Popular with tourists in Brazil, Recife is deadly for residents
Ines Maria da Silva stares blankly outside her shack as she tells how she lost all five of her sons to the violence that makes Recife the deadliest major city in Brazil.
The first son died 15 years ago in a fight over a girl, another after telling a mob he didn't want a pedophile lynched on his doorstep. The third was stabbed while arguing with a friend and the fourth was shot, mistaken for a thief.
Her last remaining son was felled by a stray bullet as he joined Recife's famous carnival celebrations a year ago.
"I just want to understand, how come no one is punished?" said the diminutive, 68-year-old widow, who cares for six grandchildren and three unemployed daughters and collects cans and bottles, along with garbage to feed her pigs in Recife's squalid Coque shantytown.
"There are people here who just kill for fun," Da Silva said. "Two of the men who killed my sons are my neighbors. If I had somewhere to go I would have moved out a long time ago."
This seaside city, a favorite with European tourists, gets much more attention for the shark attacks that have killed 18 people since 1992 than for its homicides -- at least 2,617 in the metropolitan area last year.
Tourists are warned not to take valuables to the beaches, as in most Brazilian cities, but little is said about the homicide rate, mostly because the violence generally is restricted to the poor areas.
Although Rio de Janeiro's bloody drug war makes international headlines, the homicide rate in this balmy city of 1.5 million is 90.9 per 100,000, more than twice that of Rio, according to the Latin American Technological Network's Map of Violence.
Now, a group of local crime reporters is working to show the human cost of the death toll.
"For 10 years we've been writing the same story, all that changes are the names of victims and the killers and the authorities giving the excuse of the moment," said Joao Valadares. "It's going to change only when people become aware of the situation, not just when it arrives at their door, but when they realize these are people who are dying."
Valadares and three of his colleagues have launched www.pebodycount.com.br, featuring a death-toll counter updated daily with details of homicides across Pernambuco state. As of Monday, this year's count was 1,403. The reporters are working with another website that uses Google Map technology to mark the location of each killing with a red flag.
