Note: Portuguese translations are located at the bottom of the story.
Linha Vermelha *
7 Years Old
It was the morning before Christmas and I woke up half on my sisters’ bed and half on the cool floor. I hated the heat; it made me clammy and sweaty. All I wanted was to feel the cold ground, so most mornings my parents would find me on the wood floor drooling. We were in Buzios, two hours away from our apartment in Rio, in our family beach house. My mom wasn’t talking to me because I had been caught with one of my Christmas presents already opened. It was a toy dog that came with a little bathtub so you could wash and style his long black and white fur. I was already putting bows on him when my mom burst in the bathroom door, jerked me by hair, bent me over and slapped me until I had no tears left to cry. I waited in silence until she left the house and then called my grandma to specifically describe the red hand prints glowing on my bare cheeks.
Our house was in a fenced-off condominium where every condo had its own color. Ours was mustard yellow. Next door was the red house, with our closest family friends that lived near us in the city. Every day we would spend hours playing hide-and-go-seek with every kid within the awkward stone fence of our condominium. I loved it but hated it. My sister was five years older than me, along with most of the kids. So being the young one, I was always the café com leite (Or that’s what they would call it). I was never allowed to hide by myself, I always had to have a buddy. Today it was Antonio, the boy from the red house. He was six years older than me with black hair down to his shoulders and he owned a bright green boogie board. When we ran off to go hide he grabbed my hand and took me into his house. We ran into his bedroom. I was completely against it; I thought there were rules about not hiding in houses, but we walked in and he shut the door. I had my favorite bathing suit bottoms on, pink with orange butterflies. Even though it was ten in the morning, it was already so hot my skin felt like butter melting in the heat. I crouched in the corner and started holding my breath in anticipation of being found. Antonio looked at me and laughed; bent down and picked me up like a baby and whispered in my ear that it was way safer under the sheets of his bunk bed. Hidden underneath the soft white sheets lined with animated frogs, I curled up in the fetal position and waited. That was the point of the game. He pressed his body up against my bare back and whispered,
‘Take off your bottoms and I’ll let you borrow a pair of my swim trunks.’
His tongue slid in my ear, so wet and slimy. I just wanted him to stop so I wiggled out of his reach. His strong hands reached forward grabbing and scratching my body which was curled like a ball of rubber bands. I focused on holding my breath because I didn’t want to be found by anyone, especially my sister. Ignoring my small gesture of fear, he kept freely wandering with his hands. All I wanted was to run away, I didn’t understand what he was looking for. I started crying and counting the frogs that lay over my face….1….2….3….4.
He jumped out of bed, as if an unsuspected noise had startled him, and told me to go home in quick words.
“Vai pra casa,” he coughed the words out as if he had been eating dry wall.
The game was over. I ran as fast as my little feet could across the wet grass, all I could see was mustard yellow, and all I wanted was to be inside that house. I tried to run by my mom, but she grabbed me mid step into my room and asked me what was wrong. I couldn’t tell her, I didn’t know what was wrong, why I was crying, why I felt so strange. He didn’t hurt me, but all I could say to her was—Antonio.
“Monica Isabella Da Silva, I told you if you want to play with the bigger kids you can’t be such a baby about it. So stop crying and go to your room, you’re grounded remember?”
10 Years Old
It was Monday morning and Zélia, my nanny, woke me up with a sweet kiss on my forehead. She knew how grumpy I got in the mornings so she made sure to always ease me out of sleep. I opened my blurry eyes and her face came into focus. Zélia had been my nanny since I was born and ever since then we’ve been inseparable. She had dark black skin that shone with the slightest touch of a sun ray, and poofy hair that she always let me play with. Every morning before school she made my breakfast and then we walked to the beach, molded sand, and swam until I had to go back home to eat and go to school.
I jumped out of my bed, stuffed my sandwich down my throat and began picking through my bikinis to find the perfect one for a Monday morning. I went with my green and blue bikini with pink polka dots and bows that I had just gotten for my tenth birthday.
When we got back to the apartment I ran all sandy and wet straight into the shower trying to avoid my mom. I hopped into my room and my Colégio do Santo Agostinho Catholic uniform was laid out on my bed. I carefully put on my white-collared shirt first and tucked the edges into my underwear. I always saved the skirt for after lunch. I hated messing up the creases; it always had to look perfect or else I would refuse to go to school until Zélia ironed my uniform again.
