Paulina Cicho

Child Discipline, Punishment and Survival in a Shantytown in Rio de Janeiro,

Brazil, according to Donna M. Goldstein article.

An adults is talking with the child:

-There is no Santa Claus.

-Yes, it is.

-So, why I don't see how spreads the gifts here?

-He is afraid of crossing the favela's border...1

When you think about Rio de Janeiro, the first picture witch comes to your mind is

probably The Carnival- full of colors, tastes, aromas and sounds. You found Rio de Janeiro as

a capitol of samba dancing, football, and city of incessant entertainment . In front of your

eyes appear golden beaches like Copacabana fill up with people busk in the sun, blue-sky

waves brake on the rocks, sunburnt athletic bodies, carefree children playing with their

parents, office blocks almost touching the sky, elegant man wearing in a suit and tie and at the

end -to complete this paradise image- at the top of the mountain- enormous statue of Jesus

with open arms, taking care of any stray sheep. Thats mean that you have a foggy notion

about this ambivalent city. Rio de Janeiro is like a masks from the carnival- at the top

colorful, careless, funny and happy but when you look deeper, when you observe closely Rio

de Janeiro will throw off the mask Under this mask, you will see the dark side of Rio de

Janeiro, this part of the city which government and the society of the paradise part city will

better wish to hide behind the Iron Curtain, behind the wall. On the other hand there are

some organizations, and government programs trying to find the solution of the problem, but

the consequence of the issue is to highest to cope with this social problem. But how look this

another face of Rio de Janeiro? What did you see if you draw a piece of curtain aside? Donna

M. Goldstein in her article Nothing bad intended: Child discipline, punishment and survival

in a shantytown in Rio the Janeiro let us in to a secret and show us the favelas day-to-day

reality. She had seen this cruel, ruthless full of violence word with her own eyes. Living with

1 A joke hared in Rio de Janeiro, http://www.czeszumski.com/rio.htm.

ones family she was trying not only to show us the way of this violence, discipline and

punishment but also to seek for the base of people behavior and finally by comparing it to

understand this peoples life. In my opinion important in research is not just to explain but to

understand anothers world, because the others is not a customer, the user or the drug addict,

the other is the face. This kind of approach can leads us to see more, to go into under the

surface.

Brazils favelas have a reputation for being home to the drug scene, ruthless and

violent people. No one from paradise part of Rio, put even a little toe behind the favelas

border. Favelas are bad places to live in. Police officers, judges and non-favela Brazilians

treat members of the urban underclass as second class citizens. Donna M. Goldstein taking to

consideration based of this class differences. This inequality mostly stem from : colonialism,

slavery, unequal trade relations, rigid class and race system and have served to create the

contemporary mask of domination. With black skin, born in poor family, you have a slim

chance to free yourself from this cruel world embrace. Someone could tell that the world

whenever you exist is never a place of equal chance but in this case, in the relation between

paradise part of Rio and dark part the word equal doesnt exist at all. This is the most

observable when we compare whats mean childhood for people from this two completely

unlike worlds. As Dona M. Goldstein present in her article : Only poor people are killed. The

children of the rich dont sleep of the streets.2 Gilbert Dimenstein the journalist from S.

Paulo in his series of article but also contemporary foggy report from Brazils reveal us a

crushing truth: about 200 000 Brazilian children live on their country street and are in danger

of being slain and over 250 000 are involved in child prostitution. But there are numbers,

shocking numbers but still just a numbers, which are unimaginable. Donna M. Goldstein

become convinced whats hidden behind this numbers, whats these numbers mean in

everyday favelas life. Describing case of Gracas family live, she let us to be closer, to feel

more strongly this reality hidden by numbers and if not understand , so at least not judge the

way of mothers punishment.

Favelas in dictionary explanation is translated as a slum, but words need to be

employed carefully. As far as we consider favelas as a slum we stigmatizing this area.

