Sao Paulo (AP) – Marcelo Colajkovo is driving to his bar in the center of Sao Paulo on a recent afternoon since May when he noticed something unusual: hundreds of drug users who have been around for years around the neighborhood, everyone has no. He walked around for 10 minutes, finding no trace of them. The stench of their waste, cleaned by the mayor’s office, also disappeared.
“I felt this strange peace,” said 42-year-old Sao Paulo resident. “Everyone was gone. But how so?”
The Bar Museum is located in one of the cornerland or Crackland, a scattered area of the center of Sao Paulo, which has been home to thousands of drug users for decades, often lying on the ground or jaulcing with pipes between their lips.
But by May 12, the scene changed.
Only police officers were seen where crack users have dominated for decades. The owners of stores and residents who were worried about pain were talking outside. On the sidewalk that until recently they represented scattered shoes, single socks, broken pipes and sometimes the stools looked flawless. Improvised shelters made of cardboard and fabrics did not have, and some of the graffiti of deteriorated Crackland buildings, after seeing the background of human drama, can finally be seen.
The transformation that has police officers in the area and scared residents in other parts of the city is the result of an aggressive initiative of the local government to change the region forever.
However, experts warn that cleaning brings considerable costs: police brutality, the spread of security risks in other areas, and the neglect of treatment and protection of non -criminal drug users. Instead, they say, Crackland residents have only scattered and will inevitably return.
“We can’t even wear a blanket”
Residents told the Associated Press that police aggression escalated from earlier this year with governor Tarchisio de Freetas and Mayor Ricardo Nunes. Employees are said to use sticks more often, preventing them from carrying bags where drugs can be hidden, closing several local pensions and even threatening to kill them. About a quarter of the neighboring hips, where it is reported that drug traffickers are based, has been removed.
Nearly two weeks after drug users disappeared from Crackland’s main zone, hundreds were spotted in smaller pockets around Sao Paulo’s old city center. Social media videos have shown some attempts to return at night to their previous drug use, now a 24 -hour police protected area. But all the attempts failed.
Many hope to return to the area they have occupied for decades soon – provided that police brutality are decreasing and authorities are losing their grip in the region, as has happened in the past.
“My guitar is in the mud because of a criminal, dressed in blue,” says Rorgeo, a tearful man in a dirty shirt and yoga pants that do not provide his surname for fear of retribution. “I have nothing against the law. But the law must understand that we live there. Now we have to wander, this is terrible. We cannot enter where we live, we cannot even wear a blanket.”
“It’s about people”
Crackland is in what was once part of Sao Paulo’s old city center. The decline of the region began in the 1960s, as the business moved to Avenue Paulista, a more central artery and industries moved to the more cheaper outskirts. For about two decades, until the mid -1980s, the low -budget film companies have moved, winning the region of the Garbage Mouth Nickname. For the first time, drug users arrived about three decades ago.
Brazilian researchers say that Crackland appeared in the 1990s due to the merger of two factors: the proximity to the main transport center, covering buses, subways and trains, and widespread mass murders in the most liable areas in the city.
For most of the last 30 years, store owners and residents have been afraid to be enchanted. Today, the area of 10 football flights in the old city center of Sao Paulo is flawless and silent.
Lieutenant Sao Paulo Felicio Ramut, who was selected by governor de Fraitas to clean Crackland, said last week there was no police brutality related to resident scattering.
“We had 50 police raids at the scene (s) 1000 criminals were imprisoned,” he told Daily O Estado de S.paulo on Wednesday. “We did not receive any accusation in police brutality.”
Ramut said 1200 drug users who were in the area until a few weeks ago are now being treated in clinics but does not offer evidence to support his claim. He added that he would consider Crackland without drug users if his current state remains for the next six months.
Governor de Freitas, former minister of President Jeir Bolsonaro, is reported to be running against President Luis Inasio Lula da Silva in the 2026 presidential election. His rivals claim that he has accumulated political capital (termination of Crackland, which can also be able to dollar) to move about 60 state government buildings in the area.
Critics of the government’s strategy to end Crackland are crying fake. Catholic priest Giulio Lancelotti, who has worked with homeless people over the bigger part of his 76 years, said police brutality and the dispelration of drug users would not solve the problem.
“It is not right to make political propaganda to say that Kepland is gone,” Lancelotti said. “Crackland is not a physical area, but for people. They are taken to isolated regions, they do not go to clinics.”
The Gualulhos City Hall, a city in Sao Paulo’s metropolitan area, expressed concern in a recent statement about Lancelotti’s accusations and other activists who claim that the people of Tekland “were brought and abandoned” there. He added that he would investigate the case.
Sao Paulo Mayor Nunes denied any misconduct.
“The problem will grow”
Giordano Magri, a researcher at the University of Sao Paulo, specializing in urban problems, said Crackland’s current repression aims to eliminate the infrastructure for drug users to survive the area, but will eventually find similar conditions elsewhere.
“As the governor and the mayor became more authentic, this ecosystem is gone. But they can’t do it forever,” said Magra, who added that people leaving Crackland will have more than 70 smaller spots across the city to move.
Rojo, the man whose guitar was broken, fears that the situation may get worse in the coming days, as hundreds seek to return.
“We are real people. I say with a sour heart. I’m garbage, I know,” he said. “But now that they scatter the garbage, the problem will grow.”
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