one-third Carioca

I am prescient.

Or just completely stupid.

My last blog post ended with “you’re not a Carioca until you’ve been mugged 3 times.” As of yesterday, I am happy to report that I am 1/3 of the way there. Before you freak out, I just want to say that I’m fine. No one was hurt. I’m minus my credit card (already canceled), driver’s license (whatever, it was a terrible picture anyway), 10 reais (blind dumb luck I had most of my money stashed in a moneybelt), my cellphone (sigh), and that little illusion of security that I had built up after living in Rio for more than 8 months without serious trouble. Nothing more.

Really, it was about time. All my friends have been mugged at least once. Honestly, I had already rehearsed it in my head a million ways. Give them your cellphone, give them your purse, and move along. And that’s basically how it happened. Z and I were walking to a friend’s house in Botafogo. Possibly a bad idea, but was so close! We had just crossed the street and I said, are those guys following us? Z grabbed my arm and yelled. The first guy grabbed my purse; I let him pull it away and watched him walk away across the highway median. He didn’t touch Z, but she was more shaken up than I was — she saw the knife.

I didn’t, and I’m glad. I know that this time around, I was lucky, lucky, lucky. I wasn’t by myself, the guys (probably homeless) didn’t seem all that competent or bent on hurting us, and I couldn’t care less about losing most of what they took. All in all, it was a worthwhile warning. I guess I’d gotten complacent, and here of all places that is a terrible idea.

But I’m not going to lie — it still sucks. It makes me sad to think how commonplace these petty muggings (and more serious ones) are here, and the environment of inequality and violence that produces them. And on a selfish level, it sucks to have it driven home, once again, that Rio’s not the type of city that’ll have your back if your in trouble. You have to be careful, and you can’t take anything for granted.