The wolves of Rio

The third major problem that Rio must solve, HAS to solve, is its horrific violence. Make no mistake, Rio is a city at war. Every single citizen of Rio has the mentality of life-during-wartime. It is a war of the traficantes (drug smugglers). Traficantes versus each other, traficantes versus the military police, traficantes versus the protection gangs, traficantes versus anybody unlucky enough to get in their paths; younger and younger traficantes without any hope of any kind of a life, without hoping of even living out of their teens. Traficantes versus the world.

Every day brings some new sad horror. Even in my first ten minutes in Rio, sitting in the airport waiting for the baggage carousel to start up, I overhead the following exchange between two women seated next to me:

Woman 1: "So what brings you to Rio? Are you here in vacation?"
Woman 2: "No, I'm here to join my husband because his son just got shot here."
Woman 1: "What??"
Woman 2: "My husband's son, and a friend, were in a Range Rover and a couple of guys pointed guns at them, shot them both and tossed them out of the car. The friend died. He was a very famous martial arts expert. My husband's son is still alive but he's in intensive care. He was shot 3 times."
Woman 1: "I'm so sorry."
Woman 2: "Guess how old they were. The two guys who did it."
Woman 1: "How old?"
Woman 2: "Eleven and twelve."

(I later found out the murdered Brazilian was Marcos Jara, a well-known ju-jitsu trainer who lived in the US and was visiting Brazil for the holidays to see his family. He and his American friend were just driving out of the city to visit lovely, bucolic Paraty - a town I have visited myself. Marcos happened to stop his car to get something out of his trunk... and he just happened to stop right in the middle of a dangerous favela. He was jumped, and they were both shot. O Globo has an extremely sad article about his mother, who said: "He was my oxygen. I no longer know how to breathe." He was killed on Christmas Day.)

I am always on alert when in Rio, but overhearing this miserable conversation put me on extra alert. Good thing because a night later, last night, I was almost jumped myself. I brought it on myself, of course - first by coming to Rio in the first place, and second: I was out too late, as usual, and was walking along a street that I shouldn't have been walking along, as usual, and had been too cheap to take a taxi all the way home, as usual. I'd taken a combi (little minivan) almost all the way home, but hadn't realized that my friend's new apartment was further off the combi route than I had thought; so I was walking just the last couple blocks from the combi stop back to her place.

The street was empty of people and quite dark, but was also quite wide-open. I could see pretty far in all directions and there was a pretty steady flow of car traffic along the street, including a lot of taxis that I could flag down if necessary, so I wasn't too worried. Still, though, it was a VERY empty street and rather dark and I knew it was a bad area, so I was on Extra High Alert, constantly glancing in all directions.

Like most gringas in Rio, I dress for this kind of situation, as follows: I wear only a tiny bag that looks as if it could not possibly have anything interesting in it (though actually it has the teeny-tiniest camera I could possibly find to buy. But it looks, from the outside, like it has nothing at all in it.) I wear it slung across my chest, not over one shoulder, so it can't easily be pulled off. I wear NO jewelry, NO watch, NOTHING that could possibly interest anybody. I wear shoes I can run in. And last, I usually do not walk with other Americans or, worst of all, American men (they are absolute magnets for thieves) - the last thing I want is to be in a crowd of loudly chattering English speakers.

So I was zipping along the street, using my Extra Fast, I-Know-Exactly-Where-I'm-Going Rio walk, feeling extremely exposed and vulnerable and on super-high alert, glancing in all directions.

I thought suddenly: This is what it's like to be a prey animal. To be, for example, a deer in the northern Rockies (which I had just been to) - now once again the home of wolves. Lots of wolves. A deer living in the wild like that spends its entire life constantly on guard. Constantly knowing that at every moment, there is somebody, somewhere, watching; assessing whether the deer looks like a good easy meal.

I actually had that exact thought in my head: "I'm a deer!" - when the traffic died away, all the cars suddenly disappearing in one of those odd traffic lulls, and a lone man on a motorcycle came by, and he turned his helmet and looked at me. I immediately saw that he was a wolf. I saw his helmet turn, saw him assess me, saw him decide to veer all the way across the 3-lane street and charge me head on and charge right up onto the sidewalk coming toward me at TOP SPEED. Right onto the sidewalk, right at me, accelerating. I could not see his eyes, just that blank black motorcycle faceplate as he reached out toward me. I did not have even the slightest hesitation. I knew the moment his helmet turned that he was a wolf, and I was a deer, and deers RUN, so I RAN. I ran FAST.

The entire world suddenly clicked into a fascinating three-dimensional game. All the objects around me - garbage can, small tree, series of concrete pedestals - suddenly took on extremely interesting characteristics as Potential Motorcycle Obstacles and seemed almost to glow. And I could see potential running paths emblazoned around them: the trajectory of the motorcycle coming at me vs. the various trajectories I could choose to run on. So just as his bike was leaping up onto the sidewalk, I was accelerating too and I was choosing a course. I ran obliquely at him, and I shot just past his outstretched arm, just out of his reach, at an angle, so that I was quickly far beyond him and he couldn't turn his bike around fast enough to get me.

I shot around the corner and bolted across the street to a central meridian that had some more helpful trees. More Moorcycle Obstacles. More potential running paths stretched out all around me. Which to pick? Where was he? Should I run in circles around the tree hoping for more cars to come soon? Or can I make it to that distant garbage truck, and those 2 garbagemen, that I now can see two blocks away? Does he have a gun, or is he just a pursesnatcher? I saw him starting to turn his bike to face me. I plotted a new course. (Run around tree.)

But finally a lone cab was coming - and the cabbie actually pulled over and got out to yell at the guy (99% of Brazilians are incredibly helpful. It's the other 1% who are the problem.) - and normally I would have thanked him and gotten a cab ride, but somehow I had so much mental and physical momentum by then that I could not stop running, and all of a sudden I was 2 blocks away at the garbage truck.

The two garbage truck workers hadn't seen any of this and just thought I was lost. They greeted me with a surprised "Ah, você está perdida!" (oh, you're lost!) Far behind me the biker gave up and left. I scooted the last block back home.

Oddly I was, and still am, not the least bit startled or spooked. I just went home and had some toast and cheese and read my cheesy sci-fi book, like usual. Like any gringa in Rio, I am always waiting for stuff like this to happen, and this was just the latest of a number of close scrapes, though this was the first time I've been targeted by somebody moving quite that fast, and requiring quite that much of a sprint. In retrospect I think he was probably just a purse snatcher, and what most likely made him give up was that he saw that my little, and very uninteresting-looking, bag was diagonally across my body and not easily snatchable.. and I had no jewelry at all ... and I was running pretty fast.... In other words: I looked like a fast deer, and not a particularly tasty one. So the wolf chose to continue on, to look for a slower, and tastier, deer.

Why was poor Marcos Jara the unlucky deer, and why was I the lucky deer, this weekend? I don't know. He was a world-class jiu-jitsu expert; but he was facing a gun. All I can do is run, and I'm not even very fast - but luckily for me, it was just 1 guy and he had no gun. Really I think it's just luck. All I really know is, beware of the wolves.