The safety index of most cities in Brazil is… Pretty bad, but I rarely hear Brazilians acknowledging crime as a threat apart from “don’t go the the favelas”. Is it not that bad? Or have you really gotten used to walk with eyes on the back of your neck at all times?
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Si estás ahí nomás . Súbete a tu avión de latam y visita para que veas tu solo .
Yeah… it is that bad.
It’s worse. There is a strong underreporting of data in regards to violent crimes like sexual assault, homophobia and racism. Most instances of larceny and murder are only reported if they happen in higher income neiboughoods…
In some places is worst and in some is not a problem at all.
Que clase de Latinoamericano no anda siempre con ojos en la espalda?
I think most people would acknowledge it’s one of our main problems, specially in big cities.
>Or have you really gotten used to walk with eyes on the back of your neck at all times?
This too. I live in Rio de Janeiro and it’s kind of second nature to take a lot of precautions in your daily life. It’s almost automatic at this point.
It is not as bad as the statistics would make you believe but it is much much worse than what you get in developed and safe nations; we’re just used to things like never using our phones in public streets, not walking alone at night (if at all), reacting with fear when a motorcycle comes close, always keeping our heads on a swivel while walking so we don’t get ambushed, having a fake phone or wallet so thieves get those instead of the real ones, not wearing jewelry so we’re not targeted, driving with the windows up because someone might snatch an item from us, etc.
It’s bad in the sense your cellphone can get stolen in the blink of an eye in the big capitals. You won’t get kidnapped or murdered randomly.
The numbers look worse because of the cartel wars, but they are still bad and governments do shit in order to decrease violence in efficient manners, plus the police is absurdly corrupt. In São Paulo you’re more likely to get pickpocket while taking a picture of a city attraction than of being held at gunpoint, as an example.
It depends on where you are.
Capitals? Yes, pretty much.
Countryside? Not at all.
No.
It’s extremely gentrified.
I’ve lived in both Salvador and Aracaju, two of the most “dangerous” capitals in the country and if you’re middle class you basically only see/hear bad shit happen to you or those close to you by chance.
What spikes the stats is the fact that there’s an on-going war between major criminal factions in the fringes of society. Now I live in “small” city that’s theoretically one of the top10 most dangerous in the country but this is a place where I walk virtually anywhere with my cellphone on hand, I’ve forgotten my car windows open in the district’s downtown, people walk back home blackout drunk in the middle of the night and nothing really happens.
Now in the suburbs…it’s a warzone.
For most people it isn’t as bad as statistics imply. Most people won’t get robbed or suffer violence in their life, some will disproportianly. I have been robbed twice, but most people I know never have. It’s more common in big cities, but it is very region and economic class dependent. People are rightfuly scared though.
It depends a lot on the region you live and the income of the person as higher income means better neighborhoods to live in.
For example, I’m usually aware of my surroundings. At the same time, the first place that I’ve actually felt at danger was in Germany :v the second was Rio de Janeiro. But even with that… nothing ever happened with me. I’ve seen happening. I know people that were pickpocketed. I’m still on the lucky side so far and I have 29 years of Brazil already.
I mean, I live in Rio that is a “dangerous city” and never personally experienced anything dangerous, even though I used to live in the north zone that is the poorest. But also, I did take my precautions
Depends on where you go, honestly. You can’t say all capitals because Belo Horizonte, Curitiba and Florianópolis won’t trend anywhere as violent or dangerous as Rio de Janeiro, Salvador or Natal. Mid-sized and smaller cities in the interior of the South and Southeast will generally be quite safe. Think Bauru, Presidente Prudente, Londrina, Pato Branco, Lages or Caxias do Sul.
That’s the thing about Brazil, the social inequalities are absurdly massive. Some areas are as safe as countries in Europe. Some others are as dangerous as war zones. And sometimes they aren’t that far apart. Like 15-20 min drive in São Paulo can give you an crazy different perspective of the city.
