Survivors of Brazil child massacre fade away

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) -- Vanessa, who is 16, deals drugs in a Rio de Janeiro hillside slum. Thiago, 15, battles with AIDS, while Rogerio, 21, sits in a wheelchair, paralyzed by a bullet in a gang shootout.

And they are considered the lucky ones -- the survivors of the infamous 1993 Candelaria Massacre, when off-duty policemen opened fire on 72 homeless children sleeping or playing on the steps of one of Rio's landmark churches.

Eight street kids died that July night. Some said the attack was a drug-related revenge killing and others said it was an anti-crime sweep by Rio's feared death squads.

The cold-blooded killing of defenceless children sparked outrage in a nation numbed to violence and drew condemnation from around the world. But for Rio's abandoned street kids, it was just another chapter in their scarred lives.

Seven years later, 44 of the surviving boys and girls have died, victims of drug violence, police clashes or AIDS. Few of them made it into their 20s.

"People say I'm lucky. I'm still alive. I'm off the streets and living with my mom," Thiago said during a recess at his school in a northern Rio slum. Thiago, who contracted the virus that causes AIDS while living on the street for three years, has open sores covering his scalp and ears.

"What do I remember about that night? Just lights and a lot of noise and then we moved and started living under a bridge in the north. That's all," he said.

Four officers were punished after trials following the massacre -- an unprecedented action in a police force that traditionally benefits from widespread impunity. Another four officers were acquitted.

The children, between 6 and 19, were left to fend for themselves. The survivors who had been living on the steps of Our Lady of Candelaria Church split up. They took to sleeping under bridges and continued to beg and steal on Rio's streets.

Despite public outcry, officials failed to provide special housing or other aid on the grounds that the guilty policemen were off duty and therefore the government was not responsible, according to the kids' lawyer, Cristina Leonardo.

"They didn't have any support from the government or anyone," said Yvonne de Mello, a Rio artist who has worked as a volunteer with street kids since the 1980s. "They took drugs, caught AIDS and many were murdered as part of the everyday violence that is their lives."

The government also failed to provide adequate witness protection for the survivors and, after two murder attempts, one of the oldest Candelaria kids, Wagner dos Santos, fled to Switzerland where he was taken in by a family.

Aching poverty and homelessness drew most of the remaining survivors into a life of crime where some were killed by drug dealers and others by police.

Sandro do Nascimento was the 43rd Candelaria survivor to die, but his dramatic exit made him the most famous. He hijacked a bus while fleeing police and, in a tense standoff aired live on television across South America, the 21-year-old, who had been living on the streets since he was 3, took women hostages, tortured them for hours and threatened to kill them.

He stuck a gun in his victims' mouths and forced one passenger to scrawl in red lipstick, "He has a pact with the devil" on a bus window. One hostage was killed in a bungled rescue attempt and Nascimento himself was then smothered to death after police bundled him into a waiting van.

"There isn't any doubt in my mind that they will all die young -- without an exception," said Leonardo, who represented the Candelaria children in trials.

Although a handful of shelters and human rights groups seeking to help street children have cropped up in Brazil, a huge wealth distribution gap has ensured more than a third of the country's 165 million people live below the poverty line, many of them on the street or in shantytowns.

Scarce schooling, a thriving drug trade and police impunity have also helped perpetuate the problems of Brazil's street kids and marginalized communities in general.

One Candelaria survivor was killed just last month in what human rights groups fear was a bid to silence an important witness in ongoing appeals trials. Elisabeth Cristina de Oliveira, 23, was shot to death outside her home.

"The brutal killing ... once again calls into question the ability and will of the Brazilian authorities to offer suitable and effective witness protection in cases of violent crime," Amnesty International said in a report. "Especially when the cases involve police death squads."

But other witnesses suspect Oliveira's death was just another drug-related murder and further evidence that the Candelaria survivors, like the rest of Rio's street kids, rarely escape a life of violence and crime.

"There was no persecution in this case, just the same spiral of drugs and violence that leads these kids to an early death," said De Mello, who has been taking medicine and food to street kids, including the Candelaria crowd, since 1980.

Still, a small handful of Candelaria survivors have managed to break the vicious circle.

Santos is studying and working in Switzerland with his new adopted family. In Brazil, Tieta, 26, collects trash for recycling in downtown Rio, and Fabio da Silva, 23, works as a street vendor during the day and plays the tambourine at night for a samba band he has named "Candelaria."

"I think there is a way out of living on the street, but it's not easy and nobody is going to give you any help," Da Silva said. "You just have to do it."

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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