Oh, haha general people hate pixação. We had an evil mayor who got elected demonizing pixação and telling all the problems of the city like crimes, poverty, leck of education and health system was secondary, but the main problem was pixação. And people elected him, so this shows how much people from this movement is persecuted and sometimes even executed or injured by police or people who thinks is ok to be above the law.
If I am doing a throw up in a big avenue of our city (always depends on what wall or surface you are doing of course) if I do like I almost always do, black filling, people will be screaming bad things to me and calling cops or securitys. But if i use like turquoise or some other cool color, people be like screaming from the cars like, “Ohhh this is so beautiful! This is art, not that ugly pixação thing.” So this also tells a lot about general citizen knowledge about whats what on the graffiti/pixacao world.
The thing is, the same people who want to buy and will have money to buy some piece from a super famous artist, will be calling the cops or himself confronting that same artist, doing that same piece on his wall of his property, if doing it illegally without his permission. Super contradictory.
The punishments always depends on many things. Here in Brazil we depend on what each particular cop thinks about it, and on how they are feeling in that moment. If no citizens are around and you get busted from police, they be doing some biblical things… like painting over your whole face and body or making you eat the paint. Beating the hell of you is the more common thing over here. Like the same treatment they would give to a real criminal. I was busted one time for pixaçao, I was doing with a roller, the lateral part of a building, from the rooftop of a 2nd floor pizzeria house. After I finished I was caught in the street with all my tools in my backpack. They came as if I had committed a murder and they were a SWAT team, like 4 cars flashing lights and 8 cops to catch a teenager writing his name haha… really crazy. In that same night imagine how much real crime was happening in the same center region of the city, but they were worried and focusing on me.
The real law, changes all the time but it is really rare to really go to jail because of it. There is some others accusations like breaking in a building to go up from the inside and do the top of it, you face another kind of penalty. But mainly you have to do some communitary work and pay some fines. I think just like in any place of the world. I had payed some time doing it communitary work for this episode i told you when i was 19. I was sharing the labour with a woman who robbed a person pointing a firearm to his head. So kind of apples and oranges haha
Brazil has many many problems, and the judicial system is just one more reason we are a super big country with so little things that actual work. We have corruption in the smaller proportions of power, imagine what the judges and police bosses actually do in here. Well… anyways, I think that hostile and problematic environment we live in here for sure have some contribution to made our creations and cultural movements unique as they are.