By subscribing, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy Sustainable Fashion Editorial of Sossego, through the Brazilian project carried out by Cabrochas promoted an artistic experience on Praia do Sossego tropical island and municipality in Pernambuco With the aim of empowering the community’s intellect and fostering an intergenerational exchange the result of this meeting between artisans and creative youth is powerful in an exclusive editorial highlighted how recycling art empowers the community by transforming waste into useful items especially in a beach area where recycling is crucial She shared that the experience brought recognition and appreciation for her work creating a positive impact on her relationship with her family “People started to recognize me more and value my artisanal work,” she said The dates displayed for an article provide information on when various publication milestones were reached at the journal that has published the article activities on preceding journals at which the article was previously under consideration are not shown (for instance submission Marine Pollution BulletinCitation Excerpt :This observed trend aligns with expectations attributing the increase to intensified recreational activities associated with higher summer tourism rates (Mansui et al. This ML levels was similar to previous assessments along the Latin American coast including local studies (Alvarado-Zambrano et al. ML levels were higher in the dry sand strip compared to the wet portion in both seasons (p < 0.05; see Fig All content on this site: Copyright © 2025 Elsevier B.V. Advertise | Donate Submit a tip Submit an Op-ed the legendary Montreux Jazz Festival will come to Miami for the first time in the festival’s nearly 60-year history This new addition to Miami’s vast and growing music festival scene will be hosted at the waterfront Hangar at Regatta Harbour in the picturesque Coconut Grove See performances from Grammy-award winning singer-songwriter Jon Batiste and Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Daryl Hall best known for his chart-topping 1982 single “Maneater,” alongside other appearances from Israel Houghton and Daniela Mercury The inaugural Montreux Jazz Festival Miami experience will take ‘Canes on a sonic journey across various genres of the present and past — including but not limited to jazz Friday and Saturday performances begin at 6 p.m. while Sunday performances will start at 5 p.m the festival will also feature an intimate jam session after the last performances where musicians come together to perform free-flowing improvised arrangements for festival-goers Tickets for the festival range from $199 for one-day general admission to $719 for one-day VIP access access to an exclusive lounge and specialty bars and other surprises to be revealed throughout the three-day gathering Availability for tickets is limited and dwindling The festival has already sold-out the three-day access pass option and the intimate venue holds a maximum capacity of 1,500 guests With the recent announcement of a second performance from Batiste on Saturday in addition to his Friday appearance This year’s Miami expansion does not mark the first time the Montreux Jazz Festival has ventured beyond its humble beginnings in the Swiss countryside The festival has previously expanded to other countries such as Monaco In an interview with the Miami New Times co-chair of the inaugural Montreux Jazz Festival Miami and Miami native Jeremy Arditi said bringing the festival to the city was a “natural fit.” “The other important part of what makes Montreux so magical is the setting It takes place on the lakefront,” Arditi told the Miami New Times “So being close to the water was kind of non-negotiable for us We wanted to find a place that was close to water in a city that was synonymous with its waterfront.” The inaugural Miami version of the festival pales in comparison to the scale of the original Montreux Jazz Festival the second-largest annual jazz festival in the world after the Montreal International Jazz Festival Welcoming around 250,000 visitors over a two-week period the original festival has welcomed a plethora of legends to its stage Arditi told the Miami New Times event organizers wanted to hold the Miami version on a smaller scale to recreate the intimacy of the original and ensure that the festival could grow in future years in light of the inaugural year’s success For all the ‘Canes out there who are looking for a musical festival experience this March away from the EDM-heavy Ultra Music Festival the Montreux Jazz Festival Miami may be a perfect fit Tickets for the Montreux Jazz Festival Miami can be purchased via the festival’s website, https://www.montreuxjazzfestivalmiami.com/en/ The Miami Hurricane is the student newspaper of the University of Miami in Coral Gables The newspaper is edited and produced by undergraduate students at UM and is published in print every Tuesday and online everyday during the academic year The 17th-century Dutch artist was the first professional painter to record the New World – and the view was far from exotic In the 16th and early 17th centuries assorted European states signified their claims on tranches of North America with the addition of a simple prefix: along the eastern seaboard cropped up New Sweden the lure of Brazilian sugar plantations proved too much for the newly formed Dutch West India Company and a successful invasion against the ruling Portuguese and subsequent consolidations meant that by the middle of the decade the Dutch controlled a large and profitable swathe of the country arrived in the territory as the governor-general of New Holland He was determined not just to oversee but to improve and record his new fiefdom so among his retinue he included the German natural scientist Georg Marcgraf the physician Willem Piso and two painters Eckhout was tasked with recording the people of the colony and Post its landscapes Post thus became the first professional artist to show what the terrain of the New World looked like [See also: Mildred Eldridge devoted her life and art to a windswept natural world] Nothing of Post’s early work is known so it seems likely he owed his place in the Brazil entourage to his architect brother Pieter Pieter Post was one of the architects responsible for building Johan Maurits’s new palace in the Hague – today the Mauritshuis museum – constructed during the governor’s South American sojourn were the lessons of the Dutch landscape school Post (1612-1680) was born in Haarlem to a father who was a stained-glass painter and who may also have been responsible for the artistic education of his son Haarlem was a particularly glittering nugget during the Dutch Golden Age and Post’s immediate peers there included Frans Hals who would later paint his portrait; the uncle-and-nephew landscapists Salomon van Ruysdael and Jacob van Ruisdael; and Isaac and Adriaen van Ostade Salomon van Ruysdael specialised in views with low horizons and land cut by rivers under big skies – exactly the sort of format Post would go on to apply to his Brazilian pictures The country’s landscapes became Post’s speciality even after his return to the Netherlands in 1644 of which only seven are now known to exist What is striking about them is how unexotic they are: some incidental details of palm trees and slaves aside the scenes could pass at first glance as images of the wet this was of a piece with Johan Maurits’s intention to imbue his colony with the civic attributes of the Netherlands gardens and bridges and then promptly had the new town renamed Mauritsstad in his own honour not just for the long-established Portuguese Catholics and the monastic orders that were allowed to keep their privileges but for the Jewish population too To embed the Portuguese further he included them alongside his Dutch followers in new local councils extend to the indigenous Tupi people and the African slaves who continued to work in brutal conditions on the sugar plantations that funded the entire enterprise the first he executed after his arrival and now on loan to the Mauritshuis Post shows just this social and racial structure Two white settlers and their horses are attended by a pair of African slaves with baskets of fruit where Maurits first intended to build a new capital and one of the figures signals to Fort Orange over the river for a boat in which to cross When Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum acquired the painting in 1879 claimed the man on horseback