Geraldo lived all his life in Belo Horizonte and all of his adult life in the Jardim America Biarro, specifically in a tired little set of rooms tucked off a narrow steep alley, Beco Edna, in Favela da Ventosa in the hilly southern part of the city.
Geraldo was a stone mason by trade and when he could get work, he earned enough to provide food and clothing for his wife Jendira and their three young boys, Leandro, Leonardo and Luiz. But there wasn’t always work to be gotten and like many men in the favela, Geraldo sometimes allowed himself too get a little to close to the “marginals,†the petty thieves and the foot soldiers in the drug wars that erupt in all the favelas from time to time. (more…)