1) Massacre in Paraisópolis community, São Paulo, Brazil.
None of the news in English is accurate. Those slightly closer to the brutal reality are written in poor English. Let's start with this one and add facts, context and other items.
#Paraisópolis
scmp.com/news/world/ame…
None of the news in English is accurate. Those slightly closer to the brutal reality are written in poor English. Let's start with this one and add facts, context and other items.
#Paraisópolis
scmp.com/news/world/ame…
2) Information available to local and international audiences:
- the military police was chasing suspects
- suspects ran towards a street funk party
- violent or threatening actions from the police caused a stampede
- nine people were killed by the stampede
- the military police was chasing suspects
- suspects ran towards a street funk party
- violent or threatening actions from the police caused a stampede
- nine people were killed by the stampede
3) There are several alternative versions of this account. Since I worked in a sports social project there, every day, many hours each day, I think you are all being misinformed. Witnesses say they are sure actual fires were shot, not just rubber bullets (that are not harmless).
4) A funk street dance is something massive: hundreds of young people gather in an open but very constrained environment: Paraisópolis is a slum right in the middle of São Paulo's richest area.
5) It is squeezed by these rich neighborhoods and a river, forming an urban structure that resembles a medieval citadel: it grows upwards.
6) The streets have no sidewalks - on each side, one or two stories of improvised construction. The people who live there are used to the sound of gun shots. Death squads, one of the versions of Brazilian urban militias, start killing boys at age 11 or 12 for small wrongdoings.
7) If folks are gathered in any place in Paraisópolis, there are few exits. If the police marches through one of the sides, it is because they wanted to cause what they did: panic and a stampede.
8) For over 20 years Paraisópolis has been used by the police and the organized crime, in their conflictive and symbiotic relationship, for violent purposes. Paraisópolis experienced an internal war for 12 years.
9) Although 80% of the 80K people living there are 1st, 2nd or 3rd generation Northeastern migrants, strongly discriminated against in São Paulo, they came from different Northeastern States.
10) There are different groups and gang wars that always end with several murdered people. Nobody knows - they are "non-people" to the wider society.
11) There is obviously a power re-arrangement in São Paulo with a Rio de Janeiro militia-man elected as president. The two states are controlled by different groups and even in each state there is a constant turnover in the ranks.
12) I see the middle class shocked with the massacre as if it was some abnormal event. It's not. Nobody wanted to really know what happened there. Academic studies were flawed and I exposed them.
13) Why would they spend hours in such a dangerous environment, stepping over an into open gutters, getting shit on their shoes and speaking to people whose Portuguese was so different?
14) They didn't. So I read the stories that seem all a bit off, a bit out of context. It's hard to catch up with a reality that you are supposed to be familiar with in such a short time.
15) Below are pictures that my sister, Helena Coutinho, took in 2006. The slum was "urbanized" since then but it is still basically that.
22) I'll add more later
23) @threadreaderapp unroll
