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Travelling to Rio



 
 
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  #61  
Old March 14th, 2004, 01:42 AM
P E T E R P A N
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Posts: n/a
Default Suffer the Children

http://www.bootsnall.com/travelstori...ferchild.shtml

Suffer the Children
By Craig D. Guillot

The screaming and shouting had been attracting a crowd near the corner
of Avenida Copacabana and Rua Sao Paulo. Breaking out into a
slow-paced jog, I approached the corner of the building as a small
child in tattered clothes ran past me. He fled off into the distance
and vanished into a crowd of pedestrians. My dark curiosity continued
to draw me around the corner and into the commotion.
With bare, bloodied feet slamming against the broken glass on the
concrete, dozens of children scattered like roaches from the abandoned
building. Crying, cowering, and throwing rocks at the police, they
scurried along the block as the men tried to grab hold of them. One of
the street kids' only sanctuaries had been discovered by the local
community, and it was time for them to leave.

It looked as if someone had discovered a rats' nest and they were
shaking it up to get all of the pests out. In the streets of Rio de
Janiero, Brazil, that's exactly what it was - exterminators getting
rid of the unwanted pests.

As the crowd of spectators grew, the police began to control their
tempers. A few of the older and larger kids were whacked with small
clubs, while the rest were left to flee down the street towards the
shanties that loomed in the mountains above us. There would be no
exterminations today, but the children knew that when the sun went
down, the wolves would be out to get them. As I went to sleep that
night to the symphony of gunfire, I wondered how many of those
children would wake up dead.

More than a half-million children sleep beneath the arms of Christ the
Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro. They run the gamut from runaways to
orphans to toddlers fleeing abusive parents. With few options, the
children resort to whatever it takes to survive. Sleeping in the
parking lots of the Mercedes dealerships and eating out of the garbage
of the five-star hotels, they wabble the streets like lost and
abandoned animals. In the quest for survival, the children form small
gangs and bands for protection and companionship. Sharing horror
stories about narrow escapes from armed men, they tell each other new
ways to make money and bandage each other's wounds with dirty napkins
found in the gutter. Quite too often, they bury one of their friends
in an unmarked grave.

It's perfectly logical to turn to crime in such desperate situations.
Stealing to eat, some children advance in their deeds, from armed
robbery to murder-for-hire. If only by sheer numbers, they threaten to
tear the city apart, and there are those who refuse to sit by and
watch. There are an average of 1,200 children murdered every year on
the streets of Rio. They are called "pivettes" (little farts),
"undesirables," "trash;" they are hunted down, tortured and killed by
the city's mysterious death squads. It is widely known that many
business owners and police plan an active role in the squads, which
pick off the children in their sleep like flies.

The average price to have a "street urchin" killed: a mere $70.

In Ipanema, the mutilated body of a 5-year-old boy is found wrapped up
in a rug. Not far from the scene a boy walks into a hospital, bleeding
from the groin. His penis had been cut off.

When city workers went to unclog a drain during a recent flood, they
found a young girl with a slit throat. Ask anyone about the Candelaria
Massacre, and they walk away. Rio would rather you forget about that
time a group of armed men fired upon 70 sleeping children outside of a
church. It's a picture that wouldn't look too good on a postcard.

At the young age of 11, Jao is the head of his family. He and his two
younger sisters live in an abandoned chopperia which had been vacant
since the owner was sent to prison for murder. I could look into Jao's
eyes and see the cold, hard stare of a war veteran. It was the look of
a boy who had seen far too much in his short life. The two girls do
what they can during the day to scavenge food from dumpsters in the
backs of hotels and restaurants, while Jao does other things that he
would rather not tell me about. Tonight was a special night though, as
Daniella, the older sister, had found a few half-eaten hamburgers, a
stale loaf of bread, and a half-full pint of beer.

As their aching bodies grow weary, under the cover of darkness Jao and
his two sisters creep back to the shack. The two girls cuddle in the
corner on a stolen beach blanket, as Jao peeks through a crack in the
wall at oncoming pedestrians. He knows that their lives depend on his
suspicions. All across the city, beneath the view of Christ, sleep the
hundreds of thousands of homeless children. It is not just the poverty
and loneliness that haunt children like Jao. It is that the city wants
them dead.




Kurko wrote in message ...
Simply because in normal daily life its next to impossible to encounter all
these
drug lords, thieves, muggers and murderes. In Rio more annoying are
beggars, shoeshiners and all kinds of sellers not to mention "samba bands".

Rio is very beautiful city (Cidade Maravilhosa), quite safe too for
tourists as long as you understand
and obey the "rule": Don't be stupid.

