Death is my Neighbour (article+photos by Latuff)

DEATH IS MY NEIGHBOUR
Tragedy around the corner in shanty towns built-up along railroad

By Latuff*

Much was said about social exclusion in Brasil, where did all those excluded go? The government threw them under the carpet, under bridges, hills with risk of landslides or on banks of rivers which can overflow during heavy rains. For those people who live in such dangerous areas, the System doesn't give them any other choice than to have death as their neighbour.

That's what happened to some shanty towns in north area Rio de Janeiro as Parque Boa Esperança, Parque Alegria, Heredia de Sa, Arara and Jacarezinho, which due disordered growing just swallowed 4 km of a railroad from the extinct state railroad company, RFFSA, and that now is controlled by MRS Logistica, one of the winner companies from auctions where Brazilian RRs were privatized.

Indifferent to danger, families built up houses along railroad and, in some places, distance between sheds and rails is less than 2 meters. Due to this nearness, someone inattentive who left his front door open can lose it to a passing freight train, or even have walls of houses cracked from the shaking of many tons of steel in motion, damages compensated by MRS, according to shanty town's inhabitants.

Most serious, however, is high risk of being run over. Thanks possibility of pillages, locomotives run a little too fast and horn warning is no match for curiosity of children, and even drunk adults, who try to touch or go on board of wagons. Seems that everyone in the shanty town has at least one relative or friend who lost an arm, leg or their life. Frightening or fantastic stories as a suicide who ingested some portion of "chumbinho" (a very popular substance used as rat killer) and thrown himself in front of train. He was dragged for some meters, pick up from rails and taken to hospital where, with many scratches, survived!

Despite of all these problems, precarious conditions of education and health, everlasting gunfights involving local drug dealers, rival gangs and police, some prefer to live there because it's close to downtown, since solutions presented by authorities is removal for homes located in distant areas. Threat of a derailment is real, but it doesn't scare community. In 1984, more than 500 inhabitants of Vila Soco shanty town, erected over a pipeline in Cubatao, Sao Paulo, also did not count on a possible tragedy, until they were all blown up in a explosion.

In fact, state, city and federal governments are aware of it but, in a regime where the laws of market is what matter, the blood of shanty towns residents seems worth less than a cheap can of Coke.

*Latuff is cartoonist and photographer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil