By Nacho Doce

A few days ago I ran into Brazilian muralist Kobra in the Sao Paulo neighborhood of Vila Madalena. He told me that in that same city square where we were standing in front of his graffiti, jugglers gather every Monday night.

GALLERY: SCENES FROM THE CIRCUS

So the following Monday I headed to the square at around sunset, and found them exactly as Kobra had told me – a group of jugglers in the middle of the square surrounded by and covered with graffiti. Before I even took out my camera I asked one of them if he expected more to arrive. “Uyy,” he answered. “In about an hour this place will be packed.”

I was about to experience what’s known as the Circo do Beco, or Circus of the Alley.

They began to play music, which to my delight was the same music I listen to by choice. Just the sounds of Manu Chao, one of the founders of the now defunct Mano Negra band, and Brazilian singer Criolo, made me feel at home. Meanwhile, more people kept arriving for the art of magic, and I took out my camera and discreetly began taking pictures. I didn’t want to interfere with their juggling.

I noticed children with their mothers learning to juggle, and I couldn’t help smiling behind my camera.

Something beautiful was happening – nobody asked me my name or what I was doing there for at least the first hour. Usually I’m questioned about what the pictures are for, where I work, if they’ll appear on the Internet, etc. Here it was all laughter and lively chatter accompanying their juggling.

Suddenly I discovered that there were several people around speaking my own native tongue, Spanish, and I realized that a number of the jugglers were Argentines and Colombians. I stopped to take photos of a group of them and they commented that they had been working in a plaza in Barcelona, but that the crisis there forced them to leave. The immigrants said that due to the crisis, Spain’s youth are pessimistic and stuck in time. I answered that life is made up of cycles, and that it’s now time for the Spanish to emigrate towards Latin America.

These artists who had been illegal immigrants in my country, had found in Sao Paulo’s alternative Circus of the Alley a way to meet new friends and, through conversations and learning experiences based on juggling, new paths for their lives.

At one point I wanted to take some shots from high up, but the only tall thing around was a basketball hoop. I asked for help to be boosted up, and I sat precariously on the hoop, trying not to fall.

I could see so many people around, with none of them even noticing me, and I felt like a ghost observing the joy of that weekly encounter of street jugglers and circus artists.

It struck me that I didn’t want to ask for their individual names. It seemed wrong to personalize the picture captions because what I wanted to produce was a story in tribute to them as a group.

One of those I spoke to works for a salary in a real circus, and explained that he comes to the Circo do Beco because it was here that he first learned to juggle seven years ago. He learned here and parted from here to a professional circus, but makes it his ritual to return every Monday.

He said, “Here, there is no difference between the best and the worst of jugglers. This is an encounter where we share our tricks, meet new people, and spend a few hours laughing together, in other words enjoying our street art.”

I can’t stop thinking of the look on one kid’s face as a juggler taught him tricks. That picture says it all about the future of many kids at this encounter.

The final moment arrived, when my last picture was of a juggler and his hula hoop in the perfect farewell image. That was my magical photograph.

With great sorrow I watched them say goodbye with embraces and head off toward their separate homes. I was also grateful for having experienced those moments, and when I reached the bus stop I came across two of them talking to the driver, saying very politely that they didn’t have the fare to ride. The driver shook his head no, and I touched one of their shoulders and invited them to ride with me. I paid and handed them their tickets. I could only think that if the jugglers had been more aggressive, the driver probably would have let them ride simply out of fear.

A newspaper columnist recently wrote that while Rio has its symbol in Christ the Redeemer, Sao Paulo’s symbol is it street art, making it one great open-air museum.

By Nacho Doce

It was close to midnight on Sunday night, the hour at which 1,200 families planned to occupy 11 vacant buildings in downtown Sao Paulo. Their mission was to improve their own living conditions by occupying and squatting in the buildings long enough to make their eviction a long, drawn-out legal process, and in the meantime, go on with their daily lives.

When I arrived at the meeting place for one of the building occupations, there were around 150 families sitting along a wall with their suitcases. The leaders were registering the names of all present, to keep control over who would enter the empty building. Elsewhere around the city, there were ten more groups like this one, ready to act.

These are members of a well-organized group known as the Movimento dos Sem-Teto, or Roofless Movement. The movement’s members are people who live in precarious housing in high risk areas, mostly in slums known as favelas. Contrary to what the group’s name implies, most of the family heads have jobs. They are largely not homeless but rather in need of stable, dignified housing that allow them to carry on with their lives. Their organized occupations of buildings are almost always in the city center where many of them work, and where they can’t afford to live in decent housing. The lack of a more extensive subway system in a city with more than seven million private cars circulating also makes it difficult to live on the outskirts and commute to work in the center.

