The Taxi Driver
His mother became nervous, cried, asked him to stop with the drugs and so on, all of that business. She said, “Stop, one of these days they will kill you.” Like I said to him too, “Oh, look, one hour they are going to lynch you, they are going to shoot you, kill you.” He promised, he said that he wouldn’t use any more. But at the same time, after a couple of hours, all of sudden he disappeared! When he came back, he returned high.
Introduction: Antonio Carlos took a job as a taxi driver in 1981 at the age of 30 to provide a better income for his family. He rents a taxi car in 24-hour intervals for R$65 (US$27) and spends about R$30 (US$13) per day on gasoline, meaning his first R$95 (US$40) of daily cab fares just covers operating expenses. The taxi owner pays for car insurance and maintenance. To get the most leverage out of this rental agreement, Antonio Carlos generally puts in at least 12 hours per day, sometimes laboring as much as 18 hours per day, Monday through Saturday. On Sundays he works a limited four-hour morning shift (and pays a lower pro-rata car rental rate). Antonio Carlos’s salary of US$5,620 per year is more than three times Brazil’s minimum wage, but he works long hours and as he says, “Every taxi driver has been robbed at least once.”
Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 2006
Work in the Big City
My father, now deceased, lived in Santa Maria de Itabira and my mother is from Conselheiro Lafaiete–cities close by here. She met him here. I think he came here around the age of twenty because in the country it is more difficult to find work. Yeah, he worked on a plantation, right? He was a farm worker. Now, it’s the same with my mother. Life in the country is very tough… for a person to progress, to have something, is difficult. So then, the majority come to Belo Horizonte, they go to large metropolises to find work. Here he was a public worker with the State. He worked in a government department that deals with agriculture. My mother worked in a family’s home, she was a maid. They started to date, but didn’t get married. They just lived together. I was born in Hospital Santa Casa in Belo Horizonte. I was brought up on Rua Cristal, there next to Clube José Bonifácio. Now I live in Vespasiano. It is really violent there, in terms of drugs and homicides, but for the last four or five months it has been calmer.
Father’s Departure
Ah, I remember him. He took me on walks, understand, to Municipal Park. He left with me to go on walks, things like that. But I remember very little of him. I didn’t have much affection for him. He was really screwed up. He always disappeared, like, stayed away for two, three days at a time. Understand? Then he would return. He kind of lacked judgment. He left my mother. He took off with another woman, with another family. I was twelve years old. I have another brother and sister. They don’t remember him very well, no, only really by picture. They more or less know his features and so on. But they don’t remember him, no. My biggest problem was just the questioning from my friends when I was a child, “Ah, and your father? Where is he?” I always found a way to avoid answering, but later I started to talk, I opened up and said, “Ah, my father abandoned us.” I don’t miss him very much, no. He left us. When we most needed him, he wasn’t there. He didn’t pay child support. My mother fought with him to see if he would provide child support, but it ended up nothing came of this. It ended up he disappeared. My brother and sister were younger, so I started to feel as if I was the person in charge, understand? To help my mother. I was responsible for them too.
Growing Up Working
It was difficult to survive, right? And it was only my mother. So, as we were growing up, we started to work, understand? It was difficult because they don’t pay much for maids and she had to take care of three kids by herself. I helped look after my younger brother and sister while she worked. After they got older, I started to work. I began to work at the age of twelve to help at home. She worked one shift, a half-shift, and I worked a half-shift. When she went to work, I stayed with the kids: my brother and sister. When she returned home, I went to a job that I found to earn some extra cash. I grew up with this responsibility. I worked at a coffee roasting house, a coffee business there in Floresta. It was a company that packed coffee beans for delivery to warehouses, grocery stores, and cafes. So then, that was my first job. I was a helper. The guy left with a car full of coffee packages and delivered them to grocery stores. While he was talking with owners, writing receipts, scheduling delivery times, I carried the coffee to the storage area. I unloaded the car. It was close to my house, so I didn’t have to pay for transportation or nothing. I worked from seven in the morning until 12:30 in the afternoon. I studied at night. So I continued for two years just working with that, as a delivery person. It was difficult monetarily because it didn’t pay much. So I had to stop studying to find a job to earn more money. Then, I started to study again. But I couldn’t handle it, no. I was very tired and I gave up studies in high school.
