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Originally Posted by Cape Cod Todd
That is so true. There are many resorts around the world where the well to do go for a vacation but outside the walls or a few blocks over from the tourist sections the crime and desperation that accompanies poverty is rampant.
I saw this when our cruise ship stopped at Cozumel Mexico, heck I saw it in Vegas off the strip.
When you think about the beautiful beaches and culture of the Dominican Republic it is hard to imagine that just through the jungle and over a mountain or 2 lies the desolation and desperation of Haiti.
South Africa has always been a hot spot of danger, corruption and tumultuous politics where the poor are crushed. We could blame white people but now the region is ruling its own and they are not doing very well.
Others here have pointed to the break downs in society that have caused SA to become what it is and it is very possible that it could happen here in fact we have seen the beginnings of it in some of our cities.
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This has always been the way it is. People with money have found ways to seal themselves off from those who aren't them.
You mention the Dominican Republican. There is plenty of crime, poverty, and violence right there in the DR. Pedro Martinez grew up in a tin-roofed shack outside of Santo Domingo.
Interestingly, the Vegas Strip isn't in Las Vegas, but in Paradise and Winchester. Las Vegas has had Bloods and Crips since the 1970s. The state of Nevada had a murder rate of 20 per 100,000 in 1980, the highest for any state that year.
You don't have to stop with Las Vegas. Look at New Orleans. People go there to visit the French Quarter and for Mardi Gras. Get outside of the tourist areas and you can find PLENTY of poverty and violence, gang violence. New Orleans has been the murder capital of America several times. Hurricane Katrina basically exposed how much craziness went on in New Orleans. I visited in the late 1990s when I was a kid. New Orleans outside of the French Quarter just felt grimy to me.
Haiti itself has long been an example of people trying to keep themselves from getting killed. Petionville is a suburb of Port-Au-Prince. Petionville has barbed wire on its gated and has guards. It is basically an enclave for many of Haiti's elites. But even this couldn't stop then-President of Haiti Jovenel Moise from getting assassinated in his own home, on 7 July 2021. Last year, a Haitian lawyer was murdered in front of his home in Petionville.
Many people look at South Africa's breakdown as a sign of what could happen in America. Many neighborhoods in American cities are already there. Detroit is a good example of this. Baltimore is like this. And South Africa has long operated quite badly. During Apartheid era South Africa, there was plenty of crime. It just didn't affected the White minority all that much. Most of it stayed in the Black townships, often by force. The police back then were quite abusive towards Blacks. South Africa had a murder rate in the 30s per 100,000 during the 1960s. It spiked rapidly during the 1970s and 1980s, and peaked around 1992-1993.
Apartheid is over, and that's for the best. However, South Africa has never truly gotten its act together. It was chaos during apartheid, and it's chaos now.
In many American cities, gated communities are a sign you have alot of money and want to shield yourself from the "outside world". In South Africa, it's a necessity. Barbed wire on gated, private security, this is where the South African middle class, both Black and White, live.
Argentina is the same way to an extent. I watched an episode of World's Strictest Parents. Two British teens were sent to Argentina to get straightened out by some strict parents. The teens had to got through gates to get to their new home. Very close to that middle-upper class gated community was a slum.
Rio de Janeiro. It's a major tourism hotspot. Beaches, samba, Carnaval, soccer. The favelas, the slums, are up in the hills. The violence, the police brutality, the abject poverty, it's up there. Gated communities are a necessity there.
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