internet down

If I owe you an email/Skype call/Orkut scrap/message by any other online means… it’s not that I don’t love you, but to say that my internet connection is “intermittent” is a compliment along the lines of saying that Michael Moore should be named Miss Universe. Sorry, and hopefully it will be fixed soon.

corruption

On calmer reflection, it occurred to me that some people might have walked away from my last post with the impression that I am constantly dodging bullets. That is not the case — Flamengo is actually quite safe as neighborhoods here go, which is saying something, although not quite as much as if I said it about, say, Fairfield. Or Iowa City. Or Ann Arbor. Or practically anywhere — and oops, now I’m ruining my effort to convince you all that really, it was an isolated and VERY unusual incident. It was. I am not, repeat not, living in the middle of the Gaza Strip, or even the Rio equivalent, and the reason that it made such a big impression on me is precisely because that kind of thing doesn’t happen very often around here.

And now here I am feeling kind of guilty about what I’m about to post, because I hate it when people only comment on the bad stuff in Rio and I hope that after 9 months here I have at least a slightly more nuanced view than that. But when I’m feeling pessimistic, it’s hard not to feel that a “nuanced” view of crime kind of just means the eventual sad realization that really, no one looking out for you. Including — no, especially — the police.

In some ways it’s hard to blame them. Pay for police officers is abysmal, which means that Rio’s finest often live in favelas and must struggle to make ends meet. And it gets even more complicated and scary, because Rio’s armed drug gangs are usually based in the favelas, and as you can imagine, they are not too fond of police officers. This means that being a police officer can be incredibly dangerous — both on the job and off. According to what I’ve heard, there are a couple of ways to deal with this: either you go undercover and pray no one realizes you’re a cop, or you come to some sort of “agreement” with the local Comando.

In other words, it’s pretty common knowledge that Rio’s uneasy detente between police and traficantes is maintained through a fairly significant and complicated scheme of mutual backscratching. That definitely isn’t my area of expertise. What I have experienced firsthand, though, is the other way that Rio’s cops make ends meet.

I hate having to write stuff like this about Rio. And even more than that, I hate that a friend can tell me a story like this one of being strip-searched and threatened by the police when leaving Rocinha last night and I’m not even surprised. I guess I was shocked the first time this happened to a friend (an American who got taken to an ATM by 2 cops and shaken down for R$1000 in February) and upset the second time (4 friends were visiting from the US and we got “pulled over” — while walking — and searched). Now I’m just mad.

Especially because — and I say this from my own experience, which wasn’t even that bad — being targeted by people with authority like that produces a really singular feeling of helplessness. Forfeiting $100 worth of perfume, or paying a “tax” of R$1000 is bad, but the alternatives are so frighteningly uncertain (especially if you’re unfamiliar with the legal system). If I call my friend who’s a lawyer, will the cops go away or will they slip some drugs into your purse so they can “find” them later? At best, you’d be taking a chance, and if you filed a complaint, you’d set yourself up for months of hassle and discouraging odds of success. It’s the feeling that no matter what you do, the deck is so stacked against you that your only way out is to play directly into someone else’s game.

open letter to Rio de Janeiro

Dear Rio,

Please stop.

I have been trying all year to defend you. I explained that visiting a favela is not the automatic equivalent of stray-bullet-assisted suicide, or even of wearing a MUG ME sign on my back. I noted that violence here is situational, more often based on poverty than on the desire to harm. I’ve gotten used to stuff that most people would consider paranoid, like carrying only expendable things, splitting my money among 6 different pockets, and never visiting an ATM after dark. And I’ve said again and again that in spite of all the problems, I feel incredibly lucky to live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

But we need to talk. That gunfight last night literally right outside of my apartment was NOT COOL. It doesn’t matter that I had decided to eat dinner a block away instead of in the open-air restaurant right across the street. And don’t pull that old, “oh, you didn’t even realize they were gunshots until later.” It’s true, to a point — I heard the shots and then thought, no, can’t be. But believe me, I saw the aftermath: the hijacked city bus that started it all, crashing into 2 parked cars right outside my door as the driver tried to escape; the ambulance pulling up outside the other door of my building to take care of the 2 bystanders who were hit during the indiscriminate gunfight between the police and the “bandido”; the little splatters of blood on the sidewalk.

I know I’ve been sad about the thought of leaving in 5 weeks, but if this is your way of making it easier for me to go, you need to stop. NOW. Thank you very much.

Love,

Grace

Brazilian vocab: o jeito

I’ve collected quite a list of phrases here that, for whatever reason (and fairly or not) I really identify with Brazil. I don’t know if they’ll be as interesting out of context, but for whatever it’s worth, here are some of my favorites:

1. O jeito brasileiro — usually translated as “the Brazilian way”. Used to explain everything from why Brazil has so many good soccer players to why the technicians couldn’t manage to fix our internet (again), why people totally discriminate on the basis of class but of course never on the basis of race, and why the orange-uniformed city worker took a break from sweeping up leaves to ask me out.

2. O jeitinho — literally I guess this would be a “way”, but it really means more of a makeshift, extra-official solution. The force behind everything from the duct tape that keeps our surge protector precariously plugged into the electrical socket to the higher-level political scandals, where to “dar um jeito” (“find a way” to work things out) might or might not imply that there is some extra-official money attached.

3. Já já. “Right away”. When used by news anchors, this means they’ll be right back [after a few short words from the sponsors]. When used by the person you were supposed to meet in Flamengo at 9:00pm and you’re calling because it’s 10:30 and they still haven’t gotten there and you’re hungry and want some food but can’t figure out where they could be and what on earth is taking so long and if you should wait for them or just have dinner already, it means that they haven’t left their house yet. In all other contexts, it means anything from “bring a book” to “never”.

4. Thumbs up. This one is in a bit of a different category, both because it’s a hand gesture and because it is one of the most all-purpose conversational tools that exists. People here use it for everything. Hey! What’s up! Thanks! Awesome! Bye! Have a good day! $#% you! In other words, pretty much anything that might appropriately have an exclamation point on it if it were written seems to be fair game. This happens to encompass a good percentage of daily life — Cariocas are nothing if not enthusiastic. And those thumbs are catching. By the time I’d been here a month the thumbs up, (and its even more emphatic and frightening cousin, the DOUBLE thumbs up) had taken over my hand-slang vocabulary. After 9 months, I’m realizing that this is a habit that may be hard to break. Kind of like the Argentine “I don’t know” gesture where you sweep your fingertips upward and outward from your collarbone past your chin. So useful… and so embarrassingly inappropriate when taken out of its national context.