Kurko

On Fri, 12 Mar 2004 21:40:02 -0500, clint wrote:

After reading all the Rio posts, why with all the wonderful places to go,
would anyone travel to Rio?

  #62  
Old March 14th, 2004, 01:48 AM
P E T E R P A N
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default The Ghosts of Rio

http://www.bootsnall.com/travelstori...ostreets.shtml

The Ghosts of Rio
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 lay the products
destined for 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 AK-47s.
With fingers rubbing the triggers, their bloodshot eyes wandered up
and down the block.

They were on the lookout for ghosts.

Among the Porsches and BMWs creeped the ramshackle city buses, packed
with the rest of Rio's 10 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 the jewelry
stores, lay 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 lay in a pile of trash on the
shoulder of the road. 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 lay right across the sidewalk. I did as the
cariocas, Rio's residents, did, and stepped right over them. The
cariocas 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; it was tilted
sideways, so that only the right eye showed, but 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, as if the blood were just 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 f*****g up the sidewalk!"

The masked man slowly wandered into the street. Cars honked their
horns and swerved around him. A splashing sound suddenly caught my
attention. I looked back down the sidewalk: a shop owner was 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.



Kurko wrote in message ...
Simply because in normal daily life its next to impossible to encounter all
these
drug lords, thieves, muggers and murderes. In Rio more annoying are
beggars, shoeshiners and all kinds of sellers not to mention "samba bands".

Rio is very beautiful city (Cidade Maravilhosa), quite safe too for
tourists as long as you understand
and obey the "rule": Don't be stupid.

Kurko

On Fri, 12 Mar 2004 21:40:02 -0500, clint wrote:

After reading all the Rio posts, why with all the wonderful places to go,
would anyone travel to Rio?

  #63  
Old March 14th, 2004, 05:41 AM
JohnM
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Travelling to Rio

In article , P E T E R
P A N writes
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/americ...carnival.reut/

Three policemen killed, ten wounded in ambush in Rio de Janeiro
Monday, February 16, 2004 Posted: 10:31 AM EST (1531 GMT)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) -- Three policemen were killed and 10
wounded in Rio de Janeiro when gunmen ambushed the bus in which they
were traveling in a new outburst of violence days before the annual
Carnival, police said Monday.


Good. Now that we know where you come from (in previous threads in
rec.travel.latin-america you have been promoting an Argentinian travel
website) we know how to respond. You are a nasty troll, as I suspected,
when I pointed out the holes in your sob story.

Good thing about trolls is that they can't stay hidden for too long.

--
JohnM
Author of Brazil: Life, Blood, Soul
http://www.scroll.demon.co.uk/spaver.htm




  #64  
Old March 14th, 2004, 09:16 AM
Kurko
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Travelling to Rio

Ok little fairy.

Thank you for your misinformation, now you may crawl back to the hole you
came from. NOBODY here needs your opinion anymore. We know that your
enormous EGO
got hurt while you were visiting Rio, but try to cope with it GROW UP ok.

Kurko

On 13 Mar 2004 13:32:21 -0800, P E T E R P A N
wrote:

According to the articles I was able to pull out of the net on a quick
search, the organized crimes problems are far more serious in Brazil
than any big city in the world, with ambush and shoot outs of the
police, drug lords in prison ordering shut down of business, shcools,
banks, stores, shops, gas stations...in Rio, including the touristy
areas like Copacabana and Ipanema.

In this lawless situation, my feelings are that tourists have very
high probablity of being victims of violent crimes, or just caught in
the cross fires between the gangs with machine guns, grenades, and
police, compared to other cities.

By the way, the scenaries in Rio is much poorer than many places in
North America, Europe, Asia, the Caribbean...Rio is full of homeless,
undesirables people sleeping on the streets, watching tourists
intensely for the opportunities to commit crimes! Rio also reeks of
urine and feces on every street! In the scale of 0 to 10 on the fun
index, Rio is not even a 3 compared to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San
Francisco, the Hawaii islands, the US Virgin Islands...!

I will stay away from Rio, so Kurko can happily kiss the drug lords'
*sses, obey their harsh rules, and enjoy that hell hole by himself!

Everyone is urged to come to the US to enjoy beautiful, pristine and
peaceful sceneries every season, every climate, from high mountains,
to deserts, to wide open oceans, with excellent outdoor and indoor
sports and recreations, with safe, clean, lively cities, with the best
varieties of great foods, and the company of friendly, fun, warm,
honest, civilized, law-abiding Americans!


