The Candy Vendor (“Baleiro”)

A lot of people I knew from my childhood have been killed, murdered. Nowadays I thank God for being alive, for being able to enjoy my daughters, and for earning money to buy things for them. I left that life of drugs behind and have no desire to go back. Life isn’t perfect, but at least I am not drowning in cachaça either.

Introduction: Paulo’s mother taught him several important values early on during his upbringing in a favela in Belo Horizonte called Cafezal. His father, on the other hand, abandoned him in his infancy. While Paulo today says that “without his mother he is no one,” at the age of 12 he ran away from home and lived in the streets of Belo Horizonte for two months. Around this time, he began selling candy as an option to begging for money, partly to help support a drug habit that began casually when he was ten and became more serious when he was twelve. Beating the odds, at the age of 16, he managed to escape the drug scene after witnessing several of his peers murdered for drug related reasons. Now twenty, he has been working as a candy vendor for eight years and has stayed clear of drugs for four years.

Today, Paulo’s estimated monthly income of R$450 (US$191) covers his own living expenses and helps support his companion and her four children, two of which are his own. Every day he purchases a variety of candy—ranging from mints to chewing gum—at a warehouse in downtown Belo Horizonte. No later than 7 a.m., he arrives at his post, a bus stop at Praca Afonso Arinos, with his merchandise neatly assorted in a polystyrene box. While it’s easier to sell candy on busses than on the streets, not all bus drivers are understanding of his cause and refuse to let him on board. He estimates that he makes a profit of roughly R$0.25 (US$0.10) per package sold, depending on the variety of candy sold. During a single day, he estimates that he sells approximately 80 packages, translating into daily income of R$20 (US$8.50).

Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 2005

Paulo’s Upbringing

I was born and raised in Belo Horizonte. My mother is from the countryside of Minas Gerais, in Ladainha, after Teófilo Otoni. Today my mother lives in the Nossa Senhora de Fátima neighborhood, near the Baleia Hospital. She came here when she was eight years old. She came here because in the past, in the countryside, it was difficult to make a living. To buy a small amount of rice, you had to work the whole day. In the big city, it’s different. Here in Belo Horizonte, she started working in people’s homes as a maid. Nowadays my mother is unemployed because she has a problem with her foot and today she can’t find any work. She is living with my stepfather. I was two years old when my stepfather met my mother. He is my adoptive father.

I have three half-sisters – a 17-year-old, a 16-year-old, and a 13-year-old. We share the same mother. I never even knew my father. He’s a bum, you know? He’s the type of person who uses drugs and then walks away. But I was raised well. I was raised only by my mother, and she taught me not to steal, not to harm anyone. I don’t have any schooling, but I work hard, I don’t just hang out on the streets doing nothing or getting into mischief. One thing my mother used to say was, “Oh, Paulo, if there is one thing I can teach you: never take anything that belongs to others. If you want something, you work hard in your life to get it.”

Biological Father vs. Adoptive Father

My mother met my biological father, they had a fling, and then he lost interest. Once he realized that the responsibility of a kid had come his way, he disappeared. I don’t know my father. He left when I was a toddler. He never tried to contact me.

If I ran into him today and he called me “son”, I would yell at him because a father is someone who raises you. If I could, I’d like to have the opportunity to meet him to hear what he would say. My mother says one thing, my aunts say another. I’d like to hear his side of the story, so I could consider all three perspectives and see what’s right. My aunts say my father always took me out and played with me a lot. My mother says the opposite, that my father didn’t want to see me–even if I were painted in gold. My aunts say it was my mother who didn’t let my father see me.

What I needed from him when I was little—affection, love, those things—he couldn’t help with. So, nowadays I need financial help. I have a family, that sort of thing. So, if he comes up to me and says, “I’ll give you affection, I’ll offer you a shoulder to cry on,” I’ll say, “No, I don’t need that. If I’m going to cry, I’ll choose my mother’s shoulder or my wife’s shoulder. Am I going to choose your shoulder? After 19 years?” So, to put it simply, for me to meet my biological father, it would only be if he helped me financially.

I heard he has a bunch of kids, poor guy. Wow, the guy’s poor—I know he’s not rich—and he already has so many kids, right? What he has, I’ll leave to my other siblings who aren’t grown yet. I’m already grown, so it’s unfair for me to come along and try to take something from the others who are still young. I heard he has six other kids. You see, the guy just started going out and making a mess of things, getting into trouble and having more kids.

