A walk through murder & mayhem - São Paulo

As everyone knows, my favorite section of Folha de São Paulo is one titled "Cotidiano" or Daily Life. Also referred to by me as Murder & Mayhem -- this section is filled with the bad stuff of the city. Okay, some good stuff but mostly bad.

I am going to take you on a little walk-through of yesterday's paper so you can see why it's my favorite.

C1: Front page. Here the story is about how the police has discovered a plan to rescue "Marcola", the leader of São Paulo state's biggest gang, the PCC. Marcola, it seems, was sentenced to 160 years in prison in 2013 and is currently locked up in Presidente Venceslau Prison, 611 kms from São Paulo. That is close enough for me. So, yes, apparently the PCC paid for some members to get pilot licenses and they were going to use two bulletproof helicopters painted like Military Police helicopters then get him to an airplane and from there across the border to Paraguay. Poor Marcola: they are now trying to transfer him to a Regime Disciplinar Diferenciado--known as solitary confinement for 22 hours a day. Yikes.

C2: Weather and an opinion article. Plus a view of this week's traffic messes from construction. Never mind.

C3: Ah, this is fun. There was a blackout at Cumbica, also known as Guarulhos International Airport, the international airport for this city. Twenty minutes of power loss, no one knows why, but no one has been sued yet. The security line looks bad. Good thing I am not traveling. Anyway, I subtitle this one "Imagine during the World Cup."

C4: An ongoing story about an actor who was wrongly identified as committing a crime and spent 16 days in jail before being exonerated. He forgives his accuser and said with a great deal more sympathy than I would have " it could have happened to anyone." And yes, we do have a big racism problem in Brazil. I saw it first hand when a young black man who worked for me in 1998 was pulled out of his expensive (corporate) car and frisked by one cop while another watched him over the barrel of a gun. That was not in the paper. That is engraved in my brain.

C5: Ah, there's a story I can't really read. It's about two kids who were inside a school van when it was hijacked by two bad guys. This stuff makes me ill. At the bottom of the page is an article about the house of representatives here considering legalizing marijuana.

C6: Agh, now this story makes me crazy. It's an "Anti-rationing plan" to use the unclaimed water in the reservoirs. The water that is below the tunnels. The plan would take 6 months to put into action. Meanwhile the water level has dropped to 16.8% full. Yep, even after the rains a couple of weeks ago.  Now here's my question, same as then: "why are we not panicking yet?"

C7: A woman loses her arm after being pushed in front of the train at the metro station Sé.  Or not. It seems that maybe she was trying to get away from two security officers and threw herself at the train. She had said she was pregnant and got into the special line but an intern said no, and then things went from there. There is nothing to be learned here. Later on the page is a small story about how facebook erased a Folha post on facebook that was themed "Flying penis." I am sorry I did not finish this article but you can find out more online. Or not.  Ah and finally a note that two Brazilians who dressed like women in Dubai have been deported.

C8: The final page of Cotidiano before going into the Health section talks about how the Carnaval parades are going to start in the rain on Friday. And where to buy tickets. And how to get out of the city in all this traffic. The final story is about a bar that was closed for thirty days for selling alcohol to minors (under age 18 which is legal drinking age here).

It's been a busy day in Murder &Mayhem.

I'm Concerned About the Blueberries - Flint, MIchigan and São Paulo

Photo credit: http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/strange-billboard-michigan-has-everyone-wondering-whats-wrong-blueberries-153267

This morning I had planned to continue my South Africa/Brazil in my eyes series but an article in Adweek caught my eye and got me thinking. The pictured billboard about blueberries appeared mysteriously in Flint, Michigan. People guessed it had to do with drugs or some other commentary about life there. 

But the man who put it up there explained that it had to do with an experience he had while traveling in Alaska. A simple question to his young tour guide "how's it going?" came back with "I'm concerned about the blueberries" referring to the state's crop and the lack of rain. The man at first thought the response rather silly...as in, what a small worry to have. But to this young man the blueberries were the worry--not gun control, not the US economy in general, not world peace. 

And I started to think about this. When you travel or live in a foreign country or even your own, do you ask people how it's going? I mean REALLY ask, not that "howzitgoin'" that means "hello." Do you get a real answer? I don't think I've asked this question enough of the people I meet. 

My guess is that the concerns that would come up as answers to "how's it going?" here in São Paulo would be: security, school, health care, traffic, and all the daily items that affect us. That would be the answer in my socio-economic group. Maybe. I might be surprised by a "blueberry" answer though.

And what about the street guard? What does he worry about? What about the policia militar? The strawberry farmer who comes to sell out of crates at the end of our street? 

It's a simple question really: "how's it going?" Try it out. You might learn that your blueberries are not someone else's.

You can see more from Adweek here.

Flying by the police - São Paulo

This news clipping is from the Folha de São Paulo and is about a crack user who is suspected of killing a college student at a party. It's from the "Cotidiano" or "Every Day" section of the São Paulo newspaper...a section my mom would call "Murder and Mayhem" much like the Metropolitan section of the NY Times used to be (and maybe still is).  Cotidiano is filled with robberies, murders, traffic jams, weather and other "every day" occurrences in the city.

In the second paragraph there is one of my favorite police-isms (sorry, give me a little grammatical license, okay?). It says that the suspect "já tem passagem pela polícia". The phrase means that the suspect already has a history with the police. He has a file. But since "passagem" is also an airline ticket, it always makes me think of the criminal 'flying by' the police station. And unfortunately, that is frequently the case. The Brazilian justice system means that anyone who has committed a crime with a penalty of fewer than four years does not even stop over in the police station. No prison. Robbery? Under 4 year penalty--out on the street. Most domestic abuse cases--under four years, out on the streets. Drug abuse? Under four years...out on the street. So to call it a "passagem" or fly-by is really quite accurate. The reason for this is mostly prison overcrowding--they save the choice long-term spots for the "serious" crimes--and yes, murder is one of them.