Number 352, May 28, 1999.
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In this week's issue:
>From FOLHA DE SAO PAULO:
- Sao Paulo police arrest MST coordinator
- Assassin of Chico Mendes given right to semi-open prison sentence
- Floods leave 8,000 without shelter in the state of Amazonas
- FHC proposes law to outlaw sale of firearms; lobby forms against proposal
- Unemployment hits new record again in São Paulo
>Special from the Folha de São Paulo
Urban Drama: The search for employment
**NEWS BRIEFS**
- Sao Paulo police arrest MST coordinator
The police of Porto Feliz arrested and detained for three hours one of the
national coordinators of the MST (Movement of rural workers Without Land),
Gilmar Mauro. He was being held responsible for the theft of a revolver
and cellular telephones from the Capoava farm. The crime occurred during a
protest of the MST, who were occupying an area of the farm. During the
occupation, protestors stole the items from the farm, according to
employees of the farm. Mauro was released after obtaining habeas corpus.
Ironically, Gilmar Mauro had just been named by Time Magazine as one of the
future leaders of Latin America the day before the arrest.
Source: Folha de São Paulo
May 21, 1999
- Assassin of Chico Mendes given right to semi-open prison sentence
After three years of being recaptured by the Federal Police, Darly Alves
da Silva, the landowner who ordered his son to shoot Chico Mendes, had his
sentenced reduced to a semi-open prison sentence. He will only have to
spend his nights in the prison as soon as he secures employment with the
help of the prison system. The judge, Everardo Ribeiro, commuted the
sentence because da Silva has completed a sixth of his prison sentence, and
had a right to have his sentence commuted. Prosecutors argued that his
lost that right when he escaped prison, but the judge did not concur.
Chico Mendes was the head of a rubber-tappers union who gained world-wide
attention in his struggle to save the trees of the rainforest.
Source: Folha de São Paulo
May 22, 1999
- Floods leave 8,000 without shelter in the state of Amazonas
In the worst flooding of the decade in the basin of the Salimões River,
Amazonas, nearly 8,000 people are without shelter in ten cities declared to
be disaster areas. Four persons have already died in the month of May due
to the flooding. The rains have been constant since April, and have
affected areas around the Negro and Salimões Rivers, including the capital
of Manaus. Help is slow in coming to affected areas due to the principal
means of transportation in many of the areas: boat.
Source: Folha de São Paulo
May 22, 1999
- FHC proposes law to outlaw sale of firearms; lobby forms against proposal
President Fernando Henrique Cardoso announced that he will propose a law
to Congress which will totally outlaw the sale of weapons to citizens. The
law also proposes that citizens who have guns legally now will have two
years to deliver over their weapons to the government. The government will
then pay the gun owner R$150 for each gun.
Meanwhile, a new lobby group has sprouted for the first time in Brazil who
are working to keep the sale of guns legal. Their tone of discourse is
very similar to that of the National Rifleman's Association in the United
States. Leonard Arruda, director of public relations of the National
Association of Owners and Sellers of Guns (ANPCA) made the following
statement: "I think that we need to take seriously the question Ronald
Reagan made in 1975: with the rise of violence, doesn't it make sense to
arm homeowners and shopkeepers, teach them how to use the weapons, and
spread the news that it is no long safe to rob them because they know how
to defend themselves?"
Interestingly, though the sale of arms is not a major part of it's
internal economy, Brazil is the fourth largest exporter of guns. The
United States is the leading exporter, and far behind is Austria, Germany,
and then Brazil. Brazil does import 5,000 guns per year, mostly from the
U.S. ANPCA fears that FHC's new law will have repercussions in Washington,
who may prohibit Brazilian guns from entering into the country, thus
causing more unemployment. However, the Folha de São Paulo points out that
the five gun factories here in Brazil only employed 5,779 people in 1994,
the last year for which the IBGE has statistics. The number is probably
less this year due to economic difficulties in the country.
Source: Folha de São Paulo
May 24 & 25, 1999
- Unemployment hits new record again in São Paulo
The unemployment rate hit a new level again for the second consecutive
month in the greater São Paulo area. According to the monthly research of
Seade-Dieese, unemployment hit 20. 3% in April. This percentage represents
1.78 million people, and is the highest since Seade- Dieese began its
surveys in 1985.
Source: Folha de São Paulo
May 27, 1999
**Special from the Folha de São Paulo**
Urban Drama: The search for employment
With R$8, four Hollywood cigarettes, a worker's permit card in his pocket,
a cup of coffee in his stomach, and a pen in his shirt pocket, Gilvan
Andrade, 32, leaves his house every day at 5:30 a.m. to look for work. It
has been nine months since he lost his job as a worker in a curtain factory.
Gilvan walks for more the 15 kilometers every day, but has no luck. He is
able to survive with help from his brothers, and from odd jobs that is able
to get--some months, yes, some months, no. When he is able to get odd
jobs, he makes a little more than R$100 per month (about US$70).
His wife, Antonia, says that sometimes they became quite dispirited,
especially when their only child, Hellen, 3, cries when she asks for a
cookie or a doll that the couple cannot afford to buy.
Friends, neighbors, family see in Gilvan a good man who is struggling to
get a decent job. According to the government, Gilvan is not unemployed.
The IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), who measure the
employment rates, only count in their statistics people who have done
absolutely nothing in the last seven days. Whoever does odd jobs, as
precarious as the job may be, is not counted. So, as this past week Gilvan
got some work polishing wood in a factory, he is not entered into the
government unemployment statistics. Thus the IBGE reported an unemployment
rate of 8.87% in São Paulo in the month of March. The research of the
Seade Foundation (State system of Analysis of Facts) and of Dieese
(Inter-union Department of Statistics ) see people like Gilvan as
unemployed as his work is not steady, and therefore have registered a 19.9%
unemployment rate in São Paulo.
