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MDG crackland
The Fluxo, where most crack is traded in Cracolândia, is confined to a square the size of a city block. Photograph: Almudena Toral
The Fluxo, where most crack is traded in Cracolândia, is confined to a square the size of a city block. Photograph: Almudena Toral

Controversial São Paulo project offers jobs to crack addicts in Cracolândia

This article is more than 9 years old

But critics say the city’s Open Arms programme is flawed by not requiring participants to give up drugs
Tackling São Paulo’s crack cocaine epidemic – in pictures

On a mild winter morning in São Paulo, two dozen people pick up brooms and rubbish bins from a warehouse. They wear blue jumpsuits with a De Braços Abertos (With Open Arms) logo, referring to a controversial new programme for crack cocaine addicts, and set off to sweep streets in the city centre.

All are current or recovering crack addicts involved in the Open Arms programme, which provides housing, food and jobs to more than 400 people in an area known as Cracolândia (Crackland).

The city-run programme, which began in January, is the latest – and most holistic – intervention to try to curb the city’s large open-air drug market. Proponents say it could be a model for other cities in the region. Critics worry that it will delay addicts’ rehabilitation.

There are an estimated 1 million crack users in Brazil, and Cracolândias exist in most metropolitan areas. Of these, São Paulo’s is the largest and oldest. It is located in the heart of South America’s largest city, near a train station and concert hall. Crack is plentiful and costs as little as R$5 (£1.20). Previously, as many as 2,000 addicts could be seen wandering the streets. Today, estimates are closer to 500.

The Fluxo, where most crack is traded in Cracolândia, is confined to a square the size of a city block. The police have unofficially declared crack users ill people instead of criminals, leaving them to smoke freely in the Fluxo, although a surveillance van monitors them 24 hours a day.

MDG crackland
Sweeping uniforms worn by addicts in their daily part-time jobs hang to dry. Photograph: Almudena Toral

Crack cocaine is a hot political issue in Brazil, and the government has invested heavily in patrolling Cracolândia. Almost 200 armed police are stationed nearby. Doctors, social workers and religious leaders abound. The São Paulo state government has a different approach: its Project Recomeço (Restart) started last year and rehabilitation involves lengthy hospital stays for addicts.

Flavia Castro do Britto, a 39-year-old addict, first visited Cracolândia with her drug dealer. She was working as a hairdresser in downtown São Paulo, where she lived with her husband and two children. In 2011, her husband began to drink heavily and beat her. He also introduced her to crack.

After fleeing the domestic abuse, Britto found an illegal occupation and started using crack more regularly. She eventually moved to Cracolândia. “It’s a huge life change,” she says. “One day you are in your house, and then you have nothing, just two bags with clothes.”

Cracolândia has caused increasing concern. “It is almost a matter of honour to recover the heart of the city,” says Fernando Haddad, São Paulo’s mayor. “We want to prove that these people are recoverable, even after years of negligence and after the crime took over this part of the downtown area.”

Open Arms, which Haddad’s administration championed, draws on a harm reduction approach. It is designed to reduce the negative consequences of addiction, but not necessarily to promote abstinence. Similar beer-for-work programmes have been implemented for alcoholics in the Netherlands and Canada.

Open Arms aims to reduce dependency on crack. The part-time custodial jobs are, Haddad says, part of a “therapeutic process and the recovery of citizenship”. The free housing and food are intended to remove stresses that can cause addicts to seek drugs.

And now, after 10 months, the city says 16 of the scheme’s 422 participants are fit for full-time employment.

Britto remembers when she moved from the streets to a hotel. “They started the conscription process [for Open Arms], and they said we will have a hotel to stay in,” she says. “I think that was the fact that most motivated me. The street isn’t easy.”

Other than not seeing her children regularly, Flavia seems content. “I don’t pay to eat, to sleep, for taking a shower. I get paid for work – and I also have the privilege to receive some money and use it for smoking,” she says, with a laugh.

MDG crackland
Police officers supervise crack addicts in Cracolândia. Photograph: Almudena Toral

This, though, highlights one of the main criticisms of the programme. The state government believes Open Arms makes it easy for drug users to stay addicted.

“They are [implementing the programme] inside Cracolândia, in the same place where people are using drugs,” says Ronaldo Laranjeira, a psychiatrist who advises the state government. “That’s why you see people sitting on the streets wearing the uniforms of city hall and openly using crack. If you leave people with the same drug trafficker, and [now] you have money … I cannot see how this can work.”

Instead, the state government advocates that users should be sent to hospital for up to six months. But while each Open Arms participant costs the city $1,000 a month, it costs up to four times for them to stay in hospital.

“[Crack users] need jobs, housing,” says Nildes Nery, a pastor who has worked in Cracolândia for nearly a decade. “But they mainly need treatment of their addictions.” She works with Project Restart to encourage users to join long-term rehabilitation clinics.

The clinics, too, have critics. “The hospitals look much more like prisons than health facilities,” says Dartiu Xavier da Silveira, a drug addiction researcher at the Federal University of São Paulo. “More than 90% of [addicts] return to drugs one month after discharge. With this new [Open Arms] model, we have a quite different way. People can learn to overcome their problems while they are in their regular everyday life.”

Unfortunately, despite the government intervention, traffickers still control much of Cracolândia. The hotels are rife with illegal activity and, though they are sponsored by the city, the police need warrants to enter – and almost never do. “We all know [the hotels] are horrible places,” says William Thomaz, lieutenant of Cracolândia’s military police unit. “It’s like ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’.” Open Arms has recently announced changes to its hotel operations, partially to ensure safety of its participants.

“Cracolândia is a hard place,” says Nery, “a hard place to work, to live, to relate. But in the middle of the crack rocks, I can find also precious gems.”

Sarika Bansal reported from Brazil with the support of the International Reporting Project

This article was amended on 29 October 2014 to correct Cracôlandia to Cracolândia

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