was Maurits himself in his “Brazilian costume”; in fact he is Portuguese so this is a painting of the world the Dutch settlers inherited It is an unexpectedly simple and topographical image with all ideas of the picturesque studiously ignored the water takes on the dun colour of the sky A European river scene would be full of boats and a sense of recession; here the water is empty and the far bank unfurls with little differentiation and with only a spine of palm trees to give variety stating little more than: here is the landscape no signifiers of the benefits of Dutch suzerainty and nothing to hymn the glory of his patron [See also: Walter Sickert’s fascination with the mundane, gaudy and sordid] When Post was back in the Netherlands he continued to produce Brazilian scenes finding a ready market among former colonists drawing on the many sketches he had made in situ he created composite landscapes with brighter blue skies and greener foliage than he had painted in Brazil and in which slices of real views were exoticised with added flora and fauna a group of 34 unknown Post watercolours and drawings of animals were discovered in the North Holland Archives in Haarlem He drew most of these animals from life – Maurits had helpfully established a menagerie to house his collection of South American wildlife – and used them to pep up his pictures as large as a common calf; they are very ferocious and strong”) Post’s landscape drawings were also turned into engravings for an illustrated edition of Rerum per octennium in Brasilia while in 1679 no fewer than 27 of his pictures of Brazil were given by Maurits to the Sun King as a peace offering at the end of the six-year Franco-Dutch War Post’s success was such that he was made treasurer of the Haarlem painters’ guild and included by Arnold Houbraken in his book The Great Theatre of Dutch Painters and Paintresses at some point Post turned to alcohol – perhaps prompted by the early deaths of two of his sons – and this may be the reason he did not travel with Maurits to Paris to give his Brazilian paintings to Louis XIV in person and why for the last decade of his life he seems to have stopped painting altogether Post’s demise mirrored that of the Netherlands’ overseas territories: Angola was retaken by the Portuguese in 1648 Brazil in 1654; in 1664 the British took New Amsterdam and shortly afterwards renamed it New York and in 1674 the Dutch West India Company itself was declared insolvent Post’s matter-of-fact paintings record a transient moment and are not just scrupulously descriptive but prescient [See also: How the Ukrainian painter Arkhip Kuindzhi laid out the spirituality in nature before Russian eyes] This article appears in the 18 May 2022 issue of the New Statesman, Putin vs Nato Mining giant Anglo American has plans to dig for copper nickel and manganese on indigenous lands in the Brazilian Amazon has submitted applications alongside two of its Brazilian subsidiaries This makes it harder for the applications registered with the National Mining Agency (ANM) to be directly linked to Anglo American The three companies submitted a combined 296 applications since the 1990s for research and availability on indigenous reserves (IRs) although about a third have since been withdrawn including areas that are home to isolated indigenous peoples such as the Yanomami in Roraima and the Kayapó and Tucumaque in Pará Almost all of the applications date from the 1990s when authorities first began entertaining the idea of allowing mining on indigenous lands The author of a bill to that effect proposed at the time was Romero Jucá minister and ex-president of the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) A new bill, recently forwarded by President Jair Bolsonaro to Congress revives that push to allow mineral exploration on indigenous reserves and eliminate the veto power of indigenous peoples The most recent applications filed by Anglo American are for copper exploration inside the Sawré Muybu Indigenous Reserve It submitted five applications from 2017 to 2019 indicating it was hopeful of the kind of deregulation now being proposed by the Bolsonaro administration located on the banks of the Tapajós River near the city of Itaituba The same is true for hundreds of other indigenous lands in Brazil where efforts at official recognition have stalled due to political pressure and lobbying from agribusiness illegal logging and the interest of multinationals like Anglo American the indigenous reserve also faces threats from the São Luís do Tapajós hydroelectric dam but which if completed would flood part of the indigenous land Asked about why it is seeking to mine copper inside the Sawré Muybu Indigenous Reserve and its view of Bolsonaro’s Bill 191/2020 Anglo American declined to respond to Mongabay Mongabay sent a list of 10 detailed questions to Anglo American regarding the nearly 300 petitions on indigenous reserves that company has filed along with its subsidiaries Anglo American said only that it has “filed applications for mineral research in the Amazon based on available geological data The responsible authorities will decide whether or not to grant us the authorization to conduct mineral research Anglo American only conducts mineral research in properly authorized areas.” It did not say whether its shareholders around the world were aware of its applications to mine in the Amazon We have our own government which should be respected by everyone We will not give up this fight until our problems have been solved.” At a historic meeting of indigenous leaders in January the Munduruku accused Bolsonaro of genocide “We have come to denounce the President of the Republic of Brazil, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, for committing and encouraging genocide, ethnocide and ecocide,” they said “We are here to say that this president is killing us at increasing rates depriving us of our rights as written in the Federal Constitution of 1988 Bolsonaro is fostering our deaths through mining prospectors (who hire gunmen to kill us) hydroelectric dams railroads (Ferrogrão) and the leasing of Indigenous Lands.” Anglo American and its subsidiaries Tanagra and Itamaracá withdrew 111 applications to explore for gold nickel and copper on various indigenous lands Most of those applications were for areas inside the Trincheira Bacajá Indigenous Reserve in Pará and the Igarapé Lourdes and Sete de Setembro indigenous reserves in Rondônia But those areas remain available for future prospecting under National Mining Agency rules; the same company can file a new application if it wants “All interested parties can participate in the Availability process even the company that has withdrawn the application which will then participate in the Availability process on equal footing with all other applicants,” the NMA said in response to a question from Mongabay Anglo American confirmed to Mongabay its withdrawal of the applications in question but did not confirm whether it intends to once again bid for the same areas “The company conducted a reassessment of its portfolio and withdrew all applications for areas of research on indigenous lands by 2015 Current applications for research that happen to border on indigenous lands can present blocks with interferences in these territories it is up to the National Mining Agency (ANM) to correctly demarcate the blocks outside of the indigenous areas or reserves,” Anglo American said Three applications by Itamaracá to mine for gold in indigenous reserves in Rondônia were blocked in 2018 following a public civil action The areas under concern were in the Sete de Setembro and Zoró Indigenous Reserve and the 10-kilometer buffer zone of the Roosevelt Indigenous Reserve the Federal Public Ministry said uncertaintly caused by the mining agency “has driven speculation on the indigenous lands of the Cinta Larga people and contributed to the perpetuation of violence against the community.” It said the conflict was “a result of the consequences of mining in these areas with the inevitable degradation of the environment and this has had devastating effects on the indigenous populations including the siltation and contamination of rivers and streams with mercury the transmission of diseases like tuberculosis influenza and leprosy and the change of the community’s traditional habits.” Tanagra and Itamaracá submitted 27 applications to explore for gold inside the National Reserve of Copper and Associates (Renca) a vast protected area that straddles the states of Pará and