Monday January 31st 2011 Evaluation of Brazil

So I have my first real regret about Semester At Sea.  Although I so much enjoyed my Jungle Lodge trip and it was a fantastic experience, I should have gone to Rio de Janeiro.  In all of our classes the past few days we have been learning about the upcoming games they are hosting and the possibility that they may not be ready for the challenge.  When you read anything in the news about Rio, the majority of the time it involves the high crime rate and the dangerous Favelas.  In the next few years, Brazil will be hosting many major international sporting events including the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympic Games.  The Brazilian government is now rushing to clean up the 44 Favelas in Brazil within the next 3 years.  The problem with this is that they are taking unnecessary methods to rush and get it done.  So far they have cleaned up four of them by rushing in guns drawn, shoot whoever may be a threat, and establish a police station right in the center to attempt and control the crime.  This would make sense if they were not killing innocent people who have no involvement in the drug trade.  I’m not sure of numbers but I know that a shocking number of innocent civilians living in the Favelas have been killed simply for being outside at the wrong time.  One Semester at Sea student had the opportunity to talk with a little boy who was shot in the Favelas as police were rushing in.  He was in front of his mother’s house when it happened. 

It is shocking how much better of a choice Chicago would have been rather than Brazil….It confuses me then why the Olympics committee would choose this country when they are not at all ready to host an event like this.  Of course so much more thought goes into that decision than I will ever know about, and I’m sure a major part of it is the fact that Brazil is such an up and growing nation, and this gives them the opportunity to expedite the process of developing their economy even more.  Rio is the type of place I can see myself going to experience in the near future.  After learning so much about the city and hearing people’s stories, all I want to do is experience it firsthand.  They are going through a historic moment right now; one that if executed on time and if the games go successfully could go down as a defining moment in their evolution as a major world power.