Asked how long he had lived in “Crackland,” a region in downtown São Paulo named after the high number of crack users who reside there, a 62-year-old Black man responded that he had been there “since the first Crackland” in the late 1980s, which was near the old bus station in the neighborhood of Bom Retiro. A 36-year-old Black woman said she had been hospitalized “thirty-something times” for treatment, while a 39-year-old White man said he had been admitted 17 times. Researchers from the Center for Bureaucracy Studies at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) and the Center for Metropolitan Studies (CEM), one of the Research, Innovation, and Dissemination Centers (RIDCs) funded by FAPESP, interviewed 90 crack users who frequented or lived in Crackland between July 15 and August 15, 2022. In the survey, they found that 66% were Black men, 16% were Black women, and 14% were White men, in addition to two White women and one Indigenous person; 78% were aged between 30 and 49, 69% were unhoused, 36% had been there for between 5 and 10 years, and more than 60% reported that they had suffered from prejudice in the weeks prior to the interviews. “Moral prejudice, because they call us trash, they treat us as if we are not human beings,” said a 40-year-old Black woman talking about interactions with the police (CEM, November 21).
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