Amapá and one of the best-preserved regions in the Amazon All the applications refer to the Rio Paru D’Este Indigenous Reserve The petitions were blocked in 2017 after the area was opened to exploration by then-President Michel Temer, who was forced to backtrack after a major international backlash against the measure spanning 46,450 square kilometers (18,000 square miles) two of which are indigenous reserves and three fully protected conservation units Studies by the WWF show that around 30% of Renca can be mined for minerals including gold Mining companies may soon get the chance to do so if Bolsonaro’s bill is passed and Renca’s status as a national reserve is rescinded or its protected area reduced Banner image of an iron ore mine run by Anglo American in the state of Minas Gerais This story was first reported by Mongabay’s Brazil team and published here on our Brazil site on March 20 The “fortress conservation” model is under pressure in East Africa as protected areas become battlegrounds over history and global efforts to halt biodiversity loss Mongabay’s Special Issue goes beyond the region’s world-renowned safaris to examine how rural communities and governments are reckoning with conservation’s colonial origins and trying to forge a path forward […] Brazil’s prisons are a human-rights disaster Detainees—even those who have not been convicted of a crime—are routinely held in overcrowded Overcrowding in the prisons of the northeastern state of Pernambuco is especially dire The prisons hold more than three times as many inmates as their official capacity in conditions that are dangerous During visits to Pernambuco’s prisons in 2015 a researcher from Human Rights Watch entered a windowless cell without beds in which 37 men slept on sheets on the floor A tangle of makeshift hammocks made it difficult to cross the room tying himself to the bars of the door so that he wouldn’t slump over onto other men combined with overcrowding and lack of adequate medical care The prevalence of HIV infection in Pernambuco’s prisons is 42 times that of the general population; the prevalence of tuberculosis is almost 100 times that of the general population and ill detainees are often not taken to hospitals for lack of police escort The prisons in Pernambuco are severely short-staffed with fewer than one guard for every 30 prisoners where the average ratio is one for every eight Brazil’s Ministry of Justice considers appropriate a ratio of one guard to every five prisoners At one prison in Pernambuco that holds 2,300 inmates—a “semi-open” facility where some inmates are allowed to come and go for work—only four guards are on duty during each shift The extreme overcrowding and lack of sufficient staff make it impossible for prison authorities to exercise adequate official control within the prison grounds they have adopted a practice of delegating authority to a single inmate within each pavilion—fenced-in areas within the prison walls that usually contain multiple cell blocks and more than 100 inmates The chosen inmates are commonly referred to as “keyholders” because they are given the keys to the pavilion and the cells within Prison staff retain control only outside the pavilions and require them to pay for places to sleep and two state officials Human Rights Watch interviewed They deploy “militias” made up of other inmates to threaten and beat those who do not pay their debts or who question their rule Prison officials either turn a blind eye or participate in the keyholders’ rackets and receive kickbacks Extreme overcrowding also puts detainees at risk of sexual violence Human Rights Watch interviewed two detainees who said they were gang raped and reported the attacks to guards who ignored them an investigation was opened only after a representative of the state’s Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office pressed the authorities to take action A major factor contributing to overcrowding in Pernambuco’s prisons has been the failure to provide detainees with “custody hearings.” These hearings in which a detainee appears before a judge promptly after being arrested are required under international law but have not—until recently—been provided to detainees in Pernambuco or most other states in Brazil The hearings allow a judge to make an informed determination about whether a detainee should be held or released pending trial and also to examine detainees for evidence of police brutality detainees waiting to see a judge for the first time may spend many months in overcrowded cells Pernambuco began providing custody hearings to detainees allegedly caught in the act of committing a crime in Recife Pernambuco joins a growing number of states that have begun holding custody hearings with the assistance of the National Council of Justice A previously published Human Rights Watch study of a similar program in the state of Maranhão found that custody hearings helped prevent the unlawful arbitrary imprisonment of suspected nonviolent offenders while they awaited trial they released about 60 percent of arrestees on the grounds that pretrial detention was not warranted when they decided primarily on the basis of police reports without seeing the arrestee judges released pre-trial suspects only about 10 percent of the time Nearly 60 percent of the nearly 32,000 people held in Pernambuco’s prisons have not been convicted of a crime Suspects accused of such non-violent crimes as possessing small amounts of drugs or of minor theft are frequently held in the same cells as convicted large-scale drug dealers and gang members The practice of incarcerating pre-trial detainees with convicted criminals violates international and Brazilian law.  Severe delays in judicial processing of cases violate the rights of detainees and fuel prison overcrowding One man spent six years in a Pernambuco prison without ever seeing a judge for any kind of hearing; another was held in prison a decade beyond completing his sentence according to the state’s Public Defender’s Office which filed habeas corpus petitions to get both men released Pernambuco needs to take urgent action to guarantee that conditions within its prisons comply with international and Brazilian law and unsafe conditions endured by Pernambuco’s prison inmates One crucial step is implementing custody hearings throughout the state The state should also eliminate judicial delays that keep its cellblocks full of people who should not be there in the first place Pernambuco should immediately stop the practice of holding suspects awaiting trial in the same cells as convicted criminals Brazil’s federal government can help by supporting Pernambuco’s efforts with financial assistance from its prison fund and Brazil’s Congress should approve a pending bill that mandates custody hearings throughout the country Detailed recommendations are set forth at the end of this report This report is based primarily on information collected during visits to four prisons in Pernambuco in February 2015: two at the sprawling three-prison complex at Curado Human Rights Watch interviewed 40 inmates and former inmates and representatives of non-governmental organizations Human Rights Watch conducted additional telephone interviews with state and judicial officials We have withheld the names of the detainees and their relatives interviewed to protect them from any possible retaliation from other inmates or prison officials and in those cases we have used pseudonyms Some state officials also requested that we not identify them by name and we have also indicated that in the relevant citations All interviewees were informed of the purpose of the interview and that their interviews might be used publicly No incentives were offered or provided to persons interviewed All interviews were conducted individually or The interviews were conducted in Portuguese we also drew on court filings and decisions Pernambuco’s prison system is the most overcrowded in Brazil, according to the Ministry of Justice.[1] In August 2015, it held almost 32,000 prisoners in facilities designed for about 10,500.[2] The reality is even worse than official figures indicate. Two prison directors told Human Rights Watch that, in at least two prisons, authorities count some makeshift bunks built by detainees as official beds.[3] In the Iguarassu prison, even counting such bunks, authorities acknowledge fewer than one available sleeping space for every seven men.