These days I really want to meet my other siblings. Sometimes I pass by someone and think it could be my half-brother, I don’t know. I heard his oldest son is 18 years old. So sometimes I see someone who looks a little bit like me and I think, “Could it be my brother?” I’m hesitant, looking around, and then tell myself, “Oh, I’m not going to ask him.”

So, I only allow two people to call me “son”: my mother and my adoptive father. I have the utmost respect for my stepfather. He’s not my biological father, but he’s been by my side ever since I can remember. Thanks to God, him and my mother, I don’t have a criminal record or anything. I’m as clean as a baby’s bottom.

Fights at Home

My stepfather didn’t initially live with my mother. Still, he would make sure we had everything we needed, go there to the home and visit my sisters. But he didn’t live with us. He lived with another woman.

Now he lives with my mother and they fight a lot. Since I like him, and I like her too, I say, “You can argue without being aggressive. As long as she doesn’t hit you and you don’t hit her, I don’t care, you can insult each other and talk however you want.”

When they start arguing, I don’t even stick around. I prefer to go outside. My mother once asked, “Paulo, why do you like the street so much?”

“Mom, I feel good in the streets because I know people there who treat me with respect, and here at home it is different with all of your fights.”

Living on the Streets at Twelve Years Old

Ah, my mother, she’s such a good person, but she has this thing: because I’m her only son she criticizes me a lot, you know?

Ever since I was little, she would favor my sisters. My sisters would cry and tell her “Paulo hit me” or something like that. Then she would proceed to hit me with a hose.

When she came to me, I’d say, “Don’t you want to hear my side of the story?”

She’d say, “No, I don’t.”

When she started to hit me, I rebelled and started to use a lot of drugs. I was already sniffing glue and paint thinner back then. Sometimes she’d kick me out of the house.

Once she said she was going to step on my neck, and she did. She’s quite strong. So I couldn’t believe it. She threw me to the ground and stepped on my neck.

After she did that, she said she was going to kill me.

I thought, “Wow, she said she was going to step on my neck and she did. Now she says she’s going to kill me? I’m not going to stay here waiting to see if that happens.”

Since my mother said she was going to kill me, I thought, “I have nothing left to lose in this world.”

I left and lived on the streets for two months, here in the city center. I was twelve years old. I just grabbed my things and left.

Thank God I’m independent. I don’t go hungry or anything. There’s that saying: “If you have a mouth, you can get to Rome.”

If you’re broke and hungry, instead of asking for money, you go up to the person and say, “Ma’am, I don’t want to ask for money. Could you possibly buy me a snack?”

When I lived on the street, it was me and three other kids. I hung out with them.

Once there was a lady who had a wad of cash on the café counter, and my friend said, “Guys, I’m going to steal that money over there.”

I said, “What’s up, man? Don’t steal the lady’s money. It’s better if you ask her to buy us something to eat.”

He said, “Sure, ok.”

He approached the lady, “Ma’am, can you buy me a snack so I can eat?”

“No, I’m not going to buy you anything,” she replied.

“Ma’am, buy me a snack so I can eat, I’m hungry.”

“No, I’m not going to.”

“Ok lady, go fuck yourself.”

He took all the money that was on the counter, and my friends ran away.

She turned to me and said, “You’re responsible.”

I said, “I’m responsible? Was it me who came to you and asked for a snack? Was it me who took the money and ran away?”

“I’m going to call the police on you.”

I said, “You can see that they ran away, and I’m still here. If I had done something wrong, I would have run with them. You should think about what happened just now so the same thing doesn’t happen to you again.”

After I’d been living in the streets for around two months, I thought to myself, I prefer to stay out here where nobody bosses me around, nobody disrespects me, I don’t disrespect anyone, nobody hits me, I don’t hit anyone.

I only came back because one of my aunts, my favorite one, invited me to her house after she found me on the streets. I stayed with her for a few days and then she took me back to my mother’s house. If it weren’t for that, I think I’d still be on the streets to this day.

If it’s daytime like right now, when the sun is out, you can’t find someone in the city center very easily because they are constantly walking around. You have a better chance of finding someone at night, when they’re already sitting somewhere, already sleeping somewhere. When my aunt found me, I was sleeping. She says she passed by and thought the person looked a lot like me. She looked, looked and looked and saw it was me because of this burn here. I got it from an accident when I was eight years old – I was run over by a speeding car while riding my bicycle. The car’s bumper hit my rear bicycle wheel and then I fell into the middle of the street. The car ran over me, and I got this burn here from the exhaust pipe.

That’s how she recognized me, from the burn, because my head was covered. I didn’t have a blanket, I didn’t have cardboard, so I put my arms like this and covered my head. That’s where my burn showed. She said: I recognize that burn.

