Amazon
Post
24/04/07, Amazônia, Proteção da Amazônia une Greenpeace e McDonald's, Source.
13/04/07, AP, Brazilian judge orders reopening of Cargill's Amazon River port, Source.
29/06/06, Iberê Thenório, Sob pressão, Cargill admite que vai assinar pacto contra escravidão, Source.
13/04/07, ORM, Porto da Cargill é reaberto em Santarém, Source.
13/04/07, ORM, Cargill fala sobre reabertura do porto de Santarém, Source.
12/04/07, ORM, Liminar autoriza reabertura do porto da Cargill, Source.
24/04/07, Marc Kaufman, New Allies on The Amazon - McDonald's, Greenpeace Unite To Prevent Rainforest Clearing, Source.
16/04/07, Monte Reel, In Rio, Death Comes Early, Source.
24/04/07, Amazônia, Proteção da Amazônia une Greenpeace e McDonald's, (Back).
Antes acusada de cumplicidade no desmatamento da Amazônia ao comprar soja brasileira plantada em áreas desmatadas, a rede de fast food McDonald’s está agora se aliando ao grupo ambientalista Greenpeace na proteção à floresta tropical, segundo afirma reportagem publicada nesta terça-feira pelo diário americano The Washington Post. O jornal relata uma missão composta por quatro ambientalistas e quatro executivos do McDonald’s à Amazônia para verificar os locais onde partes da floresta estariam sendo colocadas abaixo para dar lugar a plantações de soja.
“E apesar de o Greenpeace há não muito tempo ter acusado o McDonald’s de cumplicidade no desmatamento, no momento da viagem à Amazônia, em janeiro, os oito integrantes da missão referiam-se uns aos outros como parceiros”, diz a reportagem.
Segundo o jornal, a rede americana e o grupo ambientalista pressionaram conjuntamente os maiores comerciantes de soja do Brasil a estabelecer uma moratória de dois anos na compra de qualquer soja de áreas recentemente desmatadas.
Para a reportagem, “a história de como os dois peso-pesados se aliaram reflete as complexidades, as pressões e as ironias da economia globalizada”. “Ela também ilustra como parcerias antes inimagináveis podem se tornar forças para combater problemas ambientais e sociais com os quais os governos não conseguem lidar”, diz o texto.
13/04/07, AP, Brazilian judge orders reopening of Cargill's Amazon River port, (Back).
SAO PAULO, Brazil - An important deep-water Amazon River port owned by Cargill Inc. has been reopened by court order while the huge U.S.-based agribusiness firm keeps fighting environmentalists who say the port encourages destruction of the rain forest.
Minnetonka, Minn.-based Cargill opened the $20 million port three years ago to cash in on the rising global demand for soybeans, which had become Brazil's richest agricultural export.
But Cargill has had to fight in court to keep it open after it was accused of failing to provide an additional environmental impact study before building the export hub.
Environmentalists cheered the closure on March 23 by a judge who determined that based Cargill's initial environmental assessment, which was accepted by the state of Para, failed to meet federal standards. Cargill appealed and persuaded a judge to reopen the port on Thursday night, the company said Friday in a statement.
If the court eventually requires Cargill to provide another impact study, it will do so, Cargill said.
The rain forest, as big as Western Europe, lost 6,450 square miles to deforestation between 2005 and 2006, Brazil's Environment Ministry says, and ports and roads that make it easier to export soy are a major factor.
Cargill ships 1 million metric tons of soybeans each year from Santarem, 1,550 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro, helping to make Brazil the world's second-largest soy exporter behind the United States.
29/06/06, Iberê Thenório, Sob pressão, Cargill admite que vai assinar pacto contra escravidão, (Back).
Em conferência realizada pelo Instituto Ethos, presidente da empresa no Brasil afirma que vai assinar o pacto em que empresas se comprometem a manter o trabalho escravo longe de suas cadeias produtivas.
Esta terça-feira não foi um dia fácil para o presidente da Cargill no Brasil, Sérgio Barroso. Convidado pelo Instituto Ethos para ser um dos palestrantes da Conferência Internacional 2006 - Empresas e Responsabilidade Social, que começou nesta segunda-feira (19), em São Paulo, ele se viu em uma situação constrangedora durante a mesa redonda cujo tema era "Desmatamento da Amazônia - como é possível evitar?". Justamente o calcanhar de Aquiles da Cargill.
Ao contrário dos colegas de mesa (como Sérgio Amoroso, do Grupo Jari-Orsa, e Maurício Reis, da Companhia Vale do Rio Doce) o empresário da soja começou a palestra sem nenhum case para apresentar. Utilizou seus 20 minutos de fala para defender o agronegócio e a utilização do transporte fluvial no Brasil (leia-se: defender o porto construído pela empresa em Santarém/PA, que corre o risco de ser embargado por falta de licença ambiental). Barroso também mostrou um mapa das plantações de soja no país, tentando mostrar que a cultura do grão praticamente não afetava esse ecossistema.
No final da palestra, entre as medidas que citou para proteger a região, o presidente da Cargill ressaltou a importância de "observar" a assinatura do Pacto Nacional pela Erradicação do Trabalho Escravo, organizado pelo Instituto Ethos e pela Organização Internacional do Trabalho (OIT), em que empresas se comprometem a manter sua cadeia produtiva longe do trabalho escravo. O detalhe é que a Cargill não havia assinado o documento.
Pesquisas, como a da ONG Greenpeace, identificaram que a empresa comprava soja de fazendas que estão na "lista suja" do trabalho escravo. Organizada pelo governo federal, essa relação divulga as propriedades comprovadamante flagradas cometendo esse crime. As suas concorrentes ADM, Amaggi e Bunge também demostraram o mesmo problema em suas cadeias produtivas. A Amaggi e a Bunge assinaram o Pacto.
A maior saia-justa da Cargill veio quando subiu ao púlpito Eugênio Scannavino, do Projeto Saúde e Alegria, que atua junto a comunidades extrativistas da Amazônia. Ele apresentou à platéia uma reportagem do programa Fantástico, da Rede Globo, que mostrava a devastação da Amazônia causada pela soja e o pé-de-guerra instalado no Pará quando a ONG Greenpeace tentou bloquear o porto de Santarém, em protesto contra o comportamento da Cargill. Pela primeira vez na mesa redonda, o auditório lotado, com mais de mil pessoas e formado principalmente por empresários (e não por "ambientalistas xiitas"), aplaudiu em pé. Scannavino, em sua palestra, afirmou que a população da Amazônia não precisa da soja para se desenvolver e sim da floresta, da qual já sobrevive.
Como Sérgio Barroso já havia avisado que sairia mais cedo, como é de praxe quando grandes empresários envolvidos em polêmicas participam de debates, Oded Grajew, mediador do evento e presidente do Conselho Deliberativo do Ethos, resolveu modificar o programa do evento. E abriu um espaço para que Barroso - cujo rosto já passava do vermelho ao roxo - pudesse responder às críticas.
