[slade]

Посмотрела в выходные фильм Cidade de Deus, о жителях фавел.
Вчера снова пытала А. вопросами о Рио.

Рассказ под катом. Ничего особенно нового, просто взгляд местного представителя миддл класса.

If you come to Brazil and watch the news for some time, you will start imagining that Rio is hell and the rest of the country is heaven. And this is in the mind of people. Ask anyone from outside Rio and they will say that Rio is hell. At the same time, take a look at criminal and homicide statistics, and you will see that rio is _not_ the most violent city in Brazil. So, there is a clear difference between reality and perception.

A few stories: when I went to Naples, Italy, the streets were full of garbage. Reason: mafia. They control garbage collection and they were making sabotage to recycling units. There was even a murder on the time I was there. A friend of mine was once in Washington, he took a street, he was beaten, robbed and when he went to the police he was told that "that place was not safe to walk by, he should be aware of that". So, violence is everywhere, Iraq or Iceland.

The point is, _where_ the violence is. I can take a risk to say that in most cities in the world, the violence is peripheric. Far from the eyes of the middle class. What happens in Rio is, if I look carefully through my window here, I will see a slum (or a "favela", as we call them here). The violence, the poverty and the misery is right at my sight. And this kind of thing bothers me, bothers everyone. Worst: if the violence and poverty is at my sight, then wealthiness is at the sight of people who live in those places. And this also affects them. And so, differently from other places, where violence is, usually, restrained to the circle of poverty and misery where it is born, here, the violence sometimes reach people who is "out" of that circle.

So, the answer to your question is, yes, it affects all the disctricts. Now, in the last two years, the government is trying a new approach. They are building police stations inside the slums and they are creating several social programs inside those places. But this is a slow process, that is happening on a city with 6 million people ... and it affects me too and the place where I live.

About causes.

You can think of Brazil just a bit like Italy. Only that you should put it upside down. Here, the north is poor and the south is rich. During the 70s and 80s, but also before that, the south part had a huge problem with massive internal migration from the north to the south. The same situation you mentioned. People searching for better life in big cities and not finding it.

Now add smth else to the sum: Brazil is the most visited country in South America by foreign tourists. Rio, in particular, is the most visited city. What is the best place to travel with drugs, being a foreigner, and don't drawing attention? Rio. Now, take the biggest provider of cocaine to USA and Europe. Colombia. Brazil has more than 5000km of land borders with other south american countries. A huge part of that border is inside a dense forest. All of the border with Colombia is inside the Amazon forest. The border patrol in these regions must be done by the special forces of the brazilian army, coz it is a very difficult and unreachable place but still, it is a very large extent of land. So, it is very easy to enter Brazil with cocaine from those places, and traffic it to other countries from Rio. And the internal migration provided the labor force needed to do that ...

Regarding my place, yes, it is a middle class place. Dangerous at night ... no ... it is not. But on my way back home, there might be bad places to go ... or be ... during night. Not bad. Just ... better not to risk.