“MO, your food is ready come in the kitchen, the driver is already waiting downstairs—you’re going to be late!’ My mom’s voice echoed through the hallway of our apartment.
I sat at the table and looked down at my plate. Rice, beans, some meat already cut up for me and corn. I had completed piling my first perfect bite on my fork when my mom came over and slapped a spoonful of cut up beets in the middle of my plate. I watched as the beets bled out and infected my entire plate with a disgusting purple ink. I hated beets. And she knew that. A knot began floating up my throat. I looked at her with quivering lips.
“I’m not hungry anymore, can I go to school?” A tear snuck out of my eye and landed on my white pressed shirt.
“What do you mean you’re not hungry? Start eating right now! Do you know there are kids out there starving while you’re in here being a brat?” The smell of the beets started to make me nauseous.
“Mom, I hate beets I don’t want to eat them.” She walked over to me, ripped the fork out of my hand and began mixing my whole plate together as if she were mixing raw eggs. She swooped up a huge purple pile, grabbed me by my throat right underneath my jaw to open my mouth, stuffed the food in and slammed my jaw shut. I gulped down the purple baseball mess.
“Now lick your plate clean, or I won’t let you go to school.” And she left the room.
Trying not to throw up and not cry, I gulped down my food one forkful at a time between gasping breaths. From the kitchen, Zélia eyes sympathized with me, but I knew she couldn’t say anything. My mom stormed back into the kitchen with a huge cut out from a newspaper and taped it on the refrigerator.
“Look garotinha, this is for the next time you think you don’t want to eat your food.” I looked up and my eyes met the newspaper clipping. It was a young kid, so skinny it looked as if his dark skin was made of plastic that wrapped and stretched around every one of his bones. He was reaching up screaming in pain. I grabbed my back pack, ripped the picture off the refrigerator and threw it at her. I reached for my skirt and slammed the door behind me.
“I hate you!” I looked at the door for a second, put on my skirt, and ran down the stairs into the safety of my personal driver’s car.
18 Years old
“Hey, wait up jerk!” I ran laughing after my dad who had just told me he had a surprise waiting for me. I caught up to him and jumped on his back, never feeling too old for a piggy back ride. We took the elevator down to the garage floor and he covered my eyes. I took a couple of blind steps until he stopped me.
“Ok. 1, 2, 3…open!”
My eyelids slid apart and allowed the image of a brand new car twinkling under the garage lights appear. My heart started beating out of my chest and a huge smile spread its wings on my face, cheek to cheek. I squeezed my dad so tight, we almost fell down. I hadn’t asked my parents for anything on my birthday and I knew my mother didn’t have anything planned because we had been on bad terms since the day I was conceived to this earth, so this was more than I could have ever expected.
“It’s got air conditioning, six CD player, airbags, bullet-proof windows. Everything my girl needs to roam around. I have to work late tonight in the city, so I wanted you to have your present early in case you’re going out.”
I was overwhelmed. I loved my dad so much. Even though he worked most of the time, he always came through when something was important—like the date of my birth which my mother tried every day of her life to forget.
We went back upstairs and I did everything possible in order not to face my mom. I knew that some snide comment was waiting about my new present, the fact that she was popping me out on her 18th birthday instead of getting a new car had me permanently placed on her bad side. I went into my room, slipped on a silk green and purple dress I had custom made for my birthday. I brushed my long brown hair, grabbed a pair of earrings and rushed out of the house heading over to my best friend Luciana’s place with the new car smell intoxicating my nostrils.
Luciana ran out of her apartment building and jumped into the passenger seat.
“This car is amazing! Now let’s go get your birthday present.”
I had no idea what Luciana had up her sleeve. She guided me through the streets of Rio and finally led me onto the Linha Vermelha, one of the main highways leading out of the city and also one of the most dangerous places to be at any given time. Two rival favelas lined up along the cement walls, little deteriorating shacks that were actual houses for people piled on top of one another, reaching as far as the horizon on either side. My instant reaction was to duck so leaving only my eyes to see over the steering wheel like my dad had taught me, but I laughed out loud when I remembered the bullet-proof windows. Luciana made me take an exit right into the mouth of one of the favelas and I felt my body tighten up.
“Luciana, what are we doing here, I don’t want to get shot!”
“It’s ok, I know a guy who said he would hook us up. Go around the corner and stop by that bar right there. We don’t even have to get out, just crack the window.”
