(Reuters)
- When night falls, street crack marketplaces open for business.
The gritty
transactions of the drug trade take over in city neighborhoods that hum with
legitimate commerce by day. Throngs of stupefied buyers crowd around dealers
before skulking away behind the telltale glow of cigarette lighters.
These
are not the images that Brazil wants to project.
Proud
of growing prosperity and the millions of new consumers elbowing into the
country's broadening middle class, Brazil's leaders prefer snapshots of new
houses, new cars and the crane-dotted cityscapes of Latin America's biggest
economy.
Along
with the progress, though, has come a surge in drug use.
Demand
for cocaine has soared along with the economy over the past decade and fueled
an abundant supply of crack now ensnaring thousands of new addicts. Legions of
the addicted roam city centers across Brazil, many of them venues chosen to
showcase Brazil's ascendance during the 2014 World Cup of soccer and the
Olympic Games in 2016.
Reuters
photographers recently spent 24 hours in eight of those cities chronicling
their "cracklands," as the neighborhoods have come to be known. They
went from the decrepit center of Sao Paulo, South America's biggest city, to
the waterfront slums of Rio de Janeiro. From the Amazonian capital of Manaus,
to the colonial tourist hub of Salvador.
In
each, swarms of crack users have converted entire swaths of central
neighborhoods into nocturnal encampments doubling as open-air crack
marketplaces.
The
images reflect what sociologists, health experts and law enforcement officials
say is a rapidly growing problem that puts Brazil squarely in the center of the
international drug trade. Demand for cocaine has grown among Brazilians, and in
recent years the country has become a crucial path for transit of the drug as
it travels from source countries in the Andes to markets in Europe and beyond.
According
to the United Nations 2011 World Drug Report, seizures of cocaine in Brazil
have soared, from 8 metric tons of the drug in 2004 to 24 metric tons in 2009.
Cocaine seized in Europe, the study said, is increasingly found to have passed
through Brazil - totaling 1.5 metric tons of the confiscations in 2009, more
than five times as much as in 2005.
POLICIES NEW AND FEW
The
drugs staying in the country have caught Brazil unprepared, police and
policymakers say.
Aside
from the crime increase that accompanies a bustling drug trade, Brazil's
already overburdened health system has insufficient resources to treat and
rehabilitate the growing number of addicts.
"There
is a lack of management and focus on the problem," said Ana Cecilia
Roselli Marques, a psychiatrist and board member of the Brazilian Association
for the Study of Alcohol and Other Drugs. "There is no real drug policy at
all in Brazil."
The
government, in fact, has little idea just how many users there are. A health
ministry estimate suggests 600,000 illegal drug users exist in the country of
190 million people, but some non-governmental groups believe the number is at
least double that.
President
Dilma Rousseff pledged from the moment she won office in late 2009 to tackle
the scourge head on.
"We
cannot rest," she said in her election-night speech, "while crack
reigns within cracklands."
Last
December, she announced a 4 billion-real ($2.19 billion) plan to help crack
addicts, calling for widespread education and prevention programs, and more
than 13,000 new beds in hospitals and treatment centers by 2014.
Meanwhile,
local leaders have been trying to clean up the cracklands with moves that have
been criticized as showy but fruitless.
In
January, Sao Paulo mayor Gilberto Kassab ordered police to clear the crack zone
- walking distance from City Hall - in a dramatic days-long showdown that led
to dozens of arrests, the confiscation of thousands of crack rocks and the
razing of buildings alleged to serve as drug dens.
Critics
blast such efforts as mere cosmetics, noting the temporary displacement of the
addicts to nearby areas during the crackdown and their speedy return as soon it
stopped.
"CRACKLAND ISN'T
FINISHED"
During
a recent Sunday night visit by Reuters to Sao Paulo's crackland, the trade
proceeded unperturbed. Despite the occasional presence of a token police patrol
car, whose occupants limited their activities to shooing away assembled users
in the middle of the street, the commerce and smoking lasted throughout the
night.
"Crackland
isn't finished," said a hotel owner in the area, who asked not to be
named, dismissing the recent crackdown.
Nearby,
dozens of users clustered around dealers, squatted behind makeshift pipes or
roamed around, eyes to the ground, searching for dropped drugs or valuables to
barter or help purchase their next fix. Those who had already scored walked
with clenched fists so as not to drop their rocks.
The
crowd, which swelled to as many as 300 people during the night, was a motley
collection of age, gender and status: an addict mother trailed by a toddler; a
man in a wheelchair; a pregnant teen. A few times, a luxury car passed through,
its passengers there for a quick score.
Because
of the rapid, but brief high - and crack's highly addictive nature - addicts
sometimes smoke more than a dozen times a day. Though an individual hit is
cheap, selling for as little as 2 reais ($1.10), or about the price of a candy
bar, long-time users say they are willing to lose everything in exchange for
another high.
"Crack
is really good and I don't want to quit," sang one user as he walked by a
Reuters reporter. Another offered a cut-rate deal on a cell phone for some
quick cash.
By
sunrise, with the sound of shop shutters lifting, the crowd began to disperse.
Just as predictably, though, the reverse will happen come sunset.
"The
hours are fixed," said another crackland business owner, who also asked
not to be named. "The dealer will come, stand there in the middle and the
users all gather around. It's always the same."
($1
= 1.81 reais)
(Additional reporting by Paulo Whitaker; Writing by Paulo
Prada; Editing by Todd Benson and Frances Kerry)
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