Either Rio Stops Crime or Crime Will Stop Rio

According to the latest Latin America edition of U.S. weekly magazine Newsweek, Rio de Janeiro was always Brazil’s cidade maravilhosa, the marvelous city, but up close, the city is more often a monster than it is a marvel – a honking, steaming metropolis where rampant crime is only the most flagrant symptom of decline.

According to the article entitled “Brazil’s once marvelous city has lost its luster for natives as well as visitors. Can it recover?,” South America’s third-largest metropolis finds itself trapped in a relentless cycle of industrial decline, capital flight and bureaucratic gridlock.


All of this “has gutted the center city and transformed the once prospering suburbs into a rust belt of shuttered factories and slums.”


The city’s fall isn’t irreversible, reports the Rio-based, Brazilian correspondent for Newsweek, Mac Margolis. But Rio is unlikely to recover, he says  unless the chaos and criminals are stopped.


Margolis notes that Rio’s authorities can be very sensitive to any criticism. He cites the city’s urban planning chief saying that “For tourists, Rio is as safe as Belgium.” And adds: “Prickliness aside, the authorities have a point: foreigners are by no means the main victims of Rio’s busy bandits. But that is cold comfort to the Cariocas, as Rio’s besieged natives are called.”


Newsweek informs that, according to the UN, homicides have doubled in the last decade in Rio going up to 3,729 a year. The magazine talks about the effort of the police who have jailed 45,000 criminals, last year, but adds that often the police are the problem. The last shocking crime of the police was the recent killing, death-squad style, of 29 people in the streets of Rio’s Baixada Fluminense.


“From tainted water to toxic politics, South America’s third-largest metropolis (population: 10.5 million) has it all,” says the weekly, which also informs that last month Brazil’s Health Ministry took over six city hospitals, after calling Rio’s health services a “public calamity,”


The magazine sees Rio as Brazil in miniature, reminding that favelas (shantytowns) are all over and that violence has become a national epidemic.


“One business that is flourishing in Rio is drugs”, says the article. “After dark, gunmen in flip-flops and armed with assault weapons battle for territory on behalf of cocaine falanges, like the Red Command and Friends of Friends.”


Newsweek concludes the piece with examples of actions by citizens who wish to take the marvelous city back from criminal hands. The civic group Viva Rio is one such effort. They have launched dozens of initiatives including microcredit. And businessmen have been lobbying the government to ease taxes, clean up downtown and increase policing.

Tags:

You May Also Like

Brazilian Flagstone Maker Bets on the South of Brazil

Brazilian company Sistrel, a maker of flagstones and prefabricated elements, has recently inaugurated a ...

Brazil is not ready for another general blackout like the one in 2001

Brazilian Politics: Navel Gazing in Brasília – Largesse in São Paulo

One of the most depressing aspects of Brazilian politics is the way many – ...

Brazil Ready to Fight Foreign Threats to Amazon, Says Admiral

The Armed Forces of Brazil are capable of handling the threat of foreign military ...

Espí­rito Santo to Become Brazil’s Number 2 Oil Producer

The southeastern Brazilian state of EspÀ­rito Santo is working to become the second greatest ...

Brazilian Industry Hired Less in 2005

Brazilian industry hired fewer workers in 2005 than in 2004, according to the Study ...

Heaven’s Gate

University can be paradise, but in Brazil the road to it couldn’t be more ...

Hanging Up On the State

In Brazil you own a phone like you own your car. And while used ...

Brazil’s Oil Production: Nothing to Call Home About

Petrobras reports that total gas and oil production rose to an average 2,075,000 barrels ...

Brazil: Only Truth Will Put Ghosts of Dictactorship to Rest

Secrets and lies have failed as the basis upon which Brazil can overcome the ...

Bus Accident Kills 4 Brazilians on Way to Venezuela’s World Social Forum

The Brazilian government is doing what it can from the Venezuelan capital to provide ...