|
 For the second time in a month a Brazilian has died while in the custody of American authorities. Maxsuel Medeiros, 25, an illegal immigrant living in the state of Massachusetts, who was arrested Friday, September 7, after the car in which he was a passenger was stopped for a traffic violation, has died yesterday, September 11.
His death occurred in the Massachusetts General Hospital from an unknown cause, according to the Essex's District Attorney's office.
On August 7, Edimar Alves Araújo, 34, a Brazilian from Minas Gerais state, had died in Woonsocket, in Rhode Island state, also after have been arrested due to a traffic violation. Araújo died after having been handed to the ICE (Immigration and Custom Enforcement) for deportation to Brazil. Both victims had warrants against them.
Medeiros, who entered the US through Mexico, about eight years ago, worked as a roofer in Framingham, Massachusetts. The District Attorney informed that the state police had stopped the car he was in after a lane change violation on Interstate 497, at 5:20 pm. Even though the car belonged to Medeiros it was a friend of his who was driving it.
Authorities found then that the Brazilian had several aliases and two state warrants. Maxwell Pires and Maxeel Campos were some of the other names he used. Authorities, however, haven't revealed what the warrants against Medeiros were for.
He was at a cell at the Andover state police barracks when he fell ill on September 7. Authorities called 911 and he was immediately taken to Lawrence General Hospital. He was transferred later to the Massachusetts General Hospital where he ended up dying this Tuesday at about 6 am.
In an interview to the Boston Globe, Medeiros aunt, Meire Medeiros, lamented the young man's death. "He came here to have a better life. He never had any problems with his health; he was a young man," she said.
The aunt revealed that she and the family were told on Saturday that Maxsuel had apparently suffered a heart attack and was on a coma. The family decided to donate his organs.
Meire also told the newspaper that she has another nephew, Lucas, who is being deported to Brazil after having been detained by ICE last month in Framingham.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj).