BRAZIL:
Films, Music as Damage
Control in Prisons
By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, (IPS)
- Cultural activities in
Brazilian jails these
days include film
screenings, live bands
and libraries with
shelves packed with
books -- part of an
attempt to combat the
consequences of the
appalling living
conditions in prison.
"So far, I think we’re
managing to limit some
of the damage. Because
we know that we’re
fighting a very cruel
system," rapper Marcelo
Yuka, who likes to
define art as "a mirror
of society," told IPS.
Yuka rejects the idea
that this sort of
project contributes to
resocialising convicts.
"But if we get an inmate
to read, if we just
awaken that much in him,
there’ll be a greater
chance that when he gets
out of prison he’ll have
another frame of
reference for his life."
In the songwriters view,
resocialisation is about
"putting the prisoner
back into society,"
without first asking
oneself, "what kind of
society? The same
society that put him in
jail in the first
place?"
Official figures
indicate that there are
over 420,000 people in
the prison system in
Brazil, crowded into
1,052 facilities with a
total capacity for
262,000 inmates. The
overcrowding and
appalling conditions
have led to countless
prison riots.
Yuka said that although
it is really too soon to
talk about results, in
the Rio de Janeiro jails
where the cultural
project has begun to be
implemented, riots and
violent deaths have
declined.
"The way I see it, what
we have to do is fill
the spaces most affected
by violence with
education and culture,
instead of fighting
violence with more
violence, because that
puts ordinary people at
risk in the crossfire,"
he said.
"If we manage to spark
an awareness of a
different point of view
in a prisoner through a
film he watches, we’ve
already changed society
a tiny fraction," he
said, adding that
"people forget that
prisoners will
eventually be let out,
and they may come out
worse people than they
went in."
"I think that to
re-enter society, they
need to come back to
another ambience, with
the tools to cope
differently with
society, otherwise just
as they first went to
jail, they’ll be sent
there over and over
again," he said.
Yuka has always been an
activist for peace. Six
years ago he was left
paraplegic when he was
shot six times, going to
the aid of a woman who
was being mugged. From
his wheelchair he
continues his social
activism, which began
with the critical lyrics
he wrote for his first
band, Rappa, and now
extends to a number of
cultural activities, as
well as his outspoken
social criticism.
"I think learning is
easier through pain, and
makes a deeper
impression. But for that
very reason, I prefer to
learn through love. It’s
a very different way.
The most important
learning I’ve done in my
life was not through the
shooting, but through
the sensitivity I’ve
always had as an
artist," he said.
The Rio songwriter is
now the head of a band
called F.U.R.T.O.
("Theft", an acronym for
Urban Front for
Organised Work). Far
from wanting vengeance
for the crime that left
him in a wheelchair, he
says it has deepened his
conceptual thinking
about how to combat
violence.
"If I could make them
pay for that crime, it
would be just," he said.
"But I believe we have
to combat violence in a
much more modern and
intelligent way, giving
a second chance to
people in the poorest
strata of society,
because the reality is
that our country is
extremely unjust,
socially and
economically."
He puts these ideas into
action through BOCA, a
non-governmental
organisation which among
other things supports
the initiative of
another songwriter,
Rafael Kalil, to have
music groups perform in
prisons, in what is
called the Caravan of
Freedom and Expression.
To speak of "freedom of
expression" would be
untrue, said Kalil,
because there is no
freedom of expression in
jails. That’s why he
calls his project
"Freedom AND
Expression," he told IPS.
The idea of taking live
bands to prisons
occurred to Kalil when
he felt the need "to do
something more than
protest through our
lyrics. We needed
something more incisive,
and that’s when we
decided to go and
perform in jails," he
said.
At first they just
played and left straight
away, but after their
departure "the prison
routine went on." So
Kalil and his group
decided to start leaving
books and raising funds
to expand the library
collections.
According to the
creators of the
initiative, they are not
pursuing grand goals,
let alone miracles, but
in political terms what
they are trying to do is
very similar.
For instance, the
musicians have not yet
managed to bring
together members of
rival drug gangs for a
prison performance.
Members of different
gangs are housed
separately to avoid
deadly conflicts. But
they have won some other
small victories.
Yuka emphasised, for
example, that they have
shown movies that
portrayed one particular
drug gang, to a prison
audience of members of a
rival mafia. "It’s a
slow process, but we’ll
get there," he said
enthusiastically.
He is committed to
struggling against a
system that he perceives
as being cruel, both
"inside and out of the
prisons."
Yuka prefers not to talk
of urban warfare,
because the conflict
being fought out in his
home state of Rio de
Janeiro is "a war
without an ideological
basis, a war for
territory, power and
money." He also says
that culture is a way of
combating these
"groundless, empty"
wars.
"Is that utopic?" Yuka
asks himself, before
concluding "I believe
that by persevering,
some utopias can become
reality."
|
