Marcelo Londoño

Martyr

Dona Maria is 80 years old and passes her days in the loneliness of her small house in the place that once was the Leprosario Colonia da Mirueira, a leper colony placed in Pernambuco state in Brazil, where in the past people diagnosed with leper were confined to these places that they would then recognize as home. Until the 80s in Brazil the infected with leprosy were submitted by forced compulsory reclusion to one of the leper colonies that existed in the country, frequently far away from their houses, family, friends, beloved ones to a life of forgetfulness and severance. As time went by the separated ones were not remembered and visits didn’t occur anymore. When the compulsory reclusion was brought to an end many of the patients didn’t have a place to go and they didn’t found alternative to remain in the old hospital installations. Dona Maria is an example of someone who, in regret, lost contact with her family as she passed most of her life in the colony, enabling her readaptation to the foreign world not only for the social repulsion but also for the severe sequels that the disease left on her body.

​

Awards:

​

Transparency International-Thomson Reuters Foundation

Capture Corruption - second place.