With an hour to go before it started, a woman appeared with a serious look. She was Netti, the organizer of the Roofless occupations, and began talking to different people. She told me to stick to Manuelzinho, the leader of the Front Line team – those who carry the sledgehammers and crowbars to break down the front doors of vacant buildings. Among them are also other men whose job is to fend off any police who might arrive before they are all inside the building.

With just 30 minutes to go, the leader of the Front Line briefed the group on how to proceed. I heard the call, “Onward to battle,” and they all marched off in a line. I knew I had to stay in the middle of the group so I wouldn’t miss a step. As we marched to the waiting van, we passed the families who all stared at us. Some had done this before, but others were beginners. Among the crowd I noticed a boy resting his hand on the shoulder of his sleeping sister. The image gave a strong sensation of protection.

We climbed into the van in heavy rain, and in just a few minutes we were at the target. We were on the street in a flash, and everyone knew exactly what to do. The crowbar was in place and the sledgehammer began bashing. Just then a security guard appeared on the inside of the door, and tried to stop them, but the Roofless activists were so concentrated on their mission, and the need to succeed. The door didn’t give way easily, and we could hear police sirens.

That was when Manuelzinho took hold of the sledge and with all his strength, adrenaline and experience, the door ceded just as the police were getting out of their cars. As rehearsed, a group of men blocked the police access to the door.

With some of the families already inside, others appeared from around the corner with their suitcases in a straight line towards the door. Once inside, the families and activists knew that the police couldn’t enter without a court order. This was their strategy.

The rain no longer bothered anyone, although I constantly had to dry my lens with my shirt. I entered the building, climbed the stairs, and squeezed through a partially-open window to stand on a balcony. On the street below was the leader Netti, calling out from the street with her arms outstretched, looking upward. “Now you have a place to live!”

Manuelzinho, the Front Line leader, went to give the security guard all his personal items that were left in the building, and then turned to me to say, “Gringo, lots of adrenaline.” My nickname had become Gringo, even though I’m from Spain.

Netti spoke to the other groups by cell phone, and found out that all 11 occupations were a success. Her face lit up in joy, and she said to me, “Gringo, do you want to come with us to see the other occupied buildings?” I realized by the gender of the pronoun “us” in Portuguese, that she was talking about the Roofless leaders as being practically all women.

We climbed into a van and as we cruised from one building to the next, I realized that the 1,500 families had carried out their occupation of all 11 buildings within a 12-block radius. I did find one male leader in one of the buildings, but I think he was the only one.

In front of one building I watched people entering and leaving by an opening torn in a metal storefront. One woman appeared through a hole with a thermos filled with coffee. It was 6am and I asked where they were going, and they said, to their jobs. The leaders were making their rounds to make sure everything was alright with the families. There was always someone in the main entrance to stop strangers to the Movement from entering.

One leader took me to get drinking water for the children. I found it all so incredible that we were seeing 11 buildings where the leaders were setting schemes on how to organize the cleaning operation, control who entered and left, the requests for fruit and vegetable donations from the main market, and the designation of common spaces and offices among the apartments. That same morning journalists arrived, but were allowed in only when the respective leader was present. The organization was rigid.

During the next days I returned several times to different occupied buildings, where some of the families were already improving their apartments with plywood divisions. They had brought in all their belongings, mattresses, stoves, etc.

One person told me that they had assembled a favela inside the building, but this one had a real roof.

(My deepest thanks go to colleague Anderson Barbosa, and Roofless leaders Osmar, Netti, Carmen, Maria de Planalto, Laura and Juliana, and all the families who let me take their portraits.)

As Marcondes walked to his truck, his wife and mother said goodbye with the words, “Be careful and may God be with you.” I knew why they talked that way; the highway that he was going to take from Rondonopolis to Sorriso in the fertile state of Mato Grosso is nicknamed the “Highway of Death.”

GALLERY: BRAZIL’S TRUCKING LIFELINE

Marcondes and his father, also a truck driver, know it very well. It’s the highway famous for frequent accidents, where drivers pay little attention to the law and the narrow single lanes mean that trucks nearly touch as they pass each other in opposite directions.

This road that bisects unending plantations of cereal grain is full of potholes caused by thousands of fully loaded trucks a day, each weighing nearly 70 tons.

