HELP OF THE

HELPLESS The children were

rounded up, forced to stand on a steep

embankment, and then shot --with automatic weapons until their

small bodies stopped moving. That is only

one of the reasons why an American nun in

Brazil has put her own life on the line in an effort to help others­

By Andrew Irevkin

T he visitor's Volkswagen bounces down a steep dirt

road that cuts through a group of shacks built of cinder block, card­board, tin-a shanty town, cling­ing to a crumbling hillside, that

~ Good Housekeeping/June 1991

Left: Si ster Michael Mary Nolan in her Siio Paulo office. Bight: A policeman thrusts his revolver into a homeless chi ld's mouth.

seems held together by a maze of electric lines and clotheslines. Of the 18 million inhabitants of Sao Paulo, Brazil, more than a third live in open-air slum areas like this one (called, in Brazilian Portu­guese, (ave/as) or in crowded, in­fested tenements.

As she parks her car, the visi­tor's youthful face betrays little about her purpose. Only her eyes give her away-piercing blue eyes that cannot hide the pain they have seen . She strides-always in a hurl'y- toward a small building. It is a church-run community center where residents can learn to read and are taught marketable skills .

In the distance, through a smoggy pall, she can see the shin­ing skyscrapers of the other Sao Paulo, the rich industrial heart of Brazil. It could be the moon, as far as the slum dwellers know.

A woman comes running from a house smaller than a single-car garage but surrounded by a neat garden that defies the prevailing squalor. "Sister Michael, it's great to see you," she says.

This woman, whose name is Ce­lita, is one of the many residents who have benefited from the com­munity center; last year, she learned how to read and write there, and she now teaches macra­me at the center. She is 75.

Celita is only one of hundreds of people Sister Michael Mary Nolan has helped since she left the U.S. in 1968 to work with Brazil's un­derclass. Social work is in Sister Michael's blood: she was raised in an Alexandria, Va ., home devoted to liberal politics, civil rights, and labor causes . Her father, John, worked for the Labor Depart-

ment; her mother, Mary, executive secretary to Illi­nois Senator Paul Douglas, hired the first black in a Senate office; her brother Nicholas did union work for government employees.

continued on page 74

.Far left: Evidence collected by Sister M ichael h elped convict hired assassin "Ca boBruno"; n ow escap ed from prison, he's vowed to kill her. Near left: Sister M ichael visits fami l ies in a favela (open -air slum).

74

ELP OF THE HELPLESS continued

Michael Mary Nolan ·s- first inkling of her future came from a nun who spoke at her high school in 1959. The nun had set up a mission in Brazil and described the plight of its poor; these images stayed with the young woman, who was already thinking seriously of becoming a nun.

Michael Mary Nolan attended St. Mary's College, on the campus of Notre Dame, where she earned a degree in business administration, and soon after, she made her decision. She took her final vows on August 15, 1968. Thirty days later she was in Sao Paulo.

After chatting with Celita and visiting the community center, Sister Michael hurries back to her car and is off toward her law office. Soon she nears a soupy {ake of red mud. She floors the accelerator like a seasoned race-car driver-"the only way to make it across," she says. On the left, there is a steep embankment. Sister Michael hates driving past this spot; she is still haunted by the memory of a crime that was committed there-an event that changed her mission forever.

T he date was November 5, 1980--her 39th birthday. Sister Michael was running a program of night classes

for slum dwellers . The students were misfits- teenage boys who spent half their time stealing or hanging out.

That night, several of Sister Michael's young students were killed by justi~eiros-free-lance gunmen, many of them policemen during the daytime, paid by shopkeepers

or neighborhood associations to rid the streets of suspect­ed criminals and the otherwise unwanted. Six children forced to stand on the bare slope and then shot with automatic weapons until their small bodies stopped moving.

Sister Michael knew one of the • victims particularly well-a 14-year-old boy nicknamed "Sujeiro," which means "dirty." She had worked with him since he was seven, trying to keep him out of trouble. She was the one who had to go to the morgue to identify his body . "He was lying on a table with at least 13 bullets in his thin body."

