@Charlie
Violence levels in Rio de Janeiro are amazingly high.
One of the causes it that Rio is a huge target for international tourists.
Every time we talk about Brazil in europe or even the US, the first thing that comes up in people's minds are "the wonderful beaches in Rio">
Indeed, they are really beautiful and I would even recommend everybody to visit it but....
Tourists with their pockets full of money to spend, lots of hotels and other companies related to tourism industry atracted thousands of people to Rio. And of course there aren't jobs enough for all these people...
The "favelas" emerged and became out of control. add to this a corrupt government and a terrible police.
Rio is a huge city, of course we can't generalize the situation because in the same city are other regions that are incredibly safe and others look like a war zone.
One of the things that i can't stand anymore is this "sense of security" we don't have here in Brazil.
My city, Iguassu, for example is the second most visited city in Brazil. We also receive millions of tourists from everywhere. but as our governants are "a little bit less corrup", the situation is much different. we can say Iguassu isa very safe city.
But, at the same time, we got so used to these horrible news everywhere that it is impossible not to worry.
Because of it, we live in a bubble. our perfect micro world, surrounded by bullet proof cars, a super security system, etc. My building costed much more than a standard building and it's biggest feature is safety. everything here is super oversized. from fire to medical emergencies to weather conditions to criminality.
Sometimes i feel like living in a bunker. they try to do everything to be as discreet as possible but, little things make we remember minute after minute there's a whole world beyound our walls.
In my building for example, the car entrance has two gates, we call it "cage".
I have a remote control that opens the first gate. i have to drive in, close the gate. the cage has strong lights and lots of cameras. I must open all the windows so the security can see the car`s interior from his room. if im not alone or with somebody they already know, i have to say a password. we have two passwords, one for "ok" and other for "panic".
Only after this check, the second gate is opened. all this is to avoid geting a neighbor as a hostage to enter the building. the problem is, if someday i'm taken as a hostage, i know i would probably be killed because they won't open the gate... at certain point, they preffer only one killed than the building being invaded and probably more peoples lives in danger.
Every month or 2 months, we have some kind of drill in my building. the drills are planned with several subjects: fire, burgular, medical emergencies. it's also not difficult to be surprised by a surprise drill.
Ok, i understand that being trained is good. They are so exagerated that they look like paranoid.
Back to my parking "procedures", i can enter, park my car and walk to the elevator... but instead of pressing a button, i have to type a password to call the elevator.
After entering the cabin, i have to type another password before pressing my floor button.
The news in brazil tend to be sansationalist. most of the times a very small situation is shown almost like the third world war is happening. Maybe that makes you worried about your friend.
Police in rio use helicopters all the time. that's because of the horrible traffic so, even if you call 911 to report a burgular that broke a window to steal a clothes iron, they will come by helicopter, otherwise they could take hours to arrive. The ridiculous is seeing the policemen hanging on the door holding heavy caliber guns to arrest somebody that stole a candy from a kid or to rescue a cat from a tree. and the news, of course, love it.
At the same time we know that it's nothing too serious, the stress levels increase a lot.
The worst "burgular" we have in Brazil is our government. They legally "steal" our money and they kill people in hospitals because they don't have doctors or medication.
It's almost impossible to grow in Brazil because ho matter how hard you work, the more you get, the more the government will get from you sopusely saying they are going to give for poor people... and of course they never get the money.
