Brazil’s Prisoners Are Coordinating Riots On Smuggled Cell Phones

An inmate displays a makeshift knife moments after police left the Alcacuz prison on Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2017. Image: Felipe Dana/AP

In the first three weeks of 2017, over 100 inmates were butchered in Brazilian jails, several of them decapitated, charred or dismembered in a series of riots that have threatened to destabilize the country’s penal system. Brazil’s two largest drug trafficking gangs are warring for territorial control in a fight playing out inside the country’s overcrowded prisons.

But unlike narco wars of the past, everyday Brazilians now have a window to watch these gruesome murders up close on their cell phones. Within hours of the bloodiest slaughter yet, a 17-hour rebellion in an Amazonian jail that killed 60 people, footage of the decapitated bodies circulated on social media. DVDs of the massacre, available on the streets for $1 a pop, sold out nationwide.

Smuggled cell phones have long been a tool for inmates to control gang activities inside prison walls. And having proliferated inside Brazil's prison system they're allowing a critical mass of inmates the means to orchestrate mass attacks on rival gangs and control drug trafficking from behind bars.

But the rise of social media has given gangs a direct line of communication to their rivals, affiliates in other states, and the communities they control. Photos of blood pooling in prison corridors and stacks of corpses piled high in the aftermath of recent riots sent an incontestable message of power to their audience.

“We are seeing the emergence of both digital and physical conflicts between public authorities and gangs,” said Robert Muggah, Research Director at the Igarapé Institute, a Rio de Janeiro-based think tank that deals with incarceration and drug policy. “The communication of violence has become as important as the violence itself.”

"We are seeing the emergence of both digital and physical conflicts."

In the aftermath of the Amazonian prison revolt, police found 66 smuggled cell phones inside the complex. Aware of the amplifying power of social media and the penal system’s poor record of halting phone trafficking, the Brazilian government has increasingly relied on phone jammers, which disrupt cell phone signals to block internet access, as a way to limit inmates’ access to the web.

Jammers are currently installed in 45 percent of prisons around the country, according to the Justice Department. Brazil’s most populous state, São Paulo, announced this month that it plans on doubling the number of blockers in its prisons, according to the state’s penitentiary system.

Read more: Cell to Cell: How Smuggled Mobile Phones Are Rewiring Brazil's Prisons

But Brazil’s overcrowded prison system, combined with guards’ lack of authority over inmates, limits the viability and effectiveness of cell phone jamming tech.

Brazil has the fourth highest incarceration rate in the world, with over 600,000 inmates. That's 60 percent more bodies than its national prison system was built to hold, according to a Human Rights Watch Report issued this month. Harsher drug policies have raised the number of inmates by 80 percent in the last ten years—and prison guards are unable to keep up.

The country needs 120,000 more penitentiary workers than it currently employs to handle its ballooning prison population, according to the Ministry of Justice. In practice, that means the handful of guards responsible for watching over thousands of prisoners hand free reign over the jail to a select group of inmates in exchange for order.

Known as the key holders, these prisoners “rent” inmates sleeping space within the crowded cells for $800 a month. Crack cocaine use within the prisons, facilitated by corrupt guards, is rampant, and inmates who fail to pay their drug debts have their eyes burned out, appendages mutilated, or are even killed by traffickers, according to their family members, according to Human Rights Watch.

Relatives of inmates ask for information after a riot left 60 people killed in the Anisio Jobim Penitentiary Complex. Image: Marcio Silva/Getty

Critics say these issues require systemic solutions that go beyond jammers.

“Cell phone jammers are being installed, but there needs to be broader reform,” said César Muñoz, a Human Rights Watch prison researcher in Brazil. “Authorities simply can’t control what happens inside prisons.”

Munoz witnessed this problem firsthand when he visited a northern Brazil prison that employed four guards per shift to watch over 2,300 inmates. Vastly outnumbered, the guards kept watch over the prison entrance, but were too afraid to go inside, Muñoz said.

Making matters worse, guards are paid a spare middle income salary of $12,000 a year, according to the Ministry of Justice, and many are not adequately trained to deal with the gangs operating under their watch.

“The prison system is a ticking time bomb,” said Julimara Carvalho, a researcher who worked at the Amazonian prison where the revolts first broke out. “The guards are easily manipulated by prisoners. They don’t know how to deal with threats or blackmail.”

Encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp have replaced the inmates’ need for coded communication.

