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

Profits at Brazil’s Petrobras Reach Record US$ 6.9 Billion

During the first nine months of this year, Petrobras – Brazilian Petroleum, S.A. – ...

US Creative Way to Get Rid of Hospital Waste and Make a Buck: Exporting It to Brazil

In the United States somebody found out he could solve the problem of hospital ...

Brazil’s Guarani Indians Get Reprieve from Eviction

Brazil’s federal judge Anna Maria Pimentel has suspended the removal of around 500 Guarani-Kaiowá ...

Brazil Wants to Get Credits for Keeping Forests Intact

On Friday, March 24, the fifth day of the 8th Conference of the Parties ...

Lula Was Never the Leader He Should Have Been. And Brazil Is Much Poorer for That.

Thanks to his life story and the history of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da ...

Brazil Gets 90 Million Doses of Tamiflu in Preparation for Bird Flu

Although there still have not been any cases of bird flu in Brazil, the ...

Saudi College Students in Brazil Learning About the Country’s Technology

A group of 18 students from the Saudi Science Club is in Brazil to ...

A Respite from Corruption: Brazil Vice President’s Sister in Law Poses In the Nude for Playboy

Embattled Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff who in eight months of government has seen four ...

Brazil to Build 5 New Hydroelectric Plants in the Amazon

The president of Brazilian electric energy company Eletrobrás, José Antônio Muniz, announced yesterday (19), ...

Brazil Wants to Help 2.2 Million Illiterate Teens and Adults

Around 2.2 million Brazilian youngsters and adults are expected to be served by the ...

WordPress database error: [Table './brazzil3_live/wp_wfHits' is marked as crashed and last (automatic?) repair failed]
SHOW FULL COLUMNS FROM `wp_wfHits`