Três pessoas fizeram a mesma pergunta: por que a Cargill não assinou o Pacto contra o trabalho escravo? Barroso explicou que a Associação Brasileira das Indústrias de Óleos Vegetais (Abiove), da qual sua empresa faz parte, já havia assinado, mas, se fosse necessário, a Cargill também poderia assinar individualmente. Questionado após a palestra, Sérgio Barroso finalmente cedeu à pressão da sociedade civil. "Sim, nós vamos assinar o pacto."
A empresa, uma das maiores de capital fechado do mundo, agora poderá ter suas atividades monitoradas. O que, é claro, não irá resolver os problemas causados pelo impacto da expansão da soja na Amazônia, da qual a gigante norte-americana é um dos atores principais. Mas já é um alento para a floresta e seus moradores.
13/04/07, ORM, Porto da Cargill é reaberto em Santarém, (Back).
O Ibama cumpriu nesta sexta-feira (13) a decisão do desembargador federal, Carlos Fernando Matias, que desembargou o porto graneleiro da Cargill.
O desembargo foi coordenado pelo chefe da fiscalização do Ibama em
Santarém, Manoel Costa Filho, junto com o analista ambiental da
instituição, Marcos Borges e duas testemunhas.
Após a quebra do lacres e assinatura do termo de desembargo pelo
gerente operacional da empresa, Douglas Odoni, o porto foi reaberto.
Críticas - Em nota divulgada em seu site, o Greenpeace declarou que para a Ong a decisão é contraditória. 'Em liminar concedida pelo então juiz federal em Santarém, Dimis da Costa Braga, em 2000, suspendeu não apenas o alvará de autorização emitido pela Secretaria Estadual de Ciência, Tecnologia e Meio Ambiente (Sectam), como a proibiu de emitir qualquer outra autorização para funcionamento do porto da Cargill sem a aprovação do EIA-Rima demonstrando a viabilidade ambiental do projeto', diz a nota.
“Se reaberto, o porto vai operar ilegalmente, já que a licença de operação só poderá ser emitida depois da realização e aprovação dos Estudos de Impacto Ambiental”, disse Tatiana de Carvalho, da campanha do Greenpeace de proteção à Amazônia. Na próxima segunda feira (16), a Cargill volta aos tribunais para apelar da decisão de realizar o EIA/Rima.
13/04/07, ORM, Cargill fala sobre reabertura do porto de Santarém, (Back).
A Cargill enviou, na manhã desta sexta-feira (13) nota à Redação do Portal ORM comentando liminar concedida, na tarde de quinta-feira (12), pelo Tribunal Regional Federal da Primeira Região, em Brasília, determinando a imediata reabertura do porto de Santarém.
Segue nota, na íntegra:
'Na tarde de ontem, o Tribunal Regional Federal da Primeira Região, em Brasília, determinou a sua imediata reabertura. Com isso, é restabelecida pelo mesmo Tribunal a situação de direito que prevalece desde a sentença da Justiça de Primeira Instância, em 2004, e reiterado pelo Juiz de Santarém em 14 de março deste ano, de que o terminal está autorizado a operar enquanto aguarda a conclusão do processo, agora em Segunda Instância. Com a decisão, a empresa agora busca agora a formalização dos procedimentos para a reabertura junto ao Ibama e à Secretaria do Meio Ambiente do Estado do Pará.
O terminal havia interrompido suas operações na noite do dia 23 de março por foça de decisão do Desembargador do TRF, usando como base uma uma medida cautelar proposta anterior à 2004, ignorando o conteúdo da sentença de Primeira Instância, clara em não prever essa medida. A determinação de reabertura, resultado da ação proposta pela Cargill em 26 de março, restabelece o respeito ao que preconiza o sistema legal e a Constituição brasileira.
A empresa reitera a legalidade do seu Terminal, que sempre operou com todas as licenças necessárias e, desde o seu projeto, atendeu às exigências feitas pelas autoridades em âmbito Federal, Estadual e Municipal. A exigência de um novo estudo de impacto ambiental, além do que já foi realizado pela empresa, aguarda decisão de Segunda Instância e a Cargill cumprirá, como sempre fez, as determinações da Justiça'.
O Ministério Público Federal ainda não se pronunciou sobre o assunto.
12/04/07, ORM, Liminar autoriza reabertura do porto da Cargill, (Back).
O TRF (Tribunal Regional Federal) concedeu, no final da tarde desta quinta-feira (12) liminar autorizando a Cargill a reabrir o porto que funciona em Santarém. O despacho foi assinado pelo Desembargador Federal Carlos Fernando Matias.
O Porto da Cargill estava fechado desde 24 de março. A solicitação partiu do MPF (Ministério Público Federal) que, desde 26 de fevereiro, vinha pedindo o fechamento imediato da empresa com sede em Minneapolis (EUA), que, segundo o próprio MPF, construiu e colocou em operação um terminal graneleiro no rio Tapajós sem elaborar Estudos de Impacto Ambiental (EIA-Rima), obrigatório pela legislação brasileira para qualquer atividade econômica de maior envergadura.
O EIA é o instrumento essencial do licenciamento ambiental, citado na constituição brasileira, que diz, no artigo 225, inciso IV, ser obrigação do poder público 'exigir, na forma da lei, para instalação de obra ou atividade potencialmente causadora de significativa degradação do meio ambiente, estudo prévio de impacto ambiental a que se dará publicidade'.
A Cargill é fornecedora internacional de produtos e serviços nos setores de alimentação, agricultura e gestão de riscos. A empresa tem 142 mil funcionários em 61 países. No Brasil há 40 anos, está ligada ao setor do agronegócio. Com sede em São Paulo (SP), tem unidades industriais e escritórios em cerca de 180 municípios brasileiros e cerca de 23 mil funcionários.
O Portal ORM aguarda posicionamento da Cargill e do Ministério Público Federal sobre a reabertura do porto de Santarém.
24/04/07, Marc Kaufman, New Allies on The Amazon - McDonald's, Greenpeace Unite To Prevent Rainforest Clearing, (Back).
It was an unusual group to be sharing a small boat making its way up the Amazon River.
There were four environmental activists from Greenpeace -- Brazilians and others who flew in from Europe for the trip. And there were four corporate leaders of McDonald's, the world's largest fast-food chain, from its Chicago headquarters and from Europe.
An unlikely team of Greenpeace activists and McDonald's executives took a boat up the Amazon to see the destruction of rainforest partly driven by McDonald's demand for soybeans. (Photo Courtesy Of Bob Langert -- Mcdonald's; Graphic By Laris Karklis And Karen Yourish -- The Washington Post)
Biotech foods are unpopular in Europe, so most companies doing business there make a point of using only soy, corn and other staples that have not been genetically modified.
Brazilian growers saw a market opportunity in non-modified soy. With help from multinational companies such as Cargill, which supplies McDonald's with Brazilian soy for chicken feed, farmers began cutting down trees in the interior of the Amazon rainforest to grow soy and other crops.
Greenpeace and Chicago-based McDonald's pressured Cargill and other soy traders into placing a two-year moratorium on the purchase of any soy from newly deforested areas.
