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Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

I went to Brazil about 15 years ago. My girlfriend signed us up for a favela tour in Rio. We had a private guide. It was going pretty well until the police started a raid. The fireworks went off to let people know the police were coming. I saw one cop who looked terrified and I saw another shooting indiscriminately up a hill with his rifle. At first, I wasn’t worried but everyone around us went behind a truck, so we joined them. After that, the guide was ready to continue but my girlfriend said we were done.

Our Brazilian friend back in the states said we should have never gone in the first place. The favelas are run by the gangs. She grew up in one of them so I assume she knows what she’s talking about.

Fortunately for me, it was my girlfriend’s idea.

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Favelas are neighborhoods where lots and lots of families live their everyday life.

It has crime just like any other place (e.g. a Phd in UCLA mapped gangs in LA, santa monica and Beverly hills had the most count of gangs and members) but the police treat favelas as their war ground, causing an artificial firepower escalation. And the reason is twofold: by twisting public opinion that favelas only have criminals you can relinquish all forms of state spending (culture, etc) and you can maintain a tight grip on the local political representation during elections, and favelas have lots of votes.

In sum, it has nothing to do with the gangs per-se. It's more artificial public policy.

While I know Santa Monica used to have a huge gang population about 10 years ago in the neighborhoods between Santa Monica College and Santa Monica High School and generally south of the 10 freeway, that area has since gentrified quite heavily and LAPD maps shows insignificant gang activity in those neighborhoods.

I would be very surprised to see that there ever was any significant street gang activity in Beverly Hills, since that municipality spends a significant amount of money on street patrols to keep criminal activity low. Moreover, Beverly Hills is a fairly racially homogenous city...

Dunno about US experience, but for someone coming from Europe like me favelas that I've visited in Rio surely left impression of very dangerous places - and I grew up in Serbia in 90s, been through wars and all that shit and anarchy, and had my share of street education. Now, it's quite possible that they have less crime than some other neighborhoods, but that's just because gangs keep a close grip on their territory. As long as you play by their rules you can live your life sort-of normally. Problem with living in such surrounding arrises when you're forced to go against them, as there's no law to protect you, so you're fully at their mercy. That's a HUGE difference from Santa Monica or Beverly Hills, and much more like living in Somalia.

Can you share a link to that paper please? A DOI would do...

It's a first-world thing of treating poor people as a zoo that you can just go and watch how the "animals" live.

Do you remember those movies from the 80's where people would park a nice car in a dangerous neighborhood and when they returned the wheels would be gone?

Imagine someone PAYING for a trip to a neighborhood much more dangerous than those from the movies. Like paying for a visit to a nightmarish version of the bad places in Detroit or Baltimore.

It's just dumb, sorry.

I did one of these a few years ago when I first visited Rio. I'm a gringo with a Brazilian wife.

Looking back now, especially as I've been living in Brazil for the past year, I wonder wtf I was thinking. The AirBnb host suggested it and I went for it in a misguided attempt to 'see how the other side live'. In reality there are a million better ways to gain this perspective than going on a 1 hour trip through a favela.

Brazil could benefit a lot from more tourism than it currently does. Amazing food, people, beaches, dancing...employing the people living in these favelas with stable work. Instead of promoting the sorts of tours mentioned above that treats them like some kind of second class citizen.

> At first, I wasn’t worried

I would be scared to death. Was this not your first time seeing gunfire?

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