Macapa a town branded by banditry

By CATHERINE MASTERS

The plane touches down at midnight at the gateway to the Amazon.

It is dark and the tarmac is slick with recent rain.

As we disembark we are watched curiously by a crowd overlooking the tiny runway. Most are waiting to greet friends and family returning from Belem, a city of a million people a 25-minute flight away.

It may be winter in this frontier town of 250,000 people but it's still hotter than the hottest Auckland day.

As we wait for our bags on the rickety conveyer belt, an old man from the flight asks where we are from.

We tell him we are New Zealanders here for the Sir Peter Blake court case.

He understands nothing except the name. Peter Blake, he says, his voice thick with a Portuguese Brazilian accent.

Then he puts his hands together with the sign of prayer.

The town is alive despite the late hour. We pass clusters of excited people, crowded around televisions in small concrete restaurants with peeling Coca-Cola signs. Everything seems made of concrete - and furnished with plastic chairs. Small, sleepy birds cram the power lines.

There are no snakes here, Francisco, our interpreter. assures me in the courtyard of our small hotel, which is surrounded by a padlocked iron fence and has a guard out front.

"Spiders?" I ask, visions of tarantulas looming in my imagination.

No, he says. Foreigners, even those from other Brazilian cities, always think Macapa is overrun with creatures from the Amazon. "But I can get some," he adds.

"Argh, no thanks. Not yet anyway," I say.

In fact, the jungle is a day or more away by boat.

But there is the Amazon River. In Macapa its brown, murky water mixes with the Atlantic.

The river is a meeting point for friends who gather at its banks at night to drink the local beer, flirt and discuss politics and soccer. Sometimes they swim in it and play soccer in the mudflats at low tide.

The lovely Portuguese-style hotel room is old-fashioned but spotlessly clean with decks and hammocks at each end.

On the wall, prints of indigenous Indians stare forlornly at me as the noisy air-conditioning unit blasts cold currents around the room.

The technology is bewildering though. There are no recognisable telephone plugs. I can't figure out how to dial internally to Kenny, let alone phone home to say we have landed safely in notorious Macapa.

On the television I can get just one channel. Soccer. Flamengo of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's most popular team, is playing San Loren from Argentina.

There is no one to ask how anything works. Francisco has gone home and the whole of Macapa is glued to the soccer. This is a nation of soccer fanatics, a mix of Portuguese, African and native Indian heritage with one thing in common, a round ball.

All I can hear outside is the chirping of strange insects amid cheering, foot-stamping, loud music, laughter and whistles.

I cannot disturb something this important. And anyway, no one speaks English, just as the crew of the Seamaster discovered when they tried to get help for Sir Peter after the shooting.

The accused, a gang of pirates, supplemented their meagre incomes as assistant bricklayers, electricians, fishermen and motorbike taxi drivers by robbing yachts moored in the river.

Three of the Seamaster's crew are to speak publicly, in court, for the first time about what happened that fatal day on the river.

Journalists from the BBC are coming and New Zealand's ambassador to Brazil, Denise Almao, will arrive to try to help the three New Zealanders returning to give evidence.

It will be painful testimony as Sir Peter's good friend, Aucklander Geoff Bullock, tells the court through an interpreter how he almost became a second fatality when a bullet ripped across his back. Roger Moore, also from Auckland, who first noticed the pirates swarming silently onboard, will tell how Sir Peter's alleged killer, Ricardo Colares Tavares, hit him in the face with a pistol, knocking him almost unconscious.

Leon Sefton, son of Sir Peter's business partner and friend, Alan Sefton, holds key evidence.

According to indictment papers obtained in Brazil by the Herald, he had been in a cabin reading a book and opened his door to be subdued by the bandit Ismael da Costa. The man went back on deck when Sir Peter brandished a rifle.

Sir Peter, the papers say, could have shot him dead but thought the bandit had given up the venture.

But Ismael started shooting and Sir Peter shot the pistol he was holding - along with a finger - out of his hand.

Leon Sefton will say he saw what happened next, downstairs where Sir Peter was shot. The alleged killer, Tavares, had the vantage-point upstairs and apparently watched through a port hole as Sir Peter tried to fix his jammed rifle.

Such was the embarrassment Sir Peter's death has caused here that the water rats were arrested in record time. It is said Brazil's President, Frederick Fernando Henrique Cardoso, personally intervened and that resulted in arrests within 24 hours.

The justice system here is very different to New Zealand's. Evidence is to be heard before a federal judge - who makes the final judgment without a jury.

The case falls under federal jurisdiction instead of the state's judicial system as the crime was committed on water and is deemed piracy.

But we will not hear the full details of this darker side of Macapa for another two days.

For now the streets of downtown Macapa are pleasant. The people are well-dressed, the women uniformly stunning, squeezed into tight-fitting clothes.

There are no roads to Macapa, except from neighbouring French Guiana in the north. Cars are shipped in.

Poverty is apparent too. Many have flooded into the area from the northern state of Maranhao, hoping to find work in the public service.



Shanty towns consist of row upon row of jumbled houses built with wood from the rainforest.

In downtown Macapa people are friendly. Some ask in halting English if New Zealanders believe Macapa to be dangerous and violent. We say yes and they shake their heads sadly.

We tell them they soon will be able to learn more about the country that has put them in the world spotlight - The Fellowship of the Ring is coming to the local cinema.

The soccer has finished. The Argentines won 3-2. But none of these bright, happy people seems upset.

"I was sad because it was my team," said one. "But I don't mind. It was good for their self-esteem."

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Peter Blake, 1948-2001