Lockdown

by Drauzio Varella

  Dadá ran to his cell, where he found another thirteen men trying to hide from the troops, like himself. He found a corner behind a low wall next to the sink and squatted down.

  He didn’t have to wait long in this uncomfortable position. The riot squad was quick to arrive at the third floor. From the yelling that ensued he realised that the bullets weren’t harmless, as he had first imagined.

  ‘Didn’t you ask to die, fuckers? Didn’t you call me? It’s just the sound of a machine gun.’

  The guys who hesitated to hide were the first to fall. All you could hear were shots and cries of ‘Please, God, no!’ We kept quiet in our cell. I was like an ostrich – I didn’t dare raise my head to look over the sink.’

  Death ran through the gallery and arrived at the door to his cell.

  A uniform opened the window in the door, stuck his machine gun through and shouted, ‘Surprise, the Devil’s here to carry you lot off to hell!’ He sprayed bullets here and there. It filled the cell with smoke and the smell of gunpowder. I only realised I was still alive when I felt somethin’ warm drippin’ down my back. It was blood. At the time I thought it was mine. I looked at my cellmates: all smokin’, filled with bullet holes, with blood comin’ out of their mouths. Eleven were killed. The only ones to escape were me, with a graze wound on my neck, and one other guy who made it out unscathed, the lucky bastard.

  On the second floor, Jacó – one of the cleaners of Nine, a short, quick-talking cocaine dealer who prided himself on the fact that he had only conducted business by phone, without ever touching the drugs – had a narrow escape.

  ‘It was a major panic; everyone runnin’ for their cells. They were comin’ to kill all the cleaners. As soon as they appeared on the second floor, one of them shouted, “Let’s get rid of the fucking cleaners!”’ Because they didn’t know the prison, however, the officers headed down the gallery in the opposite direction to the cleaners’ cells. Jacó was lucky, but not the postman, who was the first to die; precisely the man who had survived a famous episode in which the guards of a police lock-up in São Paulo had locked fifty men in a tiny cell, killing eighteen by asphyxia. After the postman came the others in the same wing.

  In his cell, Majesty, whose premonition had been confirmed, sat on a little stool with his elbows on his knees and his grey head in his hands, staring at his feet. His cellmate was terrified, trembling in a corner of his bed. When their cell door was opened, Majesty just sat there, unmoving, with his head down. He could only see the officer’s boot out of the corner of his eye and waited for the coup de grâce in the back of his neck.

  ‘After ages, he asked if we were involved in the confusion. I said that I was no child, without taking my eyes off the ground, and that we were only involved in sports. He could see the balls strewn about the place. He was quiet, and I waited for him to fire. Then the boot turned back towards the gallery and I heard my cellmate start sobbin’. I just sat there like a statue.’

  Majesty’s neighbours weren’t as lucky. Among them, the centre forward of Furacão 2000, who had been radiant moments before the rebellion after kicking five goals (past Marcão, the Burgo Paulista goalkeeper, who also met his death), and who was due to be released the following Tuesday.

  On the fifth floor, in a cell with nine people in it, seven were killed, including two brothers from Rio, who had been caught a week earlier after hijacking a car on the Castelo Branco motorway so they could get back to Rio in time to attend their cousin’s wedding. ‘One died sitting on his bed and the other as he jumped up in fright.’

  In this cell, Minimum Wage, a thief arrested for holding up two police officers, survived thanks to his low stature. As bullets flew, he curled up in a corner and pulled the enormous dead body of another cellmate over his own.

  It was already after three o’clock in the afternoon when the riot squad stormed Pavilion Nine. The attack was carried out with military precision: it was quick and lethal. Its violence didn’t give anyone the opportunity to defend themselves. Although it affected everyone, the heaviest casualties were on the third and fifth floors.

  Approximately thirty minutes after the order had been given to go in, cries of, ‘Stop, for the love of God!’ ‘Don’t kill us!’ ‘Enough, it’s over! It’s over!’ were heard in the smoke-filled galleries.

  One by one, the machine guns silenced.

  The Aftermath

  When the shooting stopped, a deathly silence fell over the galleries.

  Behind his little wall, all Dadá could think about was how upset his mother was going to be over his death and regretted not having read Psalm 91. A few minutes later, he heard footsteps.

  ‘Whoever’s still alive, get up, strip and come out naked!’

  He and his cellmate stood up.

  ‘I tried to revive a guy I knew from the outside, but his eyes were already rollin’ back. I went out into the gallery. It was lined on both sides with uniforms shoutin’, “Run, run!” I got clubbed across the back and kicked in the legs.’

  When he got to the cage, before the stairs, an officer released a black German shepherd, which jumped at the wounded inmate’s throat. Dadá dodged the animal and made it to the stairs, but a kick came out of nowhere and he lost his balance on the greasy steps, fell and hit his head. The German shepherd went for him. ‘The fall knocked me out. It was probably a good thing, because at the time I didn’t even feel the dog bitin’ my legs and nuts.’

  He was woken by an officer’s baton.

  ‘Get up, fucker, hands on your head!’