[4] Under international and Brazilian law, pretrial detainees must be held separately from convicted prisoners,[5] but in Pernambuco they are housed together which typically consist of several cell blocks and a gated yard all encompassed within the prison’s outer walls Cells are not locked within pavilions and some of them do not even have doors At the time of Human Rights Watch’s visit in February 2015, one facility— the Presídio Agente de Segurança Penitenciária Marcelo Francisco de Araújo (PAMFA)—held 1,902 detainees, though it had space, officially, for only 465.[6] A PAMFA pavilion reserved for gay and transgender men had an official capacity of 50 but housed 170 Some were sleeping on or under makeshift wooden bunks Others slept on the floor in a narrow yard a few paces away from an open sewage trench The most extreme overcrowding occurs in punishment cells in prison disciplinary wings Such cells hold detainees who have committed an infraction but also detainees who have been threatened by other inmates and have had to be moved from their pavilion for their own protection While their purpose is to house people for short periods of time those cells are packed with inmates held for long periods in inhumane conditions One windowless cell, in the “punishment and transfer” area in Presídio Juiz Antônio Luiz L. de Barros (PJALLB) at Curado, has zero bunks; at the time of Human Rights Watch’s visit, all 37 inmates slept on the floor without mattresses.[8] Some men stay in those conditions for more than two months, according to a representative of the state Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office.[9] and awarded police officers bonuses for drugs and weapons seized and for measurable drops in the local crime rate—all of which acted as incentives for police to sweep many more people into prison Extreme overcrowding has a severe impact on the health of detainees Respiratory diseases are common in Pernambuco’s prisons, according to data from the Justice Ministry’s National Prison Department[18] and Human Rights Watch research. Pernambuco’s prisons have 2,260 cases of tuberculosis per 100,000 people detained—a rate almost 100 times higher than in the general Brazilian population.[19] At Penitenciária Professor Barreto Campelo, at Itamaracá, so many new detainees are arriving that personnel cannot test them all for tuberculosis, the prison director said.[20] Inmates are only tested after symptoms appear by which time others—living in cramped conditions with poor ventilation—have contracted the illness “Overcrowding makes it impossible to eliminate the disease,” the prison director conceded Pernambuco’s inmates are HIV-positive at a rate more than 42 times that of the general Brazilian population: 870 per 100,000 inmates, according to the National Prison Department.[21] Scabies, a contagious skin infestation caused by burrowing mites, is also common, said a nurse at the PJALLB prison.[22] Human Rights Watch interviewed two men who suffered skin rashes on their feet, although they did not know the exact nature of their illness.[23] Both said they were given only anti-inflammatory creams as treatment One of them had being enduring the rash for three years The Pernambuco prison system employs only 161 health professionals to care for more than 31,000 detainees, including one gynecologist for a population of 1,870 female prisoners, according to the National Prison Department.[24] Understaffed and without enough medicine, prison infirmaries often offer only rudimentary care, prison personnel told us.[25] Prison authorities deploy guards to control the outer perimeter of the prison but have abdicated responsibility for control of the prisons’ interiors to inmates In a purported effort to maintain order inside the pavilions they give the keys to cells and pavilions to prisoners officially called “representatives” but known by inmates and prison officials alike as “chaveiros,” or “keyholders.” Keyholders are often prisoners convicted of serious crimes such as homicide, chosen by prison authorities because they are able to command respect from their fellow inmates, according to interviewees.[27] They hold the keys even to the cells in disciplinary wings Keyholders abuse their power in various ways—for example, by selling places to sleep. Because official cement bunks are scarce, inmates buy from keyholders “barracos”—wooden cubicles built by previous inmates—for 600 to 2,000 reais (about US$570), former detainees and relatives of current detainees told Human Rights Watch.[30] The cubicles close to the ceiling are cheaper because they are hotter and smaller Inmates get to them by climbing makeshift wooden ladders “barracos” are simply divisions made of sheets within cells Such sheet-walled barracos are also sold and rented One woman, Regina T. (pseudonym), told Human Rights Watch that she paid 2,000 reais for a cubicle for her son, a 20-year-old sentenced to more than 4 years for possessing marijuana worth 50 reais (US$14).[31] “I gave the money to the keyholder myself,” said Regina T Some keyholders charge inmates a weekly “tax,” extorted on a threat of beatings, which ranges from 5 to 15 reais (US$1 to US$4), interviewees said.[32] Some inmates buy drugs on credit from the keyholders, and family members outside are forced to bring money on weekends to pay the debt. Sandra C. (pseudonym), a 63-year-old woman who sells cosmetics on the streets and earns about 1,000 reais (about US$300) a month, told Human Rights Watch that a keyholder called her from a smuggled cell phone and demanded that she come up with the money to pay her son’s drug debt.[37] “Either you pay or you buy a coffin for your son,” she said the keyholder told her on which she was still paying installments “It’s the law of the jungle in there,” said Maria R. who takes care of her nephew because her sister—the man’s mother—is paralyzed Keyholders often accuse inmates of infractions, interviewees said, to stifle threats to their power or to appropriate the inmates’ cubicles.[43] “If a keyholder goes to the administration and says that a person attacked someone, brings witnesses, we believe him, and punish the violator,” a prison director told Human Rights Watch.[44] Keyholders fail to protect inmates from one another Prisoners who are newcomers or particularly vulnerable may be housed in cells in disciplinary wings but two detainees told Human Rights Watch that they were gang raped while being held in such cells which they shared with scores of other men and which were governed by a keyholder “I cried for help and the men were shouting and singing The attackers had knives and threatened to kill him if he talked “Prisoners have to suffer,” answered the guard, who did nothing about it, Jorge S. said. Almost a month later, the representative of the state’s Human Rights Ombudsman met Jorge S. during a prison visit and took him to a police station to report the attack.[46] Jorge S said he asked for an HIV test because the men had not used condoms but he was not taken to the infirmary to undergo the test believes he was targeted by other detainees because he is from the state of Bahia and had nobody in the COTEL prison on whom he could rely for protection Similarly, a 34-year-old homosexual pretrial detainee named Paulo L. said he was gang raped in November 2014 in a punishment cell that he shared with 67 men at the PAMFA prison.[47] Paulo L had been sent to the punishment cell after fighting with another detainee “The prisoner who was in charge of the cell forced me to have sex with three men,” Paulo L When he told his story to Human Rights Watch in February of 2015 and had not spoken to a public defender since being arrested 18 months earlier on charges of trying to break into a home The prisons in Pernambuco on average have one guard for every 31 prisoners, according to the latest data from the National Prison Department.[50] That is the worst ratio in Brazil, where the average ratio is one guard for every eight detainees. Brazil’s Ministry of Justice considers appropriate a ratio of one agent to five prisoners.[51] “Because of the growth in the number of prisoners in the last decade, the state unfortunately abandoned the inside of the prisons,” Eden Vespasiano, secretary of prison administration for Pernambuco, told Human Rights Watch.[52] “I am going to work for the state to get back in,” he promised Pernambuco is trying to double the number of guards and the number of cameras in prisons “Everything that is happening is because the state let evil take over [the prisons],” prosecutor Marcellus Ugiette told Human Rights Watch.