Brazil, the global benchmark for violence

It’s the kind of article that will drive the Rio tourism board to litigate. In a new post, the Economist’s Gulliver blog reinforces Brazil’s outsized reputation for crime and murder. Just how bad is Brazil, according to the piece? Worse than even Mexico, the new global poster-child for murder and mayhem.

The article is mostly tongue-and-cheek (and at times quite funny), and it’s overall goal – to diminish the hysteria around the dangers of visiting Mexico, where escalating violence is primarily focused in states near the US border – is a noble one. But pieces like this only deepen the insecurity and anger of Brazilians over the west’s unfair portrayal of their country.

Brazilians can be forgiven for bristling every time a major publication, film or TV show underscores its high crime rate. Not only is Brazil’s reputation partly unfounded – the murder rate is declining in major cities like Rio, and nationally it falls well below other Latin countries – but the rest of world has also come to romanticize favelas, particularly their violence. The result is schizophrenic attitude of the West towards Brazil: we fear your country, and yet we can’t get enough of it. (Read the interview with Lilia Schwarz in the New York Review of Books for a more fully fleshed out explanation of this phenomenon.)

As Brazil continues its ascent as a global power, while moving ahead, sluggishly, with preparations for the World Cup and Olympics, the world’s view of the country will seem even more out of step with reality. And the offence taken by Brazilians will deepen every time their country is held up as an example of all that is frightening about the non-west.