It was a Brazilian movie that sparked my interest in the lives of truck drivers here, and I wanted to see if they were really as portrayed. Shortly after seeing it, a Reuters journalist coincidentally proposed a cross country trip by truck to report on the cost of transporting Brazil’s riches – soybeans and corn – from the grain belt to the biggest seaport, Santos, on the Atlantic coast.

It was the latest of my dream trips – 5,000 kilometers and 10 days spent inside a truck, waiting as they loaded and unloaded grain cargo, sleeping in the top bunk inside the cabin, showering and eating in the same places as the truckers, and using the occasional stops to photograph different aspects of the journey.

I arose every day at 5:30 to photograph the trucks starting out on another day, and then took my own seat next to Marcondes or one of the other two truckers who gave me rides when I parted ways with Marcondes.

One day on the road to Sorriso I asked Marcondes to stop near a wooden cross placed on the roadside for an accident victim. As I hiked back to the cross I noticed two dogs approaching me, and looked through a long lens to see that one of them seemed to be a Rottweiler. I didn’t know where they came from or what they were trained to do, but I panicked. Since the truck was too far to run to, I stood in the middle of the road and flagged down a van, jumped in the back without even saying hello to the driver, and asked him to take me to the truck down the highway.

One of the reasons for our interest in trucking was to see the results of the government’s new rule mandating rest periods for drivers. Their goal is to limit the number of hours that truckers drive without rest, and reduce accidents. At our first rest stop with Marcondes, who heeded this new rule, I photographed another driver sleeping in a hammock that he tied to his truck. I took some pictures and he asked me what I was doing. When I explained, he said, “Tell President Dilma Rousseff that truck tires are not square. I don’t think she’s ever been on these roads.”

All I could think of was the narrow, potholed highway with thousands of trucks full of grain rolling along them.

One of the longest stops was at a cargo terminal where grain was transferred from trucks to train wagons. It was a 12-hour wait for each truck to unload, so during that time I was able to meet and talk to many people. They were open, talkative, and willing to be photographed, even in the hot wind that surrounded us in clouds of dirt.

There I met Chiquinho, a 66-year-old trucker who was dressed more like a gentleman on his way to a fine restaurant, but was cooking his meal in a makeshift kitchen under his truck. I commented on his smart dress, and he said, “Son, I’ve been inside that truck too long,” and he invited me to eat right there with him.

There were drivers traveling with their families, drinking coffee next to their vehicles as they waited. One group of truckers who hoped I would show the government what their lives are really like, asked me if I knew the saying that’s common in Mato Grosso. When I said I didn’t, one of them told me: “Mato Grosso satisfies Brazil’s hunger, and provides for the world.”

It sounded like the perfect way to explain Brazil’s agricultural power, especially in a year when Brazilian production helped fill a gap left by a record drought in the United States. I told them that with that reality, the truckers themselves have the power to make the changes they want, and that the only thing I could do was to show how difficult their work is.

One of them said, “You know Nacho, if we truckers could unite behind our proposals, the government would come to us on their knees to ask us to work.”

From the cargo terminal I caught a ride with a trucker nicknamed Cazador, to look for Marcondes who had continued on as I stayed behind to photograph the terminal. After catching up with Marcondes, we headed toward the port of Santos. We stopped at a tire repair shop, a tiny hut along the road, where I met and photographed Uilton, 27, in what was a surrealistic image. Uilton earns about $1,000 a month repairing tires, a decent wage for around there. He said he repairs lots of tires during very long days.

During a fuel stop later that day I met Paulo dos Santos with his wife and kids, who had been waiting three days for a new axle to arrive.

The next night we reached the mountains above the port of Santos, with him at the limit of how many hours he should drive under the new rule. I was tired from riding, and I could just imagine how he felt driving. The only truck stop we could find with a parking lot had a big sign outside reading, “Full.” I looked at Marcondes and he said, “It’s impossible to stop along the side of the road. Let’s continue to Santos. The new rules don’t work here.”

There was no place to rest and there was a real danger of being assaulted or hijacked on the roadside. We reached Santos, where the mess of trucks in the parking area was incredible. Hundreds of trucks with a full day wait time to unload.

We were close to the end of the trip, and I showered in the truckers’ area. The bathroom and the area were the worst, with rats running wild everywhere. Marcondes was scheduled to unload at 8am the next morning, 24 hours after arriving. A lot of that time was spent doing paperwork.