Mother, Brother and Sister
I am very close to my mother. She raised us. She is cool. She gave a lot of responsibility to us at an early age, right? We grew up with a lot of responsibility very early on. We had liberty, but we had to show respect. She was strict with us. She kept an eye on our friendships, understand? She prohibited us from doing certain things. She always said, “Ten-o-clock I want to see everybody here inside the house, at the latest ten p.m.” The young girl, no, she always stayed at mom’s side. She let us young men go out, but at night we had to be there. Today I see, in reality, she was right. I have a very good relationship with my brother and sister. My mother taught us to be united. She always said, “Union produces strength.” So then, we always were really united, we are until this day. One helps another if necessary. There is always something. Sometimes some difficulty appears, right? So we meet, go to each others’ homes, sit down, talk, get up to date to see what’s lacking, where help is needed. It’s always like this.
A Happy Beginning, then Problems with Cachaça
When we started dating things were really good. I was really in love. I am talking about my current wife, incidentally. At the time she was my girlfriend. She was my first real girlfriend, steady, who I took seriously. So it was really good. I would meet her after work at her house and would chat with her. On the weekends I always went out with her. By the way it appeared she also was very humble, simple. She thought she had found the man of her life and I thought I had found the woman of my life too. So we dated, became engaged and, including dating and engagement, it was ten years. Then we got married. I’ve been married 27 years. It is good. It is. Only it wasn’t very good when I drank a lot. These days I only drink when I am not working, on a Sunday, I just have beer. But before I drank cachaça, a lot of cachaça, and I wouldn’t eat… nothing. So, I ended up getting kind of crazy. The relationship wasn’t good. No. I had a problem, I fought, right? I argued for no good reason and I came home drunk. I was aggressive. I even struck her one or two times, if I am not mistaken. I lost notion of everything when I became overtaken by the alcohol, so I didn’t even remember. The next day, then, she would said, “You hit me.” Right, two times, I think it was two times that I hit her. So I was ashamed, right? I said, “I have to stop this. I have to stop.” I wasn’t addicted, understand? I would become like this when I went out with a colleague to drink. I went out and mixed everything: beer, cachaça, cognac, everything… I didn’t fall down in the street, no, but when I returned home, if I didn’t pass out, I argued a lot. Talking too much, like, incoherent stuff, understand? Talk without meaning.
The End of Cachaça
So, I ended up in the hospital. I started to feel some pain in my leg, at the tip of my toe. My muscles, toes were weakening and started to become atrophied. I had already stopped drinking cachaça some two months before I started to feel sick. My wife took me to the doctor and he said it was because of the alcohol, and the like, because I drank but I didn’t eat. My nerves were weakening and such. He prescribed three injections and vitamins and told me not to drink any more cachaça. I don’t remember when this was; it must be some fifteen years ago. Look, I stopped because we get older and see our children growing up. Ah, I believe that alcohol doesn’t lead to any kind of future, no. I only drink beer. Right? Sometimes, on like a Sunday when I am not working, I drink a couple of beers and that’s it. It’s just those two bottles of beer there and done.
I had many disappointments, like this business of fighting with my wife. I lost other jobs too. I already had chances to have good jobs, like at Banco Central do Brasil, CEMIG, understand? So, I missed these opportunities, I didn’t show up. I had a chance at TV Minas, that educational television station. The guy waited for me for over an hour and what happened? I forgot, I drank too much, the next day I didn’t remember. My wife supported me until a certain point. After, she left me, went to my mother-in-law’s house. She stayed there like three months and then I went there to find her. I didn’t understand why she had fought with me. She wanted to separate from me for me to stop drinking. Understand? So it was a neighbor who told me, “I don’t think she is going to come back, no, because you are drinking too much.” She was right, too. If it continued like that, it would have just gotten worse, right? So I said, “No, I have to turn my life around, be a man.” So I went to get her and we are together until this day. I had examples of friends of mine who lost family because of this too, right? So then I looked at them as examples. I said, “No, I like my children, I like my wife, I am the one who is wrong. So then, I have to change.” Some friends approached me and talked with me too. They said, “Toninho, stop it with this alcohol!” Some asked me why I drank. Of course I didn’t even know why I was drinking like that. I sincerely didn’t even know.