Baleiro

I am a “Baleiro”, or a candy seller. You can also call me a street vendor. But my preference is Baleiro. When people see us they shout out, “Oh, Baleiro!”

I started when I was twelve years old.

Before then, I used to beg inside the city buses.

A friend of mine stopped me and said: “Paulo, this business of begging isn’t working. Let’s sell candy.”

In fact, he was the first person in Belo Horizonte to sell candy inside a bus.

I replied, “Candy? No, man, I’m not going to do that. I’m embarrassed.”

He said, “You rascal! You’re embarrassed to sell candy, but not embarrassed to beg for money? Are you just going to stand there? Let’s go.”

I was the third person to sell candy on a bus in Belo Horizonte. These days many people sell candy in the streets and on busses. They realized that they could make money doing that.

The Box and Merchandise

My box is made of Styrofoam. I like to carry a full box of candy, because otherwise customers will think it’s leftover candy, that the last few pieces of candy might be old and expired.

Trident chewing gum is the best-selling one. It’s the merchandise that sells the most here. It’s the customers’ favorite chewing gum. I sell each package of gum for one real. The box I buy costs R$10.50 for 18 packages of gum. So, I earn R$7.50 per box. Trident is a product that I make good money with; I can’t run out of stock, because if I do, I lose sales.

Pirulito Big-Big, which is a type of chewing gum, sells for 25 cents each. I sell about 25 to 30 units a day. People buy them to help me out. Many passengers know that I have a family and they buy these just to help.

Here you have yogurt-flavored gummy candies. There are thirty units. I sell them for fifty cents each and buy the box for five reais. I make about R$10.00 per box.

I used to sell Ice Kiss for fifty cents. Because there were a lot of price increases and salaries went up, I raised the price to seventy cents. Some passengers still almost hit me over the head about the twenty cents increase. Ice Kiss comes in a box of 21 units, and I earn about R$4.50 per box.

Bala Fruit-Fruit costs me about R$3 per box and comes with twelve units. I sell each unit for fifty cents, so I make R$3 in profit per box.

Pacoquinha (peanut brittle) costs R$5.75 per box and comes with fifty units. I sell it for thirty cents each, two for fifty cents and four for one real. It’s something I can’t be without in this box.

Hortela da Garoto (mints) comes with forty units per box. It used to come with 48. They lowered the price by eight units and raised it by one real. So, I sell each unit for fifty cents and make R$15 in profit per box.

The last time I weighed it, when my box was full, I put thirty kilos of candy in it. To make it all nice and full, the way I like it, it will cost around R$150 in total. Per day, in total, I sell 80 to 90 units. On average, I earn around 25 cents per unit. I typically earn around R$450 to R$500 per month.

I’ve been a candy vendor for eight years. There was only one time in my life when I managed to make R$95 in a single day. I was never able to pull off that feat again. That day, I was so happy about making all that money that I went to Ponto Frio and bought myself a television. But a week later, my wife called me: “Paulo, your daughter got sick, and the medicine is expensive.” So after just one week of having the television, I had to sell it. Because a poor man’s happiness doesn’t last long, right? I was really strapped for cash–I didn’t even have money to buy more candy to sell. Every month it’s the same thing—at the end of the month, our sales drop.

 

The “Selling Spot”

I think there are about five thousand people selling candy in Belo Horizonte. Scattered around. You just need to get a box and some merchandise. And a spot. Finding a spot is the hardest part. My spot is the bus stop here at Praca Afonso Arinos.

I wake up at 6:00 a.m. and arrive at my spot around 7:00 a.m. I stay out there until around 5:00 or 6:00 p.m.

I used to work on Amazonas Street. I came here because Amazonas was getting too crowded. Initially, I was the only one here. I stay in this area near Praca Afonso Arinos every day. This is considered the best work area because people here have a lot of money. It’s good here because there are lots of banks, universities — there’s Faculdade Promove, Banco do Brasil, Banco Itaú, Bradesco, Caixa…That’s why this is considered the best area for selling candy. Because of the bank employees, because of the universities. Sometimes I walk up to Savassi, near McDonald’s, then I come back down here.

One day another guy came here to Praca Afonso Arinos to sell his candy.

I said, “Hey man, you’ll have to excuse me. I’m here trying to earn bread for my daughters and my wife and others who depend on me. I’ve never seen you before, so you’re not going to be able to stay here selling your candy. You’ll have to look for another spot, because Belo Horizonte is big.”

He turned to me and said, “Man, the other spots—the other guys ran me off too.”