Favelas are not just a pieces of cardboards, woods and bricks, favelas are not just a

2 Donna M. Goldstein, Nothing Bad Intended: Child Discipline, Punishment and Survival in a Shantytown in Rio de Janeiro, In: Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Carolyn Sargeant, eds. Small Wars: The Cultural Politics of Childhood. Berkeley: University of California-Berkeley Press, pp. 389-415.

places of violence, death, poverty, favela is a people, favela is more than under-class

poor society, favela its a community where people organize life fallowing by their own

rules and low. Here nobody steals from anyone else, you can leave your stuff out and its left

alone. Here were all about strengthening [the community]. If a resident needs a gas cylinder,

we get it for them, if another resident needs a place to live because the rain has destroyed

their house, we support them. Just like when there was the flood, it wasnt the city government

that helped. It wasnt Fernando Henrique Cardoso that helped. The people helped

themselves. Here we have our own way of living [because] when we most need help the world

turns its back... If we dont help who will? The government? Those guys only come during an

election year, shout a lot, throw t-shirts around, and then afterwards they turn their backs on

the favela. 3 Thats the main reason why children so easily become a soldiers. They have

so few other options- economically, educationally, in terms of protection and of status. If

they join once to life with violence, killing and drugs they will stay in this kind of exist for

ever. The sad truth is the fact that children are the easiest plunder for the adults, because

they are still in the stage of development - mentally, physically and emotionally. If you gain

their confidence you might be able to control them. Why they should trust the police, why

they should wish to live behind the favelas border if nobody lend a helping hand to them?

Their home is in favelas community, because as Donna M. Goldstein notice street children

are a nuisance to middle and upper class and differently understood by the poor people,

understood as their own home children.

Childhood is a privilege for the rich and particularly nonexistent for the poor.4 What

this sentences make us realize? Maybe the fact that in the world governed by different legal

regulations, by low of the blood, by drugs, gangs and violence, there is no place for feeling

light-hearted and happy. In the world where twelve years old boy can choose the gun, there is

no place for indulge in self-pity. In the paradise part of Rio boys will able to choose the gun

as they wish but in the computer games reality, and after try to kill each other conquered the

marks. In dark part of Rio boys make the same in real life. The only subtle differences

between this two separated world is the fact that in the first case, even if someone kill you,

you can always put the enter button and be born once again, again, again, and again,

3 Luke Dowdney, Children of the drug trade, 7 LETRAS, Rio de Janeiro 2003. 4 Donna M. Goldstein, Nothing Bad Intended: Child Discipline, Punishment and Survival in a Shantytown in Rio de Janeiro, In: Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Carolyn Sargeant, eds. Small Wars: The Cultural Politics of Childhood. Berkeley: University of California-Berkeley Press, pp. 389-415.

whenever you wanted, but in this second case, theres no enter button, theres no revive,

you have just one life, life protected by nobody.

T: We have to kill the police and the Terceiro Comando so that [people from the]

Terceiro Comando die.

I: Do you think its wrong to kill people?

T: Not if theyre Terceiro Comando. Then we have to kill them.

Fogueteiro, 12 years old5

Fogueterio, twelve years old boy asking if the killing people is wrong, answering : no

if theyre Terceiro Comando. Then we have to kill them. Without the knowledge about the

favelas community, rules and reality probably we may say that this kid in the future will be a

ruthless dictator, and now its a criminal, who should be put into the prison for the rest of his

life. In Europeans way of thinking, how we can say that about twelve years old child? We

probably acknowledge that its just a kid. But theres a big possibilities for this kid to

become a killing machine, possibilities steam from the lack of any another perspectives.

This is the main reason , why the role of the mother its so important. Before we judge the

Graca as ruthless mother, we should try to understand this in terms of a class dimension and

remember the fact that ethic of care its not universal. Jill Korbin suggest in his Child Abuse

and Neglect book, that the cross- cultural record, a natural laboratory of human behavior,

allows the consideration of child abuse and neglect from the perspective of a wider range of

social and environment conditions.6 It must be emphasized that we are determined by the

culture in which we are growing. Authors suggest that the poverty and lack of options make

that extreme form of discipline and punishment as an acceptable behavior. Children from poor

families, from favelas have to learn the real life, to survive in this drab reality. They are

involved in hard work from the earliest age, in order to relieve their mothers or fathers. In

favelas community every member of families have to struggle to survive. In middle and

upper class Brazilians worries about money, work are reserved for parents and home duties ,

like cooking, cleaning, washing are the task for domestic help from neighboring favelas. The

only responsibility for children is to enjoy privileges of childhood. In contrast to favelas

children, children of the rich have time to become an adults, to grow up. In the favela children

are excepted to be produce and to accompanying their mothers in duties as a domestic help for

5 Luke Dowdney, Children of the drug trade, 7 LETRAS, Rio de Janeiro 2003. 6 Jill E. Korbin, Child abuse and neglect. Cross-cultural perspectives. University of California Press, London 1981.

middle and upper class Brazilians. Whats more poor children learn early that their needs are

secondary to those of the rich, because there its not important how old they are, anyway their

mother served food to her employers and their children firstly. Sometimes as Donna M.