[53] as victims of torture and other abuses have a timely opportunity to raise allegations with the judge and show them any possible physical evidence of mistreatment On August 14, 2015, Pernambuco instituted its own custody-hearing program, but only in Recife, the state capital. One of the judges who designed the program told Human Rights Watch that the judiciary intends gradually to broaden custody hearings to the rest of the state. Authorities have not yet set a timetable.[57] Brazil’s Congress is considering a bill, introduced in the Senate in 2011, that would mandate custody hearings throughout the country.[60] Inmates in Pernambuco often endure long delays at every stage in the processing of their cases, both before or after trial, and they are sometimes held in prison long after they have served their full sentences.[61] An insufficient number of judges, public defenders, and prosecutors is to blame for the delays, a public defender and a judge told Human Rights Watch.[62] Rodrigo da Silva Gonçalves, for example, was detained in September 2007 on charges of homicide, interrogated by police a month later, and then granted no legal proceedings for six years, according to public defender Marianna Granja, who filed a habeas corpus petition for Goncalves’ release in November 2013.[63] Nine hearings were scheduled and cancelled because prison authorities did not bring Gonçalves to the courthouse or because the prosecutor’s witnesses did not appear in court Gonçalves was released in May 2014 as a result of the habeas corpus petition Another man, who had no lawyer or family to advocate for him, completed his sentence in 2004 in Curado –then called Presídio Professor Aníbal Bruno– but spent an additional decade behind bars, until the Public Defender’s Office filed a habeas corpus petition that gained his release, Granja said.[64] Detainees enraged by judicial delays rioted at the three facilities at Curado in January 2015, castigating by name one judge in particular whom they held responsible for delays.[65] Two detainees and a military police officer died in the violence, and the state government declared a state of emergency in the prison system, according to media reports.[66] In March 2015, as a stopgap initiative, 48 public defenders from Pernambuco and other states reviewed cases in Curado. The state judicial system also assigned judges outside Recife to work overtime, temporarily, to reduce the backlog. Yet, as of September 2015, Afadequipe, a local NGO that helps detainees and their families, was continuing to receive numerous complaints from inmates in Curado about delays in their cases.[67] Living conditions in Pernambuco’s prisons violate the country’s obligations under both the ICCPR and the Convention against Torture (CAT), which prohibits not only torture but cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. Housing pre-trial detainees with convicted criminals also violates international law.[75] The United Nations Human Rights Committee likewise has reaffirmed that the ICCPR requires governments to provide “adequate medical care during detention.”[79] And the Committee Against Torture has found that failure to provide adequate medical care can violate that treaty’s prohibition of cruel In May 2015, the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice adopted revised and updated standards on prison conditions, now called the Mandela Rules.[80] The rules are based on the premise that prisoners are owed respect for human dignity They are entitled to safety and non-discrimination and to having their health and other needs met They must be provided adequate space in which to live official title—“representatives”—but it maintained their previous role and in 2014 the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered Brazil to take protective measures including guaranteeing the security of detainees The state of Pernambuco needs to undertake profound reform of its prison system after many years of neglect Human Rights Watch urges Pernambuco authorities at multiple levels to institute the following reforms: This report was researched and written by César Muñoz Acebes senior Brazil researcher at Human Rights Watch It was reviewed and edited by Daniel Wilkinson managing director of the Americas division; Margaret Knox senior editor/researcher; Maria Laura Canineu director of the health and human rights program; Aisling Reidy The report was prepared for publication by Kathy Mills and other individuals that provided information for this report We are also very grateful to Valderize Campos a representative of the state Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office and director of Afadequipe (Associação de Familiares dos Dependentes Químicos Presos e Apenados do Estado de Pernambuco) and prosecutor Marcellus Ugiette for their collaboration in the research of this report [1] Departamento Penitenciário Nacional, “Levantamento Nacional de Informações Penitenciárias,” June 2014, http://www.justica.gov.br/noticias/mj-divulgara-novo-relatorio-do-infopen-nesta-terca-feira/relatorio-depen-versao-web.pdf (accessed September 1 [2] On August 21 Secretaria de Desenvolvimento Social e Direitos Humanos de Pernambuco “Relatório do Fluxo Migratório das Unidades Prisionais,” August 21 [3] Human Rights Watch interview with Carlos Alberto Cordeiro director of the Penitenciária Agro-Industrial São João (PAISJ) [4] Secretaria de Desenvolvimento Social e Direitos Humanos de Pernambuco [5] International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) adopted December 16, 1966, G.A. Res. 2200A (XXI), 21 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No.16) at 52, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966), 999 U.N.T.S. 171 entered into force March 23, 1976, http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/ccpr.aspx (accessed September 23 10; American Convention on Human Rights (“Pact of San José reprinted in Basic Documents Pertaining to Human Rights in the Inter-American System OEA/Ser.L.V/II.82 doc.6 rev.1 at 25 (1992) http://www.oas.org/dil/treaties_B-32_American_Convention_on_Human_Rights.htm (accessed September 23 be segregated from convicted persons.” Article 84 of Brazil’s Penal Execution Law (Law 7,210 1984) states that “pretrial prisoners shall be held separated from convicted prisoners.” [6] Secretaria de Desenvolvimento Social e Direitos Humanos de Pernambuco “Relatório do Fluxo Migratório das Unidades Prisionais,” February 11 [7] Human Rights Watch interview with Roger Moury [8] According to Valderize Campos a representative of the state Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office the three cells in that area held detainees who had committed an infraction detainees who could not be sent to pavilions because of fears they would be attacked by other inmates for some reason and detainees who had come to court hearings in Recife from other prisons outside the city Pernambuco’s Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office is an office within the state’s Department of Justice and Human Rights In addition to working for the Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office Valderize Campos is director of Afadequipe (Associação de Familiares dos Dependentes Químicos an NGO that helps families of detainees who are current or former drug users [9] Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Valderize Campos [10] Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Valderize Campos [11] Ibid [12] Ibid [13] The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Mandela Rules) state: “Every prisoner who is not employed in outdoor work shall have at least one hour of suitable exercise in the open air daily if the weather permits.” Rule 23(1) https://www.unodc.org/documents/commissions/CCPCJ/CCPCJ_Sessions/CCPCJ_24/resolutions/L6_Rev1/ECN152015_L6Rev1_e_V1503585.pdf [14] Article 52 (IV) of Brazil’s Penal Execution Law (Law 7210 1984) states: “Prisoners shall have the right to spend two hours a day in open air outside the cell.” [16] These figures are based on data included in the 2008 to 2014 editions of the Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública a publication by the Forum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública The 2015 prison population and capacity data come from tallies kept by the department in charge of prisons in Pernambuco: Secretaria de Desenvolvimento Social e Direitos Humanos de Pernambuco [17] Human Rights Watch interview with Marianna Granja [18] Departamento Penitenciário Nacional, “Levantamento Nacional de Informações