By Sergio Moraes

I never imagined to find so many tragic stories that end with joy, until I discovered the project called “Praia para Todos”, or “Beach for Everyone.” The project, sponsored by the NGO Instituto Novo Ser in Rio, offers recreation and sport to the physically handicapped on Saturdays at Barra da Tijuca beach, and on Sundays at Copacabana. The project is run by physical therapists and students, all of them volunteers. They built ramps on top of the sand so that wheelchairs could easily reach the water’s edge.

In my first contact with the organizers, I asked for help to meet some of the visitors so that I could follow their personal stories. The first one I spoke to was Patricia Alves de Souza, 41, the mother of an incredible boy named Jorge, or Jorginho. Jorginho, 11, was born prematurely with brain paralysis. Jorginho is crazy about soccer, and doesn’t tire of telling stories about his favorite team, Vasco da Gama. He knows everything about Vasco.

Jorginho has always dreamed of going to the beach and swimming in the sea. Since he lives in Iraja, a middle-class neighborhood 35 km (20 miles) from the shore, the first time he was able to go to a beach was in 2009, but he never reached the water. His mother, who was abandoned by her husband after Jorginho was born, couldn’t push the wheelchair on the sandy beach at Copacabana.

Last February, thanks to Beach for Everyone, Jorginho bathed in the sea for the first time. When I entered the water with him, I asked him what he thought of the water. He answered with the question, “Are you going to remember this day, forever?” I told him yes. He couldn’t thank the volunteers enough for helping him in the amphibious chair.

I met another person who was lots of fun, Marcelo Cardoso. Marcelo, 20, is a swimmer who competes in butterfly in spite of having been born with a malformed spine. He can’t walk, but he can swim. When he arrived at the program, he didn’t tell the counselors that he knew how to swim and picked out two young and pretty volunteers to help him into the water. After being held by them for some time, he suddenly took off swimming. When the girls asked him why he didn’t say anything before, he laughed. “I wanted to spend time with you.”

What Marcelo likes to do most on the beach is play volleyball and be pulled through the water by a jet ski.

But nothing was more dramatic than the story of Yan Carlos Pereira, 14. Yan was playing in the yard of his house on February 4, 2011, when he was struck in the head by a rifle bullet. He became one more victim of a stray bullet during a gun battle between gangs in the slum complex called Mare. The accident left him severely handicapped. Doctors said he would never again walk, speak or move any part of his right side.

Yan went to the beach only after undergoing a cranioplasty to correct some of the damage to his skull. His parents Telma and Edvaldo, managed to get him the operation in a state hospital without having to pay the cost of nearly $50,000.

Yan can’t do a lot of things, but when he entered the water on the amphibious chair, he proved his doctors wrong by moving part of his right side. When the counselors asked him if he wanted to be submerged, he nodded yes. They dunked him under a small wave, and watched him react with joy.

On the sand or in a small plastic pool, Yan receives the constant affection of his sister Beatriz and his parents. It’s thrilling to see how just a few hours of recreation can do so much good for a person so handicapped.

When I visited Yan at his home, in a slum dominated by drug gangs, I spent time talking to his father, Edvaldo, who works at a printing company in the overnight shift to earn extra for his family. His wife had to stop working when Yan was shot. I asked Edvaldo if the gangs had contacted him after the shooting. It’s common in the slums for bandits to offer economic aid to the residents. He told me that when Yan was still in the hospital awaiting the first operation, one of the gang leaders called him to ask if he wanted him to kill the one who shot the bullet that injured his son.

Edvaldo answered no, because killing him wouldn’t help Yan at all.
Beach for Everyone gave me a chance to meet a brave and decent family that now has a way to spend joyful days at the beach. It was undoubtedly an example of life for all of us who complain too often of problems that are minute compared to theirs.

By Sergio Moraes

The historic building known as the Brazilian Indian Museum, located next to Rio’s even more famous Maracana soccer stadium, was donated to the Brazilian government by the Duke of Saxe in 1865. The Duke’s intention was to create a center for research into the Indian cultures, but by 1910 it had become a center for the protection of Indians, the predecessor of what is today known as the National Indian Foundation, or FUNAI.

In 1953 it became the Indian Museum, and remained that way until 1978, when the museum was moved to another location and the building became abandoned and derelict. In 2006 a group of Indians squatted in the building and ambitiously named it Aldeia Maracana, or Maracana Village.

Those Indians, who survived by making and selling crafts, dreamed of making it a cultural center for their tribes. They lived in the building for nearly 7 years, until last Friday when they were forcibly evicted.

As Brazil prepares to host the 2014 World Cup, the Rio state government decided to demolish the Indian Museum to make a parking lot for soccer fans. The proposal was recently modified, thanks to the Indians’ protests, but only to transform the building into another type of museum – a sports museum.

I began photographing the Indians’ protests at the Aldeia Maracana when they began. Apart from the permanent residents, other Indians would stay there when they were in town for any reason. I met fascinating people at the Aldeia, such as Zahy Guajajara, an Indian who dreams of becoming an actress and singer, and who spends long periods of time on Facebook.

There was also Afonso Chamacari, an Indian full of plans and projects for the Aldeia, such as a restaurant of native dishes inside of an Indian cultural center.

And the most interesting and Brazilian of all is young Thiago Kayapo. Thiago, who plays soccer in teams of Indians, dreams of being a player on the national team.

