Brazil - Brasil - BRAZZIL - Reporter Tim Lopes Is Killed, Mario Lago Dies - Short and Longer Notes on Brazil - Brazilian News - June/July 2002


Brazzil
 Short and Longer Notes
June/July 2002

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The Brazilian-Argentinean rivalry is as old as the Americas. This time, Argentina started the new little war with a very suggestive and graphic billboard. An anonymous Brazilian paid it back in the same coin.


Memory 
War Correspondent 

Tim Lopes belonged to an almost-extinct group in Brazil, that of the investigative reporter. And he was a pure breed of this rare species. Many times during his three decades as a reporter he mixed into the circle he was going to write about in order to get the inside scoop and insights only intimate familiarity can bring. His death at the hands of Rio's drug lords has shocked and enraged Brazil. Weeks after the assassination, the police hadn't either located the main suspect of his death or recovered the body of the reporter.

In the early '70s he dressed as a blue-collar worker, for example, to write an article for alternative newspaper O Repórter on the bad work conditions at the Rio's subway construction site. Later he became a truck driver to better denounce corruption at the Polícia Rodoviária (Highway Patrol). More recently, already working for Globo TV, he checked for two months into a detox clinic to show the drama of people hooked on drugs.

Just last year he won the most prestigious prize of the Brazilian media, the Prêmio Esso, using a hidden camera to show how drug trafficking operates inside Rio's favelas, the shantytowns built on the hills around the city. He obtained his images for the three-part report "Feira de Drogas" (Drugs Fair) at Favela da Frota, in the so called Complexo do Alemão, close to Favela Vila Cruzeiro, the place he was last seen.

Authorities concluded that Lopes had been killed, after testimonies from other criminals who confessed having seen the execution. The Globo TV reporter disappeared on June 2, in a funk ball in a favela where he went to investigate residents' complaints—the Police had been warned, but hadn't done anything—that drugs were being freely sold and gang leaders were forcing minor girls to have sex with them.

Tim Lopes was born Arcanjo Antonino Lopes, in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, but while still a child moved to Mangueira—the same place that gives name to the famous escola de samba (samba club)—in the North Zone of Rio. The Tim nickname from childhood was adopted as his professional identity. His parents were very poor and, in the late '60s, the future reporter started working as an office boy for now-defunct weekly Manchete magazine.

He would work as reporter for several publications including the three most important dailies in Rio: O Dia, Jornal do Brasil and O Globo. Lopes started to work for Globo TV, Brazil's leading TV network, in 1996. Easy going, he loved to tell jokes, and bohemian, he enjoyed drinking at night with friends and dancing in gafieiras (lively popular dance parties). As for his writing, some editors didn't like his adjective-laden style and would cut his baroque prose to the bone.

Journalist Arthur Dapieve, who worked with Tim in the Jornal do Brasil, tells that the newsman was also a great inventor of terms and expressions. "It was he who, writing for the Jornal do Brasil's city section, baptized as mauricinho that all-dressed-up guy, who everybody knew existed, but didn't know how to call. The female of mauricinho, patricinha, appeared soon after, so they would happily reproduce themselves, until today, in the nights of all Brazilian cities. See the irony of him as father of mauricinhos and patricinhas. He was a smiling mulatto, always in a Bermuda short and a T-shirt, who loved samba, Vasco da Gama (a Rio soccer team) and beer."

The Police Story

According to police reports, Lopes was killed by drug lord Elias Pereira da Silva with a Samurai-like sword. Da Silva, better known as Elias Maluco (Deranged Elias) had been release from prison in July 2000, after four years of incarceration. During all those years the state was unable to build a case against the drug dealer, while his lawyers used delaying tactics that included not showing up for hearings in court.

Elias Maluco is now the boss of 10 favelas that are part of the Complexo do Alemão. The DRE (Delegacia de Repressão a Entorpecentes—Drug Enforcement Headquarters) estimates that the drug lord has an arsenal of 250 guns and possesses a 400-employee work force, including security people and salesmen, all connected by radio and cell phones.