I came to a slow stop and two dark skinned guys began leering towards my car. They leaned over on the passenger side of the car and Luciana rolled down her window almost two inches.
“E aí, garotinha. You got the money?”
“Right here, Miguel. Thanks for the hook up.”
He slid a bag of white powder into her delicate hands. Luciana handed the bag over to me and smiled.
“Happy birthday!”
We picked up a couple of our friends and headed over to one of Rio’s most popular clubs, The Baronetti. We were so well-known at this club that we cut the entire line and got led straight to one of the V.I.P. tables in the upper lounge. As soon as we were situated, everyone threw their bags of coke in the middle of the table and the drinks started to flow.
Around two in the morning, I felt as if I were out of my own body. I pulled my hair down and let myself float through the dance floor. My feet and legs skimmed the ground as I swayed my body to the rhythm of the music. Every guy I came in contact with I would exchange a few words, rub my body up against him, feel my warm tongue touch the inside of his mouth and move on to the next. The dimmed lights made my skin feel as if it were glowing under a heated night sky; it pulsed along with my heart and the bass of the music. And every now and then I would lean down to the closest glass table, inhale a line of the white powdery substance, and order another drink. At five in the morning it was time to leave, and we pushed one another out of the front door of the club.
“Luciana, will you drive my car? I can barely see straight!” I laughed as I held on to one of the annoyed bouncers.
We all jumped into the car. Luciana driving, I was in the passenger seat, and three more squeezed in the back. As we sped through the city one of our favorite songs came on the radio and we all started to sing, or rather shout, in unison
“Já sei namorar, já sei beijar de língua, agora só me resta sonhar. Já sei onde ir, já sei onde ficar Agora só me falta sair.”
I inched down my window and felt the damp air hit my face. I rolled my tongue and felt its sweetness on my lips, inhaled it through my nostrils.
“Eu não sou audiencia para solidão. Eu sou de ninguem, eu sou de todo mundo e todo mundo é meu também.”
My hair whipped wildly, hitting my face, sticking to my cool neck. I felt the sweat lingering on my skin with my fingers, and then brought them to my mouth tasting them. I looked back at my friends and they were all screaming the lyrics at the top of their lungs. Happiness over took me and tears began streaking down my face.
“Não tenho juízo, se você quer a vida em jogo eu quero é ser feliz. Não tenho paciência pra televisão, eu não sou audiência para solidão.”
I was so happy I wanted to grab Luciana and give her the wettest kiss on the cheek. My eyes turned towards her and realized her head was slumped down, and her hands no longer controlled the wheel. I looked straight ahead and all I saw was a blank white wall heading straight for me.
A Linha Vermelha (Part II)
8 Years Old
A Cidade de Deus gave birth to me within its filthy shacks. They stood slammed together covering every inch of hillside in Rio de Janeiro like a jigsaw puzzle gone terribly wrong. I soon grew to know this as paraíso perdido. I know who my mother is or should be, but she has always been too busy taking care of kids in rich families in the city instead of raising her own. She left me in the dirty (literally) dirty hands of my older brother Miguel. My father, who knows who my father is, my mom has been passed around by so many guys in the favela I'm probably the kid of about 50 guys combined if that’s possible. But I guess to each his own when you have to make a living, and that’s exactly what Miguel taught me to do.
I had just turned eight two days ago, well at least that’s what my brother had told me because he remembered I was born sometime in the beginning of summer. So every year he picked a random day for me and we celebrated. He’s seven years older than I am and had been a gaviotinha in our favela for almost a year gaining some high status. Every day he would show me his gun (which he called pretinha) over and over again making my crusty fingers hold it, take the bullets out, put them back in, and just when a smile started to spring in my cheeks he would rip it away and tell me I would have to work hard to get my own. He delivered drug packages up and down the steep hills and I got to go along with him everywhere barefoot and happy. He taught me how to roll a perfect joint with my six year old fingers and spit, and since I had just become more of a man turning eight, I was allowed my first sweet painful drag. I just smiled and pushed the burning pain to the back of my head.
On this day he told me he had a special treat for me. We met up with his usual gang of gaviotinhas: Dudu, Chalita, Zezínho, and Pedrão. All of them were older except for Zezínho, who was just a year over me. He didn’t have a gun either – yet. We survived by going in the city and pick pocketing the rich putos that walked around with their heads in their asses and their money hanging out of their wallets.