She called Luiz Eduardo Greenhalgh, a lawyer who worked for the archdiocese 's Commission on Human Rights. "When he answered the phone, I just started crying," Sister Michael remembers. "He came down and we made a big stink about the shooting. I took a judge to the hospital to hear the testimony of one boy who had survived and was paralyzed by a bullet in the spine. The murders were never solved." That night was a turning point for Sister Michael. A year earlier, in 1979, she'd accepted a scholarship offered to her by the Cardinal of Sao Paulo and begun attending law school. Now she knew she had made the right decision: She would need more than just her nun ' s habit to really help the people.

Today, Sister Michael and Greenhalgh are partners in a law practice that exclusively handles cases involving human rights or labor issues. Even though 25 years of military rule in Brazil ended in 1985 , and the country ratified a new constitution. troubles continue.

In addition to working with the urban poor. Sister Michael travels throughout Brazil investigating the kill­ings of political activists, trying to build " parallel" cases alongside those of the local law-enforcement officers. (In some instances, she says . her investigation is the only one done-because the police themselves are involved in the

crimes.) Her most famous case to date is that of Chico Mendes. an environmentalist who led efforts to save the Amazon rain forests and whose 1988 murder by cattle ranchers attracted worldwide press attention; she helped to compile the evidence that convicted his killers.

This latter part of Sister Michael's work is dangerous business . She has been threaten~d with viole nce . and her office has been ransacked. The th ree main targets of Brazil's hired gunmen these days, she explai~s. are church workers. lawyers. and union leaders. She is in two ou t of the three categories-"and I work for the third ...

Still, a poster on the wall of her oflice proclaims her ·determination: Nwrca Mais, it reads-"Never Again ...

On it are snapshots or 42 people who have died or disappeared in police custody.

Together, she and Greenhalgh collected suflicient evi­dence to convict a notorious military-police officer nick­named "Cabo Bruno ... who had openly admitted to killing "only fifty" people . After he received a sentence of 120 years in prison, he swore he would kill Sister Michael and Greenhalgh if he ever had the chance.

In November of last year, Cabo Bruno escaped from prison. The complicity of the authorities was evident: He was somehow able to leave with all of his belongings and three machine guns. Sister Michael has heard rumors that he !led to Paraguay. but she keeps a low profile.

A fter stopping at her office to answer phone calls. Sister Michael heads for the tenements . called Corti­

~- (Cortir;o means "hil'e" or "cork" and is used to describe a living space so crowded that it resembles the network of cells and lllnnels in a beehive or a cork.) She stops first at a meering of catadores, men who walk the streets hauling carts and searching for wasrepaper and cardboard. They are paid a penny for every four pounds of

Good Housekeeping/ June 1991 75

paper they collect. Sister Michael has helped them form an association-the first step toward a union .

Afterward, she visits a woman who is trying to organize the tenants of a tenemelll. Walking down a mildewed, cement corridor to the woman's apartment. she passes a rickety ladder that leads up to a hole Clll in the ceiling; a toddler peers down. "Now you see why these places are called corti~os," she says. This particular hive, maybe twice the square footage of a typical American home , harbors 15 families. Sister Michael' sfinal stop for the day is at a small favela. home to 21 families, on a sliver of abandoned land between two large city-owned lots. It is the rare happy occasion, a party to celebrate the opening of a new social hall. Blll Sister Michael knows that there's another reason to celebrate: In her briefcase , she has a copy of the lawsuit she has filed on their behalf, claiming squatters' rights to rhe land.

Inside the social hall, musicians play an accordion. triangle, and guitar-the traditional [orr6 band of Brazil's northeast, an impoverished region that was the birthplace of many of the country ·s homeless class. The women show off a cake the size of a 1velcome mat; two dozen children stand transfixed, staring at an ocean of pale yellow icing.

Sister Michael grins. "The enduring qualiry of the Brazil­ians ." she says, "is that they always believe things will get beuer. As black as things get . they still have hope."

So. too, is the enduring quality of their protector. defender, and supporter- a 49-year-old American nun who . armed with only a tattered paperback copy of Brazil's ngw constitution and her own faith. is determined to help them turn their hope into reality. * Andrew Revkin is the author a/The Burning Season: The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rain Forest.