Penitenciárias,” June 2014, http://www.justica.gov.br/noticias/mj-divulgara-novo-relatorio-do-infopen-nesta-terca-feira/relatorio-depen-versao-web.pdf (accessed September 1 [20] Human Rights Watch interview with Carlos Cordeiro [21] According to the latest data from Brazil’s National Prison Department the rate of HIV in the general population in Brazil is 20.4 cases per 100,000 people compared to 870 cases per 100,000 people in Pernambuco’s prisons Departamento Penitenciário Nacional, “Levantamento Nacional de Informações Penitenciárias,” June 2014, http://www.justica.gov.br/noticias/mj-divulgara-novo-relatorio-do-infopen-nesta-terca-feira/relatorio-depen-versao-web.pdf (accessed September 1 [22] Human Rights Watch interview [23] Human Rights Watch separate interviews with two inmates [24] Departamento Penitenciário Nacional, “Levantamento Nacional de Informações Penitenciárias,” June 2014, http://www.justica.gov.br/noticias/mj-divulgara-novo-relatorio-do-infopen-nesta-terca-feira/relatorio-depen-versao-web.pdf (accessed September 1 [25] Human Rights Watch interviews with prison staff at PAISJ prison [26] Human Rights Watch interview with Pedro T [27] Human Rights Watch interviews with a state official who asked not to be identified and a man who spent nine years in four prisons in Pernambuco (name withheld) [28] Human Rights Watch interview with Jairo Cândido de Melo [29] Human Rights Watch interview with Carlos Cordeiro [30] Human Rights Watch interviews with two former detainees who were held in four prisons –Barreto Campelo and Presídio Frei Damião de Bozzano (PFDB)- and the mothers of three detainees held at the time of the interviews in PJALLB [31] Human Rights Watch interview with Regina T Regina also provided us with a copy of the sentencing order in the case which included the four-year term imposed on her son and the fact that the underlying offense was possession of 50 reais of marijuana [32] Human Rights Watch interviews with an inmate at PAISJ prison 2015 and the mother of an inmate in Barreto Campelo prison [33] Human Rights Watch interviews with two former detainees who were held in four different prisons –PAISJ and PJALLB– and the mothers of three detainees [34] Human Rights Watch interview with a prison director in February 2015 The director talked to Human Rights Watch on condition that we do not reveal his identity [35] Human Rights Watch interviews with a former inmate held in PFDB prison (name withheld) [36] Human Rights Watch interview with Valderize Campos a representative of Pernambuco’s Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office [37] Human Rights Watch interview with Sandra C [38] Human Rights Watch interview with Valderize Campos [39] Human Rights Watch interviewed two women and a man who were relatives of three detainees who were beaten by militias because of drug debts and two former inmates who witnessed similar attacks while in prison (names withheld) [40] Human Rights Watch interview with Maria R [41] Human Rights Watch interviews with a state official who asked not to be identified and a man who spent nine years in four prisons in Pernambuco (name withheld) [42] Human Rights Watch interview with a prison director in February 2015 [43] Human Rights Watch interviews with two former inmates (name withheld) [44] Human Rights Watch interview with a prison director in February 2015 [45] Human Rights Watch interview with Jorge S [46] Human Rights Watch interview with Valderize Campos [47] Human Rights Watch interview with Paulo L [48] Human Rights Watch interview with a prison director in February 2015 [49] Human Rights Watch interview with Roger Moury [50] Departamento Penitenciário Nacional, “Levantamento Nacional de Informações Penitenciárias,” June 2014, http://www.justica.gov.br/noticias/mj-divulgara-novo-relatorio-do-infopen-nesta-terca-feira/relatorio-depen-versao-web.pdf (accessed September 1 [51] Departamento de Monitoramento e Fiscalização do Sistema Carcerário e do Sistema de Execução de Medidas Socioeducativas “Mutirão Carcerário Local no Complexo Prisional do Curado/PE [52] Human Rights Watch interview with Eden Vespasiano [53] Human Rights Watch interview with Marcellus Ugiette [55] Official site of the judiciary of the state of Maranhão, “Implantação das audiências de custódia é recomendada na Carta de Recife,” June 22, 2015.  http://www.tjma.jus.br/tj/visualiza/sessao/19/publicacao/409441 [56] For an analysis of the Maranhão program, see Human Rights Watch, “Brazil: Prison Crisis Spurs Rights Reform,” April 8, 2015, https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/04/08/brazil-prison-crisis-spurs-rights-reform [57] Human Rights Watch telephone interview with judge Mariana Vargas [58] Departamento Penitenciário Nacional, “Levantamento Nacional de Informações Penitenciárias,” June 2014, http://www.justica.gov.br/noticias/mj-divulgara-novo-relatorio-do-infopen-nesta-terca-feira/relatorio-depen-versao-web.pdf (accessed September 1 [59] ICCPR art 10; American Convention on Human Rights [60] Senate Bill PLS 554/2011 [62] Human Rights Watch telephone interview with public defender Marianna Granja [63] Human Rights Watch interview with public defender Marianna Granja This case is also included in the CNJ review of cases referred to two footnotes above [64] Human Rights Watch interview with public defender Marianna Granja “Sobe para três número de mortos em rebelião em presídio no Recife,” January 20, 2015, http://g1.globo.com/pernambuco/noticia/2015/01/sobe-para-tres-numero-de-mortos-em-rebeliao-em-presidio-no-recife.html (accessed September 1 [66] See, for instance, G1, “Sobe para três número de mortos em rebelião em presídio no Recife,” January 20, 2015, http://g1.globo.com/pernambuco/noticia/2015/01/sobe-para-tres-numero-de-mortos-em-rebeliao-em-presidio-no-recife.html (accessed September 1 [67] Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Valderize Campos [68] ICCPR 9(3) (“Anyone arrested or detained on a criminal charge shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or release”); and American Convention on Human Rights 7 (“Any person detained shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to be released without prejudice to the continuation of the proceedings”) [69] UN Human Rights Committee CCPR/C/GC/35 (December 16, 2014), para. 32 and 33, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=15236&LangID=E (accessed September 23 [70] UN Human Rights Committee [71] Criminal Procedure Code of Argentina [72] Criminal Procedure Code of Chile [73] Constitution of Colombia [74] Constitution of Mexico [75] ICCPR [76] International Covenant on Economic [77] Rick Lines “From equivalence of standards to equivalence of objectives: The entitlement of prisoners to health care standards higher than those outside prisons,” International Journal of Prisoner Health 2006 [78] United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment No. 14, The right to the highest attainable standard of health, E/C.12/2000/4 (2000), par. 34, http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/gencomm/escgencom14.htm (accessed September 23 [79] Pinto v Brazil was one of the 40 member countries of the Commission in 2015 Members are elected for a three-year term by the Economic and Social Council one of the six main organs of the United Nations established by the UN Charter in 1946 Human Rights Watch is a 501(C)(3) nonprofit registered in the US under EIN: 13-2875808 IO / USPThe oceanographic vessel: custom-made for studies on the continental shelfIO / USP the first oceanographic vessel built entirely in Brazil begins its first scientific expedition this month off the coast of Pernambuco between Itamaraca Island and the Fernando de Noronha archipelago which was built to increase oceanographic research capacity in the state of São Paulo is part of a University of São Paulo Oceanographic Institute (IO-USP) project under the FAPESP Multi-User Equipment Program (MEP) The Alpha Delphini cost a total of R$5.5 million: R$4 million provided by the FAPESP MEP program and the remainder financed by USP “The characteristics of the Alpha Delphini oceanographic vessel are ideal for most Brazilian research institutions because it is of medium size has a relatively low cost compared to oceanographic ships and is able to perform studies on the continental shelf which are in great demand,” said Michel Michaelovitch de Mahiques Alpha Delphini’s autonomous range is 10-15 days and it can operate throughout a range of 200 nautical miles from the coast the Alpha Crucis oceanographic research