizes the “issue” for which he was transferred from the shelter. It was an action in which Gustavo Gutiérrez took part.

That was because Gustavo Gutiérrez, unlike the Salvadoran consul, does not put limits on what they did for Francisco. “We took care of him”, he says; and the list of things this phrase implies is long. “We would pay attention to where he spent the night, what he ate, that he received his psychological support; we took him to his consulate, we did all we could for the consulate to help him, and then we prepared a strategy so that the consulate would work together with the Immigration Office”, the Chiapaneco officer said on the phone.

The man responsible for migration affairs in the state of Chiapas needed time. Francisco’s time. As the officer himself reckons, it isn’t hard to find stories worth reporting in Mexico. The hard part is that the interested party give up or delay his trip to the North, in order to be able to make the complaint and to confirm it later. “The Central Americans don’t stay long enough”, he says with resignation.

Mexico is a country that asks for things but doesn’t give anything in return. That is, at least, what it reads in Bustamante’s statements: “We do to the Central American immigrants worse things than they do to Mexicans in the United States”. He said that on March 12, one day before meeting Francisco for the first time.

When Gustavo Gutiérrez talks about what is left to be done, he starts by highlighting the importance of making the government institutions’ staff more sensitive before the immigrants’ complaints, and goes on by emphasizing the importance of convincing immigrants to take their complaints and put them through.

“I think they did it for convenience. They would help me out in return for me making that complaint”; such is the conclusion reached by Francisco while sitting in a chair in his home.

Francisco returned to his home on April 20, and he did it thanks to the Chiapaneco government, that gave him $95 with which to pay the cost of his family members’ documents, such as birth certificates, photos, unique identity documents, and passports. When he entered El Salvador, however, he didn’t have enough money to make a phone-call. Because, although Gustavo Gutiérrez insists that the state of Chiapas paid for his transport, Francisco assures that he had to pay for his bus ticket with those $95. “And with that money, I also paid for my food and for what they charged me for some stamps at the border”, he insists.

Since his return, Francisco has only been able to get sporadic jobs. In spite of the repeated rapes, Delmy has not seen doctors or psychologists, and she spends the time performing domestic jobs in others’ homes to raise money for the food.

Francisco’s thirst for justice has been decreasing. And Delmy, who never felt a strong desire to make a formal complaint, leaves her sorrow behind and focuses on being quiet and working. “I don’t want to accuse anyone unjustly, I didn’t see their faces”, she explains.

On May 20, the Linares couple traveled to San Salvador. She was wearing a suit and he was wearing a buttoned shirt and a belt. They got off the inter-departmental bus at the stop that is in front of the Basílica de Guadalupe, in Antiguo Cuscatlán. They were picked up by the staff of the Instituto de Derechos Humanos de la Universidad Centroamericana, IDHUCA (Institute of Human Rights of the Central American University).

A whole month had passed since Francisco’s return to El Salvador, and during that time he had to deal with the same problems that had forced him to leave: paying for the house and maintenance. The Linares live in a house that was given to them by an institution that helps low-income families to get a decent home. Families, however, commit themselves to pay an installment in order to keep their adjudication-right. The Linares almost lost that right. In order to keep it, they committed to pay the delinquency fee; with that, the initial monthly payment increased from $17 to $50.

To that, they should add the amount the borrowed before the trip; the $1,100 they owe to a friend, with which the couple expected to get to the United States. But most of it was kept by the men who intercepted them.

With all those concerns, but still with the interest of justice in mind, Francisco arrived at the IDHUCA asking for advice to continue with the process of the complaint from here. But his spirit crashed down two days later. He was, as he himself puts it, frozen.

Although Gilma Pérez, coordinator of the IDHUCA’s immigration program, had said the complaint represented an “unprecedented” and “exemplary” case, Francisco had already started to give up that idea. The crimes for which he made the formal complaint in Mexico were false imprisonment, abuse of authority, forced disappearance and theft. The only non-effective charge as for today, due to Delmy’s presence, is the forced disappearance one.

According to IDHUCA’s opinion, Francisco should not return to Mexico. Pérez thinks it’s not convenient for him to be exposed to retaliation. From Mexico, Gustavo Gutiérrez not only considers it necessary for Francisco to come back, but they will also receive his whole family, willing to offer Delmy a job and to include their children in the educational system. At least that’s what they’ve offered him. And according to the Mexican officer, Francisco must only comply with the documents part, since the cost of the tickets would be at the expense of the Chiapas’ Government.

But Francisco no longer feels the same thirst for justice. The wounds have healed. Now, as if poverty had consumed his willpower, he says he regrets having accepted to make the complaint. “I should have gone (to the North)”, he says, expressing his frustration.

So, the only thing that shines today at the jeweler’s house is the memory of the daily $5.15 he used to earn by picking watermelons, tomatoes, cucumbers and onions in Texas, United States. After he came back from Mexico, two months ago, Francisco didn’t take up his trade as a goldsmith. The darkened table and the pile of twisted junk with which he worked before the second burglary are still not in use. They still haven’t found the way to pay the $50 of the installment, already in default, of the house in the outskirts of Santa Ana. The deallocation orders will soon be slid again under the door. The $4 Delmy gathers with her domestic job is barely enough for the food. At 44 years of age, the United States is as necessary to Francisco as a life-jacket to a shipwrecked person. He has convinced Delmy to let him try to do it again. He will do it alone this time, and with $20 in the bag. A trip whose only advantage is that he thinks he knows the way. Working with watermelons in the North, he is certain, is more dignifying than working gold in El Salvador.