It was almost 3 a.m. and still sticky humid out, and I was wearing my only pair of underwear which was more brown than white now. We were leaving a local party that got broken up because two assholes high on cocaine decided to kill each other in the middle of the dance floor. Ruined everyone’s fucking time, but two people dying wasn’t bad for a Friday night.
We rounded the corner of the bakery and a young girl who I knew by the name Marina was walking along.
“Hey Marina what did I tell you about walking alone at night by yourself you little slut!” My brother yelled. She quickened her pace, but our group crowded around her pushing her into a dumpster corner.
“So, let’s see what you got underneath that rag you call a skirt.” They pushed her up against the wall and she started to scream. Not that it made a difference because no one gave a shit if someone was screaming in the favela, but Pedrão put his hands over her mouth laughing,
“Shut up. Putas don’t scream.’”My brother looked back at me.
“Leo, come here. Watch and learn what a real man does.” Someone pushed me forward and I watched my brother stick his hands up her red skirt and rip her underwear off. She didn’t need to say anything because her eyes just screamed out in pain and embarrassment. Her eyebrows scrunched together making the shape of a valley, and my brother unzipped his pants and grabbed her hips closer to him. Her eyes poured a cascade of tears over Pedrão’s hands, and without thinking about it my eyes closed tight.
“The little bitch is closing his eyes! Miguel, your brother’s a little pussy!”
I looked down to my feet and watched the wet mud penetrate the crack between my toes. I couldn’t look at her eyes anymore; they were hurting me.
“LEO! Come here right now you fag,” I walked closer, my eyes fixed to the ground.
“Watch or I’ll fucking shoot you.” And with one hand behind his back he pointed his pretinha straight at my face and cocked the hammer back. This was the third time my brother had pointed his gun in my face. I knew he would never shoot me.
13 Years Old
I woke up and looked around the room. The orange ceiling was rotten, the walls filled with bullet holes. I felt the uncomfortable dirt ground underneath my back and sat up. I counted four sweaty, dirty bodies strewn over each other and I could make out two of my buddies. With my head pounding, I stepped into the next room and realized we were in one of the abandoned shacks we had started crashing in. This old haggard lady used to live here, but during a shoot out a couple of weeks ago between the drug gangs and the cops, a bullet went through her window and right into her head. Bad luck for her, but not for us.
I walked into the beaming sun and figured it was probably around 2 p.m. We had been up late last night drinking, smoking and talking shit. Then I remembered I was supposed to meet my brother this afternoon to help him make a delivery. He had just turned 20 and had been upgraded to making exchanges of cocaine between our favela and another favela that had been glued together like a broken tea cup on the other side of the city. I walked down the street to the local bar and found him there with huge bags around his eyes and the most delirious smile slapped across his face. His white teeth reflected the sun, and his black skin glittered like a pan glazed with oil. He had started hanging out with the top guys of the drug gangs; so the only time I saw him was when he wanted to take me on his trips. Otherwise he was too coked out to remember he had a brother.
He put out his joint on the bar counter.
“What’s up man, so you ready to go or what?” Smoke snuck out of his mouth with every word and his eyes rolled around in his head. I don’t know how he was functioning; he looked like he could pass for dead.
“Yeah, let’s do it.”
“So, there’s just one little problem, I’m hard on cash after last night, but it’s ok cause I got an idea.”
We started walking down the hill passing the colorful deteriorating houses, and reached the bottom making a right out of the slums. The ground went from mud to concrete. Every time I went into the city I felt as if time started ticking again. Everyone was busy, running around, catching buses, working, and that’s why it was always so easy to rob them. In the favela nothing much happened during the day; only in the night time when people drank, did drugs and got killed.
I was following his lead and we ended up in front of a school called Colégio do Santo Agostinho. It was some rich type catholic school where they wore stupid outfits and talked about their parents’ money and the priests who probably molested them. Miguel turned around and handed me a silver gun. I felt it weigh down my calloused hands.
“Don’t worry, it’s not loaded, just for show. Go with what I do.”
We started following these two white boys who had just gotten out of class. They kept looking back at us and every time Miguel and I would laugh. They were being hunted and they knew it. As soon as we rounded a corner away from the public eye, my brother pulled out his gun, (so did I) and we slammed the two kids up against a brick wall. The one I had was way bigger than I was, but with my gun barrel shoved into his neck size didn’t exist. I started going through their pockets to get their money when my brother yelled.