Taxi Driver
I first worked at two department stores. One for four years, the other five years. Later I left the two, got my taxi license and began working as a taxi driver. I started in ’81, some 24 years ago. I already was married. It was for the money. It was better, right? At the stores I earned less. Working as a taxi driver I am able to earn a lot more, take care of family better, have a better life, yeah, to raise the children, give them a chance to study, to be someone in life. I work from Sunday to Sunday. I work a lot. Only on Sundays I work less. On Sundays, I leave at seven thirty in the morning and go until eleven in the morning and that’s it. Then I park the car and just start to work on Monday. Today I am going to work 17 hours. The more time I spend on the streets, the more I earn. I can stop, rest, any time. I don’t have vacations, but when I don’t want to work, a Saturday or a Sunday, I can take off. This car stays with me 24 hours per day. It’s not mine, no, it’s my cousin’s. My salary varies, but reaches some R$1,200 per month. For now, it’s not enough to save, no. It goes to buy clothes, food and pay the bills… for savings nothing is left over. In comparison to people who I am seeing there, people earning a minimum salary, working flat out to earn a minimum salary, I feel comfortable. I should retire when I am 65, but I am going to continue working as a taxi driver.
Two Robberies
The first time they asked me to take them to a neighborhood near Venda Nova. That’s right, past Venda Nova to a neighborhood called Justinopolis. It was nine thirty in the evening. It was Christmas Eve. This was in ’92. So, when we arrived there at a deserted place, I found out that the two were criminals. They placed a revolver to my waist and took the car and the money I had. At the time, I had thirty cruzados. They took the car and the money and one week later we found the car. It was a Volks. The second time was this year, at the start of the year. It was three thirty in the afternoon. It was this very car here. The guy entered and I took him to a neighborhood called Caetano Furquim, near the neighborhood São Gabriel, inside a housing complex. At the door, like, there was a deserted road and he announced the robbery. He put the gun to me also, but he just took the car keys and R$28. So, I called the police, they arrived, and I went to get another key at my cousin’s house and that’s it.
The Risks
The work is very tiring, all day in traffic. You earn a little more, but you have difficulties: there is the risk of getting robbed and these things, there are accidents and you work a lot. The majority of taxi drivers who you talk to already have been robbed at least once. There was one who recognized the bandits, lived in the same neighborhood here, going to Venda Nova. They killed him there and threw his body out of the car and took the taxi. Four days later the police found them. Now they are in prison. Crime and violence is very common here. In general, right? In all of Brazil, every day that passes it grows even more. I think that what is causing a lot of this is drugs. It is drugs that cause this. I don’t go into favelas, no. If a taxi driver lives in a favela he might go, but if he doesn’t live there, he won’t go. I take passengers close to favelas, but inside no. Depending on the place where the guy is and his clothing… if a guy is with a jacket and a hat in heat like this and flags you down in the street, that is dangerous, isn’t it? You tell yourself, “There is something wrong there.” This profession demands that we be aware like this, understand? We have to perceive what’s going on around us.
The Passengers
Taxi stand in Savassi at Rua Alagoas and Rua Claudio Manuel.
There are some clients who don’t like that you drive very quickly. There are some who drink and become unpleasant, but we talk and such, and everything ends up okay. I have already transported famous people, like soccer coaches, soccer players, artists, comedians… One time a guy flagged me down and I stopped and he was crying. So I asked, “What happened?” I have to try to see, right? I have to see what is happening with the person, to see if I can at least help out with some dialogue. His wife said she married him just to take his things and was going to separate from him. So he entered the cab totally revolted, thinking of doing something foolish. He was thinking of killing his wife. I tried to change his mind so he wouldn’t do anything silly. I never saw him again, never heard any other news.
