Rickey Rogers

Why do we Brazilians refer to our neighborhood soccer matches as ‘peladas’? A search on the web brings up many answers, but not one is really definitive. In English ‘pelada’ means ‘naked’ in the feminine gender, but none of the answers I found has to do with playing the sport with no clothes on. One version talks of street soccer where everyone plays barefoot, or with ‘naked’ feet, running after the ball without a referee or any regard for rules.

It was around the time that Brazil was beginning construction projects to host the 2014 World Cup four years ago, that a massive earthquake devastated Haiti’s capital. The quake killed over 200,000 people and left few Haitians unaffected in some way.

One ordinary day in 2008, Maribel Murillo was at home preparing the dough to make tortillas for sale, the activity that she had done all her life. Her husband, who was in a known relationship with another woman, appeared and began to argue with her about his plans to sell their house. Maribel was opposed to the idea of losing what she had worked so hard to acquire. Enraged, he accused her of having a lover herself, and with a machete hacked off both her hands and struck her three times in the head.