Guards often become hostages to their prisoners’ demands and are unable to implement necessary reforms, like installing cell phone jammers. Last July, inmates in the northern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Norte ordered gang members to torch busses and fire at police stations and government buildings in protest of plans for the installation of jammers in several jails. The attacks brought the region to a halt for a week until the military was able to reinstate order. By December, only three of the state’s 33 prisons had a cell phone jammer installed.

Infiltrating communication between inmates has also become tougher. Gangs used to rely on social media to communicate directives to faction members outside prison walls, by posting coded pictures or songs on YouTube that relayed specific instructions. But encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp, which are much harder for authorities to intercept, have replaced the inmates’ need for coded communication, according to military police.

“WhatsApp commands the crime that happens inside and outside of prisons,” said Valderize Campos, 61, Coordinator of Afadequipe, a nonprofit in the northeastern city of Recife that works with the government to denounce wrongdoing within prisons.

Read more: Read more: How Mexican Immigrants Are Using Burner Phones to Evade Border Patrol

End-to-end encryption, a method of encrypting data where only the communicating users can read exchanged messages, has increased tension between law enforcement and tech companies committed to privacy. Last March, a Brazilian judge jailed a Facebook executive over the company’s refusal to hand over access to WhatsApp messages as part of a drug trafficking investigation. The government has placed periodic bans on WhatsApp when Facebook, which acquired the widely-used messaging service for $19 million in 2014, refused to comply with requests for information on encrypted messages.

The rise of social media has also made it easier for gangs to forge alliances across state lines. In the aftermath of the prison riots, gang affiliates incarcerated around Brazil received video and audio messages incentivizing them to replicate riots in their own states to see which region could tally the highest number of deaths. Motherboard had access to these audio messages, which Afadequipe confirmed were speeding across the country.

Afadequipe has tried to channel prisoners’ social media use to increase transparency. Inmates can now use WhastApp anonymously report wrongdoing and plans for revolts to the organization from the inside, which helps liaise with state governments to quell unrest and fight corruption.

Social media also plays an important role in maintaining inmates’ relationships with their families and loved ones—connections that can be vital for prisoners navigating the war-like conditions of Brazilian jails.

When the Amazonian prison riot erupted earlier this month, 27-year-old Jander de Andrade Maciel used a smuggled phone to send one last message to his family. According to Estado de Sao Paulo, a Brazilian newspaper, Andrade Maciel asked his brother Janderlan to take care of their mother. Moments later, he was killed.

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The Bento Rodrigues Dam Collapsed a Year Ago and It's Nowhere Near Fixed

Sandra Quintão spent New Year’s Eve in a ghost town, surrounded by the remnants of her old life. The 44-year-old was a lifelong resident of Bento Rodrigues, a 600-person mining town in southern Brazil when her whole world became covered in mud. Bento Rodrigues stood at the edge of a dam filled with 1.9 billion cubic feet of mineral waste. In November 2015 the dam burst, sending a tidal wave of iron ore refuse that blanketed the region in the worst environmental disaster in Brazilian history.

Quintã was working in the restaurant she owned, cleaning up after the late-lunch crowd when a neighbor zoomed toward her on a motorcycle, warning that the dam had collapsed and urging everyone to run. Quintão thought of sprinting to her house to gather her documents, but when she saw the mud surging towards her she knew she wouldn’t have enough time. She grabbed her three-year-old daughter and climbed a water tower, the highest point in town, just in time to see the mud engulf her house. Within ten minutes the village was destroyed.

One year later, the surviving residents of Bento gathered for an improvised barbeque amongst the ruins to celebrate the start of a new year. “We can’t let go of Bento,” said Quintão.

The sludge killed 19 people, including a 7-year-old boy, and rendered another 700 homeless. The waste flowed down the River Doce, killing wildlife along the way, until it reached the Atlantic Ocean nearly 400 miles from the dam. The disaster left a red stain on the region that was visible from space. Authorities say the recovery is expected to take more than ten years.

The mine was operated by Brazilian mining company Samarco to make iron ore pellets used in steelmaking. The company is jointly owned by Vale, the world’s largest iron ore miner with a market cap of $128 billion, and Australia’s BHP Billiton, with a market cap of $129 billion. In March the Samarco agreed to a $5.6 billion settlement with the government to cover damages from the spill. The company has also paid $300 million in compensation and indemnities and has rented homes for residents like Quintão, whose houses were destroyed, while it builds them new accommodations six miles away from the town.