We went for a stroll with Marcondes around the port area full of trucks waiting to unload. There I spotted graffiti of Christ the Redeemer, Rio’s famous statue and a tourist icon of Brazil for the world. I waited for a truck to pass Christ’s open arms, and with slow shutter speed managed to take the photo that seems to me the ideal closing image for this story.

This trip had been a wonderful experience in every way. After saying goodbye and thanking Marcondes I had to hitch a ride in another truck towards Sao Paulo. On the last leg of my trip to reach the airport for a flight home, I purposely climbed onto one of the motorcycles that serve as transportation, instead of getting into a regular taxi. I was hoping to get a little dirty. I actually wanted to arrive home in the same dusty condition as when I reached destination with Marcondes the day before.

My adventure was complete.

A photograph may be deaf and mute, but it speaks through the interpretation and feelings of each viewer. We might say that feelings are among the few things not yet globalized in the 21st Century.

SLIDESHOW: MUSIC OF SILENCE

For the second time I found myself doing a story on handicapped children in Brazil, but this time deaf musicians were very different from blind ballerinas. What I found truly gratifying about the ballerinas was what they achieved deserved fame. Well after finishing that story, they performed in the closing ceremony of the 2012 London Paralympics. This time we decided to do a story on a music school for deaf children, only to find out after that they are invited to play Brazil’s National Anthem on their drums in the opening ceremony of the upcoming 2014 World Cup.

As the ballerinas always had their eyes closed it made it easier to portray them as blind, but with the deaf musicians it was more difficult. The majority of them don’t use a hearing aid which would have served as an obvious reference, and my pictures don’t have sound. I discovered their peculiar reason for not wearing the aid, especially those over 14 years old; they were ashamed to wear them on the street for aesthetic reasons, something I realized was natural at that age.

One day during a music class, I asked permission to take a portrait of a student named Joao Pedro dos Santos Teixeira. When they finished their class on the patio I was taken into a classroom where the wall was covered with posters showing the different sign language letters. Joao came in and I asked him, through an interpreter, to tell me what he feels when he plays the drum. He went straight to the blackboard, and drew a musical score, and then took a seat on a bongo. That portrait became the story-teller for me.

After having heard them practicing on the school patio with all their strength and joy, I was moved on the day of the concert when I read the name of their group, “Music of Silence,” embroidered on their uniforms. I could feel that name deep in my heart, knowing that although they couldn’t hear they could feel the music through the vibrations of their bongos.

It was wonderful to see them communicate with members of the band who could hear, those who played other instruments like trumpets and guitars. Those musicians took it upon themselves to learn sign language to communicate with the percussionists. The art of music had achieved inclusion in the life of the handicapped.

Maybe this has already happened in other countries, but to experience it with my own eyes, hear them, see their strength and their concentration when they place their hands on the bongos without taking their eyes off the conductor, all left me without words. It was the second time I lived that experience both personally and professionally, and I knew that even if my story didn’t work out well, at least the experience was worth the trouble.

To close the concert professor Fabio broke all protocol by playing the drums with the deaf musicians. Their smiles radiated the same pure joy I had seen on the faces of the blind ballerinas, with the difference being that the dancers could hear the thundering applause, but the drummers couldn’t.

Deep inside the massive favela called Brasilandia, one of the biggest of Sao Paulo’s wretched slums, lives Rose with her husband Ivo and their three disabled children. I first learned of Rose’s predicament while doing a feature story about the AACD clinic for disabled children. I immediately arranged for us to meet for the first time in their slum at 5 am, the time they leave for a weekly session of physical therapy.

Their alley didn’t appear on my taxi’s GPS, and we got lost in the dark maze. I had to wait for a more decent hour closer to 5 am before phoning them for help. With their directions, I finally reached the top of a steep alley, and found myself practically inside a “boca de fumo,” best described as an open air crack den.  It wasn’t until Ivo quickly rushed to meet me and spoke to one of the addicts, that I heard the words, “Taxi free to pass.” I was relieved.

We hiked downhill through two steep alleys to reach their house. In the living room, their three mute children, Samille, 9, Dhones, 7, and Izabely, 6, were sitting in a row on a red felt-covered sofa, in front of a wall covered with green and brown mold. The scene struck me as both sad and beautiful.

All three kids suffer from a disease called Pelizaeus-Merzbacher, or PMD, a rare genetic nervous disorder which affects coordination and intellect. I asked myself the logical question of how a mother could continue to have children with such a serious health condition. Samille, Dhones and Izabely all were diagnosed with the disease at an early age.