The eight were in the rainforest together on a mission to see firsthand where farmers were cutting down virgin forest to grow soy beans for, among other customers, McDonald's. And though Greenpeace had not long ago been accusing McDonald's of complicity in the deforestation, by the time of the Amazon trip in January, the eight officials were calling each other partners.
Those weren't just words. The ubiquitous fast-food company and the global environmentalists had already jointly pressured the biggest soy traders in Brazil into placing an unprecedented two-year moratorium on the purchase of any soy from newly deforested areas.
Officials at Cargill, the huge multinational company that supplied McDonald's with Brazilian soy for chicken feed and ultimately pushed fellow soy traders to accept the moratorium, confirmed that the odd couple of McDonald's and Greenpeace made it happen.
"McDonald's and, yes, Greenpeace, were the catalysts," said Laurie Johnson, a spokeswoman for Cargill. "They brought together a wide range of people and created a sense of real urgency."
The tale of how the two heavyweights came together reflects the complexities, pressures and ironies of the globalized economy. It also illustrates how once-unthinkable partnerships can become forces for addressing environmental and social problems that governments cannot handle.
With Brazilian soy, the problem at least partially grew out of an unrelated dispute over genetically modified food products.
While U.S. consumers and many others largely accept biotech foods, the products are unpopular with Europeans, and most companies doing business in Europe make a point of using only soy, corn and other staples that have not been genetically modified. With U.S. and other major soy growers increasingly turning to biotech crops, Brazilian growers saw a market opportunity in traditional, non-modified soy.
With help from multinational companies such as Cargill, some Brazilian farmers began cutting down trees in the interior of the Amazon rainforest to grow soy and other crops. The scale of the operation did not become apparent until 2003, when Greenpeace and other activists saw satellite maps that showed significant new deforestation. Because of the Amazon rainforest's central role in modulating global climate, the maps caused immediate alarm.
Greenpeace's investigators searched records to see which companies were involved in the destruction and which were buying the rainforest soy. One relatively small-scale but high-profile buyer was McDonald's European operation, which fed the soy to chickens destined to become McNuggets.
Greenpeace and other non-governmental organizations have become adept at putting pressure on big companies like McDonald's, which don't want customers to think they are unfriendly to the environment or mistreating animals. Greenpeace not only staged rainforest protests at McDonald's outlets in Europe last spring, but it also sent its ship, the Arctic Sunrise, to block Cargill's port in the Amazon city of Santarem.
Following the protests, the fast-food chain and the environmentalists got together and brought in Cargill. The company had opened a port and series of soy silos at Santarem in 2003 and encouraged some farmers to grow soy for it -- though Johnson, the spokeswoman, said the company thought most of the 150 to 200 farmers it worked with were tilling land that had been deforested long ago. She also said the port was used to ship soy grown outside the rainforest.
At first, Cargill took the stand that it was bringing economic development to an impoverished region and was already working with the Nature Conservancy and others to promote good stewardship practices. Greenpeace, and soon additional environmental groups, replied that the company was inducing farmers to move into environmentally fragile areas, where they often began planting with fake property papers, without proper permits and with little understanding of forest conservation.
Faced with its unhappy McDonald's client, Cargill brought together other Brazilian soy traders, and they ultimately agreed on the moratorium -- an unthinkable action just a few months before.
"We really didn't see an immediate problem with the soy farmers, but we could see how it could grow into a big problem in the future," Cargill's Johnson said. "The moratorium will give everyone time to plan how to better control the farming and protect the forest."
A working group of soy traders and environmental and community organizations is scheduled to meet this month to discuss the soy farmers, this time with representatives of the Brazilian government, too.
For McDonald's, working with a group like Greenpeace was unusual but not unprecedented. The company has joined with a variety of environmental and animal welfare groups over the years on issues including the company's packaging, the use of environmentally harmful refrigerants and treatment of farm animals. Creating a responsible supply chain is part of the corporate culture, its officials say, though it clearly is also good public relations.
"We listened to what Greenpeace was saying about soy from the rainforest, and I think we surprised them at first by saying, 'You're right. We have a problem here,' " said Bob Langert, McDonald's vice president for corporate citizenship. "We have a firm policy against using beef -- or any other products -- that come from the rainforest. So when we learned that some of our soy was coming from there, we got involved."
John Sauven, head of Greenpeace's rainforest initiative, said that joint efforts between nonprofit groups and major corporations have become increasingly important and sophisticated but that the idea of partnering with McDonald's was hardly in the initial plan.
"We have an active campaign to save the rainforests, and it turned out that we and McDonald's had very similar goals," he said. "We didn't start out with the idea of focusing on McDonald's or partnering with them, and someday we may well go after them again on other issues. But on this one, they played a highly positive role."
John Buchanan, director for agriculture and fisheries for Conservation International, a nonprofit group, said his organization has been working with the big traders of soy and other grains in Brazil for some time, helping them create "environmental scorecards" to see how they are doing throughout their long supply chains.
Buchanan said Greenpeace and McDonald's uncovered a growing problem that had not been flagged before. Together they "shook the tree" in "soil that had been cultivated by others," and now unprecedented environmental progress is possible, he said.
"You never know how things will ultimately turn out, but this could be an important model for attacking very complicated social and environmental problems in the future," he said.
16/04/07, Monte Reel, In Rio, Death Comes Early, (Back).
Juveniles Are Often Victims as Gangs, Police Vie for Control of Slums.
RIO DE JANEIRO -- The sound of crackling explosions entered through the glassless window of Maiza Madeira's home, a hollow-brick shanty wedged deep within the narrow, twisting alleyways of this city's largest hillside slum.
She lifted her chin to acknowledge the noise, paused, then dismissed the sound as quickly as it had come: "Fireworks," she said.
Rocinha is Rio de Janeiro's largest favela, or shantytown, and occupies a hillside overlooking some of the city's wealthiest neighborhoods.
Each time she hears a rapid-fire noise like that, she said, the pause that follows marks the instant in which she takes quick inventory of her children. She has three, and she considers it her mission to steer them through childhood safely. But they live in a favela -- a shantytown that doubles as a battlefield, fought over by the neighborhood's ruling drug gangs, the police and, in some cases, vigilante militias -- and safety is hardly guaranteed.
In this neighborhood, called Rocinha, almost everyone has a story about how violence penetrated their homes. Many of the stories, like Madeira's, focus on children as central characters, whether as victims of crimes or as perpetrators.
The favelas are statistically the most violent sections of Rio, a city where the number of juvenile deaths attributed to violence far exceeds that of many war zones. From 2002 through 2006, 729 Israeli and Palestinian minors were killed as a result of the violence in Israel and the occupied territories, according to B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group. During the same period in Rio de Janeiro, 1,857 minors were reported murdered, according to the Institute of Public Security, a state research center.
In the past three months, several high-profile crimes have sparked renewed national debate over children and violence. Brazil's Congress is considering applying harsher sentences for crimes involving children, and possibly reducing the minimum age for criminally prosecuting teenage offenders, which is now 18.
Residents here say they have plenty of cautionary tales involving their kids.
Madeira said it was three years ago when she learned to identify the sound of fireworks so accurately. On the first night of Rio's annual Carnaval celebration, she said, her 16-year-old son was out with friends at the favela's dance hall. Celebratory fireworks had been popping all night, but one particular eruption caused Madeira to sit up in bed.
