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Anyone seen the documentary 'A South American Journey?' In one episode, the presenter Jonathan Dimbleby visits Rio and visits some of the favelas. He talks to ex gang members, policemen.etc, and says that the police have largely cleaned up many of the slums, and made them safer with police presence, and a heavy hand, and many are now safer than before. That the grip of the gangs has loosened and Rio at least is a lot safer than it was a few years ago (the documentary is a couple of years old or so).
Do the stats bear this out? Have you found this to be true from your own experience and from talking to others?
It was retarded to not have a police presence in sprawling squatter camps that became favelas in which addresses and property taxes and public services were non-existent.
Two things I don't much believe in in: right-wing oppressive rule and hippie we all can live in peace with no fear mantra.
Most people are motivated by the base desires of reward and fear of punishment. Police, courts, jails and prisons are necessary. Absent of them you better hope most people have a real fear of eternal damnation in hell.
Prior to the Rio police holding and actual presence in some of the favelas they are in now, what the Rio government did in the past was have the Rio law enforcement conduct lightening raids in the favelas and then exist. Tactical procedures the U.S. military uses and not the U.S. police force that has police stations, beat cops, and squad cars holding presence in U.S. inner-cities.
The Brazilians in general must be given familial and cultural/social moral formation that reduces a lot of the human propensity to violence, considering the great economic inequality gap between the have's and have not's in Brazil as well as the abject poverty in many of the urban slums of Brazil. Because considering how violent many American cities are I can just imagine how far more violent they would be if our poor lived in the millions in squalor like they do in Brazil. Our poor live like kings and queens to some degree, materially, relative to the poor in most of the world, yet they are hyper violent.
(The historical hard brutality of the Brazilian police in Rio likely reduced some of the violence in Brazil in the past--via fear being a motivation for would-be violent criminals in Rio.)
The answer is YES for Rio´s South Zone, but definetely NO for Brazil as a hole.
Actually medium-size cities that were not so violent years ago are very much violent nowdays.
The answer is YES for Rio´s South Zone, but definetely NO for Brazil as a hole.
Actually medium-size cities that were not so violent years ago are very much violent nowdays.
What about cities in the north like Salvador, Recife, Fortaleza, Belem? Is Manaus safer than the others, or Brasilia?
The answer is YES for Rio´s South Zone, but definetely NO for Brazil as a hole.
Actually medium-size cities that were not so violent years ago are very much violent nowdays.
Brazil as a....''hole''?...
Anyway, this is an interesting thread, very constructive indeed
Safer? No, definitely not. It was getting safer for a while, but now it is going back to being dangerous. The problem with Brasil is that you can be mugged anywhere in the city.. whereas the other countries in Latin America you will be pretty safe in the more populated areas.
The thing about Brasil is you're going to find a mix of stories. From the hysterical, talking about how Rio is a warzone and also the naive people who think it's a safe place to go at any time. Me? I opted to see Brasil at another time from the advice of family and friends in Brasil.
Recife has one of the highest murder rates in the country.
Brasilia was said to be one of the safer cities but the crime rates have been rising for the last 5-10 years now.
Check out South Brasil if you want to be on the safer side.. Curitiba for example.
I doubt I'd ever live in Brazil, but for visiting Rio, the north (Bahia etc) and the Amazon interest me the most. I'm not as interested in the more European part but it would be interesting to see German Brazilian communities.
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