I wasn’t going to let him work here but then he said, “Hey man, cut me a break. I’ve got a newborn daughter and a wife.”

When he said he had a newborn daughter, I told him, “Hey man, you don’t need to say anything else. If you’ve got your little girl, you don’t need to say another word. You can stay and work here.”

You know why? It’s more complicated than that. What I did for him now, here—who knows what might be in store for me down the road. Maybe I’ll receive something good, or someone else will come along and help me out here. I told him, “You can stay and work here.”

He’s been working here for three months now.

The Importance of Busses

The best buses here are the 2101, 2004, and 2001. Those are the buses that carry the most educated people, the ones with the most money.

As for me, I don’t like to get on a bus, sell my candy, and then just turn to the driver and only say, “Thanks.”

It’s good to offer a small treat to the driver who gave you the opportunity because if I had to pay the R$2 fare every time I got on a bus, I wouldn’t be able to manage.

A driver once told me, “No, I don’t want your candy. You’re the one struggling here trying to work.”

I said, “Come on, driver, but you’re giving me an opportunity. Imagine if every time I got on your bus I had to pay R$2 for the fare. Go ahead and take a candy. I’m not charging you for it.”

There was another driver—I said, “Hey, boss. Top quality, just how you like it. Have a little candy, cool off from this heat.”

He turned around and handed me fifty cents.

I said, “No, I’m not charging you for the candy.”

He replied, “If you don’t take the money, I won’t let you sell on my bus anymore.”

So I had no choice. I took the money and gave him the candy.

In fact, when I go to offer him a candy now, he just turns his face away and pretends he doesn’t even see me.

It’s like he’s saying, “No, I don’t want your merchandise. It’s enough for me that you’re working here. You’re not out there eyeing people with the intention of robbing them or anything.”

Some time ago, there was a candy seller who—because of his own lack of judgment—got onto a bus and hit the driver. A lot of people were outraged because his actions hurt everyone else, not just himself. Because of just one person we end up paying the price.

In the past, it was much easier to get on busses. Back then, drivers didn’t really pay attention or worry about us selling candy. Any driver would let us get on. But nowadays, City Hall and BHTRANS are giving drivers a lot of fines and trouble to stop them from allowing us on board. These bus drivers can get fines of R$100 reais, and they still let us work there. They’re the kind of people who, if there were more people like them, this country would be too good.

One time I asked a driver if I could sell my candy, and he wouldn’t let me. So I paid the fare and everything.

When I started making my sales pitch, the driver said, “Hey man, stop, not here.”

“I’m not going to stop, because I paid my fare. I’ve got the same right as anyone else on this bus.”

He said, “Either you stop or I’ll throw you off by force.”

So I stopped my pitch.

But I am grateful to that driver because there were only women on the bus, and everyone felt sorry for me—so they all bought something.

Afterward, I said to the driver, “Thank you. Really! If it weren’t for you, I don’t think I would have sold anything.”

Because he put me down and didn’t want me sell on his bus everyone felt sorry for me and said, “Hey kid, come here, I’ll buy the gum from you.”

Sometimes sales are good, sometimes they’re bad. For us, it really depends on whether the drivers let us get on. On the streets, people really undervalue our work. But inside the busses, people are more supportive—they buy a lot to help. They don’t buy just because they want candy. They buy because the think: “I see that you’re working—it’s better than being out there on the street doing drugs or robbing people.”

Our sales depend on the passengers. If just one person pulls out fifty cents, the others start to help too. But if the first one doesn’t give anything, the others don’t either.

Many times on the street, when I go up to sell candy, people won’t buy anything because they’re afraid I might rob them. They think, “If I pull out money here, I don’t know what that guy’s intentions are.”

But my intentions are the best—I’m out here hustling; I could be out there messing around instead. They say when a frog is under pressure, it has to jump—today I’m the one who has to make my moves. I called my wife yesterday, and they’re in need of things at home.

Look, I’ll be honest—I like my work, but sometimes I feel like quitting. Because we get so much humiliation from other people: grumpy passengers who want to take it out on us, you know? I do enjoy it, though. Here I’m cheerful, I have a good sense of humor, I talk a lot with the drivers, who are really nice.

But we’re already struggling in life, right? I go to offer candy, and the person just turns their face, says nothing—and that builds up frustration, you know? It wouldn’t cost anything for someone to say, “No, I don’t want candy.” Instead, they just turn away, and we’re left standing there. They could even say, “I don’t want this crappy candy,” but no—they just turn their face away and leave it at that.