"What was that?" she recalled asking her husband.
"Just fireworks," he had told her.
She slept uneasily until another sound -- someone insistently banging on the aluminum door of their house -- woke her at 4 a.m. One of her four children had been fatally shot by a raiding unit of military police.
Shocked Into Action
In February, two armed carjackers tried forcing a woman and her 6-year-old boy out of their vehicle in Rio. The woman escaped, but the boy's foot got caught in the seat-belt strap. He was dismembered as he was dragged alongside the car for about four miles.
What followed was a national outcry, partly because of the boy's death, but also because one of the carjackers was 17 and couldn't be charged with a crime.
Since the dragging death, Congress has taken preliminary measures that would strengthen penalties for adults who involve children in crimes, and it has debated lowering the criminal prosecution age to 16. For now, though, police say they still feel handicapped by the law.
"Some of these guys we are fighting now are 10 or 12 years old," said Rodrigo Oliveira, a civilian police commander who heads a special operations unit that fights gangs inside the favelas. "I might know of this kid that is doing a criminal act, but under the law, I can't consider him a criminal. Nowadays, the gangs are using kids under 18 to do their worst crimes because they know they won't go to jail."
Instead, they are sent to juvenile justice centers, where they spend a maximum of 45 days before being enrolled in a state program designed to educate and rehabilitate them. The maximum sentence for juveniles is three years in those programs, but maximum sentences are rare. Most young offenders spend weekdays in a rehab program for several months and are free to stay at home on the weekends.
At the Padre Severino Youth Detention Institute in Rio, about 185 boys crowd into 10 dank concrete cells every day. The inmates are assigned cells not by age -- they are all between 12 and 18 -- but by which gangs control the favelas they call home.
The other day, Marcos, an angular 17-year-old with a quick smile, sat on one of the stone-framed bunk beds at the center. He described himself as a drug dealer, a robber and a killer, and said he has been sent to Padre Severino five times since he joined the Red Command, Rio's largest drug gang, at age 12. In February, police raided his house while he was sleeping and found unlicensed guns.
Marcos had always known gang members in Cantagalo, a favela overlooking the famed Ipanema beach community. He said that when he was 11, he tried to join the gang but was rejected for being too young. So he launched a charm offensive, snatching necklaces from women in Ipanema and bringing them back to the favela to show the gang members what he could do. By the time he was 12, he said, they took him in as a delivery boy. Sometimes he carried food for them, sometimes drugs. He always carried his own .38-caliber pistol.
"I moved out of my home when I was 13, and the gang became my family," said Marcos, whose last name is being withheld because of the detention center's policy. "If we went dancing, we went together. If we went to the beach, we went together. If we decided to rob someone, we did it together."
He quickly became a dealer, pocketing about $125 a week, he said. He recently became a manager controlling all drug sales within a specified section of the favela. His income roughly tripled. Instead of a pistol, he began carrying a machine gun loaded with 7.62mm bullets.
Marcos said he was 14 when he first killed someone. A guy in the favela had gotten a virgin pregnant, and a gang leader ordered Marcos to administer lethal punishment. He said he has since killed dealers who have stolen from the gang, as well as others who tried to rat to the police. He doesn't always like doing it, he said, especially if the victim is someone he considers a friend. But they all know the rules, he said, and had agreed to play by them.
"I don't fear death," Marcos said, smiling slightly. "I make fun of it. If it's time for me to die, I'll die."
In the Crossfire
Joel Ferreira Silvestre, 17, sat on a concrete step outside his house, around the corner from a small cluster of men slamming at the sidewalk with pickaxes. They were laying a new length of PVC pipe to deliver water to one of the houses. That's the way things work in the favela -- people do not call a public utility when they need such work done, because utilities don't serve them. Nor do the police, which means that the young man sitting on another step several yards from Joel could lean to his left and light a joint from the end of his friend's cigarette, secure in the knowledge that no one would try to stop him.
The only time the police come into this neighborhood is when they enter in an armored vehicle, assault rifles drawn, on a raid. Joel has tried to stay out of the conflict as much as he can, but it's easy to get caught in the crossfire. That's what happened, he said, to his 16-year-old cousin, who had been with a large group of teenagers in 2004 when the police raided. He was fatally shot.
Like Marcos, Joel can't stand the police. But he said he has never been tempted to join a gang. Instead, he hopes military service will deliver him from the line of fire.
"I want to make my dad proud," said Joel, who hopes to graduate from high school in 2009 if he is not drafted. "My dad says that in the army they teach you things you can't learn on the streets, and that would be good for my future, for my whole life."
If someone were to randomly pick 100 teenage boys out of his neighborhood, Joel guessed that 30 of them would probably be gang members. That's higher than the estimates of academics and social workers, but it still would mean that Joel is a lot more representative of favela kids than Marcos is.
The Observatory of Favelas, a nonprofit organization that operates social programs in various slums throughout Rio, late last year released a survey of 230 teenagers who had been involved with gangs; 46 of them had died during the two-year research period, two-thirds of whom had been shot by police.
According to the Institute of Public Security, an average of 371 minors each year were reported murdered in Rio from 2002 and 2006. Because some people believe the officially reported figures of overall homicides in Rio are low, a Web site -- http://www.riobodycount.com.br-- this year began compiling its own count by collecting news reports of violent deaths. Overall, it has counted 675 homicides in Rio since Feb. 1.
"For young people, this is a genocide," said Raquel Willadino, a director of violence-related issues and human rights for the Observatory of Favelas. "And I don't mean that as a metaphor. It really is a genocide."
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, prompted by the crime in Rio, met Friday with his military advisers to discuss the possibility of deploying troops in the city to help contain the violence.
But Willadino and many other social workers in the favelas are against ideas such as lengthening sentences for child-related crimes or lowering the prosecution age. The prison and detention systems are already stretched beyond capacity, and the police do not have a good track record in separating the good kids in a favela from the bad ones, she said. On her desk, she had a copy of a recent daily newspaper front page, with a large photo of a police officer searching the book bag of an elementary school boy -- a good illustration, she said, of law enforcement's indiscriminate approach toward favela residents.
Many police officials, meanwhile, express exasperation when they see things like that. Allan Turnowski, state director of police special operations, said those kind of pictures in the news media leave out an important part of the story. Just before the officers searched the backpack of the child in the photo, he said, they had found a gun in another boy's pack. The criminals force the police to be cautious, he said.
"The media doesn't show the good things we do -- just the sensationalism," he said. "They show the criminal the hero, and we lose all authority in the minds of the young people. Then they see the police as the bad guys."
Joel certainly does. He said he often feels like a target in the war between police and the gangs, even though he has tried to go out of his way to avoid it. Joel said that last month he was stopped by a policeman while riding a motorcycle a friend had lent him. The police officer told him to hand over all his money, Joel said, or else he'd be arrested and taken into custody for riding a motorcycle he didn't own.
He gave him the money, he said, and collected another story to explain why he wants the army to call his name.