“Leo back up. Ok you fags, I want both of you to strip down to your underwear.” And he whipped one of them across the face with the barrel of his gun just to prove to himself the power he held. The boy didn’t hesitate. They took off their clothes and threw the pile in front of us. I bent over and picked it all up and before I knew it Miguel was already running the other way. Our heavy feet thumped through the busy streets until we rounded a corner that hid us from the rest of humanity as far as we were concerned.
“I don’t get it. What was the fucking point of that?” I was heaving out of breath.
“You’re an idiot; don’t you know you can ride the bus for free if you have a school uniform on?” He started laughing like a maniac.
“Oh, fuck yeah. You’re a genius.” I had to keep reassuring him.
I slid on the white pressed collared shirt, the blue pressed slacks. Every fold was perfect and straight. I looked over at my brother, and for once I saw a normal human being. I looked down at myself, and too embarrassed to admit it, I thought of how good it felt to be wearing a uniform.
“Hey Leo, you can keep the gun. The pressure will probably help you with stealing more shit.”
“Thanks. Hey tuck in your shirt, it looks better that way.”
“Fuck you.”
15 Years Old
I ran down the skinny space between a row of shacks. Blue, red, yellow, they flashed by my eyes. My skin on my knuckles began bleeding from the constant contact with the uneven cement walls on either side. My heart choked my esophagus; my wet shirt clung to my heaving chest. I looked behind me and saw three guys that looked just like me, but they wanted to kill me. I looked forward and saw my brother and his friends blowing dirt in my face with their heels. Miguel was laughing. The asshole was laughing. I looked behind and saw their rifles, I heard the clicking of them in their hands as they ran after me. We were fucked.
The brilliant idea of running across the Linha Vermelha and robbing our neighbors had come across my brother’s head on this boring day. Now we were being chased like rabbits within our own territory. I felt the sacks of coke bouncing in my underwear, hitting my balls with every stride I took. I took a sharp left turn after Miguel and tumbled straight into him.
“Fuck this, were not going to run anymore, this is our side.” It looked as if his eyelids were talking for themselves, fury spat out with every word and blink.
He turned around and his friends faithfully followed. They walked out into the clear street and faced the oncoming enemy. I unfaithfully hid behind the wall. Without any hesitation, Miguel fired his gun and killed two of the three with bullets straight to their heads. I watched the bodies flop like limp noodles to the ground. A slight smoke breezed its way out of the holes, and blood soon followed. The third boy slid through the dirt and tried to reverse his direction. Miguel shot him four times in the back, his mustard shirt now showed a growing pool of crimson, like rain being collected in a rut. Miguel cackled like a mad chicken, and walked away detached from the crimes he had just committed.
“Meu Deus! How did I raise you to be such a fucking pussy?” I was caught once again.
He came over and picked me up by my ear with a steady hand. Miguel pulled me over to each of the corpses and made me tell him whether they were alive or dead.
Dead. Dead. Dead.
I caught the glimpse of a frightened old lady through her window. No one would dare say anything. To anyone.
“Now take your gun, and shoot him in the head. Just to make sure.”
“But he’s already dead Miguel, you’re fucking crazy.Let’s just get outta here!”
“I’m not leaving you until I teach you to not be afraid to kill for your honor.” And I wondered what honor he was talking about.
Knowing he would not let me leave until I completed the deed, I pointed my gun to the messy black curls that had already given up growing. I pulled the trigger and watched the bullet pierce through the boy’s skull like an ice pick. The body did not move. I threw up in my mouth and swallowed it back down to my aching stomach.
“You see Leo, no matter what you do, you’re never wrong when you’re in your own home.”
18 Years Old
It was a dark day in the favela. The clouds hung low in the sky and trapped all the heat rising from the streets like an oven. I sat in a wooden chair outside of my friends’ house sweating and watching young kids play in the mud that had built from the rain the night before. Colors from the different shacks reflected off the water, the City of God at its finest. The only sensation I could feel was a hunger that was gripping the walls of my stomach with its sharpened claws. Lately I had been slow at making money on the streets. Suddenly my drive to rob people had vanished, and therefore so had my food and money. I looked up the hill and from a distance saw the skeleton of my brother awkwardly riding down on his bike. Miguel had been distant. After I watched him murder the boys from the neighboring favela, I had kept my distance. Also, the drug life had caught up to him, and he had found out that it was hard to do drugs and sell them at the same time.