As soon as I arrived at the house, it was time to take the kids to the clinic. Ivo quickly began the arduous ritual of lugging the wheelchairs, one by one, back up the alleys to the street at the very top. He made three trips, and then returned again to carry two of the kids while Rose carried the third. A specially-equipped van arrived as the sky lightened, and we all got in and headed off on the long ride to AACD.

Rose and her family were living in the poor northeastern state of Bahia when they learned of AACD, the only free clinic of its type in Brazil. Ivo traveled to Sao Paulo first to find work and then bring the family, even though at that time they weren’t sure how the disease would affect each of their children.

Once in Sao Paulo, Rose requested help from the INSS social security system, and after three years of waiting they were granted just 622 reais ($332) per month for one of the three kids. The INSS determined that Ivo’s job could maintain the other two. Ivo works in a bakery 12 hours a day, six days a week, and earns 680 reais a month, just over $350 at today’s exchange. When I commented to Rose that she should keep requesting help from the INSS, she responded, “I felt humiliated there. I can’t go back.” What she did obtain was help from Sao Paulo city hall in the form of transportation to AACP. The van that picked us up at the top of their alley began to arrive a year after she put in the request.

I accompanied Rose and her children for their therapy sessions in the clinic, where she had befriended other mothers of disabled children. One of them I remember clearly for something she told me. “When I met Rose and her children I finally had a reason to stop crying. She has three disabled children and I have just one. It wasn’t right for me to be so sad when I compared my situation with Rose’s.”

I also spent many hours at their home in Brasilandia, where Rose had very little rest from giving constant attention to her children. During those moments she did manage to tell me parts of their story. The first thing she did was ask me to guess her surname and that of her children. I didn’t have a clue, so she told me, “Amor Divino,” translated as Divine Love. I looked at her smiling, but speechless.

Life at home goes on in their one bedroom with just two beds; Rose and Ivo sleep in a single bed, and the three children share a double. They eat, play, watch TV and sleep in the same room. I never did see how they arrange themselves to sleep. It seemed a moment too intimate for me to stay around for.

The two girls go to school because a van takes them. The boy, Dhones, has to be carried for the 15-minute walk from home to a nearby public school just so he can participate in the hour-long recreation period. Since it’s not a school for the impaired, he’s only able to participate in recreation. While he’s at school with his mother, a young neighbor stays with the girls, who can’t speak but manage to communicate with the neighbor through gestures.

Certain situations during this story remain vivid in my memory. One day Rose received a phone call from a local hospital and had to step out the front door for a better cell phone signal, leaving me alone to feed the three children. With all three dishes of food I took turns giving one spoonful to each, but I was so nervous with the quantity, frightened they could choke on it. In the end I managed well, and it turned into a very satisfying experience.

I felt great frustration for her due to the fact that the government refused her enough aid to survive. The saddest moment for me was accompanying Rose as she carried Dhones to school. I felt I was invading her privacy as I photographed her carrying him through the slum alleys, as others stood by watching.

One day I decided not to accompany her to pick up Dhones from school, so I sat on their front stoop waiting for them to arrive. I watched crackheads buying and selling the drug as children played nearby, when Rose appeared with Dhones in her arms. His weight almost overcame her strength, as she was nearly dragging his legs on the ground. I picked up my camera and took a few photos, which to me is the picture that says everything about her world and predicament.

Once we were talking while she prepared their dinner, I said to her that I hoped these photos could help her in some way. She gave me a look that shocked me. Her eyes told me that she didn’t believe in aid arriving from anywhere.

Their neighbors often help by carrying their packs, and sometimes the wheelchairs, which when on flat ground hook together to form a train. Rose told me that even the crack vendors helped her from time to time. They would even move out of the way if I asked them so they wouldn’t appear in my photos. I could only think that the ones who really should help, the government and INSS, do not, but these guys who are doing something illegal, do.

One emotion that was constant throughout the story was rage for the system. I’m without words to express this feeling, so what comes to mind are some phrases from Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano:

How about if we hallucinate for a while? Let us stare beyond infamy, to imagine another possible world:

Economists shall not call “standard of living” what is really “standard of consumption, nor will they call “quality of life” what is really “quantity of things.”

Politicians shall not believe that the poor love to eat promises.

No one shall be considered a hero or a fool, for doing what he believes is right instead of what will serve him best.

Food shall not be a commodity, nor shall communications be a business, because food and communication are human rights.

