Words and Photos By Colevito Garapa
Throughout the 90s, São Paulo’s House of Detention contained approximately 8,000 of Latin America’s most violent criminals. Better known as Carandiru, it was once the largest prison on the continent. On October 2, 1992, a massive fight broke out between prisoners that ultimately resulted in 111 inmate deaths.
That day, there were 84 state military police officers present, and 102 bullets were fired. The nine guys who weren’t shot in their vital organs got knifed, but the cops (none of whom were killed, by the way) swore on their mothers’ graves that the prisoners were already carved up by the time guards arrived. If the math isn’t enough to make things seem a little fishy to you, take a closer look at that scrapbook down there. We see one partial decapitation and another guy with a hole in his chest the size of a fucking tennis ball. That doesn’t exactly scream “self-defense.”
Ronaldo Mazotto de Lima worked at the prison for over a decade. He was also one of the first people to witness the aftermath of the carnage that’s now referred to as the Carandiru Massacre. After the jail’s destruction, Mazotto de Lima transferred to a minimum-security prison in Serra Azul. He brought more than his experience to the new job. He also took along some of the only surviving evidence of the massacre: over 2,000 photos, 300 personal effects, and ten hours of grisly video footage. It was all taken shortly after the violence subsided, and he wants to be sure that history doesn’t forget what he witnessed. So we asked him to help us understand.