"I'd like to be living somewhere else," he said. "Somewhere calmer, where I can breathe easier."
(Back)
13/04/07, AP, Brazilian judge orders reopening of Cargill's Amazon River port, Source.
29/06/06, Iberê Thenório, Sob pressão, Cargill admite que vai assinar pacto contra escravidão, Source.
13/04/07, ORM, Porto da Cargill é reaberto em Santarém, Source.
13/04/07, ORM, Cargill fala sobre reabertura do porto de Santarém, Source.
12/04/07, ORM, Liminar autoriza reabertura do porto da Cargill, Source.
24/04/07, Marc Kaufman, New Allies on The Amazon - McDonald's, Greenpeace Unite To Prevent Rainforest Clearing, Source.
16/04/07, Monte Reel, In Rio, Death Comes Early, Source.
24/04/07, Amazônia, Proteção da Amazônia une Greenpeace e McDonald's, (Back).
Antes acusada de cumplicidade no desmatamento da Amazônia ao comprar soja brasileira plantada em áreas desmatadas, a rede de fast food McDonald’s está agora se aliando ao grupo ambientalista Greenpeace na proteção à floresta tropical, segundo afirma reportagem publicada nesta terça-feira pelo diário americano The Washington Post. O jornal relata uma missão composta por quatro ambientalistas e quatro executivos do McDonald’s à Amazônia para verificar os locais onde partes da floresta estariam sendo colocadas abaixo para dar lugar a plantações de soja.
“E apesar de o Greenpeace há não muito tempo ter acusado o McDonald’s de cumplicidade no desmatamento, no momento da viagem à Amazônia, em janeiro, os oito integrantes da missão referiam-se uns aos outros como parceiros”, diz a reportagem.
Segundo o jornal, a rede americana e o grupo ambientalista pressionaram conjuntamente os maiores comerciantes de soja do Brasil a estabelecer uma moratória de dois anos na compra de qualquer soja de áreas recentemente desmatadas.
Para a reportagem, “a história de como os dois peso-pesados se aliaram reflete as complexidades, as pressões e as ironias da economia globalizada”. “Ela também ilustra como parcerias antes inimagináveis podem se tornar forças para combater problemas ambientais e sociais com os quais os governos não conseguem lidar”, diz o texto.
13/04/07, AP, Brazilian judge orders reopening of Cargill's Amazon River port, (Back).
SAO PAULO, Brazil - An important deep-water Amazon River port owned by Cargill Inc. has been reopened by court order while the huge U.S.-based agribusiness firm keeps fighting environmentalists who say the port encourages destruction of the rain forest.
Minnetonka, Minn.-based Cargill opened the $20 million port three years ago to cash in on the rising global demand for soybeans, which had become Brazil's richest agricultural export.
But Cargill has had to fight in court to keep it open after it was accused of failing to provide an additional environmental impact study before building the export hub.
Environmentalists cheered the closure on March 23 by a judge who determined that based Cargill's initial environmental assessment, which was accepted by the state of Para, failed to meet federal standards. Cargill appealed and persuaded a judge to reopen the port on Thursday night, the company said Friday in a statement.
If the court eventually requires Cargill to provide another impact study, it will do so, Cargill said.
The rain forest, as big as Western Europe, lost 6,450 square miles to deforestation between 2005 and 2006, Brazil's Environment Ministry says, and ports and roads that make it easier to export soy are a major factor.
Cargill ships 1 million metric tons of soybeans each year from Santarem, 1,550 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro, helping to make Brazil the world's second-largest soy exporter behind the United States.
29/06/06, Iberê Thenório, Sob pressão, Cargill admite que vai assinar pacto contra escravidão, (Back).
Em conferência realizada pelo Instituto Ethos, presidente da empresa no Brasil afirma que vai assinar o pacto em que empresas se comprometem a manter o trabalho escravo longe de suas cadeias produtivas.
Esta terça-feira não foi um dia fácil para o presidente da Cargill no Brasil, Sérgio Barroso. Convidado pelo Instituto Ethos para ser um dos palestrantes da Conferência Internacional 2006 - Empresas e Responsabilidade Social, que começou nesta segunda-feira (19), em São Paulo, ele se viu em uma situação constrangedora durante a mesa redonda cujo tema era "Desmatamento da Amazônia - como é possível evitar?". Justamente o calcanhar de Aquiles da Cargill.
Ao contrário dos colegas de mesa (como Sérgio Amoroso, do Grupo Jari-Orsa, e Maurício Reis, da Companhia Vale do Rio Doce) o empresário da soja começou a palestra sem nenhum case para apresentar. Utilizou seus 20 minutos de fala para defender o agronegócio e a utilização do transporte fluvial no Brasil (leia-se: defender o porto construído pela empresa em Santarém/PA, que corre o risco de ser embargado por falta de licença ambiental). Barroso também mostrou um mapa das plantações de soja no país, tentando mostrar que a cultura do grão praticamente não afetava esse ecossistema.
No final da palestra, entre as medidas que citou para proteger a região, o presidente da Cargill ressaltou a importância de "observar" a assinatura do Pacto Nacional pela Erradicação do Trabalho Escravo, organizado pelo Instituto Ethos e pela Organização Internacional do Trabalho (OIT), em que empresas se comprometem a manter sua cadeia produtiva longe do trabalho escravo. O detalhe é que a Cargill não havia assinado o documento.
Pesquisas, como a da ONG Greenpeace, identificaram que a empresa comprava soja de fazendas que estão na "lista suja" do trabalho escravo. Organizada pelo governo federal, essa relação divulga as propriedades comprovadamante flagradas cometendo esse crime. As suas concorrentes ADM, Amaggi e Bunge também demostraram o mesmo problema em suas cadeias produtivas. A Amaggi e a Bunge assinaram o Pacto.
A maior saia-justa da Cargill veio quando subiu ao púlpito Eugênio Scannavino, do Projeto Saúde e Alegria, que atua junto a comunidades extrativistas da Amazônia. Ele apresentou à platéia uma reportagem do programa Fantástico, da Rede Globo, que mostrava a devastação da Amazônia causada pela soja e o pé-de-guerra instalado no Pará quando a ONG Greenpeace tentou bloquear o porto de Santarém, em protesto contra o comportamento da Cargill. Pela primeira vez na mesa redonda, o auditório lotado, com mais de mil pessoas e formado principalmente por empresários (e não por "ambientalistas xiitas"), aplaudiu em pé. Scannavino, em sua palestra, afirmou que a população da Amazônia não precisa da soja para se desenvolver e sim da floresta, da qual já sobrevive.
Como Sérgio Barroso já havia avisado que sairia mais cedo, como é de praxe quando grandes empresários envolvidos em polêmicas participam de debates, Oded Grajew, mediador do evento e presidente do Conselho Deliberativo do Ethos, resolveu modificar o programa do evento. E abriu um espaço para que Barroso - cujo rosto já passava do vermelho ao roxo - pudesse responder às críticas.