Education shall not be the privilege of those who can pay.

Justice and liberty, those Siamese twins condemned to live apart, shall meet again and be reunited, back to back.

The desperate shall be welcomed and the lost shall be found, for they are the ones who despaired from so much waiting, and lost their way from so much searching.

View a large format gallery of images here

What brought me to the AACD (Association for the Aid of Disabled Children) clinic for the first time was Dani, a 16-year-old girl who had been diagnosed with severe scoliosis, or curvature of the spine. When Dani’s mother, a close friend, showed me her x-ray it was a shock. All the doctors they consulted repeated the same diagnosis and solution – surgery. We didn’t doubt that surgery was one solution, but her mother wanted to find a less radical one that wouldn’t leave her daughter with a metal rod in her spine limiting her movement. Dani exercises every day at home with a therapist to change her posture, and began visiting AACD. Admittedly ignorant of the range of problems that cause so many children to become disabled, I was astonished by what I saw – children with severe conditions fighting physically and mentally to improve their lives.

It was the children’s smiles and willpower that drew me to them from the start, as much to those who couldn’t move as to those who couldn’t speak or sense. The parents and even the therapists also showed incredible strength. Once I asked Yara Santos, 9, “How are you able to smile all the time?” Yara tried to answer me, but due to her condition I couldn’t understand. Her mother and therapist could, and they answered for her. “There’s no recipe for smiling,” were Yara’s words.

Another girl who impressed me with her willpower was Luara Crystal, 5, as she lifted weights to strengthen her body against the genetic disorder known as brittle bone disease. Her middle name seemed curious to me, so when I asked the therapist about that she said that when Luara was born and diagnosed with the condition her mother chose Crystal for her fragile bones.

One thing that left me speechless was that the majority of the children’s companions there were mothers who were alone because either their husbands were at work or had abandoned them and their disabled children. While observing the persistence of the mothers faced with the difficult and slow progress of their children, it occurred to me that they deserved a monument erected to them inside AACD, in the way that great figures have sculptures to them placed in public squares.

I was surprised to see activities such as soccer and capoeira, the Brazilian martial art that combines music and dance, used as methods of therapy at AACD. The mother of one child who practices soccer with a walker, asked me not to photograph too close to him so as not to interfere with the activity. He plays incredibly well and enjoys it. Another, four-year-old Ivan, who is able to move around only on a skateboard, also practices capoeira. I found it beautiful to watch. His mother and father told me that the skateboard gives Ivan a sense of security and mobility.

The story that left the single biggest impression on me was that of a mother who told me about how her son was born premature after her husband beat her one day during the pregnancy. He was born with cerebral palsy. The only response I could think of was, “I’m sorry.” But her answer to that was more than enlightening. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ve overcome it. I’m now studying sociology at nights while my mother stays with my son.”

Three days after photographing the svelte models at the upscale Sao Paulo Fashion Week, I found myself in the crowded backstage of the Miss Brazil Plus-Size beauty pageant, a contrast in every aspect from body size to the organization’s budget and the cost of each dress.

Backstage the overweight models pushed their own dress-filled suitcases with no assistants to help them, very different from the Fashion Week models, each of whom had two or three people dressing, preening, and supervising them.

Television channels filming Miss Plus-Size were offering the stream to reality shows, while at Fashion Week the transmission was to a more serious audience, focusing on present and future stars in the fashion world.

Not once did any of the Plus-Size models react against being photographed, showing no shame for their big dresses. I found their self-esteem wonderful.

Although fascinated by the contrast of the two events, I was also impressed by one similarity. All the women, the slender ones and the overweight ones, paraded with the same nervousness and dignity past the spectators. The morning after the pageant, Miss Brazil Plus-Size was hospitalized for the stress of competing, the demanding rehearsals and lack of a proper diet, all of which sound very familiar in the fashion world.

The sensations of those who can’t see or hear you.

When I learned of the dance school I knew it was for the visually deficient. But when I arrived I found myself with many who also couldn’t hear or speak.

It was one of the most difficult assignments I’ve ever had. I had to learn quickly the steps of their rehearsals so as not to get in the way of their dancing. They surprised me with steps and jumps in which I feared tripping and injuring them. One of the instructors was also nervous with my position, and although I soon understood their movements I knew they could change at any time. That could have been tragic for them.

What most impressed me was seeing how a deaf-mute dancer helped a blind one, and vice versa. They helped each other by holding hands to learn classic ballet together, with extraordinary simplicity and beauty. Simplicity describes the way they behaved together, and their young age made an even deeper impact on me.

