Many people were left scratching their heads after reading the latest news about Brazilian police “taking over Rio’s biggest slum“. Since only a handful of arrests were made, and the vast majority of criminals simply dispersed, doesn’t this action simply spread the problem out to different areas?
Readers correctly pointed out that the goal was not so much to diminish crime as to facilitate the making of profits for the well connected:
It was the most ambitious operation yet in an effort to increase security before Rio hosts the final matches of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. Officials are counting on those events to signal Brazil’s arrival as a global economic, political and cultural power.
Powerful interests are at work here, and I get the impression that the welfare of the inhabitants of Rocinha is not the primary consideration. If it were, authorities would have taken over the slum long ago instead of waiting for the approach of the above-mentioned sporting events.
In the above article we see a common propaganda tactic: The implication that nations, neighborhoods and slums are defined by space. But it is not the space they occupy that gives them their identity, rather it is the people who inhabit that space. Thus, the proclamation that “police have taken over a slum” means little for the long term. The slum goes wherever slum-people go. The only way to get rid of a slum is to get rid of the slum-people – or to somehow transform them. The establishment left, whether in the U.S. or Brazil, loves to redistribute people and imagine that it has thereby solved problems. In most cases, the problems end up getting even worse. It is better to allow criminals to congregate in small areas so that most of their victims will be other criminals. Spreading them out increases the body count among the innocent.
But many in the establishment left understand the arbitrariness of space. This is why they advocate for open borders. Of course, in doing so, they ignore the importance of things such as race, ethnic group and culture. The establishment left will either ignore, or emphasize, location depending on whatever suits its purposes.
Brazil has a large black and mulatto population. Perhaps most Brazilians are of mulatto heritage to some degree. For whatever reason, countries, neighborhoods, cities, etc. possessed of sufficiently large black populations seem to experience a greater frequency of violent crime. We have too many examples to count here in the US. I wonder what sort of constraints this will place on the current rise of Brazil as a world power and all-around “good place.”
South America (and Latin America, in general) always fascinated me. I didn’t realize until my early twenties, during which time I did a little research, that Latin American countries were so different from one another in terms of ethnic composition and culture, even though I knew, of course, that Brazilians spoke Portuguese. I always assumed that most of them were Mestizo countries, a la Mexico. It’s not only Brazil that has a large black population and a hefty African admixture among the general population. Colombia and Venezuela are also in that boat, although to a lesser extent than Brazil and Puerto Rico. Perhaps Hugo Chavez’s hair texture was the result of African ancestry.
I think it is more correct to say that the elites will either ignore, or emphasize, location depending on whatever suits its purposes.
To the extent that the elites are not in complete agreement with each other the rest of us have an opportunity to play them off against each other.
Yes, but how many of these elite are not leftists? Very few, in my opinion, if any.
You have some interesting points.
But the main point was that these slums were areas dominated by criminal faction where the Brazilian state has no say. It is like a territory dominated by enemy armies.
So getting rid of the armies gets the crime down to normal standards, of small groups hiding from police. Before it was large organized armies that could ambush entire police stations and where police could only dare to enter with at least 50 squat.
So it is a progress. But yes, these people will spread to small towns. But they probably will not ever grow to a several hundred people army with heavy weaponry.
So now they don’t pose as much danger to the police – but will they pose less of a danger to regular citizens? That much is not clear.
Anyway, thanks for the info Human Stupidity. I figured you could throw some light on the situation.
I am Brazilian, and I lived most of my life in Rio. I was a bit skeptic about the operations in the beginning, but then the data started to turn out: violent crime and theft decreased dramatically not only in the affected neighborhoods, but in the city. And it is not like it only spilled to the outskirts: crime decreased statewide – and nationwide, by consequence, since Rio is such a large part of Brazil’s crime statistics.
So, yeah, the operation was for real. Why now, you ask? I can answer easily: the same thing was tried twice in the 90s, also with military support. But it was aborted by campaigns by NGOs. It didn’t happen this time because all those NGOs are connected to the Party that holds the presidency right now. They may not like the Governor that much, but since the federal government supported the takeover 100%, they kept quiet, and the results speak for themselves.
Crime in Rio has been very gang-related since the 80s. Since the gangs draw much of their power from control of the territory, kicking them out of the slums greatly decreases their capacity for crime and mayhem. That action backed by the military was necessary in Rio was obvious, but so-called “civil society” always hampered it.
I should know. I was part of those “civil society” machinations, long ago…
Incidentally, I agree that nothing does the job like actually arresting the criminals. In the state of Sao Paulo, the incarceration rate grew with tough police action, and now the murder rate is one of the lowest in the country, even though the make-up of the City of Sao Paulo (cramped up, big inequality) makes it in theory the one most vulnerable to crime.
Here I see the influence of Katzenelson upon you. The focus of a people should be in conquering not space, but *time* . . .
That’s perceptive of you. Actually I had that notion before reading his book, but the book did influence how I put it.
I am Brazilian and I can say that Brazil has the largest population Octoroon. I’m mix, my great-grandmother, who was the Northeast, it was kind of half mulatto and possibly India. My grandfather had one looks distinctly Semitic, and the surname (DE ANDRADE) and the fact that a large number of Brazilians have Sephardic Jewish ancestry (crypto Jews, Marranos) makes me conclude that I may have Jewish blood too, and by maternal. I look through southern Europe embora.Concordo completely with your statement about the slums. In fact, it is people that make the identity of a region, country or neighborhood .. Political correctness and cultural Marxism completely dominate Brazil. The term”politically correct”to slums is ”communities”. There is a clear link between race and crime, is not atoa that slums are the most violent regions.