The dam was the largest structure of its kind to ever burst. The earth-filled embankment known as a tailing dam has become an increasingly popular method of storing mineral waste. The Syncrude Mildred Lake tailings dam in Canada and the American Smelting and Refining Company’s Missions Mine in Tucson, for example, are some of the largest earth structures in the world. But engineers have raised alarm bells about the accident-prone structures for years.

A BHP and Vale-commissioned study on the cause of the rupture found that changes to the dam’s design allowed water to seep in, essentially liquefying the dam’s barriers.

Those left to clean up the mess are in a race against time to get the waste under control before the region’s rainy season, which stretches from December through February, spreads the waste even further. In the aftermath of the rupture, Samarco created a series of dikes to contain the waste and keep it from spreading. Still, 60 percent of the mining waste that erupted from the dam has yet to be drained, according to Brazil’s environmental protection agency, IBAMA. The agency removed 21,000 cubic feet of waste that was putrefying the area around Bento Rodrigues, the only to see half of it return after heavy rain.

“The scale of the tragedy makes the recovery very complex,” said Marcelo Belisário, who led IBAMA’s recovery efforts in the state of Minas, where the accident occurred. “It is very stressful. We are pushing the company in the restoration efforts, but we also feel society’s pressure to act quickly and find a feasible pathway to control the tragedy,” he said.

Samarco, which employed 3,000 people at the height of its operations, is eager to resume mining as quickly as possible. The accident will cost the company $1 billion in lost revenue in 2017, the equivalent of 1 percent of the entire state’s GDP, according to the company. In October, the company missed payments to bondholders raising questions about its viability if operations take too long to restart. Samarco has proposed a new system to contain mining waste—an old, confined pit protected by a 33-foot dike, capable of holding two years worth of residue, while the company looks for a more permanent solution.

“This has been a period of intense learning for Samarco, which recognizes it has caused grave social, environmental and economic impacts. After paralyzing operations for one year, we need to restart operations to honor the commitments we took on,” the company’s president, Roberto Carvalho, said in a recent statement.

The accident dealt an economic blow to the area. Tax revenues in the Mariana municipality, where Bento Rodrigues is located, averaged just $230,000 per month in the first half of 2016, compared with $2 million per month in 2013, according to the municipal government. Today, 25 percent of residents are unemployed.

“The company is responsible for the tragedy. It cannot in any way be seen as a victim,” Mariana Mayor Duarte Júnior told Vice. “But we need to understand that the company’s return will reignite our economy, and allow public funds to maintain essential services. Mining is still a very important part of our municipality.”

Still, some residents like Quintão, who lost everything in the accident, are calling for a new, more responsible company to take over operations.

“For the people of Mariana, Samarco is everything. They don’t care if they killed a dozen people.” said Quintão, who now works at a market selling pastries and bringing in one third of what she used to make at the restaurant per month. “The company said they would keep us safe. I trusted Samarco. The employees were patrons of the restaurant, I really believed them.”

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Brazil’s Psychedelic Rehab Center Treats Drug Addicts With Ayahuasca

This is the final dispatch from the 2016 World Ayahuasca Conference in Rio Branco, Brazil. The first one can be found here, and the second one here.

Every couple of weeks, Everson do Santos relives the worst day of his life. In 2003, under a crack-induced haze, he shot a man dead in a botched robbery attempt. He served six years in prison but relapsed upon his release and spent two years homeless, wandering the streets in search of his next fix.

Now, three years sober, do Santos coaches 70 recovering crack and cocaine addicts at a rehabilitation center in the heart of Brazil’s rainforest using the an unorthodox method he says saved his life. The Caminho da Luz Center gives patients daily doses of ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic brew made from rare vines found in the Amazon.

The center is an offshoot of the União do Vegetal, a religion that meshes Christianity with ayahuasca worship. Every Saturday night, the patients gather together for a four-hour ceremony in a bright blue temple, where they drink ayahuasca to the tune of slow christian chants and the noises of the jungle. When the drink kicks in 20 minutes later, several residents hallucinate, often drifting back in time to observe their own lives and actions from a distance. Some lift their hands in prayer, others tap their feet, a couple start crying.

Caminho do Luz. Image: Marina Lopes

Global demand has soared for ayahuasca, which has been used in Amazonian tribal rituals for thousands of years. The tea has become the hottest new drug, as celebrities like Lindsay Lohan and Penn Badgley rave about its transcendent properties. Seemingly overnight centers offering ayahuasca have popped up everywhere from Brooklyn to Estonia. Studies show that it helps eliminate drug cravings and is not addictive, but the brew can also bring back traumatic memories in the form of hallucinations.