Goldstein notice mothers speak more lovingly to children of their employers than to their own

progeny. Thats seem to be irrational if we think about it in European perspective- mothers

always love their children the most and give them as much warmly as they can. But when we

look for this from another perspective, from Gracas perspective well find in her behavior

more rationality than we thought. Mothers always know whats the best for their children.

The favela mothers know intuitively that in order for her children to survive these attributes

like: toughness, obedience, subservience, street smart and in general strength of character are

necessary. The favelas reality its not a fair story reading by parents of upper and middle

class to their children for goodnight, its more like nightmare, makes a scary child of the rich

crying. But even if they are crying mother cuddled them to her chest and say : Easy, my

baby it was just a nightmare, for favelas children every day is an nightmare. In my opinion

its not a truth that they dont need to be adore by their mothers. Even if they childhood

doesnt exist at all, psychically, mentally and emotionally they are still in a child age. In

Pixote movie one scene convey my words: when eleven years boy Pixote- protagonist in a

docudrama about life of urban street children , after killing his friend by mistake, start to suck

a women breast as an infant feeling safely in his mothers arm. Clinical Research from

University of Sao Paulo about probably child psychiatric disorder according to social factors

demonstrated that : Poverty, maternal psychiatric illness, and family violence were all

strongly associated with higher rates of probable psychiatric disorders among Brazilian 7-14

year olds.7 In the light of the conclusions presented above it shouldnt surprise that children

from eleven to twenty two suck their thumbs while relaxing or during moment of emotional

hardship. Regardless of this infantile behavior from time to time, behavior which might be

a regressive desire for the lack of real childhood, favelas children have to be resistant not

only to physical but in first place emotional injury. Mothers from this community are aware of

rigid principles ruled this streets world. As far as the children of the rich are overprotected

from life of the street, the poor children literally claiming the street as they own. How cruel

this world have to be even if during the kite-flying game, the time when they have possibility

to be just a carless children thus they fight each other to cut down somebody elses kite.

Taking the foregoing into account we shouldnt evaluate Gracas way of punishment, because

7 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC55573/

as Dona M. Goldstein state: The ethos of the poor is focused on survival in a harsh world.

Survival ethos leads in turn to harsh form of discipline and punishment.8 In our way of

understand child discipline expelling daughter for hit brothers is an abstract, but as Graca

explain: Flavia had brought the violence of the street into a home. Some of Gracas

action like forcing children to eat their own shit, will be recognize in our western culture as a

braking the childrens rights and in consequent someone might took away her children.

Despite the proximity with upper and middle class(working for them), favelas mother are

active producers of their own forms of justice, shaped by their own life experience. Dona M.

Goldstein by being in the middle of their life, being in the context of this culture found

Gracas action as logical, because as she emphasize this is a part of her attempt to train her

children before they become adults. In favelas reality mother task is to be more terrifying

than the gang leader- to protect and keep their children out of prison and alive.

D. M. Goldstein in her research applied an interpretation which we might called by

Clifford Geertz thick description9. She was trying to understand belief and actions of

people from foreign culture in their natural environment, what is more she attempted to grasp

and interpreted them and strived to understand how and why favelas community behavior is

shaped in such and such away. We cannot understand the meaning of culture or discover the

cultures import when as Wittgenstein noted: We cannot find our feet with them.

At the end of this essay I would like to return to the joke witch I putted at the

begging of my work. If I could answer for the adults question I would say that Santa Claus

is not afraid of crossing favelas border, he doesnt spread the gifts there because there is no

child to be given, behind favelas border childhood doesnt exist at all.

8 D.M. Goldstain, Child Discipline 9 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Culture, BASIC BOOK, New York 1973.