I turn to them and say, “No, thank you, I don’t want it.” I respond for them. Then they look at me like with a nasty face, and that’s when I also get upset. I offer candy, they say nothing, turn away. Then I say, “No, thank you.”

Thief Dressed in a Suit and Tie

Some people say that favelas are like this and favelas are like that. Me, I walk by someone with my candy box, and the person grabs their bag. I say, “Ma’am, you don’t need to hold onto your bag. Thieves don’t walk around with candy boxes.”

And another thing—thieves these days don’t wear shorts. You can notice, today’s thieves dress well so they don’t draw attention.

Thieves nowadays think, “We have to dress nicely, because anyone looking scruffy draws the attention of the police.” These days they even walk around in suits and ties. One day I looked, and a thief was all suited up. I thought, “No way, that’s not a thief.” Suit, tie, dress shoes. The moment I noticed it, psshh!—into the old man’s pocket. Wow! I would never have suspected him, I thought he was a lawyer or a doctor. Then I see the guy—psshh!—and he’s gone with someone else’s stuff just like that.

Then the “doctor” passed quickly by me and the old man shouted, “Grab him, candy seller! Stop him!”

I said, “Sir, please excuse me. I don’t work for the government. If I jump in front of that guy and manage to stop him and recover your things, you’ll just say, ‘Thank you.’ Then the thief goes to jail, and two days later he’s back on the street, coming after me with a gun, shooting at me—how am I supposed to handle that?”

Woman with a BMW

One time, I was walking up the street, and a young woman got out of her car. She got out of a BMW. She parked the BMW here and started walking. I was sitting here, and my colleague said, “Paulo, go get me a cigarette.”

“Got it. Stay here with my candy box.”

As I was walking, the woman dropped a bag on the ground—a fairly big bag!

I thought, “Wow, there must be a lot of money in there.”

I picked it up and decided to return it. There’s that saying: if you do a good deed, God will see it later. So I went and said, “Miss, your bag fell.”

The woman grabbed her other bag, slapped my hand with it, and said, “Were you trying to steal this from me?”

I said, “Ma’am, I won’t argue with you, but the One above is watching. Later, He will make justice, and you may lose everything.”

She called a police officer. My luck was that a guy who was behind me said, “No, she dropped the bag and he picked it up and returned it to her.”

Paulo’s Wife and Kids

I have two daughters with my wife, and I take care of two others who were already hers. They live after Teófilo Otoni, after Ladainha, in the countryside.

I live with my parents in Belo Horizonte, but I’m desperate to get some money to rent a shack. My wife wants to come here. I have to buy a stove, a bed, a refrigerator, so sometimes I wonder how I’m going to manage.

I thought about moving to the countryside to live with my wife instead. But making a living there to support a wife and four children and pay rent, water, and electricity, it’s going to be difficult. There you work from seven in the morning until five in the afternoon to earn R$7.

It’s complicated, because this girl–my wife–she’s also my cousin. But here’s the thing: she liked me, and I liked her. So I said to her, “I like you. I want to live with you—will you accept?”

“I accept, if you take care of my two children.”

So our families agreed, right? Family doesn’t help you with anything—they just talk. I told her, “You’re of age, you are 20. I’m already 18 and in charge of my own life. If you want to live with me, I want to live with you.”

She said, “I accept.”

I have two daughters with her and her other two children from another relationship. They call me by my first name, but they give me respect as if I were their father. One is seven, the other six. My oldest biological daughter is two years and six months, and I have another one who will be six months soon. When they start talking… wow, I dedicate my life to them.

I have a tooth problem. I need a root canal, and it costs R$130. I don’t have that money. So the only option is to let the tooth swell, go down, and swell again. Every month, it swells and goes down. It hurts so much. But I don’t have the R$130 to fix it.

So I called home the other day, and the first thing my daughter asked me was: “Daddy, are you feeling better?”

I said, “Wow, a two-year-old is already asking me that!”

I said, “Yes, baby, I’m better.”

She said, “Daddy, I miss you. When are you coming home?”

I said, “Baby, the thing is, Daddy is struggling to get money.”

And I really am! Twice a week I send money to my wife. Yesterday, thank God, I managed to send R$25. On Monday, I have to see if I can send more. Because of this sun, my daughter gets heat rashes from this intense heat. So I need to buy an ointment, and the ointment costs R$30.

I’m more worried about my wife because of the little girls.

Back at my mom’s house, I can manage. But I’m really worried about my wife. She needs things, and out in the countryside, you work from seven to five just to earn R$7 for a day of work. Wow, it’s tough there!

Today, I hadn’t even fully opened my eyes, and my adoptive father comes in with a water bill of R$45 and an electricity bill of R$35.