I have a hypothesis, that someday I want to test. It is: brazil is bad at crime, but it is just as good at showing how bad we are.
What do I mean is that most countries have a tendency of making crimes statistics as obscure and ambiguous as possible. That’s not the case of brazil. Our crime statistics are extremely open, easy to access, and very public. That isn’t to say we are doing great, but rather we aren’t that afraid of showing how bad things are.
Pretty bad compared to Chile but better than most of central america, colombia, venezuela and mexico (going by statistics only).
Violence in Brazil is very regionalised, some capitals have it pretty bad (like salvador) and some are pretty safe (like florianópolis, brasília, goiânia etc.). Even inside a capital, some neighbours are super safe and other are not. The countryside in general is quite safe.
I think you may not have so much contact with brazilians because violence is the number one concern in the country. If you hear how brazilians talk about São Paulo as if it was gaza even though São Paulo has a smaller homicide rate than NYC.
And about walking with your eyes on your back… I visited Santiago and although it felt safe compared to other latam cities, I wouldn’t describe as japan-safe either. Unfortunately it’s the reality in all of the region (although anecdotally, the first time my friend got robbed was in Paris so there’s that).
the numbers are insane because of homicide between drug factions and because of police violence. Which also means that crime is very unequally distributed.
There are rich neighbourhoods where no one has been murdered in years and poor neighbourhoods where it happens almost daily. So that drives the number way up high but doesn’t necessarily affect everyone’s lives equally, and if a Brazilian speaks English there’s already a greater chance that they are not personally affected by this violence (Im not talking about stolen phones and wallets).
Its the sad reality which makes the numbers even worse when you consider how they affect the poor communities
If you are white and middle or upper class, chances are you won’t have to deal with kind of safety problems aside from precautions against petty crime. I’ve lived in Rio for about 30 years, and nothing ever happened to me.
Follow up to OP’s question: What’s the meme danger city for you guys?
I know in the United States it used to be Detroit while in Canada it’s Winnipeg. I would say Mexico has its choice of places, but most circles say Culiacan is a warzone right now.
Do you have an equivalent?
Here in my city, the police commit the most murders.
It isn’t.
For personal anecdotes: as a kid I used to live in one of the worst neighbourhoods in town close to a dangerous favela, hearing shootouts between gangs and police/other gangs was a regular occurence, it was so bad my mom taught me to always stay away from windows as I might get hit with stray bullets.
In my teens, my mom got married and we moved into a way nicer neighbourhood, from that point on I would walk/bike anywhere, at any time of day without a single worry, with big flashy headphones on.
In the cities over 1mi habitants is a nightmare… but in some country side smaller cities you could find european standards according the zone you are.
Violence/Crime depends on your social class, the rich are barely affected by it. The middle class witness and sometime is the victim of the crime. Usually the poor and destitute are the ones affected the most. That’s one of the main reasons for why crime isn’t a priority of the government, the most affected are the poorest and “invisible”. In their minds – Why would we care if a “bunch of poor” are being robbed, threatened and having other rights violated?
So, if you live in a middle class neighborhood or even a rich one, then crime is something you read about it, see on the internet, maybe your employees are victim of.
Of course, from time to time this “bubble” ruptures and them someone from the upper classes is victim of a crime, then we make protest, walkings about it and demand justice, but 1 week later our lives return to normality.
TLDR: crime – as a rule – affects mainly the poor classes.
Yes, it is. I live in Salvador, a city ranked among the 20 most violent in the world, or as a “murder capital”, or something. Murder is common here, it’s generally gang members killing each other in the slums. If you live outside of the slums, violence may be hard to perceive, but the risk is always around. You just learn to live with it, and do your best to avoid it. Violence towards common, non-gang affiliated people, without any relationship to crime (robbery, murder, etc) happen frequently.