Três pessoas fizeram a mesma pergunta: por que a Cargill não assinou o Pacto contra o trabalho escravo? Barroso explicou que a Associação Brasileira das Indústrias de Óleos Vegetais (Abiove), da qual sua empresa faz parte, já havia assinado, mas, se fosse necessário, a Cargill também poderia assinar individualmente. Questionado após a palestra, Sérgio Barroso finalmente cedeu à pressão da sociedade civil. "Sim, nós vamos assinar o pacto."
A empresa, uma das maiores de capital fechado do mundo, agora poderá ter suas atividades monitoradas. O que, é claro, não irá resolver os problemas causados pelo impacto da expansão da soja na Amazônia, da qual a gigante norte-americana é um dos atores principais. Mas já é um alento para a floresta e seus moradores.
13/04/07, ORM, Porto da Cargill é reaberto em Santarém, (Back).
O Ibama cumpriu nesta sexta-feira (13) a decisão do desembargador federal, Carlos Fernando Matias, que desembargou o porto graneleiro da Cargill.
O desembargo foi coordenado pelo chefe da fiscalização do Ibama em
Santarém, Manoel Costa Filho, junto com o analista ambiental da
instituição, Marcos Borges e duas testemunhas.
Após a quebra do lacres e assinatura do termo de desembargo pelo
gerente operacional da empresa, Douglas Odoni, o porto foi reaberto.
Críticas - Em nota divulgada em seu site, o Greenpeace declarou que para a Ong a decisão é contraditória. 'Em liminar concedida pelo então juiz federal em Santarém, Dimis da Costa Braga, em 2000, suspendeu não apenas o alvará de autorização emitido pela Secretaria Estadual de Ciência, Tecnologia e Meio Ambiente (Sectam), como a proibiu de emitir qualquer outra autorização para funcionamento do porto da Cargill sem a aprovação do EIA-Rima demonstrando a viabilidade ambiental do projeto', diz a nota.
“Se reaberto, o porto vai operar ilegalmente, já que a licença de operação só poderá ser emitida depois da realização e aprovação dos Estudos de Impacto Ambiental”, disse Tatiana de Carvalho, da campanha do Greenpeace de proteção à Amazônia. Na próxima segunda feira (16), a Cargill volta aos tribunais para apelar da decisão de realizar o EIA/Rima.
13/04/07, ORM, Cargill fala sobre reabertura do porto de Santarém, (Back).
A Cargill enviou, na manhã desta sexta-feira (13) nota à Redação do Portal ORM comentando liminar concedida, na tarde de quinta-feira (12), pelo Tribunal Regional Federal da Primeira Região, em Brasília, determinando a imediata reabertura do porto de Santarém.
Segue nota, na íntegra:
'Na tarde de ontem, o Tribunal Regional Federal da Primeira Região, em Brasília, determinou a sua imediata reabertura. Com isso, é restabelecida pelo mesmo Tribunal a situação de direito que prevalece desde a sentença da Justiça de Primeira Instância, em 2004, e reiterado pelo Juiz de Santarém em 14 de março deste ano, de que o terminal está autorizado a operar enquanto aguarda a conclusão do processo, agora em Segunda Instância. Com a decisão, a empresa agora busca agora a formalização dos procedimentos para a reabertura junto ao Ibama e à Secretaria do Meio Ambiente do Estado do Pará.
O terminal havia interrompido suas operações na noite do dia 23 de março por foça de decisão do Desembargador do TRF, usando como base uma uma medida cautelar proposta anterior à 2004, ignorando o conteúdo da sentença de Primeira Instância, clara em não prever essa medida. A determinação de reabertura, resultado da ação proposta pela Cargill em 26 de março, restabelece o respeito ao que preconiza o sistema legal e a Constituição brasileira.
A empresa reitera a legalidade do seu Terminal, que sempre operou com todas as licenças necessárias e, desde o seu projeto, atendeu às exigências feitas pelas autoridades em âmbito Federal, Estadual e Municipal. A exigência de um novo estudo de impacto ambiental, além do que já foi realizado pela empresa, aguarda decisão de Segunda Instância e a Cargill cumprirá, como sempre fez, as determinações da Justiça'.
O Ministério Público Federal ainda não se pronunciou sobre o assunto.
12/04/07, ORM, Liminar autoriza reabertura do porto da Cargill, (Back).
O TRF (Tribunal Regional Federal) concedeu, no final da tarde desta quinta-feira (12) liminar autorizando a Cargill a reabrir o porto que funciona em Santarém. O despacho foi assinado pelo Desembargador Federal Carlos Fernando Matias.
O Porto da Cargill estava fechado desde 24 de março. A solicitação partiu do MPF (Ministério Público Federal) que, desde 26 de fevereiro, vinha pedindo o fechamento imediato da empresa com sede em Minneapolis (EUA), que, segundo o próprio MPF, construiu e colocou em operação um terminal graneleiro no rio Tapajós sem elaborar Estudos de Impacto Ambiental (EIA-Rima), obrigatório pela legislação brasileira para qualquer atividade econômica de maior envergadura.
O EIA é o instrumento essencial do licenciamento ambiental, citado na constituição brasileira, que diz, no artigo 225, inciso IV, ser obrigação do poder público 'exigir, na forma da lei, para instalação de obra ou atividade potencialmente causadora de significativa degradação do meio ambiente, estudo prévio de impacto ambiental a que se dará publicidade'.
A Cargill é fornecedora internacional de produtos e serviços nos setores de alimentação, agricultura e gestão de riscos. A empresa tem 142 mil funcionários em 61 países. No Brasil há 40 anos, está ligada ao setor do agronegócio. Com sede em São Paulo (SP), tem unidades industriais e escritórios em cerca de 180 municípios brasileiros e cerca de 23 mil funcionários.
O Portal ORM aguarda posicionamento da Cargill e do Ministério Público Federal sobre a reabertura do porto de Santarém.
24/04/07, Marc Kaufman, New Allies on The Amazon - McDonald's, Greenpeace Unite To Prevent Rainforest Clearing, (Back).
It was an unusual group to be sharing a small boat making its way up the Amazon River.
There were four environmental activists from Greenpeace -- Brazilians and others who flew in from Europe for the trip. And there were four corporate leaders of McDonald's, the world's largest fast-food chain, from its Chicago headquarters and from Europe.
An unlikely team of Greenpeace activists and McDonald's executives took a boat up the Amazon to see the destruction of rainforest partly driven by McDonald's demand for soybeans. (Photo Courtesy Of Bob Langert -- Mcdonald's; Graphic By Laris Karklis And Karen Yourish -- The Washington Post)
Biotech foods are unpopular in Europe, so most companies doing business there make a point of using only soy, corn and other staples that have not been genetically modified.
Brazilian growers saw a market opportunity in non-modified soy. With help from multinational companies such as Cargill, which supplies McDonald's with Brazilian soy for chicken feed, farmers began cutting down trees in the interior of the Amazon rainforest to grow soy and other crops.
Greenpeace and Chicago-based McDonald's pressured Cargill and other soy traders into placing a two-year moratorium on the purchase of any soy from newly deforested areas.
The eight were in the rainforest together on a mission to see firsthand where farmers were cutting down virgin forest to grow soy beans for, among other customers, McDonald's. And though Greenpeace had not long ago been accusing McDonald's of complicity in the deforestation, by the time of the Amazon trip in January, the eight officials were calling each other partners.