I said, “What is this? I just woke up, and you already want me to go back to sleep?”

I pay for things at my mom’s house, and I send money to my wife, right? I can’t stop sending it. For her kids too because here’s the thing: if you’re with a woman who already has kids, you have to take responsibility! If you pick up the suitcase, you have to carry the clothes inside.

Like yesterday, she called and said she’s really struggling—my daughter ran out of diapers… I have to figure out a way to get money, I need to come up with R$40 to send her.

Diapers are so expensive! And little babies go through a lot! I also help with groceries for my parents, water, and electricity. We split the bills. Like, I’ll pay one for R$15 and my adoptive father will pay one for R$20. And there are still bills left—R$40, R$80, and R$35.

I told him, “I can’t pay everything, because you know I’m not single anymore. Right now, I have to pay my bills, I have to send money to my daughters—I can’t stop sending it, right?”

So yeah, money is tight. Sometimes I sit and wonder how I’m going to manage to get this money.

I want my kids to be able to say, “My father was someone who helped me a lot when I needed it. I have nothing to complain about.”

Because when I needed my biological father, he wasn’t there to help me, right?

The happiest moment of my life was when I saw the birth of my first daughter. I cried like a child. I felt like I had been reborn. Nothing like that had ever happened in my life; from my point of view, that was so good. Because my life had been going so far backwards. When I saw that little girl, it gave me such joy! I thought, “That’s it! My life has been fulfilled!” Now it’s time to work so that this little person can become someone in life. Because, if it depends on me, I want to live a long time to see my daughter go to college, become a lawyer or a doctor and help other people.

Difficulty Finding a Formal Job

For a formal job, you need experience officially recorded on a work card, which I don’t have.

And people discriminate against me because of where I live, because I’m black, because I have no formal education… and they’ll ask for experience—I don’t have it.

Cafezal, where I live, is discriminated against when it comes to finding work. They’ll ask where you live, and when I say “Cafezal,” they’ll say, “Whoa! That’s a tough favela. There are a lot of shootouts there.” That’s where the discrimination comes in. People think, “One day he’ll try to rob me or steal something valuable.” If you are from Cafezal, they judge the book by its cover.

They’ll also ask for schooling—I don’t have it. I stopped studying in sixth grade. Even today, my mother tells me, “Paulo, schooling will make a big difference for you.”

But when you’re young, you don’t worry about the future—you only care about the present. If I had completed high school, I could be earning a decent salary today.

But right now, for me, it’s hard. I already have a family, so I can’t stop earning money just to study and buy things. It’s difficult because you have to work, earn money for food, pay for water, electricity, and gas, and still have time to study. Today studying is practically an impossible task for me. Think about it: if it were just work and study, you could manage, but you also have to make time for Dona Maria, right? If you only worked to put food on the table and studied later, you still have to reserve time for your kids, to show them affection, and for your wife—you can’t neglect her.

Cafezal and the Laws of the Favela

The first thing the traffickers (drug dealers) don’t accept in the favela: a thief who steals there, a thief who steals in the community where they live. No chance—if you steal, that’s it. Let’s say I live in the favela. I go to a little bar and steal a bottle of cachaça—done. I can expect that sooner or later, they’ll kill me. That’s how it is in Cafezal. The traffickers say, “If you want to steal, go to the asphalt.” That means go outside of the favela and steal from people in the city who are well off.

There’s also the “law of silence” when police are investigating drug traffickers. Why? Often the traffickers help people in the favela, which is something the government doesn’t do. A guy can sell drugs, kill people, do whatever, but if he helps the community he has their support and they will protect him. The government, on the other hand, does nothing to help. When they send the police to the favela, the police act violently and beat people. They don’t arrive for “Order and Progress” or “To Serve and Protect” as they claim. It’s completely the opposite: they like to “Beat and Humiliate.”

So the police go there to investigate drug related crimes or murders and it’s the law of silence. Outsiders will say the residents are afraid of the traffickers. That’s not the case. The law of silence exists because the traffickers help the residents inside the favela. If someone doesn’t have food, they go to the head trafficker, “I need this and that, there’s nothing to eat at home.”

He tells them, “Go to this market and tell them I sent you to take this and that.”

People are grateful, “I know you’re bad, you’re this or that, but when I needed you, you helped me — so you have my respect.”

Another law is to not cause trouble inside the favela. Let’s say someone gives you a problem here—if you call the police, even if you are in the right, in the eyes of the traffickers, you’re wrong. So before calling the police, you have to go to them and say, “Look, this guy stole from me and I don’t want to call the police to bring unnecessary attention to you—what can you do for me?”

