Crackland
Two large steel spikes driven into the ground block access to a forsaken road locals call Crackland. Traffickers have forced the metal into the earth to block the armored trucks the police use to raid Jacarezinho – the Rio de Janeiro shantytown that surrounds Crackland. Lookouts for the drug gangs will move the barriers for 50 cents per pair of hands. Three sets labor under the orange streetlight to extract the spikes. Plenty are willing to do the work. The change nearly pays a rock.
Past the barrier is the road, pitch black, the light from the main street seems to flee from here. City workers don't come to fix the shot out street-lamps. They've been told not to, and no boss back in the office will make them cross those that own this road. In the darkness, a woman shuffles. Her one sandal crunches against the dirt as she listlessly moves.
The smell hits before the human eye can adjust to the moonlight. It's the type of scent that has a taste. The kind of smell that makes the stomach drop like a forgotten step on the stairs. Human feces. Cat piss. Death.
Refuse heaped in piles of inscrutable mass seem to move in the moonlight. Like a scene from Armageddon, two horses stand atop the mountain of trash, nudging their noses into the stinking waste looking for food that hasn't yet been claimed by the rats and cockroaches. Then there are the people.
They are the "Cracudos"– the crack addicts. The drug gangs force them to stay in Crackland so that they don't bother the humble residents of surrounding Jacarezinho. The narcos depend on the community's goodwill so they can use it as a base of operations. The Cracudos have to leave Jacarezinho to sell or steal whatever they can to afford the crack rock. When they come back, they must stay down the forgotten road in Crackland. Even amongst the poor, they are shunned.
Despite the hour, some move quickly, agitated, wanting to talk to anyone or anything. Others sit quietly alone or in pairs along the train tracks that cut through the clearing. Every few minutes, they will have to get up and move as a train passes. The noise stops them mid-sentence, and they stare with dead eyes off into the distance. When the train runs off, they again start talking, albeit on a new tangent, like nothing had happened.
Semipermanent shacks provide logistics for the local trade. A central booth occupied by armed men distributes the drug. To the side is another hovel where users can buy empty water cups. With crack rock balanced on top of the cups aluminum seal, the addicts can use a lighter to heat it. The cup acts as a funnel for the fumes to be sucked greedily back into the lungs of its owner.
The men that run Crackland sit unsmiling behind a table with black garbage bags full of plastic-wrapped rocks. Their leader wears a Vasco football jersey and a gold chain around his neck. A gun sits in front of him. To his side is a woman that never speaks. He does not take the crack, but he has the dilated pupils and hard edge of someone that is using cocaine to stay awake. He hates his clients and often loses patience with their needy haggling. When he raises his voice, the users scatter.
Several broken water pipes that run along the tracks spray liquid into the warm air leaving a faint mist. Past the pipes is a hovel larger than the others with construction pallet walls and several blankets tied together to make up a roof. Inside are fifty or so people who flash into existence with the flickering of lighters. There is a sense of pagan religion about the place. A dark mass held in reverence to their god. They sit bent over on boxes organized in lines like pews. The congregation takes turns bowing their heads in submission; their faces' briefly light up as they burn the crack rock.
Many want to talk. Through teeth missing or broken from the drug, they will slur with shocking clarity about their situation. They have chosen this hell voluntarily, living in a state of perpetual present to hide from their past. Carol has AIDs and an abusive boyfriend that pimps her out for drugs. Joao lives with his boyfriend after his religious father kicked him out. Pedro has seven kids that won't talks to him anymore.
Pregnant women are everywhere. Their condition doesn't seem to impede them from getting a fix, cigarette in one hand and cup in another. Some say they can't remember how many children they have. "Must be seven or eight by now," they say. Kids run around aimlessly bullying each other or poking the older residents of Crackland that are too gone to defend themselves. Some kids are holding bottles with solvent in it. They call it Lolo. Inhaling it helps with the hunger.
The state doesn't come by anymore. Three times a month, the Angels of Liberty Charity come to deliver food, spare clothes, and an ear to listen. An evangelical church nearby will sometimes convince some of the addicts to try to detox through christ and the bible. Those fighting to stay clean dance frantically during fire and brimstone sermons. Sweat dripping off their faces as they try to beat the demon off for another day. When they can't dance anymore, the recovering addicts collapse into plastic lawn chairs and stare up at the church's florescent lighting, searching for something. For every ten the Evangelicals pull out, seven will end up right back sitting on the tracks.
Andrea has been with the Evangelicals for two years. Now she is in a pretty dress with a bow holding back clean heir, but she used to work for the drug gangs selling coke. As a kid in Jacarezinho, Andrea saw the girlfriends of the traffickers with their money, beautiful clothes, and motorbikes. She wanted that too. When the gangs trusted her with $25,000 for safekeeping, someone ratted to the police. The police wanted the money. When they caught up to Andrea at her mother's house, Andrea jumped out a second-story window with the bag of cash. Looking up, she saw a cop and a barrel. He shot. The bullet hit. It went through her face, into her shoulder, and out her back. The police took her to the hospital and kept the money. You can see the scar from the bullet on her cheek. It crinkles when she smiles.
When Andrea got out of prison, she expected to see her mother waiting for her. Instead, she found out the ordeal had been too much. Andrea's mother died, and no one had told her. On the day she got her freedom is when Andrea first tried the rock. By the time the Evangelicals pulled her free she had three kids the state had taken at birth. The evangelicals have photos of when they found her, squatting on an orphaned tire, hands around knees and skinny, surrounded by garbage. Andrea says she can't get her kids back but is okay with that. She says she can't be trusted. For her, staying out of Crackland is a decision made every day.