<\/p>\n
Marcelo Colai\u00e1covo was driving to his bar in Downtown Sao Paulo<\/a><\/span> on a recent May afternoon when he noticed something unusual: the hundreds of drug users that for years roamed around the neighborhood were all gone. He walked around for 10 minutes finding no trace of them. Also gone was the stench of their waste being cleaned by city hall staffers.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt this strange peace,\u201d said the 42-year-old Sao Paulo resident. \u201cEveryone had disappeared. But how come?\u201d<\/p>\n Colai\u00e1covo\u2019s bar-museum is located in one of the edges of Cracolandia, or Crackland<\/a><\/span>, a sprawling downtown Sao Paulo area that for decades has been home to thousands of drug users<\/a><\/span>, often lying on the ground or jaywalking with pipes between their lips.<\/p>\n But by May 12 the scene had changed.<\/p>\n Only police officers were seen where crack users dominated for decades. Shop owners and residents who worried about muggings<\/a><\/span> were chatting outside. Pavement that until recently featured scattered shoes, single socks, broken pipes and, sometimes, feces seemed spotless. The makeshift shelters, made of cardboard and fabric, were gone, and some of the graffiti on deteriorated buildings of Crackland, once a backdrop to the human drama, can finally be seen.<\/p>\n The transformation that stationed police officers in the area and scared residents into other parts of the city is the result of an aggressive local government initiative to change the region for good.<\/p>\n Experts caution, however, that the cleanup carried significant costs: police brutality, the spread of security risks to other areas and the neglect of treatment and protection to drug users, who are not criminals. Instead, they say, Crackland residents have only scattered and will inevitably return.<\/p>\n \u2018We can\u2019t even carry a blanket\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Residents told The Associated Press that police aggression has escalated since earlier this year under Gov. Tarcisio de Freitas and Mayor Ricardo Nunes. They say officers more frequently are using batons, preventing them from carrying bags where drugs could be hidden, closing several local pensions and even threatening to kill them. About a fourth of neighboring slum, where drug traffickers are reportedly based, has been removed.<\/p>\n Nearly two weeks after drug users vanished from the main Crackland area, hundreds have been spotted in smaller pockets around Sao Paulo\u2019s old city center. Social media videos show some attempting to return at night to their former drug use spot, now a 24\/7 police-protected area. But all attempts have failed.<\/p>\n Many hope to soon return to the area they occupied for decades \u2014 provided police brutality wanes and authorities lose their grip of the region, as has happened in the past.<\/p>\n \u201cMy guitar is in the mud because of a criminal wearing blue,\u201d said Rog\u00e9rio, a tearful man in a dirty shirt and yoga pants, who didn\u2019t provide his surname due to fear of retribution. \u201cI have nothing against the law. But the law has to understand we live there. Now we have to roam, it\u2019s horrible. We can\u2019t enter where we lived, we can\u2019t even carry a blanket.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s about people\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Crackland is located in what was once part of Sao Paulo\u2019s old city center. The decline of the region began in the 1960s, as business moved to Paulista Avenue, a more central artery, and industries relocated to the cheaper outskirts. For about two decades, until the mid 1980s, low budget film companies moved in, earning the region the nickname of \u201cGarbage Mouth.\u201d Drug users first arrived about three decades ago.<\/p>\n Brazilian researchers say Crackland emerged in the 1990s due to a confluence of two factors: the proximity of a major transportation hub, encompassing buses, subways and trains, and widespread mass killings in the city\u2019s most impoverished districts, which forced residents to congregate in the downtown\u2019s most dilapidated sector.<\/p>\n For much of the last 30 years, shop owners and residents feared being mugged. Today, the area the size of 10 soccer fields in Sao Paulo\u2019s old city center, is spotless and silent.<\/p>\n Lieutenant Sao Paulo Gov. Felicio Ramuth, who was picked by Gov. de Freitas to clean up Crackland, said last week that there was no police brutality linked to the scattering of residents.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had 50 police raids at the scene (and) 1,000 criminals were jailed,\u201d he told daily O Estado de S.Paulo on Wednesday. \u201cWe did not receive any accusation of police brutality.\u201d<\/p>\n Ramuth said that 1,200 drug users who were in the area until a few weeks ago are now under treatment in clinics, but offered no evidence to support his claim. He added that he will deem Crackland free of drug users if its current condition remains for the next six months.<\/p>\n Gov. De Freitas, a former minister under President Jair Bolsonaro<\/a><\/span>, is reportedly considering running against President Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva<\/a><\/span> in the 2026 presidential election. His rivals claim he stands to gain political capital by ending Crackland, which could also make way for a 5-billion Brazilian reais ($900 million) project to relocate about 60 state government buildings to the area.<\/p>\n Critics of the government\u2019s strategy to end Crackland are crying foul. Catholic priest J\u00falio Lancelotti, who has worked with homeless people for most of his 76 years, said police brutality and the scattering of drug users will not solve the problem.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is not right to make political propaganda to say Crackland disappeared,\u201d Lancelotti said. \u201cCrackland is not a physical area, it\u2019s about people. They are being taken to isolated regions, they are not going to clinics.\u201d<\/p>\n The city hall of Guarulhos, a city within the Sao Paulo metropolitan area, expressed concern in a recent statement about the accusations by Lancelotti and other activists who claim that the residents of Crackland \u201chad been brought and abandoned\u201d there. It added it will investigate the case.<\/p>\n Sao Paulo Mayor Nunes denied any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n \u2018The problem will grow\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Giordano Magri, a University of Sao Paulo researcher specializing in urban issues, said the current crackdown on Crackland aims to remove the infrastructure for drug users to survive in the area, but they will eventually find similar conditions elsewhere.<\/p>\n \u201cSince the governor and the mayor became more authoritarian, that ecosystem is gone. But they can\u2019t do this forever,\u201d said Magri, who added that people leaving Crackland will have more than 70 smaller spots across the city to relocate to.<\/p>\n Rog\u00e9rio, the man whose guitar was broken, fears the situation could get worse in the coming days as hundreds seek to return.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are real people. I say that with a sour heart. I am garbage, I know,\u201d he said. \u201cBut now that they are scattering the garbage, the problem will grow.\u201d<\/p>\n – Mauricio Savarese, AP News<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Marcelo Colai\u00e1covo was driving to his bar in Downtown Sao Paulo on a recent May afternoon when he noticed something unusual: the hundreds of drug users that for years roamed around the neighborhood were all gone. He walked around for 10 minutes finding no trace of them. Also gone was the stench of their waste being cleaned…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":9407,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dims.apnews.com\/dims4\/default\/02b53b2\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/6604x4403+0+0\/resize\/1440x960!\/format\/webp\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2F2b%2F23%2F4a87bf59e16bd6489e94567bb2e1%2F8ef93b18386e4f90aa83df8367aa785c","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[195],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9405"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9408,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9405\/revisions\/9408"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\n