What is wrong with this picture?

Funny, huh? Well that is certainly not the word I would use. But that is reality, not reality TV, but life. This is a picture taken by my brother in Sao Paulo, Brazil. My home country. This post is mainly to get me to try and understand and feel for myself the magnitude of injustice and class discrepancies in Brazil.
This is Brazil socioeconomic class 101. There is the rich, and the poor. The sad part is that this is true to most of central and south America.
According to the UN estimations, Brazil has 190 million residents, making it the 5th most populous nation in the world.
Now, read for yourself about wealth distribution.

(this was released in 2008--> relatively recent)
"The Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada (IPEA) of the Brazilian Government in a recent study stated that in São Paulo the wealthiest 10% had 73.4% of while in Rio they retained 62.9% and Salvador 67%.

Near the end of the 1800s, the richest 10% in Rio had 68% of the wealth. Not much progress."

Tell me these numbers do not make you want to puke. Just look in over two hundred years nothing has changed. NOTHING. For a country's whose motto is "Ordem e Progresso" (progress and order), they (should I say we) are lacking in every aspect of this issue. This is a major FAILURE.

It is truly pathetic, a country with so much to give, cannot give to their own people. A country known for its happiness but that is incapable of caring for its citizens.

A read an Ethnography called Laughter Out of Place by Donna Goldestein. It is about Brazil's favela. The researcher follows, lives, and records the life of a empregada aka maid. She depicts the horror, poverty, fear, and deplorable way in which this woman lived. She is black. Now, for those of you who believe Brazil is free of racism, let us all be clear when I say you are DEAD WRONG.

Look at what the footprint of an apartment in Sao Paulo. See if you think there is anything wrong...

It is a little hard to read. But to point things out I drew-in two ovals, and wrote front and back door. I do not know much of history, so dates to me are just dates. What i do know is that in Gainesville in the 1960s due to some law, it was required that apts have two doors, a front and a back one. But in Brazil...well I cannot tell you if there is a law, but it sure is a practice.

I lived there for 11 years. I never EVER thought about the fact that we had a service, and a non service elevator, an entrance and a back door. For safety? Very possible. However, you can see from that picture that it was used for more than that. It is portrays a separation of the areas where one's maid can enter, exit, and a lot of time live. In this specific plant, we do not see the "Maid's room," but I can say where I lived, we had one. Now, my mother was opposed to idea of having a maid sleep and stay with us. I will be honest, although I am part of the middle class and we were in Brazil too. My mother proudly says she only had a maid for about 2-3 years. Mostly because she was working and needed someone to clean the house. We were brats and did not like the empregada's food, so we asked that my mom cook =)

I distinctly remember no being able to use the "front door entrance" if i was wearing a bathing suit, barefoot, or carrying groceries. I guess this was brought to my attention almost a year ago, and still cannot grasp it. Why?

But I digress, reading that book made me sick, made me want to just cry. Our society is built to repress and prevent the people that live in the shantytown you see in the picture from rising above poverty. How? Good question. One way is to not address the problem with violence, the empregada in the story felt save in her favela yet the police was never there. It was managed, by a drug lord and gangs. The cops are well aware of this. It would not be the first time to know that a cop is cooperating and getting paid by the drug lord to protect him instead of abiding by Brazilian Law. Corruption.... enough said. Everyone has a price..is that not what they say? I guess Brazilians just are not that expensive...

To make matters worse... I heard on NPR yesterday as story that once again breaks my heart. I don't know why it still does. I mean wouldn't you have gotten used to it? Well it turns out that a popular TV Host (whose show is about reality TV covering murders) has been allegedly ordering the killings-- so he can UP his TV RATING. What is a life in term of rating? 2 lives for #1 program for the night? Really? This is just another example of how little life is worth, at least how it appears to be in Brazil. Things are bad when there are too many dead to make the 5 0'clock news....

Okay. I am done.

Like the Southerners say "Bless her(Brazil's) Heart"

GaBy