Mrs. Brito, a 58-year-old widow, is used to taking care of others.
For years she pampered her husband after a stroke, visits bedridden patients, has
adopted
to an elderly neighbor who lives alone and who, according to his calculations, must be around 90 years old.
A true triumph in a Brazilian favela like this one in Paraisópolis.
What had never happened to Isabel Brito is that someone was so aware of her family.
“It's the food, the basic basket, everything.
The girl who comes all the time… She asks if we are sick, if we have a fever;
Bring masks, disinfectant gel… ”, this woman who lives with her daughter-in-law and three grandchildren in one of the largest favelas in São Paulo explains in wonder without removing her mask.
All this aid is the result of a device organized not by the authorities, but by the powerful neighborhood movement of Paraisópolis to face the most recent challenge in its almost 100-year history.
The coronavirus.
The "girl" that Brito mentions is a lifelong neighbor turned into a street president with the pandemic.
Their vital mission is to visit 50 families on a daily round.
Distribute food, investigate if someone has symptoms of having contracted the virus, if they go out to look for life ..., bring help and gather information like the best gossippers with an eye on getting their neighbors to survive this plague and its consequences in one of the most unequal countries in the world.
Thanks to the 660 street mayors, they calibrate the needs even in the last corner of this labyrinth of steep alleys.
Inequality in Brazil is so brutal that in São Paulo the difference in life expectancy between the best and the worst neighborhood is 71 to 85 years.
A hairdresser in Paraisópolis, active since the beginning of the pandemic.
Lela beltrão
The first battle neighborhood activists had to fight was against the false belief that the poor were safe from the coronavirus.
As the first Brazilians hospitalized were rich of those who travel to Madrid or Milan, dine in French restaurants with red wine or belong to exclusive clubs, many of those who cannot even dream of it believed themselves immune.
The idea that the new disease would be less bloody in tropical countries also prevailed.
These falsehoods, coupled with the speech of President Jair Bolsonaro himself, who dismissed the threat as "a little flu," were a potentially devastating cocktail in the slums of Brazil.
They immediately went to work with a car and a megaphone to convince the neighborhood that the threat was real.
If they did not act soon, the consequences would be catastrophic in the favela.
It was enough to see the hospital collapse in countries like Italy or Spain on television.
The coordinator of the neighborhood music program - an evangelical pastor - and a firefighter took turns on the bus as they walked the handful of paved streets that crosses Paraisópolis to try to educate its inhabitants about all those things that the epidemic has made daily, such as going out strictly necessary or wash your hands often.
An enormous challenge in this favela of São Paulo, where confinement is a luxury available to few and where families would like to have savings for when unforeseen events arise.
Informing and raising awareness was the first mission of veteran activists hardened in a thousand battles.
Gilson Rodrigues, president of the Association of Neighbors and Merchants, whom his neighbors consider the mayor of Paraisópolis.
Lela beltrão
At the head of this gargantuan effort, a charismatic 36-year-old fellow, Gilson Rodrigues.
His official title is that of President of the Association of Neighbors and Merchants of Paraisópolis.
On a daily basis, he is the type his 75,000 neighbors turn to when they have a problem, the closest thing to a mayor they know in this favela, one of the best organized in São Paulo and one of the richest in Brazil.
“I have a responsibility.
And I believe a lot in setting an example.
I try to make few mistakes and correct them quickly, ”says this experienced activist who has made his favela stand out from the rest.
Paraisópolis is known not for the sale of drugs, which there is, or police operations, but because it generates businesses with a social impact, it has an orchestra and even a ballet (by the way, it is not the only favela with a ballet school).
Rodrigues is a tough guy in casual but impeccable dress.
Other poor neighborhoods are replicating their initiatives.
He and his team devised a solution for each of the many problems brought on by the pandemic that has killed an estimated 140,000 Brazilians and infected 4.6 million.
Figures to be taken with a grain of salt because, as Brazil does very few tests, they are far below the real ones.
Only in the United States and India has the virus been more lethal.
“If the Samu [the ambulance service] doesn't come to Paraisópolis?
We hire ambulances.
Do people need to eat?
We assemble the dishes for Maria.
Do people need masks?
We started to produce them.
We were finding ways for people to overcome this pandemic, "explains Rodrigues in the pavilion that has become the heart and brain of a complex mechanism to mitigate the blow.
After the initial panic, they met the challenge with imagination and efficiency.
