THE first time that Cosme Machado wore a suit, had a haircut and a shave was for his own funeral.
It was a grandiose occasion, attended by hundreds of mourners, who packed the church in São Paulo to pay their respects to the 56- year-old vagrant.
It was also a bleak, stark contrast to anything that the vagrant living on the streets of Brazil’s industrial and financial hub had known while he was alive.
Like five other homeless people, Senhor Machado was clubbed to death last week with an iron bar as he slept on the pavement outside the Roman Catholic Cathedral. Fifteen other street-sleepers were seriously injured in a vicious spree of attacks blamed on death squads of off-duty policemen seeking to rid the city of its very poorest residents.
Their deaths, like those of street children in Rio de Janeiro a decade ago, have become a focal point for a nation where the vast majority live below the poverty line and where, for many, the social safety net does not exist.
Advertisement
As the smartly dressed body was carried away in a felt-lined, mahogany coffin, Florendice dos Santos, the dead man’s sister, who had not seen him in the ten years he had been sleeping rough, wept inconsolably. “After so much suffering, at least he has left us with dignity,” Senhora dos Santos said.
Thousands were drawn to the funerals of Senhor Machado and the other victims: Givanildo Amaro da Silva, 41, a transvestite known as “Panther”, an unidentified woman and three unidentified men. The killings resemble the murder of six street children sleeping on the steps of the Candelaria church in central Rio in 1993.
“Its shocking that the first time so many people cared for these people was after they were beaten to death while sleeping,” Father Julio Lancelotti, a priest who works with São Paulo’s homeless, said. “But this is not enough. We cannot let these crimes go unpunished.”
President da Silva condemned the crimes as an “abhorrent discrimination which is still deeply embedded in our socially divided society”.
He has vowed to improve the lot of Brazil’s 45 million destitute, but despite attempts by his allies in São Paulo to help the poor, including the founding of 36 shelters for 7,500 homeless, human rights groups complain that not enough is being done.
Advertisement
They claim that the attacks are the work of vigilante squads who want to “cleanse” São Paulo’s crowded and dilapidated centre of the 10,000 people who sleep under bridges and flyovers and in public parks.
They claim that the death squads comprise off-duty or retired policemen paid by shopkeepers to see the streets cleaned up.
The centre, which bustles with commercial activity during the day, is abandoned at night by most who work there and its pavements are lined with people wrapped in rags.
Senhor Machado had been huddled in a doorway, wrapped in a filthy grey blanket, when his attackers struck. Like most of the people with whom he shared the pavements at night, he had come to São Paulo from the poor northeast of Brazil seeking employment. He never found a job or a permanent address.
Many of the homeless still prefer the streets to government hostels, where they are encumbered by rules forbidding alcohol and sex.
Advertisement
Indeed, despite the killings, hundreds still sleep on scraps of cardboard outside the cathedral.
“We are not sleeping at night, we watch out for each other, because we never know what to expect,” said Tatiana, a homeless mother who has raised her two children under a flyover.