Kurko wrote in message
...
Simply because in normal daily life its next to impossible to encounter
all these
drug lords, thieves, muggers and murderes. In Rio more annoying are
beggars, shoeshiners and all kinds of sellers not to mention "samba
bands".

Rio is very beautiful city (Cidade Maravilhosa), quite safe too for
tourists as long as you understand
and obey the "rule": Don't be stupid.

Kurko

On Fri, 12 Mar 2004 21:40:02 -0500, clint wrote:

After reading all the Rio posts, why with all the wonderful places to

go,
would anyone travel to Rio?





--
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/
  #65  
Old March 14th, 2004, 02:36 PM
João Luiz
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Travelling to Rio



JohnM schrieb:

Good. Now that we know where you come from (in previous threads in
rec.travel.latin-america you have been promoting an Argentinian travel
website) we know how to respond. You are a nasty troll, as I suspected,
when I pointed out the holes in your sob story.

Good thing about trolls is that they can't stay hidden for too long.


Agora que você menciona, a coisa começa a fazer sentido.
A moeda por aqui custou a cair.

JL

  #66  
Old March 14th, 2004, 04:50 PM
P E T E R P A N
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Travelling to Rio

This stupid, nasty guy JohnM was not able to provide any information
or any arguments to defend his interests in Brazil, so he just
conveniently accuses other poster of being a troll!

If JohnM is stupid and unedcuated, perhaps he should just shut up,
lest people may suspect that he is lying to protect his pimping,
mugging interests in Rio!

JohnM wrote in message

Good. Now that we know where you come from (in previous threads in
rec.travel.latin-america you have been promoting an Argentinian travel
website) we know how to respond. You are a nasty troll, as I suspected,
when I pointed out the holes in your sob story.

Good thing about trolls is that they can't stay hidden for too long.

  #67  
Old March 14th, 2004, 04:55 PM
P E T E R P A N
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Travelling to Rio

Everyone should see clearly that this dumb jerk Kurko is acting like a
stupid, uneducated loser with his nonsense arguments and his dumb
accusations!

If Kurko's old wife got raped up her big, sagging *ss by a bunch of
drug lords, Kurko will immediately blame his wife for the crime like
any dumb loser would!

Kurko is just dumb trash!

Kurko wrote in message ...
Ok little fairy.

Thank you for your misinformation, now you may crawl back to the hole you
came from. NOBODY here needs your opinion anymore. We know that your
enormous EGO
got hurt while you were visiting Rio, but try to cope with it GROW UP ok.

Kurko

  #68  
Old March 14th, 2004, 05:16 PM
P E T E R P A N
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Hot in the city: crowded jails and drug economics push Latin American cities to their limit on crime -- Travelling to Rio

As Kurko admits, **** happens a lot to his dumb, miserable life! Kurko
is trying to lure more tourists to Rio to feed his pimping, mugging
businesses!

Kurko is just a stupid, whiny little jerk with no brain and no balls!
Kurko-the-stupid-loser always blames the victims for the cirmes, and
passionately kisses the pepetrators' asses to buy peace!


Kurko wrote in message ...
Lil' Pete!

You've made your point. What's bugging you? **** happens everywhere, my
buddy got
beaten up in Liverpool, England. Should we start looking for statistics of
violence
in there and tell everybody not to go to England anymore?

Face it faq, you ****ed up by being stupid. Stop blaming others on your own
stupidity. Take your responsibility!

Kurko


  #69  
Old March 14th, 2004, 05:36 PM
Kurko
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Hot in the city: crowded jails and drug economics push Latin American cities to their limit on crime -- Travelling to Rio

Fantastic. Its always rather funny when someone who speaks english as
mother
tongue doesn't know how to write his own language. Oh, sorry lil petey is
an AMERICAN, so he really doesn't speak english.

Anyway, I have no business in Rio especially related to pimping or mugging.
In no circumstances I don't approve these crimes, but I've tried to explain
that when you travel you MUST TAKE RESPONIBILITY OF YOUR OWN ACTIONS!!!!

Its funny how lil petey knows me so well that he already is able to point
out that my life is so miserable. Thanks, I think I just go and shoot
myself.

Kurko

On 14 Mar 2004 08:16:27 -0800, P E T E R P A N
wrote:

As Kurko admits, **** happens a lot to his dumb, miserable life! Kurko
is trying to lure more tourists to Rio to feed his pimping, mugging
businesses!

Kurko is just a stupid, whiny little jerk with no brain and no balls!
Kurko-the-stupid-loser always blames the victims for the cirmes, and
passionately kisses the pepetrators' asses to buy peace!