This happens a lot: a woman enters into the taxi and asks me to follow another car. Understand? Sometimes it is the husband with another woman. Ah, once it happened at a shopping center and I left her there and said, “No, I am not going to do this, no, because this is very dangerous.” So I left her there at the shopping center because she saw her husband entering with another woman. I left her there and said, “Now ma’am enter and resolve it with him, I am not going to continue waiting, no.” This is very dangerous. Women, when they are like this, my God, this leads to death! Emotions, right? It happens a lot, principally on the weekends because on the weekends people have more time to go out with their girlfriends. There are some guys who go out to meet married women. So there are all kinds of things.
Clothes, umbrellas, cell phones, these things they always leave behind and I return them. When I don’t return them to the passenger’s home, I return them to BHTRANS, which is an organization that administers the taxi service. Understand? It comes from my upbringing, right? My mother was very strict, she was very honest and she liked everything to be correct. You have to be polite, that’s it, not talk back to people and always try to be honest.
Sincerely, I like my work. I like really like to rush about. There are friends, at the taxi stands, right? I like to chat with my friends, my colleagues. I really liked to drive, I like to drive. Things happened and I stopped studying. I didn’t acquire any other profession; the only thing I acquired was this here, so I delivered myself body and soul to this.
First Son – Start of the Addiction
He used drugs. Right, marijuana and crack. He started when he was sixteen. Artur. Artur Rodriguez de Alvarenga. He was working, right? He worked as an “office-boy,” but he started to mess with drugs and abandoned everything. He quit work, school. He became addicted to crack. It’s the curse of cocaine, isn’t it? He was very intelligent, very committed, helped at home, anything that had to be done, like, he helped… before starting to use drugs. Even later, when he wasn’t high, he was like this.
He began to study at a school there in the neighborhood of São Lucas. This school wasn’t very… I wasn’t very confident in this school, no. I thought that drugs were present. I don’t know if it was there or if it was in the housing complex because in the complex there was a lot of this too. Now, this is in general, not just in Belo Horizonte. Anywhere you go, if I go to Rio de Janeiro it’s like this; if I go to São Paulo it is the same thing. So then, it’s in general, this business, this type of problem. It is something without an exit. The only way out is if the person himself places his faith in God. He had friends who used, right? In the neighborhood where I live, a remote neighborhood, it is a lot easier. You know teenagers: they don’t want to appear any weaker than the others. By the time I became alarmed, he already was addicted.
I perceived he had different features when he was using. His face became fine, very fine, and his skin very oily. Super oily. Excessively so. And he drank a lot of water. Water with ice. And he took a lot of showers too. He was acting, crack makes a person act with a lot of… act with a lot of… violence. He was hiding stuff and fighting a lot. Behavior changes a lot. He lost self-esteem, right? He started to go out filthy, didn’t take showers, only when he came home. He would stay three days at a time in the street, just using drugs and looking after cars, washing cars for a little money. So I pressured him, one day talking with him, I pressured him and asked if he was using drugs. He confessed that he was. Afterwards I tried to stop him, but there wasn’t any way, no. I wasn’t able to. He tried to stop. He quit for two weeks, but returned to smoke crack again.
Violence and Addiction
He was imprisoned for 45 days because he tried to steal, right? In order to buy drugs. But he didn’t manage to get away with it, no. He stole, but they caught him at that very moment. Understand? They caught him in the act and he got 45 days in prison. I didn’t kick him out, no, because it would have been worse. I liked to see him close to me because I was able to control some things. He got into a lot of trouble. He was getting into a lot of trouble: taking money from people there in the neighborhood. When he was high, he lost all notion for real. He started to bite people’s hands… look at that! When he was high, he took money from a person’s hand and began to bite. He bit the person’s hand and took off running. People always showed up at our house complaining to us, understand? And I was embarrassed, right? My son, that way, taking advantage of people, going there to the doors of neighbors. The people knew me, for this reason they didn’t do anything. They wouldn’t do anything, but they would complain to me. So when I returned from work, they would talk to me. He sold people cesta basicas without actually having them. He arrived at the neighbors there, said, “Oh, I have a cesta basica that I am selling for so much.” But he didn’t have it! “I have this cesta basica, give me some money and I will go there and get it.” The person gave him money; he would take it and disappear. The person continued waiting, saw that it was a scam and then came to me.