Paraisópolis, one of the largest favelas in São Paulo with 75,000 inhabitants.
Lela beltrão
The more than 75,000 residents of this neighborhood of São Paulo and of the many similar ones scattered throughout Brazil had everything against it when the virus appeared.
Favelas like this remain overcrowded, more than houses they have hovels, they have few services, almost always precarious.
They are neighborhoods where the State is rarely present out of fear or laziness, where neighbors would like to have better teachers, more doctors and fewer policemen.
Obesity and hypertension are widespread.
“Paraisópolis and other favelas were unfortunately abandoned for a long time.
We are going to do 99 years now.
They are 99 years of neglect in which they stopped applying public policies so that the neighbors could develop.
Since the Government does nothing, the neighbors are uniting to transform this reality, ”says Rodrigues.
The chronic neglect was joined by the chaos that characterizes the political management of the epidemic from minute one in Brazil.
Bolsonaro has fired two health ministers, sabotaged the governors' efforts, promoted a drug of unproven efficacy ... Regardless of whether it exacerbated the health crisis, his approach has always been that an economic collapse would kill more than COVID-19.
With good political reflexes, in a month he had approved a basic income that charges a third of the citizens.
Despite the trail of deaths, it is more popular than ever.
The Paraisópolis community leader and the activist-entrepreneurs around him sought donations by land, sea and air.
They opened several
crowdfunding
lines
on the Internet, where they are skillfully managed and, as they say, are accountable on Facebook or Instagram.
It worked.
The pandemic activated in Brazil a real race of asking for and giving donations.
The neighborhood association hired doctors and nurses who stand guard 24 hours a day and an ambulance because the public health workers do not dare to enter the neighborhood.
They managed to get the authorities to give them two of the public schools to set up reception centers where they could quarantine asymptomatic infected people living in slums where isolation is impossible.
Doctors from one of the best private hospitals in São Paulo visited by videoconference.
They had nearly 500 isolated patients.
In August, when donations and demand fell, they closed.
Other initiatives are still in full swing five months later.
The premise was to adapt what they had to the new circumstances.
For starters, the headquarters.
As the day center for the elderly in the neighborhood had to close due to the virus, they converted it into their headquarters.
Several of the companies with a social impact - the last name that their founders insist on - built under the umbrella of the neighborhood association were suddenly left without contracts or customers.
In a matter of days, they began to work to fill the needs of their neighbors.
Employees of the Mãos de Maria (Hands of Mary) project distribute plates of food.
Lela beltrão
Monday.
An hour before the delivery begins, the queue is forming.
The same is true on Tuesday.
It is the first time that Daniele Brasiliana, 34, a mother of three, comes to get the
kettle
, hot food for her family.
Although she lost her job in a market, she had managed to get by, but at home they no longer have anything to eat.
And here it is.
The first in line.
Mãos de Maria (Hands of Mary), who
catered
events and meals in schools, now cooks and distributes 5,000 servings a day to neutralize the specter of hunger.
A hearty dish that includes rice, beans, meat and salad.
Since the beginning of the crisis, they have cooked and distributed more than 700,000 dishes, but the pace has slowed because donations have diminished.
Another company, Costurando Sonhos (Sewing Dreams), went from creating its first sustainable fashion collection to recruiting women and getting sewing machines to make masks at home.
More than 270,000 masks thanks to 68 dressmakers.
Here no one queues without a mask, but it is not uncommon for them to put it on when they arrive at the delivery center.
Sewing workshop of the company Costurando Sonhos (Sewing Dreams), born under the protection of the neighborhood association.
Lela beltrão
Paraisópolis was a vacant lot destined to house residences for upper-class São Paulo citizens when 99 years ago it began to be populated by people who came from afar with their clothes on and had nowhere to live.
Those immigrants from Bahia, Pernambuco or Ceará - extremely poor places, victims of periodic droughts - came to the dynamic São Paulo in search of work and a decent future.
"When I arrived there were no houses, everything was forest, crops and shacks," recalls Mrs. Brito, the one who works hard to take care of others.
She arrived by bus at the age of 17.
Only then did she learn to read a little.
Today, the neighborhood where he lives is one of the points in São Paulo that best illustrates the inequality that eats away at Brazil.
Skyscrapers with swimming pools on the balconies - on the terrace of each floor - stand majestically on flimsy buildings of exposed brick and tin roof clustered in no order.
