I was forced to work for Brazilian drug gangs aged NINE & wrap cocaine to survive – what I saw will haunt me forever

AGED just nine-years-old, Marli Gonzaga was forced to work for drug gangs in the slums of Brazil in a desperate bid to survive.

After a childhood plagued by tragedy, the youngster spent her days wrapping cocaine with old newspapers in exchange for stolen food and a rotten mattress.

Marli - who is now training to be a nurse - spent most of her younger years immersed in the dark world of drug trafficking after both her parents died.

Aged nine, Marli lived in a "biqueira" in São Paulo - a Brazilian slang to describe a drug hotspot.

Biqueiras are the usually grim derelict or abandoned buildings where drug dealers and addicts squat to conduct their trafficking business.

Speaking to The Sun, Marli described the appalling conditions of the place she was forced to call home - and the life she faced under the wrath of Sao Paulo's drug lords.

She said: "The building didn't have many walls and most windows were broken. There was no energy, no water, or sewage and all of us slept spread around on the floor."

Marli said the lucky ones would find a corner by the wall - or sleep on a dirty mattress.

To eat and have a roof over her head, she was forced to follow a strict schedule enforced by the ruling drug lords.

"Every morning, I had to go to the local market to steal food, and if I didn’t help, I wouldn’t eat," Marli said.

"During my free time I'd play with a tiny rice bag or fly kites made with unused newspaper sheets.

"By 'unused' I mean the papers I'd secretly stash for later when I was wrapping cocaine and marijuana."

After her morning market trips, nine-year-old Marli would shred marijuana blocks and roll them up so her sister and cousin could sell them to drug dealers.

The same would apply to cocaine - getting all wrapped up so it could be shipped off across São Paulo.

At the weekend, the young girl would be forced to tag along with her cousin to visit her thug boyfriend in prison.

Now selling barbecue skewers and training to become a nurse, the mum-of-two and grandmother said she will always be haunted by her upbringing in the outskirts of the Brazilian city.

She did everything to survive inside the Brazilian favelas - from enduring forced labour by her aunt to wrapping drugs and paying visits to dealers in prison.

After her mother died from pre-eclampsia, Marli and her four siblings were raised by their dad, who worked around the clock as a security guard.

Every morning, I had to go to the local market to steal food, and if I didn’t help, I wouldn’t eat

Marli Gonzaga

"I had a very troublesome and lonely childhood," she told The Sun.

"Since I was two, I have lived without a mum, many times without a dad, and later in life with no family at all.

"My siblings would drive my father insane as they were constantly arrested for shoplifting or caught using drugs while he was at work.

"And when he was at home, he’d drown his sorrows away with three bottles of liquor a day until he passed out."