ship also began operating © Revista Pesquisa FAPESP - All rights reserved Por um futuro em que as pessoas vivam em harmonia com a natureza Photos and graphics © WWF or used with permission. Text available under a Creative Commons licence You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience Real estate purchases all over the world continue to be at high prices despite the pandemic and the consequences of the crisis that caused there are some regions in specific countries where investors can find properties at a really low price Alabama is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States security system and external area with lawn are offered at an average price of 60.000 dollars while larger ones can be found at the price of almost 100.000 dollars CEOWORLD and ‘CEOWORLD magazine’ are trademarks of The CEOWORLD magazine LTD na exposição fotográfica “Hiromi Nagakura até a Amazônia com Ailton Krenak” - Foto: Tânia Rêgo/Agência Brasi For the Indigenous thinker and intellectual Ailton Krenak, the “apocalyptic” scenario Brazil has faced in recent weeks due to the cloud of smoke covering most of the country is the result of a culture spread during the administration of Jair Bolsonaro (Liberal Party) A member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL, in Portuguese) since May, the writer says that the dismantling of environmental regulations coupled with the discourse of the former president gave birth to a “mentality that you can set fires [to forests] and people end up embracing it,” he says in an interview with the Bem Viver TV show on Wednesday (11) a smoke that's throwing a kind of acid rain over Paulista Avenue [in the city of São Paulo].” Krenak is taking part in the São Paulo International Book Fair Kuján e os Meninos Sabidos (Kuján and the Smart Boys in partnership with illustrator Rita Carelli The children's book tells the story of the “surprising reunion between the creator and his human children.” The story is already known to the public because it was recorded by Brazilian music icon Gilberto Gil in the song Tudo é Pra Ontem “I told Emicida [a Brazilian rapper] this story about anteaters he invited Gilberto Gil to sing that line… Gil's voice is unique Asked if the Lula administration can reverse the culture inherited from Bolsonaro, Krenak believes the country is still politically divided, preventing a change in the scenario. There are many people who don't have the slightest respect for the transition we made between the threat of a dictatorship and the effort to redemocratize Brazilian life We can't evaluate anything for now.” In the interview, Krenak talks about his meeting with singer Lia de Itamaracá, on September 7 – Brazil’s Independence Day –, and also comments on the trivialization of the term “ancestral future." On September 7, you were at the Mátria Amada [a pun on Pátria Amada – Beloved Nation – which is part of the Brazilian national anthem] event and performed alongside Lia de Itamaracá. How was that meeting? For me, being with Lia de Itamaracá was already a gift and even more so with the possibility of having the audience we had. An impressive audience in Sorocaba [in the state of São Paulo]. It was a deeply poetic experience outside of the institutional framework. There were other events in Sorocaba on the same day. We were competing for the public, but there were a lot of people. It was a great experience to do Mátria Amada. And people talked a lot about our duo, there are still a lot of people listening to Lia, singing her cirandas [the kind of music Lia is known for]. Was it your first meeting with Lia de Itamaracá? It was my first face-to-face encounter with Lia, this entity, she is an entity. Can you imagine this? She's over 80 years old and ciranda is almost a synonym for her. And she sang a song that has a Brazilian version and a Spanish version, which is the one Mercedes Sousa sings, Duerme negrito. Lia sings the Brazilian version, which is Dorme pretinha and she talks about a mother who is a fisherwoman. But at the time, Lia changed the last stanza to say 'dorme indinho' [Sleep, Indigenous boy, in a rough translation], so the people laughed a lot at the joke she played on me on stage and I had the privilege of dancing with her. You were also recently in Minas Gerais at the Paracatu International Literary Festival. There, you spoke a little about the importance of literature, which can help us propose other ways of living on Earth. Do you feel that since you took over a seat at the Brazilian Academy of Letters, people have started to look at you not only as a philosopher, an Indigenous intellectual, but also as a writer? I didn't imagine that joining the Brazilian Academy of Letters would uncover this kind of revelation for a public that had already seen me talking around. But I don't think they related it much to literature. I think the tribute that the Paracatu Literary Festival paid to the writer, to the author Ailton Krenak, highlighted the importance of this kind of literature we've been doing for the last… ten years, I don't know… It is as if we hadn't written or published anything before. Does this have to do with the understanding that in the Indigenous world, orality is a way of transmitting knowledge? Is there any prejudice about it? Indigenous literature is very recent in Brazil. In Latin America and North America, people have been writing since the 1960s and 1970s. Here in Brazil, it's a recent event. [It started] Maybe 20, 30 years ago. Eliane Potiguara and Daniel Munduruku are the authors who published most frequently in the 1990s. So, let's imagine 25 years of literature. It's a very short time, the Indigenous authors are all alive. I mean, in the past there were no authors talking about literature written in books. There was an idea that they were short stories, fables, but that they weren't literature, that nobody wrote novels, nobody wrote chronicles, essays, short novels. And now there's this understanding that all these forms of writing are possible and can be done in any context by Indigenous authors, in the Amazon, in northeastern Brazil, southern Brazil… This is expanding. There's still a long way to go. In fact, Millôr Fernandes used to say that Brazil has a huge past ahead of it. At the São Paulo International Book Fair, you’ll be launching your first children's book, Kuján e os meninos sabidos. This is a story that has already been presented in Emicida's work with Gilberto Gil, right? I told Emicida [a Brazilian rapper] this story about anteaters, and he kept the story with him. Then, he invited Gilberto Gil to sing that line… Gil's voice is unique, isn't it? In fact, I had already prepared this text for a dossier for the Minas Gerais Academy of Letters, a dossier on Indigenous poetry and literature in Minas Gerais. That was a year before I took a seat at ABL. On Saturday (14), you will be at the São Paulo International Book Fair with the theme “What is the Ancestral Future? Is it still possible to get there?” This term, ‘ancestral future’, is becoming more and more popular. Do you feel that? Yes, I'm impressed by the scale of the whole thing. When Alok, who made his album called Futuro Ancestral (Ancestral Future), went to launch it in New York, recorded it in Amazon… and got all this repercussion, I said: “Damn, I thought I was the only guy who was looking at this narrative about the idea of a perspectival future”… But the statement caught on. Everyone now wants to relate it in some way to the idea of ancestry.  Even other ethnic groups that aren't Indigenous. You start to see people talking about this ancestry as a common heritage. It is not linked to any specific identity. As my grandmother used to say: Nobody was born from the hollow of a stick.  Faced with all this that we're experiencing in relation to the environmental disaster, do you think it's possible to think about this ancestral future? There is no blue sky anymore. We covered the country with ashes, a smoke that's throwing a kind of acid rain over Paulista Avenue [in the city of São Paulo]. I told you that the three days I stayed in Sorocaba I didn't see the sky, and when the sun goes down, you see fire in the sky. It looks like we're witnessing some kind of apocalypse. It's a horror that we've come to this conclusion. The global climate is hot, but we don't need to set fire to the forest the way people are doing, do we?  