SAO PAULO, BRAZIL--The Praca de Se, Sao Paulo's public square, swarms with vendors, gypsies, evangelist preachers, and commuters at all hours of the day and night. It is alive with the electric buzz of the city. But it is also the scene of violent attacks on street children by members of the military police and their undercover, off-duty cronies.
Elilda dos Santos, a leader in the Pastoral Ministry for Youth run by the Catholic Church, walks the Praca each night, making her rounds in the center of Sao Paulo. A young woman in her 30s, Elilda has been protecting children here since 1985, gaining their trust, coming face to face with their murderers, and with the politicians and judges who quietly stand aside and allow the killing to go on.
"When I started this work in 1985, we had a problem with kids in the streets, but the situation was different. In July 1990, the Secretary for Youth in the state of Sao Paulo announced that 'We are going to provide services for all these children, so that we will have no more children on the streets.'
"That sounds like a noble pronouncement; but after that, the justiceiros, as the exterminators are called, declared an all-out war on our kids. They come into an area and shoot an entire group of five, seven, or 10 without cause," Elilda told me.
A recent report by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro asserts that between 1988 and 1990, 4,611 children from 5 to 17 years of age were killed in Brazil. The majority of these were in the states of Sao Paulo, Rio, Pernambuco, and Bahia.
One case, an example of countless like it throughout Brazil, is the murder of seven youth in the Sao Paulo neighborhood of Morumbi. Three girls and four boys were caught unawares while sleeping in an abandoned machine shop and were gunned down. The murderers first threw a gas bomb into the building, then shot all seven dead. A small child, the 4-year-old son of one of the victims, was the only one to escape.
Despite testimony by various youth who saw the incident, and gave detailed descriptions and even names of the gunmen, nothing has been done by the police to investigate the case or arrest them. Charlton de Araujo, the 4-year-old, has been sequestered by a judge and is being kept as a ward of the state--which means he is denied visitation by his remaining family.
"Children are being used as human sacrifices to the idol of modern society," said Father Fernando Altemeyer, a parish priest in the periphery of Sao Matteus. In this neighborhood of 100,000 inhabitants, he says 50 young boys live on the streets, often sleeping on the steps of the parish house. The church does not give shelter to the boys, but offers programs and services during the daytime.
"There is an entire ideology that has grown up around these children--that they are at fault for what is happening in the economy; that in order for society to recover and prosper, they must die," says Father Fernando.
Many of the children who end up on the streets are there because their parents have lost work, or because of a split in the family. The beginning of the process is usually a decision to send the child to beg or steal to help support the family. It is not a far slide from there to living, abandoned, on the streets.
In Brazil, 40 million out of a total of 58 million children and adolescents live in a state of utter poverty. Of these more than eight million have been abandoned and make their homes on the streets.
PROGRAMS to take children off the streets exist, but are limited, with many projects able to assist only a few dozen children at a time. Many projects, like those of the Christian base communities in Sao Matteus, work with children who are marginalized, but not yet homeless.
"We have professional training programs for young boys, giving them a practical trade like carpentry or masonry, but this is usually made available to boys in the favelas [slums], who still have someplace to go, although the potential is very great for them to fall into street life," said Father Fernando. Joint projects throughout the city with the Methodist and Baptist churches are also common.
JEAME is a Baptist program that provides material assistance on the streets and "recruits" youth to take part in its training and rehabilitation programs. "Their success has been quite good," says Dr. Jairos Fonseca, legal advocate for the children and member of the Council for Human Rights in Sao Paulo. "The emphasis of their work changed when they saw the needs of the children."
Many of the youth take advantage of these programs, but return to the streets once the programs are completed, or in some cases are expelled before completion for stealing or using drugs. Some of the children have drifted into a fatalism that is difficult, if not impossible, to eradicate. Rosalyn, a 22-year-old transvestite with AIDS, was badly beaten by a justiceiro after it was discovered that he testified about a recent murder case. "I hope he comes back soon to finish the job," he told me. "I'm going to die anyway."
AIDS is a tremendous problem in Brazil. Many of the teenagers are prostitutes, and all are sexually active. Cledie, a young woman who moved from the streets into a favela three years ago, passed the virus to all three of her children, two of whom have already died. "These girls will get pregnant to activate their immune systems," Elilda said. "It keeps them alive, but the babies die."
THE INTERNATIONAL human rights community, including Amnesty International, UNICEF, and Americas Watch, has been on the front lines of the battle to stop the violence; but the Brazilian government has been slow to respond. In 1988, a "Children's Statute" was adopted into the new constitution for Brazil, and was to stand as the country's commitment to its children by giving them explicit rights and making them a priority on the political agenda. But to date, only several of the more than 200 items provided for by the document have been enacted.
One sector of Brazilian society that is beginning to respond to these needs is the business community. In what may be revolutionary for Brazilian empresarios and entrepreneurs--who traditionally have been known for their lack of participation with the community--they have established programs to give vocational training, food, clothing, and support to street children.
The Abrinq Foundation, which was organized and established by a group of Brazilian toy manufacturers, has been a leading voice in the fight for children's rights, coaxing the involvement of the private sector. Recent activities of the foundation include the distribution of the documentary A Guerra dos Meninos (War on Children) by filmmaker Sandra Werneck, which depicts the violent reality of the children on the streets of Rio de Janeiro.
"Everyone likes to blame the government," said Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns, Cardinal of Sao Paulo. "But what is happening with these children is a social sin. All of us bear a portion of the guilt, and all of us must work to find a just solution."
Alberta Piccolino was a free-lance writer based temporarily in Brazil when this article appeared.
An Epidemic of Violence and Neglect
The war against children is taking place throughout Latin America in one form or another.
In Bogota, Colombia, 35 children disappear every month, according to the Institute for Family Welfare. And death squad-style killings of children have been reported in Guatemala.
"Until recently, the image of the abandoned Latin American child was of a ragged child, sleeping in a doorway," Uruguayan journalist Samuel Blixen wrote recently. "Today, the image is of a body, lacerated and dumped in a city slum."
Poverty and malnutrition are also tremendous threats to children in the region, where 28 children die every minute. In Peru, 51,000 of the 600,000 born in the last year will not survive their first year.
--compiled from Latinamerica Press
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