“E aí, brother. What’re you doing?”
“Not much, just fucking starving and hating this shithole I call my life.”
“Yeah, I feel you. You wanna do a line?” And for the first time in my life, I had the urge to snort cocaine. I had always feared the destruction my brother had symbolized to me, but I still never wanted to disappoint him by letting him know I didn’t indulge in the same things he did. I didn’t want to become him, but I wanted to live up to his image of what I should be like.
“Yeah, sure.”
“Just wait a couple minutes. I got this rich bitch coming to pick up a sack, and then we’ll chill after wards.”
Soon a small grey car could be seen in the distance. Its new wheels wobbled through the potholes and mud that lined the streets of the favela. It pulled up right in front of Bar do Zé. I got up and followed my brother. Two girls sat in the car; they stood out like puppies trapped in a pig sty. The one driving couldn’t even keep her head up, her lips curled like eyelashes in disgust with her surroundings.
Miguel leaned up against the passenger door as if it were his best friends’ car.
“E ai, garotinha. You got the money?”
“Right here Miguel. Thanks for the hook up.”
He slid the bag of coke through their bullet proof windows and into her thin white hands and the car drove off back towards the Linha Vermelha. This was closest highway to our favela that also served as a boundary line between our rivaling favela on the other side.
“So about that coke, let’s go get fucked up,” Miguel said with a twisted smile.
Two hours, a bottle of vodka, and a couple of lines later Miguel and I found ourselves bonding like brothers for the first time in years. We laughed and joked about our childhood. We both agreed about the love we had for where we lived and could never ask for anything better than the City of God. Suddenly, one of our friends came running towards the bar.
“The idiots from the other favela stopped traffic on the Linha Vermelha! They set a bus on fire, people are freaking!”
This was our chance to score some money, and maybe a car. I sprang out of my seat, grabbed my gun, running behind my brother towards the highway.
Once I reached the flames of the charred bus, complete chaos developed before my eyes. People were either locking themselves in their cars, or leaving them behind and running towards the closest barrier from the flying bullets. Children huddled under the wings of their parents. Fear chewed on eyeballs. Miguel ran off to the empty cars and started stripping them for cash and any other valuables. A sudden surge of power grew inside of me, like electricity shooting through water. Maybe it was the drugs, maybe it was the adrenaline, but I began purposely searching for a car with a person inside. My eyes darted around their sockets until I finally saw a man in a blue Audii who seemed too calm for the situation. Gripping the sweaty metal of my gun, I ran over to it.
“Roll down your fucking window right now!” I screamed. The man did as told.
“Give me your wallet, your watch and anything else you got!” The man threw his valuables out the window. His wallet bounced off my stomach and landed in my hand. I opened it to see how much treasure I had gathered when I felt a sharp pain spread across my chest. Miguel screamed from what seemed miles away. I looked down and watched blood travel like water colors through the cotton threads of my white shirt. I lifted my heavy eyes to the man in the Audii and met the cold gaze of a gun.
Glossary
Portuguese Translations:
Linha Vermelha: The Red Line. A highway in Rio de Janeiro which runs directly between two rivaling slums.
Café com leite: Literally means coffee with milk. A children’s term for showing that one is too young to play by themselves.
Vai pra casa: Go home.
Lyrics to song on first part of story by a Brazilian band called Kid Abelha:
“I know how to love, I know how to kiss with tongue, so now all that’s left is for me to dream.
I know where to go, I know where to stay, so all that’s left is for me to leave.”
“I’m not an audience for solidarity. I don’t belong to anyone, I belong to everyone and everyone is mine too.”
"I don’t have good jugdement, if you want your life in play, all I want is to be happy. I don’t have any patience for the television, and I will never be an audience for solidarity.
A Cidade de Deus: The City of God
Paraíso perdido: Lost paradise
Favela: Small cities (slums) made up of shacks in the hills of Rio de Janeiro inhabited by the lower class.
gaviotinha: Young kids used to help with the drug delivery/pick up within the favelas. The starting point in becoming involved with drug trafficking.
pretinha: Literal translation: Little black thing, implies that object is a female.
putos/putas: Degrading slang words. Similar to asshole/bitches.
Colégio do Santo Agostinho: School of Saint Agustine.
E aí?: Similar to ‘What’s up’.
garotinha: Little girl.
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