The police were told about the details of the murders after detaining three suspects. They said that, before being killed, Tim was tortured and subjected to a mock trial staged by Da Silva plus three other drug dealers: André Capeta (Satan André), Boi (Ox), and Ratinho (Little Rat). Ratinho was one of the drug dealers who were shown in the award-winning report "Feira de Drogas."

The detainees told police that Tim was at first shot on the foot so he wouldn't be able to escape. This happened in front of some caves that are known as microwaves due to the fact that they are used to burn people killed by the drug traffickers. They also graphically described how Elias Maluco thrust a sword against the reporter's chest cutting him from the neck down to the belly button: "His blood spilled on all of those around him."

One week after Tim's disappearance, the police occupied the hill where the reporter had disappeared and the usual weekend funk ball was suspended by the authorities. Many days of search for the journalist's body, however, were fruitless. While searching for Lopes's body, the police found several signs of the hills' lawlessness. They discovered, for example, a clandestine cemetery with bones of scores of unknown victims and holes being readied to receive fresh bodies.

Commenting on Lopes's assassination, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso called it a "heinous crime and an attempt to silence media reports about drugs." The Rio de Janeiro's Journalists Union, after expressing its outrage at the killing, accused of unfairness and opportunism those who expressed the opinion that the reporter had been reckless and irresponsible for entering the favela the way he did.

Daily Jornal de Brasília, in an editorial, complained that the media covering of the TV reporter's murder was overblown. The newspaper called attention to so many anonymous deaths in similar circumstances that are not mentioned not even in the internal pages of the newspapers.

Drug Empire

Tim's death called the attention once again of Brazil, and the Rio population in particular, to the precarious state of the state authority in the country. It's estimated that one million people or around 20 percent of Rio's population lives under other laws than those of the rest of the nation in the 605 favelas of the city. They are controlled by at least 10,000 well-armed people linked to drugs. Policemen are known to refuse to go to some areas at night fearing for their lives.

Roberto Aguiar, Rio's secretary for Public Security, says that drug trafficker with vulgar names like Deranged Elias do not represent the base that produces violence: "These people who head gangs in favelas have to be captured because they are psychopaths, but they are not the big shots of the system. They are medium agents. We should look for the bosses rather in the social columns than in the paper's police section."

In an article for Rio's daily O Globo, Miriam Leitão, who usually writes on economy, used the murder of her colleague to demonstrate that Brazilian authorities lost control of the favelas in Rio: "We already knew that, but it became scandalously explicit now. There, the law, the order, the distributor of basic services to the population, the creator of jobs, the real authority are others. It's not only the old fight of the police against the outlaw. It's more complex than that. You can't build a network so powerful without connections with the police and other powerful people from this side of the world.

"In the favelas, the traffic is the main economic activity, the main source of income, one of the greatest job generators, and, in many areas the only social assistance people get. And it is, most of all, the only established power because the state has been impotent… The drug activity in the favelas corrupts and oppresses our poor in order to offer the goods consumed by our rich."

The murdered reporter was writing a book on samba, which included profiles of several sambistas from Rio. The work was being written in partnership with his longtime friend Alexandre Medeiros, who intends to finish the book by himself. "It will be painful," Medeiros said, "but I will go ahead and write the book as an homage to him."

Reporter Cristina Guimarães, who worked with Lopes in the "Feira de Drogas" piece moved out of Rio soon after the TV story was aired. She said she had to leave due to a series of threatening calls. The reporter also sued TV Globo in the labor court, accusing the company of not offering her adequate protection. Ms Guimarães was told by favela residents that there was a 10,000 dollar prize on her head. The reporter contacted the Amnesty International in order to ask for asylum in a foreign country. Nobody knows about her whereabouts.
 