  Like Dadá, the other survivors took off their clothes and ran through the corridor of baton-wielding officers and down the stairs, slipping in the oil and blood, with the dogs at their heels.

  Jacó, the dealer who did business over the phone, said there was no room for altruism. ‘I came out of the cell and a dog came after me. When it had almost caught up with me, I ducked behind a fat guy. Unfortunately for him, poor thing, the dog latched onto his arm and wouldn’t let go even when he swung it around in the air. I couldn’t help the fellow, because it was each man for himself and God for whoever He thought deserved to make it out.’

  Majesty kept his nerves under control and his head in his hands, until he heard the order to vacate. ‘I raced out to avoid the beatin’. I was in such a hurry that I forgot to take off my clothes.’ He charged down the stairs in Bermuda shorts and the Corinthians shirt from which he couldn’t be parted. When he got to the inner courtyard, there was an officer with a machine gun pointed at the men leaving the stairs. The officer was standing with his legs on either side of a dead man who had blood running out of his mouth. It was Santão, who used to help us in the cinema.

  Despite his many years of prison experience, Majesty got a shock when he saw his friend’s body. ‘When I saw Santão lying there like a trophy under the uniform with the tommy, I stopped rationalisin’.’

  Seeing him in clothes, the officer cocked his gun.

  ‘Hey airhead, why’re you still dressed?’

  When he heard the gun cock, Majesty and everyone around him threw themselves to the ground, on top of one another. He said he’d never taken off his clothes so quickly. ‘I fell face-down to the ground and got up naked.’

  The officers lined up the prisoners in the inner courtyard of the pavilion and ordered them to sit with their arms crossed under their thighs and their heads between their knees. Anyone who looked up to see what was going on was beaten with batons and bitten by the dogs.

  They sat there in the courtyard for hours, naked, in silence, with the agitated officers and dogs around them.

  Sitting there quietly, only concerned with staying alive, Chico Heliópolis, a thief from the favela of the same name, lost the gold chain and saint pendant that he had been given by his godmother at his first communion. ‘The uniform squatted down next to me and said, “See what it’s like when you do this to others, scum?” and snatched the chain off my neck. Me of all people, who only robbed businesses, banks and mansions and n
ever dirtied my hands with petty stuff.’

  At around ten o’clock at night, the riot squad took up position on the stairs and in the galleries and started taking in the prisoners. They escorted up the fifty or sixty in the first row. Minutes later, there was more shooting, shouting and barking.

  In the courtyard, the men tried to discreetly scoot back to the last rows.

  Stutter, an illegal lottery operator and marijuana dealer who worked in the warders’ kitchen, described the walk back: ‘The stairs were covered with blood, with bodies strewn everywhere. You couldn’t stop, the queue had to keep movin’ – the uniforms ordered everyone to run and threatened, “If anyone flicks blood on me, they’re dead!” You had to run barefoot in that bloodbath, without lifting your feet so as not to get the uniforms dirty, ‘cause they were just lookin’ for an excuse to kill.’

  The riot squad’s aversion to the blood on the ground cost a number of clumsy inmates their lives, said Isaías, a thief who had lost the movement in his left arm from a crack overdose and who years later died of tuberculosis in the infirmary. ‘It was all so crazy and fast, and they made us shout, “Long live the squad! Long live the squad!” There was an older man who stepped sideways to avoid a corpse that was in his way, but he stepped in a puddle of blood, which splattered up onto a uniform’s trousers. The uniform didn’t think twice: he stopped all movement on the stairs and pow, pow, put two bullets in him, in front of everyone.’ Having shot the man, he pulled the body aside and shouted at an inmate in glasses who was behind him on the stairs. ‘”You there, carry this cadaver downstairs!” At that moment, the guy’s mind must have gone into meltdown, ‘cause he started sobbin’ and said he didn’t dare. “Really? You don’t, do you?” He shot him at point-blank then turned to the queue and shouted, “Don’t stop! Don’t stop!”’

  The men were randomly assigned to cells. They would put as many as possible in each one, lock them and fill up the next, until they were all locked up.

  The bodies had to be carried down to the ground floor by the prisoners themselves. Jacó was one of the carriers. ‘They came up to me and four others and said, “You there, go get the cadavers from the gallery on the second floor and take them to the school, downstairs!” We’d pick ‘em up by the arms and legs and take ‘em down. All in a rush, with the uniforms houndin’ us.’

  By this time, although that day’s events had already numbed his fear of dying, Jacó was worried about the fact that he was barefoot, with his feet grazed from playing football. ‘So much HIV inside, if I get out alive, I’m gonna end up gettin’ AIDS. That was when a uniform ordered us to pile the bodies up properly in the school, ‘cause it was all a big mess of arms and legs and their heads were all over the place. As he was speakin’, someone in the pile moved. He went to beat him in the face with the butt of his machine gun and I took advantage of his distraction and lay down in a corner, among the stiffs.’

  He stayed there unmoving in the space between bodies, almost holding his breath, until the other four had brought in the last cadaver. The officer turned to them.

  ‘”Done?” he asked. They said they were. Takatakataka, he gunned ‘em down. They fell on top of the men we’d been carryin’.’

