RIO DE JANEIRO — Our lunch plans for Saturday just hit the skids. There’s a rumor that the police will strike this weekend. They haven’t been paid, so of course they’re angry.
Wrote Lorena, the friend of a friend, this morning: “I don´t know if you are following the police strike situation in Espirito Santo [state], but all my family and friends are from Vitoria and they don´t go out of their houses since Saturday because of the chaos the city turned into! “
“Chaos.” Understated? Yesterday, nephew Luke told me that one of the gangs shot down a police helicopter a couple of months ago.
A few stories about violence on my journey…
— Buenos Aires, Argentina. Maia, 33, IT management, has observed people going through garbage looking for food. “I haven’t seen that in a long time.” The economic recovery under the new president hasn’t trickled down yet.
— Montevideo, Uruguay. Gilda, mid-40s, won’t teach at night anymore and her husband changed jobs so he wouldn’t be out late at work. He was held up in his car at gunpoint last year. So was her father, in his car. And Gilda’s car was stolen.
— Rivera, Uruguay/Santana do Livramento, Brazil, a border city of 100,000. Gabriela, late 30s, left Montevideo after her husband was held up in his car. She is a lawyer specializing in criminal justice with a good government job. She transferred to a lesser job in Rivera, near her parents. Her husband, a dentist, travels to see her and their two daughters a couple of days a week between his clinics in his home town and Montevideo, which is six-and-a-half hours South from Rivera.
— Travel to Porto Alegre, Brazil. I was going to take the overnight bus from Rivera to Porto Alegre, seven-and-a-half hours away, but that plan died quickly. “You can’t arrive at 5 a.m. at the bus station—it’s too dangerous!!!!” insisted Fernando, mid-20s, a specialist in city planning and my friend since he was 10. Two men had been gunned down in one incident and another’s arm cut (off?) by a knife at the bus station last week. When I arrived on a summer evening, we hurried to his car.
— Porto Alegre, Brazil. This is a gorgeous, hilly city bounded by a river as wide and clear as a lake with sandy beaches, marinas and jogging trails in the city’s South. Lovely, oldish riverfront homes with bars on the windows are secured behind traditional, high enclosures. To the North, a riverfront park is being designed. This is the direction where those with money are escaping into 20-story condo gated communities in which two or three towers are surrounded by attractive fences. Inside the bars are armed guards, playgrounds, soccer field, tennis courts, pools and dog parks. Mostly the residents drive out from their underground garages to go where they’re going. They don’t walk on the streets, said Fernando, whose speciality is city re-invention. Gated developments are sealing off those with money from those without all over Brazil, he said. He and other city experts, worry this worldwide trend will destroy what makes cities thrive.
Fernando lives in a tower. When I got lost returning from the swimming pool to his apartment two nights ago, everyone I encountered was open, friendly and helpful. They also spoke English, which is uncommon in Brazil.
I get it about the beauty of non-violent life inside the gates. I really get it about the destruction of the mix of people’s that makes cities vibrant. The question is, how do you make these cities safe enough to thrive? Zero tolerance, like NYC did? These Brazilian cities and states are so broke they can’t pay the police.
Which loops us back to Rio and our desired Saturday lunch in a beachfront restaurant at the base of Sugarloaf. Will it be canceled? Will the violent take over the streets without the police? Will we hunker inside, waiting out the danger?
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Facebook PS: PLEASE!!! Don’t let this article scare you away from traveling to Latin America. I have had an amazing time, been with friends in many circumstances. As my Grandmother Healy wrote to her best friend about their winter trip to Costa Rica when they caught the last Pan Am flight out when the revolution (of 1948) started: “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.” That was after she described the pickups with armed men chasing the plane down the runway as it took off.
Nothing that exciting has happened to me.
!!!!!
BTW, my father, always cautious, esp. after WWII PTSD, denied that his mother wrote that. It is in one of the letters in my book, “Improbable Pioneer.”
2017-02-09 – There’s not going to be a police strike, so lunch is on for Sunday at my favorite restaurant, the Girl from Urca, which is near the Rio Yacht Club at the foot of Sugarloaf.