One blind woman, Geyza, who was also one of the teachers, seemed to have the greatest sense of balance. My question was whether or not her better balance came from the fact that she could see until the age of nine, when she became blind.

When I went to their public performance of Don Quixote, I noticed one dancer, Marina, very quiet with her head down. I asked her what was wrong, and she said, “I’m just very nervous.” I then realized that nerves were affecting all of them, dancers, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters.

Their performance and the audience’s reaction were so moving that at one point I realized I had stopped taking pictures to applaud, and watch their smiles in the darkness.

They certainly fulfilled their first dream, to overcome their handicaps and dance classic ballet. I hope they soon achieve their second goal, which is to be invited to dance internationally, against all the laws of science.

Before I was able to experience a Sao Paulo favela firsthand, my knowledge of that world was mostly defined by a movie I saw only a few weeks earlier called “Linha de Passe,” or “Passing Line” in English. The title is a metaphor of the concept of teamwork, the imaginary line that connects players passing the ball in soccer. In the movie the players are the four brothers of a family, and the ball is life itself. What I took away from the movie about a slum family’s struggle to survive, was an idea of what it’s like to live on the edge of life, on the edge of a precipice.

That movie and a newspaper article about a social graffiti project in one of the city’s largest favelas ignited my curiosity, so I searched out and met founding members of the project named OPNI, a Portuguese acronym for “Unidentified Graffiti Artists.” OPNI was founded in 1997 by 20 youths in the city’s marginal slums with the goal of transforming the streets into an open-air gallery where the community can express its gripes. Of the original 20 only Cris, Val and Toddy are left after most were either arrested, abandoned the activity, or died from drug abuse.

To reach OPNI in the Vila Flavia favela on the outskirts of Sao Paulo took me two hours by bus and train, the same time it takes for many of the slum’s mothers and daughters to travel to the city’s better-off neighborhoods where they clean homes for a living. That’s a four-hour round trip, every day.

At our first meeting, Cris, Val, and Toddy described the life of survival in the favela that I was searching to experience. Through urban art, capoeira and rap they give children an alternative to the world of crime and drugs. I had found the passing line.

During my first night in Vila Flavia, as I stood in the window smoking a cigarette, I began to collect mental statistics on cars driving by with music blasting. Of every ten cars, six were playing funk carioca, three rap, and one samba. I could even hear funk carioca coming from the cell phones of children walking past.

The next day I went for coffee three blocks from the house where I was staying, and was surprised to receive a “good morning” from passing strangers, something that even in the elevator of my own apartment building people rarely offer. In my first favela walkabout with Toddy, along the graffiti-covered streets that are now part of the landscape, I commented to him about the dominance of funk carioca in the cars and children’s cell phones. “It’s the real cancer of the favelas,” he said. “Have you listened to the lyrics?”  He explained that the songs only talk of sex and criminality. He considers the music worse than drugs. “It turns daughters into mothers,” he said. I was speechless.

Later the same day I met up with Cris. The three OPNI founders took turns escorting me around. We came across graffiti of a mother and daughter. I looked around us and saw that we were in the middle of a crack zone, where the drug was openly sold. Entering in a nearby bar Cris introduced me to its owner who commented that it wasn’t in their interest for photos of drug vendors to reach the media, and that the OPNI project would all be ruined if it happened. I realized that they were making a pact with me, my discretion in exchange for freedom to roam with a camera. The next day I sensed while walking the streets that even with a camera hanging from my shoulder I had become just one of the neighborhood. One of the vendors gave me a tour of the alleys where they lived, explaining the difference between the favelas of Rio and Sao Paulo. In Sao Paulo, he said, there was a pact from the PCC, a massive criminal organization that operates from the state prisons and favelas, to not kill inside the favelas, whereas in Rio there wasn’t such an organization.

That night I went to see capoeira and graffiti classes for children at OPNI’s headquarters named Sao Mateus en Movimiento. Teaching graffiti was an artist named Ogrão. As he painted on a panel a scene of buildings in favelas with the electric cables clearly emphasized, I asked him what it all meant. “The only thing that joins buildings in favelas is electricity,” he answered. When Ogrão and Cris later took me for my first nighttime tour through the narrow streets and alleys, I suddenly realized that I still had the camera on my shoulder, something I would never do in the city for fear of being mugged. It dawned on me how safe I felt, in the middle of a favela.