However, those who live in the slums are caught in the criminal crossfire, and are oppressed by the gangs. The good people who live in the slums are the ones who suffer the most. I live in a middle class area, and I don’t remember the last time I was subjected to violence. Saying that “violence only happens in the slums” is insensitive to these people.
Overall, the experience of violence can be felt in many ways, but everyone agrees we live in a very unsafe city.
It’s probably like this in most big brazilian cities.
It depends greatly, here in Santa Catarina I feel safe walking around at any time with my phone in hand.
Honestly my no1 concern when using my phone on the street is accidentally dropping it rather than it being stolen.
Murder is also not a concern for me here. Keep in mind I’m a 20yo guy, I imagine women, elderly and children need to be more careful no matter where.
Well, the thing about accurate statistics is that they are… accurate.
By definition, things are exactly as bad as the statistics say.
Now, is that as bad as the statistics make you feel? I don’t know, probably not. Depending on where and how they live, most Brazilians don’t face the hell on earth that the country’s internet reputation would have you believe.
I live in a somewhat safe place so I reading news about crime in Brazil is sometimes like reading about things that happened in another country.
I never been robed or had to worry to much about safety.
Yes, it’s bad, maybe much worse than it seems outside the country.
The crime that used to be restricted to big cities is now spread throughout the country, there is no place to escape, even where you don’t see the violence it’s because it is contained, normally acting in drug trafficking.
Brazil’s biggest problem is that we are a very large, poor country and the only Portuguese-speaking country in LATAM, which is why the average Brazilian rarely leaves the country, traveling abroad is for the upper middle class and upper class, so people have no parameters of what it is like to live in a safe country, they end up getting used to it, thinking that what they have in Brazil is normal.
After seeing a robbery from my window in the corner of my place I am carrying wherever I need to go now. I was at birthday party in a pizzeria and the thought of 2 guys getting in with motorcycles helmets couldn’t leave my mind. A friend of mine that also own gun noticed I was carrying and relieved at least I was ready if anything happened as he had his kids with him
Brazil big.
It’s a massive country with massive inequality and massive regional disparities. If you go to r/Brazil they will tell you, for instance, that you should never use your phone in the street, but that isn’t true in several places. In mid-sized cities of the south I usually carry/use my phone in the same way I do in Europe.
The bad murder rate numbers are clustered, and inflated by gang/cartel/police war. The average citizen who has nothing to do with gang/cartel activity has a very remote chance to become part of the statistics.
Yes, it is. We need a bukele here 😔
Obesity will kill more Brazilians than crime in the future. I think there are few “fatter” countries than Brazil. And I say that as Venezuelan
I never got assaulted in my whole life, but the city i live in is small if compared to other cities(perhaps still being very big), i think that is a factor. There is also the fact that i usually don’t go into dangerous neighborhoods. I think something you need to consider is that usually big capitals atract more crime than small cities, is not like small cities are safe havens or anything, but the crime rate tends to be smaller
Yes it is. Depending on the place you are is even worse, like Bahia, Maranhão and Rio. Even São Paulo is becoming rampant allied to the already big drug problem, the crackheads are spreading throughout the city, not being contained in the Center region and/or the so called Crackland.
Brazil has so many safe middle sized cities where crime is not much of a concern, while the state capitals tend to be dangerous.
But even among the capitals there is a lot of variation I would say Florianópolis and Goiânia (the latter nowadays) are very safe, think of montevideo (arguably even safer).
Then Curitiba, Brasilia and Belo Horizonte would be around the same level of crime as Santiago and Buenos Aires. Porto Alegre used to be extremely violent but the crime rate there has dropped a LOT in the last few years so I would say it’s leaning into this category, although not there yet.
Then you have São Paulo in the middle
And as for the last category, I would say these cities are the really violent ones: Rio, Salvador, Recife, Fortaleza, Manaus and Belém
Funny thing about statistics is that it doesn’t say anything is bad or good. It’s just numbers. You decide if thr numbers are good or bad.