Sunday, November 9, 2014

We also spent time with Antonio in a former jail in Rio.  In the last couple of years, 14 of these have been closed…they were illegal holding facilities where police could pick people up (whether true criminals or not) and place them here without them being processed in the system.  Some were held here over 4 years.  In holding cells that were to sleep 30 men were 100 grown men.  There was one toilet.  NO natural light.  NO ventilation.  Temperatures were WELL over 100 degrees.  I met a man who now works with the Rio de Paz ministry with Antonio who was held her for over a year…for stealing a fish.  He remembers men screaming and crying out loud in desperation.  

Men with money were taken to the 'hotel' side of the prison…where they had air-conditioning and conjugal visits with women.  But if you were poor you went to hell as they called it.  

Antonio and his church are largely responsible for putting pressure on the local officials to close these prisons…which he calls concentration camps.  They were truly inhumane.  He sees a direct correlation of his faith to issues of human rights…and it is very compelling.  How can you love your neighbor if you turn a blind eye…or know about injustice and yet do nothing.  There mission inscribed on their door way for all in the favela they work to see says this...
"Giving voice to the voiceless and visibility to the invisible"


 Antonio showing us the prison
Where 100 men would be housed.  there were nine of these cells…so 900 men where 270 were meant to be housed.  


Eventually Antonio got the prison to open the cells to allow the prisoners to roam into this small area as well…for the first time in years sunlight touched their faces and they could breath some fresh air. 

Men who were political prisoners, small thieves, folks arrested because they were gay, and the most heinous drug lords were all housed together.  This is why they call Brazil's prisons…Criminal Universities…many men came out going to work for the drug lords in their freedom.

Antonio now has men transferred from local prisons to Rio de Paz where they teach them life skills and teach them a trade while they help them look for jobs to avoid being pulled into the drug world.

This trip reminded me of visiting the Red Fort in Johannesburg where we also saw horrific living conditions for men of true crime and political differences of opinion (aka not criminal offenses, but folks like Ghandi, etc).  It is inconceivable how easily humanity can begin to look at each other and not see another's soul…we begin to treat each other as less than human.  As you leave the Red Fort which is now converted into a museum on Constitution Hill in South Africa you read this…

“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.”  Mandela

Below are two articles about facilities and treatment at Julia Tutwiler prison in Wetumpka…a place I have spent time visiting women in the HIV dorm.  It is always worth knowing and pondering where we can even improve our own treatment of our "lowest citizens".  

2003 article  -
https://www.schr.org/resources/tutwiler_warden_copes_with_ticking_time_bomb

2013 article - 
http://blog.al.com/wire/2013/09/tutwiler_prison_tour_commissio.html

(And I haven't even begun to share with you all we are learning about the slave trade…whew!)

Headed tonight to a Condomble service, which is an African religion here in Brazil that permeates much.  Looking forward to seeing and experiencing something new and different!



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