Village of joy
By Ueslei Marcelino
Deep in the Brazilian heartland, where the upper reaches of the Amazon Basin dissolve into the central plateau, I had the opportunity last week to spend a few days in the village of joy.
What I dubbed the village of joy is the home of the Yawalapiti tribe. One day last week, a group of us were escorted into the Xingu National Park by members of the Darcy Ribeiro Foundation and the Cavaleiro de Jorge cultural center, and arrived at the circular Yawalapiti village under an enormous full moon.
The mood was one of celebration. The Yawalapiti, one of the 14 tribes living inside the Xingu National Park, were preparing a new “quarup,” a ritual held over several days to honor in death a person of great importance to them. In its original form, the quarup was a funeral ritual intended to bring the dead back to life. Today, it is a celebration of life, death and rebirth. From the very oldest to the very youngest, all the members of the Yawalapiti tribe participate in the preparations.
They wrestled, danced, fished and prepared food for the main event which will happen in August. Yawalapiti warriors held wrestling matches in a sort of qualifying round to select the best team to confront warriors from other tribes. From the inter-tribal event during the quarup will emerge the great champion.
The truest of smiles
By Nacho Doce
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.
Everywhere a Crackland
By Paulo Whitaker
Crack consumption is an epidemic in Brazil. In virtually every corner of the country there are users of the drug, so we decided to produce a photo essay to cover a wide geographic area. Seven photographers in seven cities during 24 hours. The story titled “24-7, Crack in Brazil” is about crack use in public view in 2014 World Cup host cities Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte, Manaus, Salvador da Bahia and Curitiba.
In most of the cities our research showed that users logically confine their consumption to areas with little police presence, such as alleys and deserted streets. In contrast, crack use is so widespread in Sao Paulo that users and dealers gather in the city center with no fear of the police.
Our first concern was safety. Addicts do not normally pose a danger but others involved, such as traffickers and police, will react if they sense our presence. I spent nearly a month in Sao Paulo revisiting the streets of a district known for a long time as “Cracolandia”, or “Crackland,” where I did a multimedia story in 2010. Early this year police routed the addicts and dealers from the two abandoned houses near the bus station where they used to hang out, but since then they have regrouped to other locations.
The city now has several mini Cracklands instead of just one. The difference now is that the police frequently patrol the largest of the new Cracklands, which is only six blocks from the original one. I managed to locate a resident of the neighborhood who agreed to allow me to use his apartment window to photograph from. The day I returned with my camera to take some test photos the police had decided to base a permanent patrol there, and the street was empty. I easily found the addicts’ new location just two blocks away, but I was faced with the task of finding a new place from where to work in safety.
The United States still has them beat as the number 1 consumer of illegal drugs…I’m sure the media could find lots more pics here in America…
From the Quake to the Cup
By Mariana Bazo
Nearly 300 Haitians are stuck in Inapari, a tiny Peruvian village on the border with Brazil. They are victims of the 2010 earthquake in their country and traveled weeks chasing their dream of simply getting a job. They believe that in Brazil the upcoming World Cup is creating great opportunities.
Some 3,000 kilometers after leaving home, they reached the Brazilian border only to find it shut to them, closed to stop the wave of their compatriots that began to arrive after the disaster.
They wait in the middle of the jungle and understand little. They’ve bet everything on this chance, selling or just abandoning all their belongings back home to make it this far. They now have nothing in Haiti and can’t reach their destination, nor can they return. They even asked me why they’re not allowed to cross the border, assuring that they are good workers and are willing to work hard to live better.
Inapari is a lowland village of immigrants from the Andean highlands. A few years back it was opened up to the world with the construction of the Interoceanic Highway uniting the Pacific with the Atlantic across Peru and Brazil. With that road came many things good and bad. First came illegal logging. Then came illegal mining and smuggling. But at the same time Brazil and Peru are now united, commerce is more fluid and Machu Picchu is now only 12 hours away by road.
It’s so sad and heartbreaking to see a human being in this condition… I understand that the level of employment in Brazil is growing, good news! Let’s have these mens get in, what could we do to accelerate the process of legalization?
Catwalks for all sizes
By Nacho Doce
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.
Blind swans
By Nacho Doce
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.
Boa tarde Sr. Nacho Doce
Reitero minhas solicitações para enviar cópia das fotos para a Cia Ballet de Cegos Fernanda Bianchini. As fotos ficaram muito bonitas e acredito que captaram bem a essência da Associação. Assim, gostaria que o Sr. por gentileza, me enviasse cópia deste material.
att
Antonio Correia
Web Marketing e Mídias Sociais
Cia Ballet de Cegos
Painting a favela
By Nacho Doce
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.
Congratulations, it´s a wonderfull job! You took pictures about the most important issue that I know: people. Keep doing it! See ya, Thiago Menezes.
