Anarchy in Rio
Violence in Brazil, particularly in its bigger cities, carries true through the worries of its populous. This article identifies violence in Rio de Janeiro. Rio is the heart of samba in all of Brazil. There are tons of samba schools in the area and they compete with one another in a two-day bash of all out partying.
At the most recent Carnival, the parade, was held up by a couple minutes of silence for Joao Helio, a small boy that was the latest victim popularized by the Brazilian media. He was riding shotgun next to his mom when her car was jacked at a stoplight. He attempted to get out of the passenger side window while the carjacker was fleeing the crime. He ended up suffocating himself while he struggled to get out of the window.
The article assumes that he was probably the latest victim of the ripple effect from the drug world of Brazil. Which, around carnival, is at its peak. All around carnival stadiums, where the schools go to dance in a kind of parade like fashion in front of bundles of on lookers, there are drug dealers infiltrating the populous. The many police officers assigned to the Carnival often get a chunk of the money the dealers make because they tend to look the other way. Apparently many of the Carnival dancers will do lines of cocaine just to keep them dancing through out the night and onlookers can pay about 10 reais to suck up some nose candy themselves. The article said that drug dealers could make in 2 days what they would regularly in 2 months.
We visited one of the samba schools in Rio when I was staying there. It was the only place in Brazil that I had traveled to in which our little tour group was escorted by four armed cops. The tour guides told us about keeping out valuables on the bus or tucking them into somewhere safe. I never saw anything, other than the occasional smell of weed that would have made me suspicious of drugs.
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