The paradox is that precisely this closeness that shows in raw flesh the abyss that separates the 1% of the most privileged Brazilians from the millions of compatriots who live in favelas is one of the reasons why Paraisópolis is one of the most vibrant neighborhoods in the world. country.
The supply and demand of labor are two steps away, and that in a megalopolis of almost 20 million inhabitants with horrible traffic is of vital importance.
Employees of the Mãos de Maria (Hands of Mary) project prepare the rice, beans and meat dishes that are distributed daily.
Lela beltrão
With its community response, Paraisópolis has managed to minimize the damage and avoid a major catastrophe, but the blow has been hard.
The virus soon showed that it does make class distinctions, usually in favor of the privileged.
Also in Brazil, the pandemic has hit the poor and black the hardest.
In May, the death rate from covid-19 in this favela was less than half the São Paulo average, according to a study by the Polis Institute.
A fact that drew attention because it distinguished it from similar neighborhoods and made it similar to other more privileged ones, although the authors of the study warned that the average age in Paraisópolis was lower.
The most recent data compose a diametrically opposite photo.
The same academic team found that, at the end of August, the average in São Paulo was 133 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, but that of Paraisópolis was more than double (293 per 100,000).
"Those solidarity measures of mutual support had an impact that was diminishing because people continue to go out to seek their livelihood and there was a lack of determined support from the Government," says one of the authors of the study, doctor Jorge Kayano.
The specialist is outraged that the Brazilian public health, which achieved such good results against HIV, is in the hands of someone like Bolsonaro.
The catastrophe first appeared in the form of layoffs.
While the bosses were secluded to continue working remotely with Zoom meetings, it didn't take long for most of them to fire their babysitters, drivers, cooks, housekeepers, porters ..., the next door neighbors, those from the favela.
Another of the businesses born of neighborhood activism, known as the favela's Linkedin, launched the
Adopt a diarist
campaign
.
In other words, one of those women who work as domestic servants on loose days.
“Many are heads of families who have to pay rent.
With confinement they had two options: either I stay home and starve, or I go out to look for work and risk getting infected, ”illustrates Rejane dos Santos, 35, the founder of this company that connects employers with the unemployed.
It was a success.
They wanted to help 500 and obtained donations for 1,032.
With the progressive return to normality, the program has been converted into
Contract a diarist.
Both the Dos Santos business and those that now offer hot dishes or sew masks were born as workshops to train women from the neighborhood, who had a much worse education than desired, in trades with which to obtain economic independence and the consequent freedom.
These activists and entrepreneurs have managed to give employment (and new horizons) to their neighbors.
As they always say, businesses with a social impact.
Claudia Regina di Silverio, street president, distributes food around the favela.
Lela beltrão
Paraisópolis showed its friendliest face in a soap opera years ago, but it also has a sinister one because, like other favelas, it is under the control of a criminal organization.
This drug market is especially lucrative and valuable for the First Command of the Capital, due to its proximity to a wealthy neighborhood.
Like millions of people, Claudia Regina di Silverio, 48, had the world fell at her feet at the start of the pandemic.
She lost her job because she was caring for nine children at home that their mothers had no one to leave with when they went out to work.
Until they were fired.
Suddenly, those mothers could not pay or need it.
And her ex-husband still did not pay her pension for the two children.
Di Silverio went to knock on the door of the neighborhood association, like other times.
They didn't have a job for her, but they did have a proposal: did she want to be president of her street?
That is how she began to visit 50 families every day.
Natalia Macario, 7, receives a plate of food.
The girl and her brother follow the classes from home by mobile phone.
Lela beltrão
Monday, shortly after noon.
Di Silverio carries two bags full of plates of hot food as he passes some workers in Harmonía alley.
Wearing a mask, a hairnet and a T-shirt that proclaims “Stay home”, she knocks on the door of Natalia, a 7-year-old girl who now follows school classes thanks to a mobile phone.
Around here hardly anyone has a computer.
The baby collects food for her brother and father.
From there, the street president goes to the home of Celia Gomes, a mother of 14 who, at 40, already has her sixth grandchild on the way.
Even before the pandemic, she did not have a decent job, she rummaged through the garbage for materials to recycle.
Be part of the millions of Brazilians who live literally from day to day.
If they don't go out and find a living in the morning, they and their families go without food.
After the round, Di Silverio returns home to bake cakes, which she then sells.
With that, she pays the bills and raises her children while ensuring that her neighbors are protected from the virus and have what it takes to last until the vaccine arrives.