Those weren't just words. The ubiquitous fast-food company and the global environmentalists had already jointly pressured the biggest soy traders in Brazil into placing an unprecedented two-year moratorium on the purchase of any soy from newly deforested areas.
Officials at Cargill, the huge multinational company that supplied McDonald's with Brazilian soy for chicken feed and ultimately pushed fellow soy traders to accept the moratorium, confirmed that the odd couple of McDonald's and Greenpeace made it happen.
"McDonald's and, yes, Greenpeace, were the catalysts," said Laurie Johnson, a spokeswoman for Cargill. "They brought together a wide range of people and created a sense of real urgency."
The tale of how the two heavyweights came together reflects the complexities, pressures and ironies of the globalized economy. It also illustrates how once-unthinkable partnerships can become forces for addressing environmental and social problems that governments cannot handle.
With Brazilian soy, the problem at least partially grew out of an unrelated dispute over genetically modified food products.
While U.S. consumers and many others largely accept biotech foods, the products are unpopular with Europeans, and most companies doing business in Europe make a point of using only soy, corn and other staples that have not been genetically modified. With U.S. and other major soy growers increasingly turning to biotech crops, Brazilian growers saw a market opportunity in traditional, non-modified soy.
With help from multinational companies such as Cargill, some Brazilian farmers began cutting down trees in the interior of the Amazon rainforest to grow soy and other crops. The scale of the operation did not become apparent until 2003, when Greenpeace and other activists saw satellite maps that showed significant new deforestation. Because of the Amazon rainforest's central role in modulating global climate, the maps caused immediate alarm.
Greenpeace's investigators searched records to see which companies were involved in the destruction and which were buying the rainforest soy. One relatively small-scale but high-profile buyer was McDonald's European operation, which fed the soy to chickens destined to become McNuggets.
Greenpeace and other non-governmental organizations have become adept at putting pressure on big companies like McDonald's, which don't want customers to think they are unfriendly to the environment or mistreating animals. Greenpeace not only staged rainforest protests at McDonald's outlets in Europe last spring, but it also sent its ship, the Arctic Sunrise, to block Cargill's port in the Amazon city of Santarem.
Following the protests, the fast-food chain and the environmentalists got together and brought in Cargill. The company had opened a port and series of soy silos at Santarem in 2003 and encouraged some farmers to grow soy for it -- though Johnson, the spokeswoman, said the company thought most of the 150 to 200 farmers it worked with were tilling land that had been deforested long ago. She also said the port was used to ship soy grown outside the rainforest.
At first, Cargill took the stand that it was bringing economic development to an impoverished region and was already working with the Nature Conservancy and others to promote good stewardship practices. Greenpeace, and soon additional environmental groups, replied that the company was inducing farmers to move into environmentally fragile areas, where they often began planting with fake property papers, without proper permits and with little understanding of forest conservation.
Faced with its unhappy McDonald's client, Cargill brought together other Brazilian soy traders, and they ultimately agreed on the moratorium -- an unthinkable action just a few months before.
"We really didn't see an immediate problem with the soy farmers, but we could see how it could grow into a big problem in the future," Cargill's Johnson said. "The moratorium will give everyone time to plan how to better control the farming and protect the forest."
A working group of soy traders and environmental and community organizations is scheduled to meet this month to discuss the soy farmers, this time with representatives of the Brazilian government, too.
For McDonald's, working with a group like Greenpeace was unusual but not unprecedented. The company has joined with a variety of environmental and animal welfare groups over the years on issues including the company's packaging, the use of environmentally harmful refrigerants and treatment of farm animals. Creating a responsible supply chain is part of the corporate culture, its officials say, though it clearly is also good public relations.
"We listened to what Greenpeace was saying about soy from the rainforest, and I think we surprised them at first by saying, 'You're right. We have a problem here,' " said Bob Langert, McDonald's vice president for corporate citizenship. "We have a firm policy against using beef -- or any other products -- that come from the rainforest. So when we learned that some of our soy was coming from there, we got involved."
John Sauven, head of Greenpeace's rainforest initiative, said that joint efforts between nonprofit groups and major corporations have become increasingly important and sophisticated but that the idea of partnering with McDonald's was hardly in the initial plan.
"We have an active campaign to save the rainforests, and it turned out that we and McDonald's had very similar goals," he said. "We didn't start out with the idea of focusing on McDonald's or partnering with them, and someday we may well go after them again on other issues. But on this one, they played a highly positive role."
John Buchanan, director for agriculture and fisheries for Conservation International, a nonprofit group, said his organization has been working with the big traders of soy and other grains in Brazil for some time, helping them create "environmental scorecards" to see how they are doing throughout their long supply chains.
Buchanan said Greenpeace and McDonald's uncovered a growing problem that had not been flagged before. Together they "shook the tree" in "soil that had been cultivated by others," and now unprecedented environmental progress is possible, he said.
"You never know how things will ultimately turn out, but this could be an important model for attacking very complicated social and environmental problems in the future," he said.
16/04/07, Monte Reel, In Rio, Death Comes Early, (Back).
Juveniles Are Often Victims as Gangs, Police Vie for Control of Slums.
RIO DE JANEIRO -- The sound of crackling explosions entered through the glassless window of Maiza Madeira's home, a hollow-brick shanty wedged deep within the narrow, twisting alleyways of this city's largest hillside slum.
She lifted her chin to acknowledge the noise, paused, then dismissed the sound as quickly as it had come: "Fireworks," she said.
Rocinha is Rio de Janeiro's largest favela, or shantytown, and occupies a hillside overlooking some of the city's wealthiest neighborhoods.
Each time she hears a rapid-fire noise like that, she said, the pause that follows marks the instant in which she takes quick inventory of her children. She has three, and she considers it her mission to steer them through childhood safely. But they live in a favela -- a shantytown that doubles as a battlefield, fought over by the neighborhood's ruling drug gangs, the police and, in some cases, vigilante militias -- and safety is hardly guaranteed.
In this neighborhood, called Rocinha, almost everyone has a story about how violence penetrated their homes. Many of the stories, like Madeira's, focus on children as central characters, whether as victims of crimes or as perpetrators.
The favelas are statistically the most violent sections of Rio, a city where the number of juvenile deaths attributed to violence far exceeds that of many war zones. From 2002 through 2006, 729 Israeli and Palestinian minors were killed as a result of the violence in Israel and the occupied territories, according to B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group. During the same period in Rio de Janeiro, 1,857 minors were reported murdered, according to the Institute of Public Security, a state research center.
In the past three months, several high-profile crimes have sparked renewed national debate over children and violence. Brazil's Congress is considering applying harsher sentences for crimes involving children, and possibly reducing the minimum age for criminally prosecuting teenage offenders, which is now 18.
Residents here say they have plenty of cautionary tales involving their kids.
Madeira said it was three years ago when she learned to identify the sound of fireworks so accurately. On the first night of Rio's annual Carnaval celebration, she said, her 16-year-old son was out with friends at the favela's dance hall. Celebratory fireworks had been popping all night, but one particular eruption caused Madeira to sit up in bed.