  While his fear of AIDS was saving Jacó’s life, a military police official was ordering Dadá to take the bodies down from the third floor. ‘In the cage on the third floor there were about thirty bodies piled up. The pile was almost two metres high. We took them down to the Forensic Institute car that was parked at the entrance. They were already stiff, with holes in their chests.’

  When Dadá and his companions had finished, the lieutenant called him over.

  ‘Tell me, scum, you’re in for killin’ some of our boys, aren’t you?’

  ‘Not me, sir. I’m in for aidin’ and abettin’ fraud.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. You killed police officers!’

  ‘I’ve never killed anyone, sir. I’ve got a light sentence, just three years. I’m in for fraud.’

  ‘Well, before I regret it, head on up with that line there. Get out of my presence. You’re lucky ‘cause you look like my oldest boy!’

  Later Dadá thanked God for his physical similarity to the lieutenant’s firstborn. ‘I was convinced his son had saved my life, after seeing the other carriers disappear forever.’

  With the prisoners locked away, the police and Institute of Forensic Medicine cars carted away the dead until late at night. The atmosphere in the cells was tragic, said Dadá. ‘We couldn’t sleep in the cell. First, ‘cause we were all perturbed, and second, ‘cause there was a strong smell of death. The floor was awash with blood. It was only the next day that we cleaned every-thin’, and I found myself a Bible.’

  In the holy book, Dadá finally read Psalm 91, recommended by his mother only two days earlier, and said he cried like a baby when it said: ‘A thousand will fall at your side, and ten thousand on your right, but it will not come near you; no plague will come near your tent.’

  On 2 October 1992, 111 men died in Pavilion Nine, according to the official version. The inmates claim there were more than two hundred and fifty deaths, counting those who left wounded and never returned. There is no reference to the wounded in the official records. No military police officers were killed.

  Afterword

  Brazilian society turns a blind eye to what goes on in prisons. When most believe that the aim of imprisonment is merely to punish those who have committed crimes, why would there be any interest in providing better living conditions on the inside?

  Our jails are built to punish criminals and keep them off the streets, not to rehabilitate them for life in society. Humanitarian concerns regarding their fate will only gain strength the day that inmates from more influential families end up in the same cells as those from the poorest families.

  Carandiru is an illustrative case. The complex of buildings that housed over 7000 men and almost 1000 employees, located on one of São Paulo’s busiest avenues, had the same importance to the city as a barnacle stuck to a ship’s hull.

  Until the massacre in 1992, when 111 inmates were recorded as killed, the prison had only appeared in the national news after an attempted armed escape in 1982. Except for this episode, press coverage was restricted to the crime pages of tabloid newspapers, and even then only when there were rebellions or when fugitives inexplicably escaped through the front door or crawled through tunnels dug with cinematographic guile.

  It is hard to believe that a prison complex of such dimensions remained in silent anonymity for half a century, in spite of the daily coming and going of delivery trucks to meet the needs of a population larger than that of many towns, not to mention the thousands of women and children who formed kilometric queues for weekend visits.

  The only explanation for this phenomenon is in the social invisibility that is characteristic of the excluded.

  Every day dozens of detainees would arrive and dozens would be released, many of whom were responsible for the kidnappings, hold-ups and murders that rob Brazil’s streets of their tranquillity. Considered the dregs of society, from parts of town through which members of the middle and upper classes would never venture, they face two kinds of prejudice: first, because they live outside of the law; second, because they are poor.

  If we believe they are all the same: perverse, merciless villains, regardless of the nature of their offences, why would we care what happens to them? Let them rot like caged animals until death carries them off to the depths of hell. Isn’t giving them free food and shelter already an unbearable burden that the civilised world obliges us to carry?

  Keeping prisoners behind bars and jails out of the press was what law-abiding citizens expected of the men in charge of running the prison system.

  Then the massacre of 1992 took place. Overnight, Carandiru became the most famous prison in the world.

  It was never the same again. Inmates making unreasonable demands and attacking warders became routine. In the days following the traged
y, when Waldemar Gonçalves, the director of sports, was leaving the pavilion after work, he was approached by Barra, a drug dealer both respected and feared by his fellow inmates.

  ‘I’ll see you to the gate. The atmosphere’s weird. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you; you don’t deserve it.’

  He wasn’t the only one to be escorted out by a prisoner, an inversion of roles that would have been unimaginable just a few weeks earlier.

  Aware that the state had emerged from the episode the worse for wear and that further armed repression would be politically impossible, the more experienced inmates formed coalitions in order to seize power: that abstract space that men never leave unoccupied.

  As Charles Darwin predicted over a century and a half ago, the strongest prevailed in the fratricidal competition that arose between these different groups of prisoners, and, in just a few short years, the leading faction came to impose its draconian laws on most of the prisons in the state of São Paulo, as well as the neglected streets of the state’s poorest districts.

  After many years without investments in the prisons, the two state governments prior to 1992 had built a number of more modern, well-equipped facilities in the city of São Paulo and the interior of the state. This effort, however, was overshadowed by the media’s interest in the Casa de Detenção, an antiquated, problematic institution that denigrated the image of the state’s penitentiary system.