Controlled By Addiction
My wife also was suffering, she suffered very much. She wasn’t able to do anything. She talked, asked him to leave behind the drugs and so on. He said that he would stop, he didn’t respond rudely. He said he would stop, but he didn’t stop. Ah, she became passive. A mother reacts with her heart, right? So who needs to react in these cases is the father. The mother no. His mother became nervous, cried, asked him to stop with the drugs, and so on, all of that business. She said, “Stop, one of these days they will kill you.” Like I said to him too, “Oh, look, one hour they are going to lynch you, they are going to shoot you, kill you.” He promised, he said that he wouldn’t use any more. But at the same time, after a couple of hours, all of sudden he disappeared! When he came back, he returned high.
I hoped for change, but at the same time I felt, “one hour it is going to happen,” because he would leave home and stay away for two to three days. I began to believe it was an uncontrollable addiction for real. I tried to intern him, but he said he wouldn’t stay. It wouldn’t help, no, because these clinics work if a person wants to be there, right? He has to want it. The addict has to want it, because it won’t help if I say, “you are going to stay,” and turn my back and in a little bit he is arriving home before me.
Crack Kills
It was midnight, more or less, everyone was sleeping. A police vehicle arrived there to advise us of the news. My God it is difficult! It is very difficult! He was murdered. There in Vespasiano, no Conjunto Romualdo, where I live. It was there close to home. There they killed him. He was 23 years old. Crack kills for real. He went there to get an explanation from another gang there that had shot one of his friends. He arrived there and pretended that he was armed, so the guys thought he was armed for real and shot him right away. He was high. We already knew that this could happen. It was a very big shock, but… I already more or less was waiting for this to happen. I already had talked to him, but I was waiting, because the effect of this drug, it is very… who uses this drug, the person becomes very violent. There where I live, people are very–they shoot for no reason. So I said like, “One day news is going to come that this kid is in prison, or dead.”
A Lingering Guilt
There are times that I feel a little guilty about this because I think he was missing my presence. I think I should have been more present in my kids’ lives, during their adolescence. During that period I should have talked with them more, but my work demands a lot of me, understand? So then, I didn’t have that time. Look, according to what they tell me, alcoholics’ children—I was almost becoming an alcoholic—have this tendency, right? Their children have a greater possibility of getting addicted to any kind of drug.
Waiting for Justice
We know who did it, like, by word of mouth, but testimonies don’t go there, no. They won’t testify. They told one of my relatives that it was a guy who also uses, he’s a drug addict, understand? I already thought about revenge, but later I thought that’s not going to help. It’s preferable that the guy is in prison, behind bars; instead of I go there and commit another ignorant, violent act. I hope for justice, for sure. Look, in his case, I believe, yes. I believe, because people can’t remain unpunished for the things they do. That there, to take a life, I think that only God has the right to take somebody’s life. Correct? So then, this person has to… he is still above ground, he has to pay, isn’t that right?
Dreams and Happiness
My dream was just to have a home, a car, a calm life. My dreams were very little dreams. They weren’t very big, the dreams I had. I never thought about being rich, I also never wanted to be rich. Like, all my life I wanted to have a stable life, to live well with my family, without problems, without debt, have a job, travel, these things. I have a house, but I have a mortgage that I have to pay, right? I pay installments on the house–a common lower class home. I have three other children. The two girls are married, the young man, no. My dream now is to age in peace, with my children all grown up, to have time to go out with my grandchildren. The one who died left behind a grandchild. The other young man, who is alive, has a child too—another grandchild. My girls, one has three and the other has one. I really like children, right? To go out, play, and so on, all of this stuff. I still have a little bit of a kid in me. On days when I am at home, when I take a day off from work, I am happy. I visit with the wife, there is a son and daughter who live nearby, there are the grandchildren, so I am happy.
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