“When I drink the tea, I go back to that moment. I see him again,” said do Santos, 33, of the man he killed. “It helps me process it, and come to terms with what I did.”

The center is a colorful mix of wooden shacks just outside of Rio Branco, a city of 300,000 people on the Northwestern edge of Brazil. Hammocks and reclining chairs dot the grounds, encouraging patients to sit back and take stock of their progress.

It claims a 50 percent relapse rate, in line with traditional drug treatment programs. But patients like that ayahuasca helps them make sense of their addictions on their own, through the hallucinations rather than pills or therapy.

“It is totally different here because there is no over-medication. The tea acts as your therapist,” said Carlos Eduardo Machado, who relapsed twice after seeking treatment for his cocaine addiction at traditional clinics before discovering Caminho da Luz. “The last time I was treated, I was on so many antidepressants I just slept all day,” he said.

Little is known about why Ayahuasca inhibits cravings, in part because the tea is illegal in many parts of the world. But preliminary findings confirm a link. A 2013 study by the University of British Columbia found that ayahuasca therapy decreases cocaine, alcohol and tobacco cravings, and increases mindfulness, quality of life, hopefulness and empowerment.

It’s hard to know whether the tea is directly responsible for the success rate at Caminho da Luz, because it offers a mix of traditional and alternative approaches to drug treatment. Patients follow a strict code of conduct that includes scheduled chores, meals and baths. Those with a greater risk of relapse are transferred to a rural camp, to recover away from the temptations of the city.

Clients at the Caminho do Luz. Image: Marina Lopes

“We know that religions have a positive impact on drug addiction, independent of ayahuasca. So we need more clarity. We have indirect evidence that is very promising, but needs to be researched,” said Luís Fernando Tófoli, a psychiatrist researching Ayahuasca at Brazil’s University of Campinas.

Critics also say that while the hallucinations may help some patients process their past, they can be a set back under the wrong conditions. “Re-living an experience is a critical part of healing it, but you want to make sure there is a good setting, a sense of safety…. If not it can just be re-traumatizing,” said Richard Furr, a psychologist who treats patients recovering from bad Ayahuasca trips.

Read more: Millenials on Spirit Quests Are Ruining Everything About Ayahuasca

But for the families of patients responding well to the treatment, ayahuasca is a game changer.

“I thought I was substituting one vice with another, but things got so bad at home, I gave it a try,” said Verlandia Furtade Santos, 38, whose two teenage sons, who were hooked on crack and stealing to fuel their addiction. Weeks later, she barely recognizes her children. “To be honest, I’ve never seen my boys this well. It’s all I want for them.”

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We’re So Addicted to Our Gadgets That ‘Unplugged’ Tourism Is Booming

If a tree falls in the Amazon, but you don’t capture it on Snapchat, did it actually fall? I had the thought while hiking through the rainforest, on the third day of a digital detox that was slowly killing me. What’s the point of eating a live worm or luring a monkey onto my shoulder if I can’t post the photos to prove it?

These days, vacation can feel like work. Between Facebook updates, Instagram posts and tweets of your shower thoughts, memorializing your vacation can overpower the trip itself. In fact, 41 percent of millennials feel that their phones are keeping them from living in the moment when traveling, according to a JWT Intelligence consumer trends survey. And over half of those who plan on unplugging during vacation aren’t able to, according to an Intel digital behavior study.

So how much are tech addicts (i.e. most of us) willing to pay for someone to cut them off? It turns out, quite a lot. And the travel industry is readily capitalizing on our addiction to glowing screens.

Well, somebody needed to take a picture of this hammock. Image: Marina Lopes

Lack of WiFi and cell service, once unforgivable for any hotel, have become selling points at places like La Pause, in Morocco. Nestled between desert sand dunes, it has no electricity or cell service, but offers luxury tents with egyptian cotton linens and bathrobes for $250 a night. Similarly, at Petit St. Vincent, a secluded Caribbean resort averaging $1,000 a night, the phone never rings. Residents use flag poles outside their bungalows to communicate with management.

“People don’t know how to disconnect. That’s why there’s this demand. It’s catering to soul searchers, people are looking to get to know themselves again,” said Adriana Lacerda, a travel consultant at Plantel Tourism. “Technology prevents this self-reflection. You are connected to other people, but not really.”

Unplugged tourism is like rehab for the traveler whose thumb flicks upward at the first sign of boredom. And digital breaks can have actual health benefits. Studies show that heavy users of technology suffer more mental illness and have trouble sleeping.