Tribute 
Gentle Anarchist 

Being co-author of "Ai Que Saudade da Amélia", one of Brazil's most enduring musical jewels, would have been enough to secure a place for Mário Lago in Brazil's cultural history. He was much more than that, though, circulating with ease from playwriting to lyrics writing, from acting on radio to acting on TV and on the big screen, from being active in politics to being an inspired memorialist and story teller. Brazil is mourning his passing, which occurred May 30, after a long fight with emphysema. He was 91. For most people he was an example of integrity, someone who kept his convictions even under duress throughout his whole life.

Graduated from law school, the actor didn't practice law for more than a few weeks. A confessed communist for his entire life—at the end he used to say that he was an "autonomous Marxist"—Lago was sent to jail six times for his political convictions, some of them during the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. He authored more than 200 songs.

Lago was born on November 26, 1911 at Rua do Rezende, 150, in Rio's Lapa neighborhood. His father, Antônio Lago, was a music conductor and a piano player, his mother was said to have been overprotective. In order to pay his studies, the future composer started writing vaudeville plays. He wrote 31 of them, according to his biographer, Mônica Carvalho, who in 1999 wrote Mário Lago, Boêmia e Política (Mário Lago, Bohemia and Politics). Lago published his first poem on Fon-Fon magazine by age 15. It was called "Revelação" (Revelation).

The lyricist started to work as a TV actor in 1966, when he was already 55. His first role was in the novela (soap opera) O Sheik de Agadir. Among the characters he is most remembered for are Atílio in O Casarão (The Large House) and Alberico Santos in Dancin' Days. He was still very active till the end. He had to use an oxygen tank during the taping of TV Globo's O Clone, in which he interpreted Doctor Molina. The novela had its last episode aired June 14.

Lago also appeared in such movies as Glauber Rocha's Terra em Transe, Joaquim Pedro de Andrade's O Padre e a Moça and Cacá Diegues's Os Herdeiros.

The actor wrote several autobiographical books. He was in the process of writing Meus Tempos de Moleque (My Years as an Urchin) when he died. He had already published "Na Rolança do Tempo" (In the Wheels of Time), in 1976; Bagaço de Beira-Estrada (Edge-of-the-road Bagasse), in 1977; and Meia Porção de Sarapatel (Hodgepodge's Half Portion), in 1986.

How did he keep his stamina and youthful enthusiasm? By being politically active, he used to say3. His political convictions, however, didn't make him an ascetic: "Despite being a communist I didn't want to deprive myself of anything. An activist needs to lead his life as everybody else, at least to be able to dialogue with them.

He was a bohemian, but only until he met and married Zeli Cordeiro, in 1947. They saw each other for the first time during a communist rally. Zeli would be at his side the entire life, until 1997 when she died. Was she the submissive Amélia-type woman that Lago describes in his memorable tune? "She was a woman from the left like me," said Lago, "but in a way she was also Amélia. When we had to move from Barata Ribeiro street to Bento Ribeiro street, she told me, 'Bento or Barata, it doesn't matter, they are all relatives."

Zeli was the only one to know the other side of a man who seemed always so caring and affectionate. He once confessed, "I'm crabby, I wake up kicking my own shadow." The cranky, but modest man died poor and in debt. His long disease wiped the little savings he had. His contract with Globo and his US$ 500 retirement pension were not enough to pay for the bills that the medical insurance didn't cover. His debts with health care had climbed to around $12,000 at the time of his death.

Phrases

"I made an agreement of peaceful coexistence with time: neither does it chase me nor do I run away from it. One of these days we will meet."

"If we lose all our hope we should also wipe out the rainbow."

"Be on the right or on the left, we are all bourgeois. There is no denying."

"I keep young by being communist. Communism has always been the world's youthhood."

"Life made me do all I've done even though I'm lazier than Dorival Caymmi."

"Time doesn't buy round trip tickets. I have memories, not pinings."

"Radio has become a big record player. We have no programs anymore and the remote made me lazy."
 