Gilvan live in the neighborhood of Parada de Taipas, in the eastern part
of São Paulo. On Thursday, the Folha accompanied him as he looked for
work. In the half hour that it took to get to the bus stop from his house,
Gilvan smoked three cigarettes. And he explained how he looks for work.
"I take the bus until some place that has factories, and then I start
walking. I look for businesses that have employment signs out front. If
there is something that looks like it might work for me, I knock on the door."
"And what is it you want?"
"Ah, anything really. Anything will do." Except a being a driver because
Gilvan does not have professional license and therefore cannot drive
commercial vans or trucks.
At 6:17 a.m., the bus arrives at his stop. Even though there are still
seats, Gilvan remains standing. "If I sit, I become lazy. I fall asleep,
and after I don't feel like going out walking." The trip to the Marginal
Tiete (a major Sao Paulo freeway) takes two hours. He has to take two
buses to get to the Remedios Bridge, where he begins his walk.
Gilvan gets off the bus and asks for a match to light his fourth cigarette
of the day. Valmir Magalhaes lends him his lighter. He is 28 and is also
walking through Sao Paulo to look for work. Gilvan walks fast. He crosses
the Remedios Bridge, from which one can see a good part of the city. "It's
really big, isn't it? And sometimes its vastness doesn't do any good. How
many companies I've visited in Sao Paulo and for nothing?
He complains about the companies' demands. "To do anything, they ask you
to have at least a high school education, experience, 1m70, and a good
appearance. Where's an ugly guy like me to go?
Gilvan has bad luck. At the first company where he visited, Expresso
Mercurio, there is only a space for a driver and a checking clerk. He has
tried for five months to get a job there. He was informed that he needs to
have at least a high school education. Gilvan says that he didn't study
because in Cha Grande, the city where he was born, in the countryside of
Pernambuco, there was no school. There were only little schoolrooms where
he learned to write his name. When he arrived in Sao Paulo, at age 21, he
didn't feel his lack of education mattered. "No one was asking anything of
you to get work," he says. In 1991, when he got a job at Cardal, a
showerhead factory, the company paid for his education. But he only
finished fourth grade.
An economist, Silvia Brandao, of the Seade Foundation, explains that as
unskilled labor becomes more abundant, businesses create more rigorous
standards which serve to diminish the number of candidates. One of the
recent demands is the completion of high school. Because of this, workers
like Gilvan have difficulties finding placements. "His chances are
minimal," says Brandao.
At Expresso Aracatuba, Gilvan finds an even worse situation: the sign says
that there are simply no jobs. Same story at Lever, producer of cleaning
products. "If there are no signs, I don't even ask the security at the
gates. For them, they are employed and they don't want to be bothered by
people like me."
He lights his cigarette, and continues his walk. He remembers better
times, ten years ago, when there where plenty of jobs. "Factories lassoed
workers like a cowboy after a bull." It was the time of the Jose Sarney
government, the Brazil of hyperinflation, but also low unemployment rates.
In that year, the rate of unemployment was the lowest in history since the
IBGE began keeping records, 3.85%.
Gilvan crosses the Rio Tiete one more time. Later, after the Anhanguera
Bridge, he arrives at the Sadia factory. "We are only taking resumes,"
says the guard.
"I already have sent one to Viacao Jaragua, four to Viacao Urubupunga.
They send it straight to the files," says Gilvan.
In Lapa, Gilvan passes Unitown, who are asking for drivers only; the
placard for jobs at Redimix, a concrete-making company, has no listing as
does the placard at Tiporvac, who make sausage. At Farmed, a packing
company, there are no jobs posted. Same story at the Alstom factory.
Gilvan stops at a bar, buys a pack of cigarettes, and has his sixth
cigarette of the day. He laments the minute he left Cardal, which was
three years ago. "I had a checking account, a health plan, and free bus
passes. I let go of everything to buy a house."
At Cardal, Gilvan made R$479 per month. He paid R$250 for rent. In
August of 1996, the company created a voluntary dismissal program. Gilvan
went along with it and received R$5,000. He then paid R$4,500 for his
house in Taipas. The plan was to buy the house and soon after get another
job. Gilvan had never been more than three months without work. Ten years
ago, according to Seade, it took on average 14 weeks for someone to find
work. Today, the search takes 39 weeks. After leaving Cardal, Gilvan only
was able to find work in April of 98. In September, he was laid-off.
He returns to his search. He goes underneath the bridge for the Lapa
train. Street venders are selling cookies, trinkets, and the dolls that
you see on Angelica's TV program on Globo. His only daughter Hellen is
crazy about these dolls. "She cries because she wants one," says her mother.
Gilvan goes straight to the Carrefour supermarket, where he already took
his resume once, and then he risks going to a printers near the Marginal
freeway. "If there is an employment line, I'll enter to fill out the
form." Nothing.
He goes in the direction of the Limao Bridge, where he begins to make his
way home. "It's disheartening at times, you know. I walk, and walk, and
nothing happens," he says. "I am sad, but I try to keep the sadness
inside. I don't show anything for anyone." "That's a lie," his wife says
later. "Sometimes he cries."
Gilvan puts the blame on politicians for his situation. "They are bums.
They come up with a solution for everything, except things like Aids,
cancer, and employment." He likes to watch TV and follow the latest
banking scandal going on now. He says that if he were to have $1 billion
like those involved in the scandal have made, he would buy a good house and
give the rest to his relatives.
At 11:40 a.m., he gets the bus to go home. At 1:00 p.m. he arrives, with
a pen in his pocket, a working permit in his pocket, along with a pack of
cigarettes and R$3.75.
By Monica Bergamo
Folha de São Paulo, May 16, 1999
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