Then the traffickers will settle the problem for you.

Like the guy from whom I bought a dog—I gave him a blender. I still owed him R$20 more so I left my video game as collateral because he said, “If you want to take the dog, you have to leave something as a guarantee.”

Later he said the video game was stolen from his house and that it was my problem and I should call the police.

I said, “I’m not calling the police because I’m not rich and I know how the favela system works. The only thing I can do is go downstairs and talk to the guys.”

So I went downstairs and said, “I was honest with this guy, and now he’s being shady with me.”

They told him, “You have a week to pay. If you don’t pay Paulo, we’ll kill you.”

A week passed, I went to his house and said, “Do you have anything to give me?”

He said, “I don’t have it, and I’m not giving it to you.”

I said, “Look, I can’t do anything for you. I’m not the police and I’m not a criminal. I’m a worker and I want what’s mine, what I bought and paid for with my hard work and sweat. You spend all day just drinking cachaça. See what you can do.”

He said, “Take my TV.”

I said, “Okay, the TV works for me.” So I took his TV.

Drug Dealers

There’s only one person in charge in Cafezal. I don’t know him personally. Often people want to take over other drug dens or selling points, right? Let’s say Cafezal is under one command, and the drug sales are very high. Other drug dealers think: “If we had control of those selling points there, we’d make a lot more money.”

So, the more you sell, the more attention it attracts from the bosses of other gangs, “Wow, I want that region over there, they are selling a ton, and I want to make more money!”

So what generates violence within the favela is just that: the territorial disputes or battles related to selling drugs.

If you sell drugs, you have to sleep with one eye open and one eye closed. The moment you turn your back, someone could pull out a gun and shoot you, right? So, people who enter this life already know their days could be numbered.

Drugs at an Early Age

I first started drugs when I was ten years old. A lot of little kids use drugs—it often starts at home because many times parents are too harsh on their kids. Like me, I love my mother very much. Without her, to be honest, I’m nobody. But my mother also was very hard on me. She would just grab me and beat me.

Many times I’d argue with my sisters, and she wouldn’t want to hear my side of the story—she would just beat me. Once she even grabbed a thorny stick to hit me. I ran and climbed up a mango tree.

I said, “There are ripe mangoes up here. As far as I’m concerned, I can stay here three days just eating mangoes.”

My mother said, “Yeah? You come down from there.”

I said, “Yes ma’am, I’ll come down.”

The moment I got down, she beat me hard.

That’s when I got involved with drugs… it wasn’t a friend, but a crocodile who offered me drugs – because no real friend offers you drugs.

“Go ahead, try it—you’ll forget everything your mother does to you.”

So when I sniffed that stuff, I forgot everything. I felt happy. Many times people use drugs to forget their lives, which aren’t going well. It’s a way to escape reality.

Many times the person is unhappy at home, and instead of fighting with their family, they go out into the street and drink alcohol or use drugs.

After I started using drugs I saw that my old friends were distancing themselves from me, my mother was becoming sad because of me, and I realized I was losing a lot of things that really mattered to me—like friendships, talking with my mother, my relatives who used to talk with me a lot.

In 2000, two other users who were acquaintances of mine died right next to me. It was really bad. Afterwards, I spent an entire week constantly thinking about it.  I couldn’t get it out of my head.

I was sitting there with these two acquaintances of mine, at night. The drug dealers were suspicious that one of them was stealing drugs. You know? So the guy said, “I’m going to kill him today, it’s today.” We were sitting on the corner like this, then the guy arrived and I saw that he had a gun. His hands were behind his back. But the gun was so black that I thought it was a toy gun. Because nowadays, if you go to a toy store to buy a toy gun, it looks real, it looks like the real thing. I went up to him and said, “Wow, man, that’s a nice gun.” I thought it was a toy. Then he just walked up to my friend like normal, and when the boy looked up, he shot him in the head. He wasn’t satisfied with that. There was another boy next to me, so he went and shot him in the chest too. I was stunned. I had seen others die, but not right next to me like that.

My God, man, I didn’t even blink. I was barely breathing. I didn’t even move from where I sat. I just stayed there, still. I was in shock. I had grown up with one of those poor guys through my teenage years. And then someone just comes and kills him like that…

The dealer turned to me—because I was in the middle of those guys and knew a lot of people—and he said, “Paulo, you didn’t see anything.”

And there was no way I was going to say, “No, I saw it, I’m calling the police.”

The guy just left, went down the hill, got on a bus, and kept riding around the favela on the bus.