Some people have seen in Lago's most famous song, "Ai Que Saudade da Amélia", which he composed with Ataulfo Alves, a celebration of the down-to-earth woman, a lovelorn song or even a machista provocation. But, the number one bohemian, disavowed those versions explaining in a Rádio Nacional interview that Amélia was born in a mesa de botequim (bar table) to retell the story of percussionist Almeidinha—revered singer Aracy de Almeida was his sister—who every night between a beer and a swallow of cachaça (sugar-cane liquor) complained about the departure of a cleaning lady who used to keep his house and his clothes spotless. "That was a real woman," Almeidinha used to say. The real woman was named Amélia.

 


Ai, que saudades da Amélia

Ataulfo Alves and Mário Lago

Nunca vi fazer tanta exigência
Nem fazer o que você me faz
Você não sabe o que é consciência
Não vê que eu sou um pobre rapaz

Você só pensa em luxo e riqueza
Tudo que você vê você quer
Ai, meu Deus, que saudades da
Amélia
Aquilo sim é que era mulher

Às vezes passava fome ao meu lado
E achava bonito não ter o que
comer
Mas quando me via contrariado
Dizia: meu filho, o que se há
de fazer ?

Amélia não tinha a menor vaidade
Amélia é que era mulher de verdade
 


How do I miss Amélia



I've never seen so many demands
Neither someone doing all that you do
You don't know what's conscience
You don't see I'm a poor lad

All you can think is luxury and riches
All that you see you want to buy
Alas, my God, how do I miss
Amélia
That really was a woman

Sometimes she would starve by my side
And thought that having nothing to eat
was pretty
But when she saw me upset
She would say: "Sonny, what
can we do!"

Amélia wasn't vain in the slightest
Amélia surely was a true woman

    You can listen to "Ai que Saudade da Amélia" in http://www.brazzil.com/amelia.mp3 
 


