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April 28, 2002
Dear Friends,
Since January I’ve been working several days a week in
Jardim Ângela, a neighborhood on the southern periphery
of the city of São Paulo. Most people in the neighborhood
live in plywood shanties or very crowded housing built of unpainted
brick and mortar. The neighborhood was identified by the United
Nations in 1997 as one of the most dangerous in the world, according
to my colleagues at Casa Sofia, one of two places in this enormous
city to which women victims of domestic violence can go for support.
Well, in fact, women can also go to "women’s police
stations" too, but the support they receive there is very
limited and bureaucratic at best.
At Casa Sofia we provide psychological and legal counseling,
various types of group support for the cultivation of self esteem,
and in extreme cases we provide financial aid or its equivalent
in bus tickets, food, and even rent. I am fascinated and horrified
by the stories of the women who arrive needing help. In another
letter I will tell you about some of them.
In this letter I want to reflect on the problem of drugs in
Jardim Ângela. It isn’t exactly drugs that are the
problem—it is more the politics of drugs that have created
a society that is difficult to imagine. Let me give some examples.
One: Hardly a week goes by that doesn’t bring a
young woman who was recently widowed. Their husbands (usually
fathers of one or more small children) are killed because of a
drug debt (often pathetically tiny) or perhaps because of rivalry
between sellers. One woman heard of her husband’s death while
she was having their third child in the hospital. When she arrived
home, she heard that the killers had promised to return to kill
the rest of the family, to make an example and discourage others
from repeating whatever offense the victim had committed. (In
the meantime, the two older children were being hidden by courageous
neighbors.) Casa Sofia was able to finance their move to a distant
city.
Two: One woman said that her husband refused to support
their 3-year-old. The father was being threatened because he owed
R$46, about $20. When drug debtors are murdered as examples to
other debtors, family members who are present are often killed.
The woman didn’t want a divorce, but didn’t want the
father around because of the danger his presence represented to
their child.
Three: Another woman, a victim of serious physical abuse
by her husband, was told by the local trafficker, "We know
you have problems, but don’t call the police. If you need
protection, we’ll take care of him." She interprets
this as a promise to kill him, not a solution she prefers!
Four: A mother of an adult daughter with mental problems
said that three men broke into her shack looking for X, her daughter’s
best friend, who owed the men for drug purchases. X wasn’t
there, but the daughter with problems was. In front of her two
small children and her mother, the men raped the daughter. They
returned later in the week and did it again. The daughter has
received medical attention, but for financial and other reasons,
the family has no ability to move elsewhere.
Five: A volunteer at Casa Sofia remarked that people
in her large neighborhood are terrified when the police come,
because they come shooting, jeopardizing the lives of all. Her
neighborhood is particularly dangerous because most of the shacks
are made of plywood, which doesn’t stop bullets.
Six: All of São Paulo suffers from high unemployment
rate, but in poor neighborhoods the rate is astronomical. The
young and the old (over 40!) suffer most employment discrimination.
Almost all employment possibilities are drug related.
Seven: Jardim Ângela has a number of drug treatment
programs that are said to be good.
Eight: Many women mention that their aggressors are under
the influence of alcohol when they attack. Not one has yet said
that she was victimized physically by someone under the influence
of illegal drugs.
I cannot help but think that almost all of these problems would
disappear if currently illegal drugs were decriminalized and sold,
for instance, at health clinics, where their purity could be controlled
and where there would be no advertising to attract new users and
no
attraction of the legally forbidden.
Since drugs are illegal and are controlled by groups that attempt
(by violence) to establish monopolies, the prices are not related
to the actual cost of production. Decriminalizing would mean lower
prices and greater availability, it’s true. Obviously, a
mixed blessing, even if the drugs were sold at cost by the government.
But there would be no criminal or even market interest in enticing
others to use drugs. And the cost of lives murdered in the maintenance
of monopolies and for drug debts by users, their families, neighbors
and the police should decline to zero. Finally, the monetary expenditures
on the war on drugs, including legal and prison costs, could be
redirected to treatment.
I’ve read that some drug rehabilitation workers and others
are against decriminalization because of the havoc that drugs
make of the lives of the users. And I have to ask: How can there
be havoc worse than what I see and hear about in Jardim Ângela?
Please include the residents of Jardim Ângela in your
prayers, and please, if you are not already involved in finding
solutions, make your prayers a first step in resolving the problem
of the politics of drugs. Many lives are in the balance and these
lives are every Christian’s
concern.
Shalom e Salaam,
Linnis Cook
The 2002 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 258
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