So, isn't it possible to reach an ancestral future? The very idea of getting there is nonsense. The ancestral future doesn't point in any direction like the idea of the future that has historically been understood, the Cartesian idea of the future. The ancestral future is not a prospect in space, in time. Ancestral future is a spiral, as [Brazilian writer] Conceição Evaristo says, or as other narratives from peoples who were not totally colonized.  The idea of an ancestral future is above all counter-colonial, as Nego Bispo used to say. It's another epistemology, another narrative and sometimes it bothers me how people repeat it in a way that almost doesn't understand what they're talking about. Getting there, in the ancestral future, has to do with that phrase I told you about Millôr Fernandes: the history of our country has a huge past ahead of it. We must know our past. Ancestry is not something we're going to look for in the future, in the prospective future. It's something that we have to be able to rescue from everything we have in terms of knowledge, technology, and understanding of life, so that we can inhabit the land that we've already talked about: it's getting warmer, it's not going to offer the same climatic conditions for our children. Imagining the future as a place where we are heading prospectively is a mistake. We will continue to “eat” the Earth if we think we are going somewhere else. We must think about decreasing, about degrowth. We have to think about getting involved with the biosphere of planet Earth, and not developing. The idea of a prospective future comes from the idea of development. It's a machine in motion. We are not machines.  Do you think the fire spreading across the country – with evidence of being criminal and ordered by groups of people – is a new phenomenon in Brazil or has it always existed and we just didn't realize how it was taking on such proportions? No, it hasn't always existed. We've always been welcomed by a country with many forests, the Atlantic Forest, the Cerrado biome, the Amazon rainforest… Now we have several biomes being destroyed. And we can thank this to a guy who took over the Ministry of the Environment who said it was time to “let the cattle through” [a reference to Bolsonaro’s minister of environment Ricardo Salles]. Is it impossible to separate what is happening now from what has been promoted over the four years of the Bolsonaro government? Of course, because when you propose something, it doesn't happen immediately. It hangs around, reverberates, people spread it little by little, and it becomes a kind of local culture, a mentality that says it's ok to set fire, that you can steal the forest, that you can wipe out the Pantanal biome. All this becomes a deleterious culture, a poor culture and people end up embracing it. And that happened in addition to dismantling the entire environmental surveillance and control service. ICMBio [Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation] was practically dismantled, Ibama [Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources], the control agencies, they were all dismantled, creating a vacuum. Now, this fire is spreading in the vacuum created by this predatory culture. And do you believe that the current Lula administration with Marina Silva [minister of the environment and climate change], Sônia Guajajara [minister of Indigenous peoples] and other exponents of the environmental struggle has managed to combat this culture you were referring to, or is it still too little to assess? I prefer to think in other terms. I prefer to think that Brazilian reality is still divided, many people don't have the slightest respect for the transition we made between the threat of a dictatorship and the effort to redemocratize Brazilian life. And we're a long way from peace, so we can't evaluate anything for now. All original content produced and editorially authored by Brasil de Fato may be reproduced, provided it is not altered and proper credit is given. All original content produced and editorially authored by Brasil de Fato may be reproduced, provided it is not altered and proper credit is given. It is a priority for CBC to create products that are accessible to all in Canada including people with visual Closed Captioning and Described Video is available for many CBC shows offered on CBC Gem some of the control over overcrowded cells is often given to criminals The NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report denouncing the lack of control and hazardous conditions facing prison facilities in Pernambuco these prisoners exchange mattresses for money and control drug trafficking inside the penitentiaries and bathrooms,” HRW representatives declared after going on a tour through a number of detention facilities in the state Overpopulation is associated not only with the shortage of beds but also with poor management Based on data released by the Ministry of Justice the NGO points out that the prison population in Pernambuco totals 32 thousand people with beds amounting to no more than 10.5 thousand making Pernambuco the Brazilian state with the highest level of prison overpopulation 59% of detainees have not been brought to trial yet HRW paid a visit to two prisons in the Curado complex 45km away—the Barreto Campelo Penitentiary and the Agro-Industrial São João Penitentiary (PAISJ Interviewed during the visit were directors In one of the prisons in the Curado Complex a cell in the disciplinary ward had six cement beds to serve 60 interns shirtless because of the intense heat and humidity the researcher encountered interns sleeping in corridors and shared areas “in any space they find available in the refectory including on top of tables and cement benches on the floor.” The penitentiary has enough capacity for 630 inmates but house as many as 2.3 thousand people “There are a lot of people in jail who shouldn't be there,” he argues referring to the amount of people who spend years in prison before awaiting trial or who remain in jail after their sentence is over but are still serving in the correctional facility Sending pretrial detainees to a separate area is another strategy “detainees have to collect water in buckets for drinking They go to taps in the yards that have running water only three times daily The excessive number of people and unhealthy conditions contribute Prisons in Pernambuco are plagued with 2,260 cases of tuberculosis among every 100 thousand people—a rate a hundred times higher than Brazil's national average HIV affects 870 cases in every 100 thousand people—42 times as high as the rest of the population the study says that detainees are exposed to several forms of violence The chaveiros cut deals with fellow prisoners to extort money from others and ensure the payment of drug debts “Prison officials either turn a blind eye or participate in the keyholders’ rackets and receive kickbacks,” the document mentions Among the steps that could be taken to tackle the problems Muñoz advocates the implementation of custody hearings: whenever a case of flagrante delicto takes place the offender must be heard in up to 24 hours by a judge who should evaluate whether imprisonment could be replaced with temporary liberty “A detainee must not be given authority over other detainees.” Pernambuco's Secretariat for Justice and Human Rights released a response to the Human Rights Watch even though it did not officially receive any reports on the state's prison situation The statement also says that the secretariat regards the problem with the urgency and responsibility it demands and that actions “will not be led by social organizations.” The secretariat further announced that Pernambuco's prison population totals 31,919 detainees and 11,196 beds like the need for more professionals working in social reintegration Officials also declared that the state government has already implemented custody hearings in Recife “with figures on the adoption of several penalties alternative to detentions with rates above 39%.” The measure has been ruled by the Supreme Court (STF) across a number of states as the top court understands that incarceration before conviction should be exceptional partnership between the State Secretariat for Health and local health secretariats has strengthened preventive initiatives against tuberculosis in prison buying medication and carrying out collective action for the prevention and control of the disease The note further mentions that the state has been working to curb'subordination by tightening up inspection procedures purchasing equipment aimed at weapon control “always having as our goal the observance of prisoners' rights and integrity.”