Then there are the Indian children, who always brought joy to the Aldeia, even during the tense moments when they were under threat of eviction.

This past week, when the courts ordered the Indians to leave by Thursday, the air was thick with expectation. We three photographers in Rio, Ricardo Moraes, Pilar Olivares and I, divided up the final days before and during the eviction, to make sure someone was always there in case the police arrived.

The Indians and a group of college students, professors and activists who came to give them support, were determined not to leave the building. But I could sense that there were divisions within the squatters, due to suspicions that some had received money from the government to leave peacefully, and that weakened their movement.

The deadline came and went, but Friday around dawn Pilar arrived for her turn and found numerous riot police around the building. Both Ricardo and I rushed to reinforce the coverage, and when it seemed everything would end peacefully, suddenly the police decided to a carry out a forced eviction even though the building was nearly empty. There were only about 15 left, between Indians and activists.

With pepper spray and tear gas grenades, the police provoked a reaction from demonstrators who were outside the building, who immediately blocked the street in front of the museum and it turned into a battle that could have been easily avoided.

It was clear to me that the authorities had ignored the Indian cultures, and they had denied any chance of success to an idea that could have spread the knowledge of those cultures and brought tourism and education. And they acted without even asking the population of Rio. It was also very strange not to see any representative of FUNAI present during the conflict, even though it is their charter to protect the interests of Brazil’s native tribes.

In that way the dream of establishing the Aldeia Maracana as a viable project in favor of native Brazilians, was banished in favor of one that will promote Brazil as a sporting country that will soon host a World Cup and Olympics.

By Sergio Moraes

I remember it as if it were yesterday. I was a staff photographer at the Isto É news magazine when I was assigned for the first time to cover the Carnival parade of samba schools. The year was 1986, and I was 24.

GALLERY: BRAZIL’S CARNIVAL

From then to now coverage of the event changed a lot, I changed a lot, and even Carnival changed a lot. By coincidence that was the first year that the parade was organized by LIESA, Rio’s Independent League of Samba Schools, which still organizes it today.

I felt as if I had received a present.

I went to the parade with the joy and excitement of someone going to a World Cup or Olympics. Back then 14 samba schools competed in one long night, while today there are 12 split across two nights. When the last school hit the runway I was on my 48th roll of film as if it were my first. Such was my joy at covering.

The headquarters of the magazine was in Sao Paulo, so as soon as the parade ended I headed to the airport, and then straight to hand in my film. I had a 3pm breakfast as the film was being developed, and the editor arrived to look over the 150 rolls from the three photographers who covered Carnival. I still recognize that as my first lesson on self-control in a big event.

I later covered three more Carnivals for Isto É, one of which stays in my memory, the one from 1988. It poured rain then, a true deluge in Rio that I knew would cause problems. As soon as the parade ended I handed my film to one of the other photographers who was going to Sao Paulo, and I sleeplessly headed to Petropolis, a mountain town outside of Rio. There I came across one of the region’s worst tragedies, with 134 victims buried by landslides.

My next Carnival stint was with Jornal do Brasil newspaper for the six years from 1989 to 1994, followed by periods covering for Reuters, then the Lance sports daily, and back to Reuters. The only year that I managed to take a respite from so many Carnivals was in 2007, but I got sick and I spent most of the five days in the bathroom at the family beach house we rented. So much for a Carnival break.

Reuters was all digital by the time I returned to the agency in 2001. We still worked with two photographers, and although I could transmit everything from the press room at the Sambadrome, it was still very exhausting with all the trips back and forth to the runway to photograph and pick up digital cards from my colleague.

In 2005 we began to cover with three photographers, which was an ideal number to divide ourselves between the runway and the photographers’ tower. But the big change came three years later with our Paneikon remote editing software, as we no longer had to return to the press room to transmit. That meant kilometers less of hiking, and more time photographing.

From 2008 onward we also managed to have a new photographer among the three of us each year, a photographer who was covering the Rio parade for the first time with a fresh eye. Carnival is not an easy event to cover because year after year everything looks the same, with each samba school similar to the previous.

The parade of photographers has included Bruno Domingos, Jose Miguel Gomez, Jorge Silva, Ueslei Marcelino, Nacho Doce, Ricardo Moraes, and now Pilar Olivares. Bruno and Ricardo have since covered several times with me, but this year Pilar was the fresh eye. Even so, I was surprised when I asked her what she thought of her first Carnival, and she said that the first night was great, but the second looked all the same.

I couldn’t stop thinking that my first Carnival was 27 years ago.

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.”

At the age of 18, Nativo was drafted into the Navy, where he remained for two years. During the first week he was arrested for beating up a marine he believed was homosexual. Even while serving in the military, Nativo never stopped his habit of stealing. “That was what I liked doing,” he explained. After the Navy he returned to the favela, the drug gang, and his old way of life. Change came for him one day when, after being arrested for dealing, he was convinced by a jiu-jitsu trainer to take lessons. In a short time he became an expert, and went on to excel at boxing and then MMA.

Today, the former trafficker gives boxing classes and competes in MMA bouts. MMA fighters use techniques adopted from jiu-jitsu, boxing, wrestling, muay thai, karate, and other martial arts. Nativo has fought and won all of his first four bouts.

As I said goodbye I asked him how he managed to escape from the gang. “I was rescued by Jesus from hell,” he answered.