Over the summer, in search of this elusive freedom from technology, I took a plane, two boats and a van into the heart of the Amazon. I wanted to trade in my Spotify playlist for a creaking hammock and reconnect with nature.

Juma Lodge promised just that. The secluded hotel is made up of 21 thatched-roof huts swaying on stilts at the basin of the Paraná do Araçá River. For $300 a night, the hotel boasted a return to the basics. There were no televisions, telephones, and certainly no wifi. The only means of communication with the outside world was five radios, used strictly for emergencies.

Juma Lodge. Image: Marina Lopes

The lodge was packed with overworked businessmen, european lawyers and a high schooler looking for a college essay topic. The first days were pure bliss. I went on a midnight hike through the jungle, learned how to crack open vines to get drinking water in the wild and hunted alligators in the moonlight. I journaled and reflected on life as I watched the sunset. I had no idea what was happening beyond my immediate surroundings.

But halfway through the week, withdrawal took over. The heat and stillness leveled me and I needed a break from my own mind. I wondered about the Twittersphere. What was I missing? Which videos went viral, what did the latest election polls show, who Taylor Swift was dating? But with no option to cheat on my detox, I pushed the thoughts away and learned how to build shelter from banana leaves instead.

I was startled a few days later, when on a rickety boat halfway to the mainland, my phone buzzed alive. I slowly swiped it on, submerging myself back into to civilization. It turns out the Internet hadn’t missed me nearly as much as I missed it. Within five minutes, I was all caught up. With a sigh of relief, I turned my phone off and enjoyed the last few hours of my vacation.

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No One Got Zika At the Olympics and Brazil Is Relieved

On the eve of the Olympic Games, the mood in Rio de Janeiro had been tense. Mosquito repellent advertisements covered luggage conveyer belts as thousands of athletes descended on Rio, while tourists wandered the city in clouds of DEET. Signs with instructions on how to prevent Zika emerged around Brazil stating, “a mosquito is not more powerful than a whole country”.

But this week the World Health Organization announced that no one associated with the 2016 Olympics in Rio contracted the Zika virus so far. The news somewhat vindicates the Center for Disease Control and other medical experts, like British journal The Lancet, who predicted that the Olympics would not aggravate the epidemic.

Here in Brazil, the lack of cases was met with both relief and pride. Rio’s mayor, Eduardo Paes, criticized what he called an “irresponsible panic” about the virus in the months before the games.

The Zika virus, which can cause brain damage in fetuses and paralysis in adults, grew into an epidemic in 2015, spreading to 54 countries. Brazil, the outbreak’s epicenter, saw the highest number of cases, a worrying statistic as athletes representing nearly every country in the world prepared to gather in Rio.

In May, 240 scientists and medical experts, concerned that the Olympics might accelerate the spread of Zika to Africa and other regions, had sent a letter to the WHO urging the Games to be postponed or moved.

“An unnecessary risk is posed when 500,000 foreign tourists from all countries attend the Games, potentially acquire that strain, and return home to places where it can become endemic," the letter read.

A sign at the airport in Rio read: Give your blood to sports, not mosquitos. Image: Marina Lopes

The Center for Disease Control responded to the outcry with a risk assessment of its own. It found that over 70 percent of the 206 countries that participated in the Olympics do not house the Aedes Aegypti mosquito that carries the virus, or the conditions necessary to sustain an outbreak. The Annals of Internal Medicine estimated between three and 37 visitors would return home infected. Zika fears deterred about a dozen athletes, who pulled out of the Olympics.

But as the weather hovered near 50 degrees several nights during the Games, Rio’s mosquito population dwindled. The virus’s biggest presence was seen in the soccer arena, where Brazilian fans taunted their competitors with shouts of “Zika” when they had possession of the ball.

As Zika fears abated in Brazil, returning US athletes encountered rising concerns back home. Last week,federal health officials warned pregnant women to steer clear of Miami Beach, an active area in Florida’s Zika outbreak. Congress has yet to provide emergency funding to fight the epidemic.

While the lack of cases during the games is promising, new patients could still emerge. Zika lives in victims’ blood for up to 14 days, but can survive in sperm and is sexually transmittable for months after a bite, according to the CDC.

Meanwhile, the CDC urges anyone who has traveled to Zika infected areas to monitor their symptoms and spray repellent for three weeks after their return.

“Everyone thought they would arrive in Rio, be attacked by Zika-carrying mosquitos and we would all get very sick.” Paes, Rio’s mayor, told reporters at a press conference. “Let me remind you, that those looking to avoid Zika were safer in Rio than in Miami.”

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