The street was full of people because they heard the gunshots, right? A lot of police then arrived and started asking many questions. I got out of there. Because if you talk, you might have protection at that moment but once the police leave, that’s when the guys come back wanting to kill you. I walked off and just wandered around in a daze.

That dealer who killed those two guys—two days later he was in an alley and some guys on a motorcycle showed up with a .380 caliber gun and started shooting into the alley.

He got hit five times and all the bullets hit the same leg—none of them hit a bone. They just tore through the flesh. A .380 bullet is pretty big, and it has a lot of force because there’s a lot of gunpowder in the casing. If it hits a bone, it’ll shatter it. But he was so lucky that the bullets only hit flesh. They just went straight through.

Nowadays, here in Brazil, the life expectancy once you become a trafficker, user, criminal or a thief is five years. If they make it past five years, it’s because they left that life behind

The dealer recovered 100%. But he never went around unarmed again. Every time I saw him, he had two revolvers in his waistband.

I told him, “Man, don’t take this the wrong way, but you were born again.”

He said, “Why, man?”

I said, “You killed that guy without being sure he had taken your stuff. I’m sorry to say this to you, but those shots you took to your leg—that was because of that.”

He didn’t die because the One up above said, “No, it’s not your time yet. You still have more to suffer in this world.”

They say that when you die, you have to give an account. If you commit blasphemy, if you curse your mother, you answer to the One up above. But here on earth, what you do here, you pay for here. What goes around comes around.

I know a woman who was practically like the mother of all criminals—she used to order people killed. Nowadays her children are dying one by one. She just cries, and she’s the only one left. Sometimes I see her, and I don’t say anything. But in my head, I think this is the sin she’s paying for.

So my friends were dying, you know? I thought, “I’m my mother’s only son…” I thought, “I’m not gaining anything from this. I’m just ruining my health and wasting money. The best thing I can do is stop.”

That’s when I managed to quit, thank God. I was 16 years old when I completely stopped.

There’s a friend of mine who also died less than a month ago—I found out he had died. They say he was using a lot of drugs, hanging around a lot with criminals, you know? I even asked another friend to talk to him and tell him to come see me so we could talk.

He didn’t come. Then the week before last, a friend came up to me and said, “Paulo, I’ve got some very bad news for you.”

I said, “Man, if it’s really bad, you don’t even have to tell me.”

“But I’m going to tell you, because I know it matters to you. This person was a very close friend of yours.”

His name was Ricardo. And his death was very ugly. They killed him—but they beat him badly before killing him. They hit him with sticks, threw rocks at him… then they shot him. Because criminals only kill in a cowardly way. They don’t come at you face to face to kill you. If possible, they wait until you turn your back.

I’d known Ricardo since childhood, since I was five years old, when I moved here. We were always together. People even thought we were brothers. If we had food, we shared it. Money too—sometimes if he didn’t have any, I would get some for him.

I was so shaken that I didn’t even want to work the rest of the day.

A guy here told me, “Paulo, you’d better just go home. Don’t work anymore today.”

So I left and told my mother. She was deeply affected too. She had known Ricardo for a long time. He used to eat and sleep at our house. My mother cared about him as if he were her own son. He was twenty years old—the same age as me. He died in Vila Pinho. The criminals there have a lot of fights with drug dealers from other favelas, you know?

I heard he had been letting his guard down, hanging out in bars until late at night. Then some guys came by on a motorcycle, grabbed him, put him on the back, took him away to somewhere secluded. Apparently for no reason. Just to build a name for themselves, to earn respect inside the favela. They did it to build their reputation—so people on the street would say, “Wow, those guys are dangerous. Don’t mess with them—just looking at them is enough and they’ll kill you.”

I was devastated. A great friend of mine had died for no reason at all. I couldn’t even go to his wake. I didn’t know where he lived or where the funeral would be held. I asked a friend if he could at least get me a phone number so I could offer my condolences to his mother. I used to be at her house all the time. But I couldn’t even get that—not even a phone number.

A lot of people I knew from my childhood have been killed, murdered. Nowadays I thank God for being alive, for being able to enjoy my daughters, and for earning money to buy things for them. I left that life of drugs behind and have no desire to go back. Life isn’t perfect, but at least I am not drowning in cachaça either.

Nowadays, if you don’t have faith, you’re nobody. Even though I’m barely getting by, there’s that saying: if you have little faith and thank the One above, your money multiplies, and you can buy things you never imagined. But if you think you have a lot and, “Ah, it’s that one below who gave it to me, everything I want I get from that one below,” you don’t move forward—you only move backward.

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