September 3, 2003

Dear Friends,

This is a story that was told to me some time ago by a woman who was briefly a client of the human rights center where I work.

Ana was a single mother of mature years. She lived in a cortiço (tenement) that was home to a number of other young mothers, perhaps as many as eight. Most had been living in the same place for several years. Each month they paid their proportionate shares of the water bill, which was very low. No one thought much about the cost because poor people have so many other worries that a low bill is just one less worry.

One day the meter reader exclaimed, “Somebody drove a pin into the meter and slowed it down! Your next bill will be higher.” Ana said to me that the residents hadn’t known anything about the pin. Maybe that is true for some or even all of them. Who can tell?

The next month when the bill arrived, it was for 23 times the normal amount. The women were horrified, but thought that with a little time—maybe an extra three or four months—they could pay off their debt. But then the next bill arrived for 230 times their normal bill. The amount represented the water company’s punitive determination of the amount it lost because of the pin—plus fines.

Ana went to the highest ranking person that would talk to her at the water company. He assured her that the best that the water company could offer was a four-month payment plan, which would require amounts completely out of the question for these extremely poor women.

Ana went home and the women waited for the inevitable cut-off of their water. Now it is obvious to anyone but water company officials that water is an absolute necessity—not just occasional glasses, but water for food preparation, bathing and cleaning, and especially in the case of families with young children.

Soon enough, the water company workers arrived and cut off the water. The mothers, not stupid, and as resourceful as most poor Brazilians are forced to be if they are to survive, found a local teenager who, for a small sum, reconnected the water. The water company discovered the reconnection and cut it off. It was reconnected and cut a number of times.

Finally, one afternoon the water company dug a hole under the sidewalk, cut the pipe and left a large lump of cement between the parts of the pipe. In the middle of the night the teenager reopened the hole in the sidewalk and attempted to reconnect the pipe. Something went amiss and instead of a reconnection, there was a two-story geyser! They tried everything to stop the flow, but failed, and finally they called the water company to report the appearance of the geyser. Water company employees appeared rapidly (it was in the wee hours of the morning) and asked what had happened. No one was willing to hazard an opinion. So the workers got busy and when they finished sent one of the women to check that the water had really been reestablished inside the tenement. It had. So the women had water for a while.

Then one day an order from the police station arrived that required the presence of all the women at a specified hour to speak with the police chief. It was hot, the police chief was harassed and running late, and the women waited with their small children well past the indicated time. Finally the police chief called them all in and accused them of stealing a public service, referring less to the unpaid bill and more to the theft of unmetered water that the women had since the cutoff. He began yelling and threatening them all with prison. At a prearranged signal, the mothers, with their smallest children in arms or on their laps, pinched the children. The resulting wails were too much for the shell-shocked police chief, who ordered them all out immediately and added that they were not to return.

All this happened before my human rights center became involved with water problems.

About five years ago, after many struggles with the water company, we showed a newspaper reporter how families living in cortiços (tenements) were paying more for their water (which they used in smaller quantities) than middle class families. The comparison, and interviews with our clients, received front-page headlines.

The state-owned water company, which had been intransigent about denying discounts to tenement dwellers with debts to the water company and adamant on debt repayment schedules of a maximum of only four months, no matter what circumstances caused the debts, suddenly responded to the pressures of bad publicity. Their community services department began to work with us and as a result we have arranged payment schedules of up to seventy months. Now it is also possible to arrange discounts on current bills for tenements before their debts are paid off: a practice that makes so much sense that it shouldn’t need to be defended.

Tenements are different from most middle class homes in many ways besides the poverty of their inhabitants. First, there is only one meter for everybody. Second, if the owner, or more likely, the sublessor, absconds with people’s shares of the water bill, or takes other illegal action that results in fines and unpaid bills (as perhaps happened in Ana’s case above), a lot of innocent, poor people are stuck with the financial consequences. These differences justify the discounts and extended repayment periods.

But all is not perfect even now with the water company. Oddly, the written rules governing the company’s behavior with respect to tenements have not changed at all. Furthermore, none of the water company employees who work outside of the community services department knows of the special provisions available to tenement dwellers. No training has taken place to inform the workers and no public information campaign has occurred to inform tenement dwellers. This means that unless the tenement dwellers in São Paulo (perhaps as many as two million) are fortunate in their contacts (for example, with a neighbor who has the benefits, or with the human rights center where I work), they will never know about the discount or extended payment schedules. Facing a problem, they are likely to get deeper and deeper into debt, have cut-offs and fines and endless problems. Still, we think we have a significant victory—for now. (Of course our center tries to inform as many as possible about what changes exist and how to obtain the benefits.)

The electric company has a different recent history. Its rules pertaining to tenements are very similar to the water company’s written (but no longer applied) rules. However, about six years ago, the electric company closed down its community services department and transferred or laid off all the workers. Before they left, the company ordered the department’s workers to destroy all their records (I know this is true because a friend worked there). Then the state-owned company was “privatized,” that is, sold to a multinational. The sale was doubtless supported by the IMF as part of the “restructuring” of the economy. Many Brazilians feel that the IMF and World Bank pressures for privatizing publicly owned enterprises come from the desire to allow foreign capital to enter the developing countries’ economies (because in these countries, there is little private capital available to buy the big state companies that have been built up by the taxpayers over the years). So there is foreign pressure to sell, and only large foreign companies are potential buyers.

But what primarily interests me is what happened here. Tenements could no longer become certified to receive discounts on their electric bills. Some that had been certified were decertified, though I don’t know how many. I do know that a few years ago in all of São Paulo, only 35 tenements had the discount, and I believe that fewer have it today. Many people have had their electric service cut off for failure to pay, partly because the price of electricity has quadrupled since the sale of the company.

When the electricity is cut off, people reconnect illegally (as Ana did with the water) and dangerously, or use candles. I have a small collection of newspaper articles about people who have died in fires started by candles after the electricity was cut off by the company. And tenements are particularly vulnerable to fires. But since most reporters seem not to ask whether the candle that caused the fire was being used because there had been a prior cut off of electricity, my small collection of articles probably substantially underrepresents the number of electric company’s victims.

Now that it is privatized, the electric company acts as though it feels immune to popular pressure. It won’t negotiate with us or any of the tenements that we are aware of.

The price of the privatized electricity affects us all, but the intransigence about discounts—sometimes literally lethal—affects only the poor. With the sale of the electric company, São Paulo and its poorest citizens have lost the political power to protect themselves from some of the worst effects of globalization.

After the electric company was sold (to an American and French conglomerate, I was informed), there was a serious blackout that affected everyone. Then there was rationing of electricity (a result of lack of investments in energy production and a drought) and, of course, the quadrupling of the cost. All this caused the proposed privatization of the water company to be put on hold for awhile. For me, it helps to explain how the water company could change its working rules in response to public pressure, but to do it only temporarily and to retain the impossibly rigorous written rules, perhaps to be enforced after the proposed privatization, when the new owners will be able to point to the old rules and say that nothing has worsened for the poor.

Ana’s group of mothers represents the God-given creativity that the poor must cultivate to survive. The Anas of the world, living on the edge of disaster and facing life without basic necessities, are not benefiting from current and proposed economic globalization.

U.S. churches that send out missionaries need to know the realities that we witness and can testify to. Somehow churches, missionaries, and others in favor of the abundant life that Christ promised must find ways to work together to support the Anas as they face the lethal economic movements supported by, among others, our own government and our largest corporations.

Requesting your prayers and involvement,

And wishing you Shalom,

Your witness in São Paulo,

Linnis Cook

The 2003 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 258