Jacinto’s dream was killed twice: first by poverty, then by bullets from the Mozambican police

Jacinto Ernesto was a poor young man, living in the Urbanização neighborhood, right on the edge of Maputo’s cement area. Two years ago, he interrupted his university studies due to a lack of conditions to enroll in the third year at the Faculty of Agronomy at Eduardo Mondlane University. He dreamed of re-entering next year, but three gunshots — two to the feet and one to the abdomen — put an end to his dream forever.

“They shot him twice in the feet and he fell. He got up and tried to run. He fell again. They followed him and fired the third shot into his abdomen. He died there”, says his grandmother, who took him in when he became an orphan of his parents.