While strolling we suddenly heard a different type of music coming from deep inside the slum, and I asked them what it was. They said it was probably from a Umbanda or Candomblé ritual. We followed the sound and came to a house. One of them entered first out of respect, to comment that there was a “gringo” outside doing a story on the community, and we were invited in. They were in the middle of a ceremony, and I put my camera away in my backpack. The Holy Mother told me that I could come back in two days to photograph an even larger ritual they planned. Excited, I must have thanked her a thousand times. I was so worked up at the invitation that suddenly the photos I was hoping to take began to lose importance next to the whole “favela experience” I was assimilating.

The day I accompanied the graffiti classes on the street for children was special. They were very concentrated on painting the favela wall, and when I climbed up a house to take a panoramic shot I realized how tiny that one wall was among so much poverty. But it was wonderful to see the children dream of creating.

At the end of the class the kids helped themselves to fruit from a truck that parked nearby.

My last day there I sat on a sidewalk with the OPNI group, eating sausage on a stick after they had just finished painting another wall. I had begun to learn favela jargon and one of them asked me, “Brother, you’re connected.” I can laugh at that now, because in the favela they are the ones “connected” to life. They’re the ones who decided not to take the easy route through crime. In the city there are walled condominiums where kids play in their own swimming pools, but their parents are too afraid to walk on the streets.

I finished the conversation by proposing to the group that we give a camera to each child so they can take photos of their life in the favela. The all looked at me and Toddy said, “If we give them cameras they’ll trade them for pipes, you dig?” We all laughed together.

One day, as I gradually widened my geographic range and knowledge of my new city, I spotted people practicing sports under one bridge. It was a brief view but long enough to register in my mind. So when I read soon after about a boxing school under a viaduct and went to search it out, I realized immediately it was the same one I had spotted that day.

Under the bridge I met former pro boxer Nilson Garrido, the founder and owner of the school. Six years ago Garrido started a project in which he created several boxing academies under the viaducts of Sao Paulo. His goal was to take the sport to the poor and marginalized population. In the meantime the project attracted other people who started to contribute a small monthly fee for the use of the gym.

The Boxing Academies of Garrido adopt primitive training equipment that he developed himself during his years as a coach; plastic containers turned into punching bags, heavy rocks used for weightlifting and abdominal workouts, vehicle motor shafts for exercise bars, truck tires as weights for resistance training.

Today Garrido manages and lives in the academy under the Alcantara Machado viaduct, part of which receives donations of more modern sports equipment, and where they are developing other activities besides boxing, such as gymnastics, skating and biking. The ring is located under a section of the overpass that doubles as a parking lot.

One day, as I sat ringside waiting for the arrival of present and future athletes, Gorilla and Talent appeared. Those are the nicknames of two normal, simple people who practically live there with their enormous desire to grow into boxers. As we got to talking they asked me if I knew of anyone who could treat them to “vitaminas,” a word that means vitamins but that they use to refer to the protein drinks commonly used by boxers and weight-lifters. I thought they were talking about fruit and vegetable juices, so I took them out to a nearby stand to drink one. That one juice quickly turned into a daily habit during their breaks from training. That was the perfect time for them to tell me about their personal lives, their children and the child support they were paying from their meager incomes.

The effort these athletes put in with the primitive training methods is fascinating. I could feel the fatigue resulting from their incredible effort, their sweating bodies, and their jolts of adrenaline. As the days passed it dawned on me that economically, these people were truly needy, and that they were lucky to have this place to practice sports and to be able to dream of becoming boxers.

Others whose situation touched me were a student named Laercio and his trainer Mauricio. Laercio almost never spoke, but when Mauricio arrived they had long conversations before and during the session.

One day I put my camera down ringside and spent the time listening to them carefully. Laercio arrived to train and Mauricio fired a question at him. “What is the greatest conquest?”

Laercio looked at him without responding, so Mauricio answered his own question. “The control of your emotions,” he said.

Laercio never stopped looking at his mentor, who continued the questions.

“Who is your greatest adversary?”

More silence.

“We, ourselves,” responded Mauricio. “Training is our best medicine. This is the present. The future is in our imagination.”

Silence again, and Mauricio said, “Start with the mirror and confront yourself first.” That’s when I realized that Mauricio’s phrases weren’t only about sport, but rather about training for life itself.

I looked at my camera lying on the side of the ring, and began to compare it to Mauricio’s mirror. I asked myself, “Do I use my camera to present my subjects, or to represent them?”