Society

Police and government in the spotlight over controversial Cracolândia crackdown

'Cracolândia,' São Paulo's decades-old open-air drug market, is back in the headlines due to a series of heavy-handed police operations

Photo: Danilo Verpa/Folhapress

Before dawn last Wednesday morning, roughly 650 police officers armed with guns, batons, and stun grenades advanced on a throng of several hundred homeless crack cocaine addicts congregated in an open-air drug market in the center of São Paulo commonly known as “Cracolândia,” or Crackland.

Existing since the mid-1990s, Cracolândia is akin to “Hamsterdam,” the fictional free zone for drug dealing and consumption in Baltimore created by U.S. crime drama The Wire. 

Located in a degraded enclave in the center of Latin America’s biggest city, it is an open area where people can purchase and use crack, cannabis, and cocaine, with minimal day-to-day interference from the police. Approximately 500 homeless people reside there permanently, while roughly 2,000 people pass through the area each day.

Traditionally hidden away in front of São Paulo’s lesser-used but centrally located Júlio Prestes train station, a prior law enforcement operation in March saw the congregation moved a few blocks away to the very public Princesa Isabel Square.

The immediate effect of last week’s police action, however, was a veritable exodus of homeless crack addicts, left to roam aimlessly around the streets of central São Paulo, often clashing with law enforcement.

But perhaps the most eye-opening aspect of last week’s police operation is that a very similar incursion took place almost exactly ten years ago. Officially entitled Operation Suffocation, then-Mayor Gilberto Kassab sent hundreds of armed police officers into Cracolândia in January 2012, only for users and the drug trade to return to the same spot just one month later.

State police and Municipal Guard agents staged an operation raided the 'Cracolândia' last week. Photo: Allison Sales/FotoRua/Folhapress
State police and Municipal Guard agents staged an operation to raid the ‘Cracolândia’ last week. Photo: Allison Sales/FotoRua/Folhapress

“This year’s actions and those of 2012 are practically the same thing, this idea of dispersing people and chasing them on the street, not letting them gather, not letting them sit on the sidewalk, not letting them sleep,” says Daniel Mello, journalist and member of A Craco Resiste, an autonomous collective set up to push back against police violence in central São Paulo. “It’s collective torture, basically.”

“Since 2017, these repressive and violent police actions have become more intense,” says Thiago Calil, Ph.D. in global health and sustainability at the University of São Paulo’s School of Public Health.  “And this year it’s more violent still, as we saw a homeless person die during last week’s operation.”

Amid a subsequent police incursion to disperse crowds gathered in Praça Princesa Isabel last Thursday, three officers advanced on 35-year-old Raimundo Fonseca and shot him in the chest. He died shortly after.

Municipal officials, meanwhile, claim the law enforcement agents were off duty at the time and had no link to the police operation. “It was a mistake, of course,” says Alexis Vargas, the executive secretary of strategic projects of São Paulo’s municipal government. “Now, this police officer is going to have to explain himself. Why was he there? Why did he shoot? I don’t know.”

One week after the police operation to move drug users out of Praça Princesa Isabel, the so-called fluxo established itself in three separate hubs around São Paulo’s city center, each no more than seven blocks from its origin.

“We noticed that other cities around the world were using this technique of dispersion, such as Frankfurt, Vienna, Lisbon, Bogotá, and New York,” Mr. Vargas explains. “When these people are in that large group, using drugs, being led by organized crime, they don’t accept treatment. The criminal groups don’t want that, they use these people as a source of income, but also as human shields.”

There is certain controversy regarding dispersion techniques, however. “Like it was in 2012, when you disperse these people, you make it harder for them to access health services, because you’re breaking the bonds which are crucial in constructing a process of care,” Mr. Calil tells The Brazilian Report.

Putting the police in the spotlight

Noticing the parallels to the much-criticized operations in 2012, a group of São Paulo state prosecutors launched a civil inquiry into recent police actions in Cracolândia. “That operation [in 2012] was a complete failure,” explains state prosecutor Arthur Pinto Filho, one of the authors of the inquiry request. “We were shocked to see the similarities with today, it shows São Paulo is incapable of learning from its own mistakes.”

The operations ten years ago were subject to a similar complaint from prosecutors, amid allegations that the police’s behavior...

Don't miss this opportunity!

Interested in staying updated on Brazil and Latin America? Subscribe to start receiving our reports now!