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 I did as the Cariocas and stepped right over the bodies.
They shopped for gold and talked on their cell phones as the rest
of the city died beneath their feet. The poor simply did not exist.
By Craig D. Guillot
Christ watched over me, high on his hill in the distance, as I prowled the streets of
Ipanema's shopping district on a muggy September afternoon. Behind the thick glass windows
of the ritzy stores laid the products destined for the Rio's elite. Up and down the avenue
cruised some of the newest luxury cars on the market as the upper class pranced along in
their designer clothes, gold jewelry, and cash laced wallets. There was a sale on gold
Rolexes and Ferrari had one of its newer models in stock. Next door, a new shipment of
Persian rugs had arrived.
I thought for a minute that I had stepped into Beverly Hills or New York's 5th Avenue.
But as I looked harder, beneath the glitter and glamour of Ipanema, I could see something
entirely different. Between the stores and malls stood nervous men armed with Uzis and
AK47s. With fingers rubbing the triggers, their eyes wandered up and down the block. They
were on the lookout for ghosts.
Among the Porsches and BMWs crept the ramshackle city buses, packed with the rest of
Rio's ten million residents. Crammed like sardines in a tin can, the desperate souls in
fourth-hand clothes leered and pointed at the commerce around them. Belching clouds of
exhaust, the buses cruised towards the shantytown favelas rising high into the
mountains. It was a cruel, teasing form of urban planning where day after day, the poor
would look down to see the world that didn't want them. Nowhere on earth does such wealth
and poverty lay side by side.
Along the elaborately designed sidewalks and outside of the jewelry stores lied the
occasional motionless body. A small child was curled up underneath a sidewalk bench while
a legless man begged on the corner. Then there was an old woman who laid on the shoulder
of the road in a pile of trash. With her head resting upon her hands, she slept like a
baby as cars raced past only inches from her head. A taxi pulled up alongside of her as
two women with gold necklaces and bags of loot stepped right over the sleeping body.
Across the street, a group of small children with dirtied faces and rags around their
malnourished bodies scurried underneath the outdoor tables of restaurants in search of
crumbs. They looked just like pigeons pecking for birdseed in a park. It wasn't long
before a bearded man with an automatic weapon chased them away like a pack of wild dogs.
Every block or two, a body laid right across the sidewalk. I did as the Cariocas,
Rio's residents, and stepped right over them. They shopped for gold and talked on their
cell phones as the rest of the city died beneath their feet. The poor simply did not
exist.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched a man emerge from what appeared to be a small
drainage hole. Slowly standing into a hunchback position, he started to wobble his way
onto the sidewalk. Draped in torn, filthy rags, he had a ski mask on his head tilted
sideways so that only the right eye was showed through the left hole. A large tear in the
rags around his body revealed what appeared to be burnt and disfigured skin.
The man crept his way in my direction, dragging his aching feet along the concrete as
men with Armani suits and Rolex watches scurried around him. Mothers led their children
around the trail of blood while others trudged right on through like a puddle of water. As
the monster walked in front of the small store where I was standing, a man with a pistol
strapped to his waist came outside and started yelling at him. All I could understand of
the Portuguese was "leave, leave... you are fucking up the sidewalk." The masked
man slowly wandered into the street while cars honked their horns and swerved around him.
A splashing sound suddenly caught my attention as I looked back down the sidewalk to find
a shop owner dumping buckets of water on the blood.
As the masked figure made it to the other side of the street, he dropped down onto an
open area of concrete, falling on his back. The enormous pool of blood forming from his
feet made it apparent that death was coming for him. While the sun started to set, the
crowds began to thin so that the drug gangs and killers could take control of the streets.
After all, Rio had to meet its annual murder count of 6,000. Taking one last look at the
man, I thought that was why he had crawled out of that hole in the first place—to die
in front of everyone in the hope that someone would notice.
Nowhere on earth have I seen such indifference to so much suffering. I wanted to show
the man that I cared. I walked around him.
As a photojournalist and travel writer, Craig has traveled extensively
throughout Latin America. After receiving his first intestinal parasite as a student in
Central America, he has become obsessed with the exotic, dangerous, and unknown. Craig
currently contributes to various web sites, small publications and independent books, and
has a BS in Business Management which he hopes to put to use someday. He lives in New
Orleans and is now working on a "secret project." You can reach the author at cdg0001@email.msn.com
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