"Who's killing all the Chinese people?"

"Who's killing all the Chinese people?"


This isn't the question you want to hear asked of you, especially when you're researching the local Chinese community.

Yet after explaining my project at a bar in Sao Paulo, I was asked this very question. Not a good sign, eh?

I don't know the answer to this question, but it's a fascinating subject. Four Chinese merchants have been murdered in the past two months, and forty to fifty have been robbed. The circumstances are usually more or less the same: someone breaks into an apartment, usually at night, perhaps knowing who is living there, takes the cash. Whether or not violence follows seems completely unpredictable. Apparently it is well known here that many Chinese immigrants keep their money (in cash) at home, rather than putting it in a bank. Many carry loads of cash around themselves in the first place. I've heard some people claim that this is a cultural difference, but it may also be a very practical thing -- many immigrants here are illegal, and therefore don't open any sort of account.

I happened to stumble upon the crime scene of the last murder, which didn't fit this profile at all. A Fujianese man was beaten to death in the early morning of a Saturday, inside of store on a quiet street in Pari, a commercial district. He was just a worker, and not the owner -- and given the strangeness of the crime -- the murder seemed completely random. Other Chinese merchants around the area knew about the murder, but didn't know him nor any details. One Taiwanese family two streets down was good friends with him, and said he was a very... "straight" and "abiding" man (terrible translations, sorry). Apparently he used to live in Ciudad del Este with the Taiwanese family, and were regular churchgoers in Sao Paulo.

Violence is a strange thing, which has unfortunately touched the heart of the Chinese community here in Sao Paulo.