"What was that?" she recalled asking her husband.
"Just fireworks," he had told her.
She slept uneasily until another sound -- someone insistently banging on the aluminum door of their house -- woke her at 4 a.m. One of her four children had been fatally shot by a raiding unit of military police.
Shocked Into Action
In February, two armed carjackers tried forcing a woman and her 6-year-old boy out of their vehicle in Rio. The woman escaped, but the boy's foot got caught in the seat-belt strap. He was dismembered as he was dragged alongside the car for about four miles.
What followed was a national outcry, partly because of the boy's death, but also because one of the carjackers was 17 and couldn't be charged with a crime.
Since the dragging death, Congress has taken preliminary measures that would strengthen penalties for adults who involve children in crimes, and it has debated lowering the criminal prosecution age to 16. For now, though, police say they still feel handicapped by the law.
"Some of these guys we are fighting now are 10 or 12 years old," said Rodrigo Oliveira, a civilian police commander who heads a special operations unit that fights gangs inside the favelas. "I might know of this kid that is doing a criminal act, but under the law, I can't consider him a criminal. Nowadays, the gangs are using kids under 18 to do their worst crimes because they know they won't go to jail."
Instead, they are sent to juvenile justice centers, where they spend a maximum of 45 days before being enrolled in a state program designed to educate and rehabilitate them. The maximum sentence for juveniles is three years in those programs, but maximum sentences are rare. Most young offenders spend weekdays in a rehab program for several months and are free to stay at home on the weekends.
At the Padre Severino Youth Detention Institute in Rio, about 185 boys crowd into 10 dank concrete cells every day. The inmates are assigned cells not by age -- they are all between 12 and 18 -- but by which gangs control the favelas they call home.
The other day, Marcos, an angular 17-year-old with a quick smile, sat on one of the stone-framed bunk beds at the center. He described himself as a drug dealer, a robber and a killer, and said he has been sent to Padre Severino five times since he joined the Red Command, Rio's largest drug gang, at age 12. In February, police raided his house while he was sleeping and found unlicensed guns.
Marcos had always known gang members in Cantagalo, a favela overlooking the famed Ipanema beach community. He said that when he was 11, he tried to join the gang but was rejected for being too young. So he launched a charm offensive, snatching necklaces from women in Ipanema and bringing them back to the favela to show the gang members what he could do. By the time he was 12, he said, they took him in as a delivery boy. Sometimes he carried food for them, sometimes drugs. He always carried his own .38-caliber pistol.
"I moved out of my home when I was 13, and the gang became my family," said Marcos, whose last name is being withheld because of the detention center's policy. "If we went dancing, we went together. If we went to the beach, we went together. If we decided to rob someone, we did it together."
He quickly became a dealer, pocketing about $125 a week, he said. He recently became a manager controlling all drug sales within a specified section of the favela. His income roughly tripled. Instead of a pistol, he began carrying a machine gun loaded with 7.62mm bullets.
Marcos said he was 14 when he first killed someone. A guy in the favela had gotten a virgin pregnant, and a gang leader ordered Marcos to administer lethal punishment. He said he has since killed dealers who have stolen from the gang, as well as others who tried to rat to the police. He doesn't always like doing it, he said, especially if the victim is someone he considers a friend. But they all know the rules, he said, and had agreed to play by them.
"I don't fear death," Marcos said, smiling slightly. "I make fun of it. If it's time for me to die, I'll die."
In the Crossfire
Joel Ferreira Silvestre, 17, sat on a concrete step outside his house, around the corner from a small cluster of men slamming at the sidewalk with pickaxes. They were laying a new length of PVC pipe to deliver water to one of the houses. That's the way things work in the favela -- people do not call a public utility when they need such work done, because utilities don't serve them. Nor do the police, which means that the young man sitting on another step several yards from Joel could lean to his left and light a joint from the end of his friend's cigarette, secure in the knowledge that no one would try to stop him.
The only time the police come into this neighborhood is when they enter in an armored vehicle, assault rifles drawn, on a raid. Joel has tried to stay out of the conflict as much as he can, but it's easy to get caught in the crossfire. That's what happened, he said, to his 16-year-old cousin, who had been with a large group of teenagers in 2004 when the police raided. He was fatally shot.
Like Marcos, Joel can't stand the police. But he said he has never been tempted to join a gang. Instead, he hopes military service will deliver him from the line of fire.
"I want to make my dad proud," said Joel, who hopes to graduate from high school in 2009 if he is not drafted. "My dad says that in the army they teach you things you can't learn on the streets, and that would be good for my future, for my whole life."
If someone were to randomly pick 100 teenage boys out of his neighborhood, Joel guessed that 30 of them would probably be gang members. That's higher than the estimates of academics and social workers, but it still would mean that Joel is a lot more representative of favela kids than Marcos is.
The Observatory of Favelas, a nonprofit organization that operates social programs in various slums throughout Rio, late last year released a survey of 230 teenagers who had been involved with gangs; 46 of them had died during the two-year research period, two-thirds of whom had been shot by police.
According to the Institute of Public Security, an average of 371 minors each year were reported murdered in Rio from 2002 and 2006. Because some people believe the officially reported figures of overall homicides in Rio are low, a Web site -- http://www.riobodycount.com.br-- this year began compiling its own count by collecting news reports of violent deaths. Overall, it has counted 675 homicides in Rio since Feb. 1.
"For young people, this is a genocide," said Raquel Willadino, a director of violence-related issues and human rights for the Observatory of Favelas. "And I don't mean that as a metaphor. It really is a genocide."
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, prompted by the crime in Rio, met Friday with his military advisers to discuss the possibility of deploying troops in the city to help contain the violence.
But Willadino and many other social workers in the favelas are against ideas such as lengthening sentences for child-related crimes or lowering the prosecution age. The prison and detention systems are already stretched beyond capacity, and the police do not have a good track record in separating the good kids in a favela from the bad ones, she said. On her desk, she had a copy of a recent daily newspaper front page, with a large photo of a police officer searching the book bag of an elementary school boy -- a good illustration, she said, of law enforcement's indiscriminate approach toward favela residents.
Many police officials, meanwhile, express exasperation when they see things like that. Allan Turnowski, state director of police special operations, said those kind of pictures in the news media leave out an important part of the story. Just before the officers searched the backpack of the child in the photo, he said, they had found a gun in another boy's pack. The criminals force the police to be cautious, he said.
"The media doesn't show the good things we do -- just the sensationalism," he said. "They show the criminal the hero, and we lose all authority in the minds of the young people. Then they see the police as the bad guys."
Joel certainly does. He said he often feels like a target in the war between police and the gangs, even though he has tried to go out of his way to avoid it. Joel said that last month he was stopped by a policeman while riding a motorcycle a friend had lent him. The police officer told him to hand over all his money, Joel said, or else he'd be arrested and taken into custody for riding a motorcycle he didn't own.
He gave him the money, he said, and collected another story to explain why he wants the army to call his name.
"I'd like to be living somewhere else," he said. "Somewhere calmer, where I can breathe easier."
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