Kurko wrote in message
...
Lil' Pete!

You've made your point. What's bugging you? **** happens everywhere, my
buddy got
beaten up in Liverpool, England. Should we start looking for statistics
of violence
in there and tell everybody not to go to England anymore?

Face it faq, you ****ed up by being stupid. Stop blaming others on your
own
stupidity. Take your responsibility!

Kurko






--
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/
  #70  
Old March 14th, 2004, 05:51 PM
Lise Sedrez
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Travelling to Rio

Dear Mr. Pan,

I was not really planning to get into a geographic/tourist flame, but it
is really getting annoying.

1 - I am sorry you had a bad experience in Rio. However, we do not keep
our criminals on leashed just to release them on unsuspecting tourists
that decided to stroll at night in dark streets. Pardon my selfishness,
but I wish we could! Unfortunately, Brazilians bear the burden of
criminality much more than tourists, everyday, and not only when they
are on vacations. And we don't bear it gladly. For a person who does not
speak our language, neither lives in our country, to say that we don't
discuss, struggle against and try to combat violence, it is not only
laughable ignorance, it is insulting.

2 – I am not surprised that Brazilians got snippy at you, instead of
sympathetic, if you showed them the same attitude you showed here. I am
afraid that we share with many other nationalities that kind of pride
that makes us very resistant to criticism by foreigners about our
country—even about issues on which we may trash our own government,
among ourselves. It comes to mind that delicious caricature of an
American jingoist played by Kevin Kline, in a Fish Called Wanda: “we
didn’t lose in Vietnam, it was a tie.” My point is that if you want to
have a candid conversation with Brazilians on the problems of the
country, you’d have to approach them with a bit more of sensitiveness.
It may be simply a cultural clash, but high-handed arrogance in Brazil
is considered, well, plain bad manners, and it is not likely to elicit
you a courteous answer.

3 – Finally, if you get so fired up by a relatively mild comment such as
Kurko’s initial post, well, maybe you should avoid not only the dark
streets of Rio, but also the Usenet altogether. Toughen up!

At this point, please feel free to insult Brazilians for what a born and
raised Brazilian told you. Even worse: I was born and (mostly) raised in
Rio de Janeiro city.

I have seen my beloved, gorgeous city change a lot in the last 20
years—unfortunately not always for good. Having somehow a “gringo”
appearance, I have been mistaken by a tourist very often, by thugs as
well as by well-intentioned cariocas who tried to educate me on how to
be safe in the city. I am glad, however, that it never prevented me from
enjoying my city, and I have never let violence steal from me the right
to uncover its beauty and charm. This doesn’t mean I don’t take
precautions, as everybody else does in Rio. For instance, when I take
friends with me to the Feira de São Cristovão, in a not so safe area,
but where you can find delicious northeastern delicacies, I make sure
that we go there in groups of 4 or 5, and that we leave—also
together—with the family crowd, by midnight. I avoid going out at night
alone, but, if I am all by myself, it is better to go home at 7 am than
at 2 am. And there are many perfectly safe places, not too expensive,
where you can bid your time. Just ask a local person, that is what I do
when a go to another country. (I have also travelled rather
extensively, and, except for one bad experience in the US, which I am
the first to admit that resulted from my being naïve, my ask-a-local
methodology works just fine everywhere). In fact, even when I go to a
new place in Rio, I try to talk to a “native” beforehand, asking what is
Ok and what is not ok to do in such place—be it a favela, a new
neighborhood, or only a more isolated patch of forest.

As I current live in a suburb city in the US, where most restaurants
close at 9 pm (even on Saturdays!), I miss the midnight dinners, the
dancing, the chorinho bars at Lapa, the kiosks in the Lagoa Rodrigo de
Freitas, the shows and art galleries in the Cultural Corridor, the
saveiro-tour in Guanabara Bay), the mangrove forests, the Tijuca urban
forest, the beaches (each one with a different personality), the
peregrination for used book in "sebos" in downtown Rio, the juice
stands—with oh so many exotic fruit names--, climbing the SugarLoaf (it
is not so difficult, and there are several alternative tourist agencies
that can take you there), the hidden treasures that are the Museu da
Chácara do Céu or the Museu da imagem do inconsciente, the incredible
garden of Burle Marx, the cosmopolitan bars in the Zona Sul and the
little-town feeling in some suburbs… I could go on and on.

Again, I am sorry that you had a bad experience in Rio; but I am even
sorrier for you, that you allowed that experience to blind you for
everything Rio could have offered you.

Best,

Lise

 




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