Lockdown
Page 25
After much debate, the government decided to deactivate and destroy it, as a result of its bad press. Contrary to what had happened in previous eras, now everything that happened there made headlines.
On the day the building was brought down I got together with a group of former warders in the cafeteria on the top floor of a neighbouring building, with a panoramic view of the prison. There was an air of beer-fuelled excitement, with everyone talking and telling stories. When the loudspeakers projected the state governor’s distant voice into the air, the animated voices hushed. In the end, standing side by side on the balcony, we listened to the countdown that preceded the explosions.
In seconds, the pavilions swayed and buckled clumsily as if enormous hands had knocked their legs out from under them. An orange cloud of thick dust spewed from the entrails of the twisted metal and concrete monster and trailed away over the city.
In the emotional silence of the balcony, Waldemar Gonçalves murmured, ‘It didn’t have to have been like that.’
The implosion of Carandiru was a landmark in all of our lives, but especially those of the warders. The world in which they had lived collapsed the instant the walls came down. The violence, the petty corruption in exchange for small favours, the deaths they had witnessed without being able to prevent them, the cowardly attitudes, the value of one’s word, the acts of heroism in defence of their colleagues and the prisoners, the good and evil that went hand-in-hand, all buried under the rubble of that big house, resuscitate like ghosts every time we see one another in the other prison where I continue my voluntary work or when we get together for drinks in the city.
Drauzio Varella, São Paulo, June 2012
Note On The Author
Drauzio Varella was born in São Paulo, in 1943. With a degree in medicine from the University of São Paulo, he worked at the Cancer Hospital for twenty years. He was a voluntary doctor at the Casa de Detenção in São Paulo (popularly known as Carandiru) for thirteen years.
Lockdown was originally published in Brazil as Estação Carandiru in 1999, and won two prestigious Jabuti Prizes – for the best work of non-fiction and the book of the year. Varella is also the author of Macacos (Publifolha, 2000), Por um fio (Companhia das Letras, 2004), Borboletas da alma (Companhia das Letras, 2006) and O médico doente (Companhia das Letras, 2007), as well as two children’s books, published by Companhia das Letrinhas: Nas ruas do Brás (2000; which won the Novos Horizontes, Bologna Children’s Book Fair and Rio de Janeiro Biennial Revelation awards) and De braços para o alto (2002).
Endnotes
1 The number of the article of the Brazilian penal code that deals with fraud.
2 Guava jelly.
3 The martyr José Joaquim da Silva Xavier, who was hanged and quartered in 1792 for his role in the conspiracy known as the Inconfidência Mineira, which favoured Brazil’s independence from Portugal.
4 State Department of Criminal Investigation.
5 A torture method in which the prisoner is hung by his knees from a metal bar with his hands secured around his lower legs with a rope and then tortured with electric shocks, beatings and cigarette burns.
6 Department for the Repression of Crime Against Property.
7 Literally meaning ‘dragnet’, an arrastão (plural: arrastões) is when a group of thieves, often children, moves through an area mugging everyone in sight, usually in crowded places such as the beach or busy downtown streets.
8 A haematoma that forms as the result of a leaking hole in an artery.
List of Illustrations
1. Communal cell in Pavilion Eight.
2. Corridor in the general infirmary.
3. The skull with dagger through it is associated with cop-killers.
4. Pavilion Four.
5. Inner courtyard of Eight.
6. The surgical centre of the infirmary in Four.
7. An offering in the Umbanda centre in Pavilion Nine.
8. The last page of the comic book O Vira Lata [‘The Stray’].
9. Prisoners arriving in Pavilion Seven.
10. A lawyer talks to an inmate.
11. Communication between cells in Yellow.
12. Communal cell in Two.
13. Mounted Military Police officers guard the entrance to the Casa in a moment of tension.
14. Riot squad conducting a search.
15. Burial after the 1992 massacre, at the Vila Formosa Cemetery.
1. Communal cell in Pavilion Eight.
2. Corridor in the general infirmary.
3. The skull with dagger through it is associated with cop-killers.
4. Pavilion Four.
5. Inner courtyard of Eight.
6. The surgical centre of the infirmary in Four.
7. An offering in the Umbanda centre in Pavilion Nine.
8. The last page of the comic book O Vira Lata [‘The Stray’].
9. Prisoners arriving in Pavilion Seven.
10. A lawyer talks to an inmate.
11. Communication between cells in Yellow.
12. Communal cell in Two.
13. Mounted Military Police officers guard the entrance to the Casa in a moment of tension.
14. Riot squad conducting a search.
15. Burial after the 1992 massacre, at the Vila Formosa Cemetery.
Table of Contents
Half-title page
Title page
Copyright page
Map
Introduction
Contents
Carandiru Station
The Big House
The Pavilions
The Cells
Day and Night
Weekends
Intimate Visits
Slamming
In the Cinema
Rita Cadillac
Tumult in Divinéia
Welcome
Making a Difference
Biotônico Fontoura
Leptospirosis
Angels and Demons
The Warders
The Flock
Yellow
All On The Spoon
To Bring Down the Cons
The Inside Deal
Idleness
Capital Punishment
Fall Guys
Good Guys
Transvestites
Innocence
Lover Boy
The Power Puzzle
Santão
Women, Motels and Partying
Maria-Louca
Miguel
Disappearing Act
Deusdete and Mané
Mother Dear
Edelso
Lula
Margô Suely
Chico
The General Kitchen
Reunion
Zé from Casa Verde
Blackie
Mango
Old Jeremias
Veronique, the Japanese
Black Guy
Eye for an Eye
Head Over Heels
Not-a-Hope
Valdomiro
The Prodigal Son
Condoms for Cons
The Uprising
The Attack
The Aftermath
Afterword
Note On The Author
List of Illustrations