Capturing souls
From the very first photograph I took of the Kayapo tribe in the Brazilian Amazon, I knew it would be a difficult nine days. They were nine days during which doctors and nurses from the humanitarian Health Expeditions carried out more than one thousand medical exams and dozens of operations on a people known for their qualities as warriors, strong and suspicious of outsiders. Few of the Kayapos understood that they were receiving aid in their benefit, for which nobody would charge them.
The field hospital was in a school annexed to the village, and on my first stroll toward their houses a mother asked for a gift in exchange for the photo I had just taken of her son. As she spoke to me in her language, translated by a man who happened to be walking past. Later I learned that even the native women who do speak Portuguese will not use that foreign tongue if their husbands are not with them.
Absolutely decided not to negotiate or “buy” their permission to photograph, I just shrugged off her demand saying that I understood. I continued on my way, only to run into her again in a short time. During the first hours there I found it impossible to recognize anyone who I had already met earlier, and suddenly I found the same woman confronting me with a “bill” for each picture I took of her, her son or any of her other children. She was aggressive and I had no resource other than to show her my ignorance of the language, even though she repeated in Portuguese, “Money, must pay.”
The Kayapos hate to be photographed after having seen so many strangers arrive, take pictures of them and their children, and then disappear without leaving any photos behind. In these terms, their anger is understandable. Even in the hospital waiting room many of the Kayapos reacted aggressively to my presence, many pointing to their palms in search of compensation for my photos.
Favela fighter
When I reached the Chapeu Mangueira favela in Leme, a slum that borders on Copacabana, I was expecting to do a story on a martial arts school for poor kids. But there I met “Nativo” (Native), expert in what is today called MMA/NHB, or Mixed Martial Arts/No Holds Barred fighting. Nativo is the nickname of Fabio da Conceicao Ventura, 25, a lifelong resident of the same slum. Nativo told me how he was born in Chapeu Mangueira, and when he was just five he watched his mother set fire to herself to escape her miserable life. Two years later his father kicked him out of the house and he found himself on the streets.
In the streets Nativo learned to steal before joining up with drug traffickers. He told me how he first liked to rob tourists on Copacabana Beach, but then how it was really being part of a drug gang that made him feel most protected. He made it obvious to me that the gang came to be his family. With them he would spend hours consuming drugs and taking care of business inside the slum.
I started to photograph him and accompanied him around the narrow streets of the favela that was “pacified” by police in June, 2008, as part of a government program. Nativo showed me the places where drugs used to be commonly sold, and where he sat with his rifle giving cover to the gang.
In one corner he showed me where 12 of his companions were massacred by a rival gang. Several times while walking around he acted strange, scaring me like someone I always hoped not to come across on a dark street. He said to me, “I’ve done all types of evil, including things that you can’t even imagine.”
The most painful story
EDITOR’S NOTE: Last Thursday, April 7, a gunman entered under a false pretext the Tasso da Silveira school in a Rio de Janeiro suburb, carrying two pistols and dozens of rounds of ammunition. An alumnus himself of the same school where he had a history of being bullied and mental illness, he lined children up facing the wall and shot two dozen of them, before turning the gun on himself. Twelve students were dead, and others are still agonizing in the hospital.
This is the most painful type of story for most photographers, when a senseless tragedy involves children. The two Reuters photographers who covered the shooting and subsequent funerals speak here of their experiences, and how they coped professionally and personally.
Sergio Moraes, 49, father of two, writes:
I woke up on April 7, the morning a gunman attacked students at Tasso da Silveira middle school, with a slight headache only hours after celebrating my son’s 18th birthday. A journalist from the newsroom called early to tell me that a man had entered a school in a Rio suburb and injured a few people. It sounded serious but since there were no apparent fatalities I called my colleague Ricardo, who was closer, and asked him to go to the school. It was only when I began to monitor my news sources that I realized we had a huge story on our hands, and I raced to Realengo, the middle class neighborhood where the school was. I called Ricardo and assigned him to the hospital as I arrived at the school.
The scene at the school was one of families’ desperation for news of their children. It took a few moments to get my bearings and know where to begin to photograph. The first thing I thought about were my own kids and how I would like to be with them now, but the importance of our work at times like these was very clear. We were documenting the first attack of this type in Brazil. My head cleared and I began to photograph with precision what I was witnessing.
The worst came on April 8, the day after the attack, when 10 young victims were buried. It was an exercise in how to cover a story so grave without offending or showing disrespect for the families that had lost their children. I first tried to talk with some of them and show that I wasn’t a vulture preying on their grief. I had arrived early to show them my solidarity with their pain, and simply observed from afar while discreetly taking pictures.
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Resident Photographers Blog Expert
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The Wall
very good story.