In Which I Am Involved With the Brazilian Federal Police

The past week yielded many travel rewards: we got our smelly underwear laundered; we liked Boa Vista, Brazil, and the people in it; and our tans have increased to Level Dark Vanilla.

The past week also yielded a whole lotta crazy. I´ll expound.

First, during our first wander through Boa Vista, we were greeted by an army tank full of military personnel, all with guns pointed towards us, doing laps around the central area.

Then, we met Carlos. The full trials and tribulations are posted here, but I´ll just add that I have never met such a concentrated dose of crazy in all my life.

Then, we got in an, um, more serious situation.

We were in Boa Vista originally to photograph the Yanomami, who are an indigenous group known worldwide for their recent fights to keep hold of land, despite governmental initatives to implement gold-mining and development. One of their leaders, Davi, has had help from charity Survival International and has been to foreign governments and the UN to gain support for their causes. I was liasing with Survival to gain tribal contacts and see about shooting some pictures that could be used in their campaigns. ANYWAYS, two of the central organisations involved with them - The Pro-Yanomami Comission and Hutukara (a tribal-run group that is working to increase Yanomami autonomy & self-reliance) - are based there, so we emailed ahead and showed up on their doorstep, hoping to gain their permission to photograph. They were happy to oblige. Only (only!), we´d have to figure out how to hire a plane to fly us in, and we didn´t speak enough Portuguese so we might have to think about a translator, and we´d have to bring our own food and resources, and we´d have to be careful because there was a lot of military shit going on - oh, and we´d have to get government permission by way of a visa to actually enter indigenous lands, which might take weeks or months, and by the way I´m not really allowed to even shoot any pictures, because I´m on a tourist visa and the Brazilian government is very particular about that.

So, like, pretty huge obstructions in our path. Jon and I had a big think about it, and decided maybe it´d be better for me to try to sneak around and photograph at Hutukara, as they just had an influx of young Yanomami men in for a class, which would help teach them computer, communication and other skills so they could work with government officials, etc - a pretty interesting sounding programme, right?

We waited out the weekend, and I decided to start shooting there on Monday, which was fine. I had a fairly fruitful day of shooting, where we scurried around town with the group, getting notebooks and supplies for their upcoming conference with other local indigenous groups, and afterwards Jon and I (both exhausted), wandered back for a lazy dinner at our hotel. We noticed two very jolly, very tanned Brazilian dudes towards the front of the restaurant, and as people trickled out, we were the only ones left. One of them finally turned and asked us where we were from. We chatted, and then eventually invited the two of them to come and sit down at our table. Basic chat ensued, until we asked them if they were here in Boa Vista on business.

Actually, said Long Haired Dude, we´re undercover federal policeman, and we are here in Boa Vista on a huge project involving the indigenous people and the military.

Uh? Sorry?

I am not even supposed to be shooting pictures at all, and here there are some undercover police officers whose job it was to get information about places like Hutukara and the Yanomami, and they are suddenly in our hotel? At our table?

Jon and I fumbled through a half-hour´s more conversation, making small talk and generally thanking the alcohol in our system for taking over. They spoke about the problems with the indigenous people and the military, and we told them about the tank. They said there were more officers coming in, and in the next couple months, 300 undercover officers were coming into Boa Vista, and something big was going to happen.

Then we went back to our room and shat ourselves with fear.

Had they seen us out with Hutukara? Was this their subtle way of saying back off? What were they planning? Had they been following us? Was our hotel room bugged? What should we do?

We then had a long sleepless night, worrying that the door would burst open and we´d be taken into some darkened room for questioning, and then packed off and sent home.

And the next morning, after we awoke and were still alive and in Brazil, we did what we thought was best: we chickened out. I emailed my contacts and told them about the police and the conversation, and said we didn´t want to bring more trouble onto an already very persecuted group of people. That we wouldn´t shoot anymore and we were leaving town.

We had two more awkward days before we could get a flight out, and we spent the whole time worrying we were being followed and watched, and hoping to god we wouldn´t run into the Hutukara and have an awkward moment. Which we did. In the centre of town. In the middle of packed streets. It was the worst combination of deep fear and pretending to be wide-eyed tourists who didn´t know anything about what was going on - and especially since we ran into the cops again nearly everytime we were in the hotel:

Cops: Oh! Hello again! What have you been doing today!
Me or Jon: Oh! Heeeey! Nice to see you! Oh, we´ve just been looking around! Boa Vista sure is beautiful! Yep! It sure is!

Thankfully, we got the hell out.

I feel terribly guilty, especially as this was an important part of a larger project which fizzled out in such an awkard way, but despite the charming, friendly personas of the policeman (who both gave us their phone numbers and invited us to visit them in their hometowns, btw), the mix of federal police, the military, and the indigenous peoples is an often toxic one - and one I certainly don´t want to mess with.

It´s just the sort of situation you don´t ever imagine to find yourself in - knowing information you perhaps don´t want to know but are glad to know nonetheless. It also makes me wonder if I would make a good spy.

I play a pretty good clueless tourist.

Posted by: megantidd in Uncategorized | Permalink