On weekends, the square in Japeri, a small town in the Baixada Fluminense region crossed by the Guandu River, fills with young people flying their tissue paper kites which can be purchased for a few cents at a small kiosk. Bright colours, football club logos, and comic book heroes are woven into their fragile surfaces.

What looks like a party is actually a battle whose purpose is to cut the opponents’ strings, causing their kites to fall. For this reason, despite the prohibitions, the linha is often reinforced with cerol, a mixture of shoe glue and glass powder that makes it as sharp as a blade.

On weekdays I only meet the youngest children in the quadra. The flights of their kites and their smiles manage to convey a sense of hope in an unfortunate land that too often sees its youngest citizens end up in the hands of drug trafficking factions, attracted by the lure of easy money. Too many strings break.

On the ground, fallen kites, severed strings. Like dreams that shatter against a reality where violence is always just a step away. Like the lives broken almost every day a few blocks from where the kites fly.

“Was your dad thrown into the Guandu River too when he was killed?”