A principled and resourceful Brazilian, Ms. Joana Zeferino da Paz was a model citizen. His true identity was only revealed this Thursday when he died at the age of 97. It was carefully kept for nearly two decades to protect it from the drug dealers and corrupt police officers he denounced. Fed up with the shops under her home in a favela next to Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, she went to the police and the judges. It didn’t help. When he turned 80, he adopted a new strategy: Record on video what he saw out the window. One day in 2004, he showed up at the police station with a handful of VHS tapes that, over time, ended up in the hands of reporter Fábio Gusmão from the Globo Group’s newspaper Extra. He unveiled in a report the extraordinary story of Dona Vitória, the pseudonym with which she became famous throughout Brazil. He was also responsible for now reporting his death and bringing his real name to light.
“She changed the history of Rio de Janeiro when, with her courage, she decided to face the drug trade she saw under her window,” says journalist Gusmão in a video that accompanies the news that the former masseuse in died in a public hospital. from Salvador de Bahia after a stroke. The reporter was very careful after her death to have the Brazilian’s courage and sacrifice recognized because, he writes, “her wish was for public recognition.”
Dona Vitória captures an undated photo through her window. Fabio Guimaraes (O Globo)
Gusmão tells in his chronicle that faced with the indifference of the authorities, Mrs. Da Paz decided to buy the Panasonic video camera in installments and 12 installments, which at the beginning of the century was the closest thing to a cell phone with a camera. He secretly recorded what resulted in a visual diary of routine at a drugstore. It showed the trade, the daily coexistence between criminals (boys in bathing suits and flip-flops, armed with guns or rifles and corrupt policemen) down his alley in the Ladeira dos Tabajaras neighborhood, a kilometer from the sea, the Copacabana, the most famous, lapped beach in Brazil. His videos were instrumental in the conviction of about thirty criminals, including nine MPs, who received bribes for looking the other way.
After the police operations ended and she was under the protection of the authorities, the newspaper Extra told her story in a special supplement in August 2005. She was then baptized as Dona Vitória.
By handing over the tapes to a police commissioner and starring in that first report, Da Paz had to radically change his life to protect. He sold the apartment where he had lived almost half his life, left Rio de Janeiro and entered an official witness protection program, where he spent several months with relatives before moving several times and rebuilding his life in another part of the world, such as Bahia. There he spent his last years.
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Ms. Da Paz knocked on several doors in the public administration before she was forced to record the videos so that someone would attend to her requests. When the police didn’t do anything about his complaints, he went to court to report that the sale of drugs reduced the value of his home. It didn’t work either. One of the police officers who gave evidence questioned the allegations, praised the work of his colleagues and called for evidence. This is where the idea for the camera came from.
Dona Vitoria inserts a cassette into her camcorder on July 13, 2006. Fabio Gusmao (O Globo)
Journalist Gusmão learned of the existence of the tapes while touring the police stations in search of news for the weekend. A commissioner told him that a lady with hours of recordings had turned up. Gusmão first had to get the inspector in charge of the police station to allow him to see her. hallucinating. He later met the retiree and spent months negotiating with her to agree to go and stay safe before publication.
The scenes recorded were routine, but what set them apart for the journalist from what every Carioca knows – because they’ve seen it or heard about it – were the author’s comments, which revealed her impotence in the face of the drug trade ruining his life, that of his neighbors and his neighborhood.
The journalist wrote a book about her. And Globo just announced that his fascinating story will be made into a movie. The one chosen to play the masseuse is one of Brazil’s most celebrated actresses, Fernanda Montenegro, who is white and will be named Josefina in the film, not Joana.
O Globo newspaper reported in its Friday edition that Ms da Paz’s favela is still of strategic importance to drug traffickers and that it is still controlled by the same traffickers as it was 17 years ago. This is the bad new one.
The good news is that the energetic old woman has rebuilt her life in Salvador. He found friends among his new neighbors whom he invited to the cake. Joana Zeferino da Paz, a model citizen of Rio, loved to dance.
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