Compositions and Partners

Adeus orgia (with Roberto Martins), samba, 1952

Ai, que saudades da Amélia (with Ataulfo Alves), samba, 1942

Ana Maria, fox, 1946

Atire a primeira pedra (with Ataulfo Alves), samba, 1944

Aurora (with Roberto Roberti), marcha, 1940

Baladinha lítero-cultural-amorosa (with Lúcio Alves), samba canção, 1960

Bate, bate coração (with Roberto Martins), marcha, 1937

Batuque no terreiro (with Roberto Martins), samba, 1946

Bobagem gostosa (with Chocolate), baião, 1953

Calcule eu (with Francisco Santos), samba, 1960

Capacho (with Ataulfo Alves), samba, 1945

Chega de tanto amor, samba, 1941

Coitado dele (with Chocolate), samba, 1954,

Como é que ficou o céu? (with Newton Teixeira), samba, 1944

Como o tempo judiou (with Roberto Martins), samba, 1953

Covarde (with Dunga), samba, 1952

Covardia (with Ataulfo Alves), samba, 1938

Cuidado com o andor (with Marino Pinto), samba, 1946

A culpa é sua (with Sílvio Caldas), samba, 1952

Dá-me tuas mãos (with Roberto Martins), fox, 1939

Deixa a saudade bater (with Chocolate, baião, 1953

Deixa assim (with Roberto Martins), samba, 1946

Destino traçado (with Erasmo Silva), samba, 1946

Devolve, valsa, 1940

Diz que sim, diz que não (with Roberto Martins),samba, 1945

E ela não voltou (with Erasmo Silva), samba, 1946

É melhor não voltar (with Newton Teixeira), valsa, 1944

É noite (with Custódio Mesquita), marcha, 1936

É tão gostoso, seu moço (with Chocolate), samba, 1953

Ela mandou me avisar (with Rubens Soares), samba, 1941

Endereço (with Ataulfo Alves), samba, 1956

Enquanto houver saudade (with Custódio Mesquita), valsa, 1938

Eu não posso dizer, samba, 1952

Eu não quero saber, valsa, 1941

Eu não sou pano de prato (with Roberto Roberti), samba, 1941

Eu quero ir a pé (with Roberto Roberti), 1941

Eu sou feio e moro longe, toada, 1952

Eu te agradeço (with Benedito Lacerda), valsa, 1942

Faça de conta (with Custódio Mesquita), marcha, 1939

Ficarás, samba, 1952

Fim de romance (with Nássara), bolero, 1955

Fracasso, samba, 1946

Gilda (with Erasmo Silva), samba, 1946

O homem mais feliz, fox, 1940

Incerteza, fox, 1946

Leva meu coração (with Roberto Martins), samba, 1945

Mais um minuto apenas (with Newton Teixeira), fox, 1942

Menina, eu sei de uma coisa (with Custódio Mesquita), marcha, 1936

Mentirosa (with Custódio Mesquita), choro, 1941

Meu amor foi embora (with Erasmo Silva), samba, 1953

Meu consolo (with Roberto Martins), samba, 1958

Minha revelação (with Roberto Martins), samba, 1947

Morena, morena, valsa, 1958

Na mão direita (with Nássara), samba, 1938

Nada além (with Custódio Mesquita), fox-canção, 1938

Não é bom pra você (with Chocolate), samba, 1961

Não me olhe assim (with Erasmo Silva), samba, 1946

Não precisas bater (with Oldemar Magalhães), samba, 1960

Não quero chorar (with Roberto Martins), samba, 1939

Não te conheço mais (with Newton Teixeira), samba, 1951

Não tenhas pressa morena (with Antônio Lago), valsa, 1951

Numa noite assim (with Alberto Ribeiro), marcha-rancho, 1941

Número um (with Benedito Lacerda,) valsa, 1939

Os olhos de Nancy, fox, 1956

Passa passa moreninha (with Roberto Martins), samba, 1950

Pensa um minuto em mim (with Frazão), valsa, 1940

Penumbra, penumbra, samba, 1952

Perdão não é níquel de tostão, samba, 1958

Podia ser melhor (with Custódio Mesquita), marcha, 1936

Poleiro de pato (with Rubens Soares), samba, 1940

Por que me olhas assim? (with Roberto Martins), samba, 1940

Pra que mais felicidade? (with Ataulfo Alves), samba, 1946

Primeiro prêmio, samba, 1941

Problema seu (with Chocolate), samba, 1958

Qual a razão? (with Antônio Almeida), samba, 1939

O que é que me acontecia (with benedito Lacerda), marcha, 1939

Que mulher infernal, samba, 1950

Que tem você que se meter? (with Roberto Martins), samba, 1939

Quero o meu pandeiro (with Ataulfo Alves), samba, 1944

Questão de vez (with Nássara), samba, 1937

Rosinha bonita (with Chocolate), samba, 1960

Rua sem sol (with Henrique Gandelman), samba, 1953

Sacoleja morena (with Erasmo Silva), samba, 1961

Sacrifício não se pede (with Chocolate), samba, 1952

Sambista da Cinelândia (with Custódio Mesquita), samba, 1936

Se a vida fosse sempre assim (with Newton Teixeira), valsa, 1946

Se essa rua fosse minha (with Roberto Martins), samba, 1936

Se o negócio é sofrer (with Chocolate), samba, 1957

Seja feliz... (with Custódio Mesquita), marcha, 1936

Sem rancor (with Roberto Faissal0, samba, 1957

Será?, valsa, 1945

Só errando o português (with Lúcio Alves), samba, 1954

Tabuleiro de Ikusat (with Roberto Martins), chorinho, 1941

Talvez digam que é vaidade (with Nássara), samba, 1942

Tão bonitinha (with Lúcio Alves), samba, 1960

Tira a boca do caminho (with Chocolate), marcha. 1955

Três sorrisos (with Chocolate), 1962

Um gesto...Uma frase (with Roberto Martins), samba, 1950

Uma canção dentro da noite, fox, 1951

Valquíria (with Erasmo Silva), samba, 1953

Vamos falar de saudade (with Chocolate), toada, 1955

Vem pra cá que tem mulher (with Roberto Roberti), samba, 1942

Vida vazia (with Chocolate), samba, 1954

Você pensa (with Almirante), samba, 1938

Você sabe me maltratar (with Erasmo Silva), samba, 1954


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