Crime, Pollution Crisis : In Rio, It’s Beauty Vs. Urban Beast

Post card from Rio: “Copacabana Beach, with its glistening sunbathers and glittering high-rise apartments, is as breathtaking a sight as ever. Wish you were here.”

Maybe not. Over the years, while post card-pretty Rio has basked in its sparkling image, a more somber city has taken shape in the shadows. The other Rio is a welter of urban crowding, spreading poverty, crime, pollution and confusion.

Greater Rio’s population has burgeoned to an estimated 10.5 million today from 4.5 million in 1960, making it one of the most populous metropolitan centers in Latin America.

Typical of Megacities

Rio’s urban problems have become typical of those faced by other struggling megacities in developing countries. What is especially sad here is that the urban beast threatens to overshadow the uncommon beauty.

“The city is being brutally destroyed,” said Carlos Nelson Ferreira dos Santos, an urbanologist who has lived here most of his life. “It makes me very sad to see it being consumed as it is.”

Migration from rural areas, lack of public resources and bad management are all to blame, said Dos Santos, who is research director for the private Brazilian Institute of Municipal Administration.

“It is an enormous city with few resources, and like everything in Brazil, very badly managed,” he told an interviewer.

‘Calcutta Syndrome’

Dos Santos and others warn that if Rio’s deterioration is not checked, the city could fall into a hopeless “Calcutta syndrome” of urban pandemonium.

For most of the 19th Century, while Brazil was the New World’s only monarchy, Rio de Janeiro was the imperial capital. Then it was the capital of the republic, from the end of Dom Pedro II’s reign in 1889 until the national government moved inland to Brasilia in 1960.

Some analysts date Rio’s decline from that year. They say the city lost the benefits accorded the capital by the national government but never learned to look out for itself.

Nevertheless, “the Marvelous City,” as the people of Rio call it, still has many marvels.

The natural setting is as spectacular as ever. The city faces Guanabara Bay, an island-studded natural harbor, and spreads south along a graceful string of sandy beaches--Copacabana, Ipanema, Leblon, Gavea, Sao Conrado, Barra de Tijuca.

Huge granite outcroppings like Sugarloaf and Corcovado give scenic majesty to green hills and mountains that rise steeply within and behind the city. Even the hillside favelas, or shantytowns, seem picturesque from a distance.

The people of Rio--Cariocas--speak Portuguese with a soft lilt that seems to rustle like palms in a gentle breeze. They are famous for their easygoing, fun-loving and urbane ways.

Rio cultivates its reputation as a tourist mecca and jet-set hangout. It works hard to stay on the leading edge of Brazilian culture, setting trends in music, fashion, art and theater.

In a country where the pre-Lenten carnival is a popular cult, Rio stages incomparable extravaganzas of dancing, delirium and debauchery.

Poverty Is Rampant

Mauricio Azedo, secretary of social development for Rio de Janeiro, said he is not worried about the “soul of the city,” its warm and vibrant personality.

“Rio preserves the essence of what characterizes the city--cordiality, good humor, optimism,” Azedo said. But he is concerned about the degradation of the urban environment.

“Sometimes I ask myself if this city is governable anymore,” he said.

Azedo and other officials estimate that 2 million or more of greater Rio’s residents live in favelas and other makeshift shantytowns that have few conveniences such as sewers and running water. They say at least 10,000 others live on the street, without even a shack for shelter.

“One of the things that you see in Rio de Janeiro is an increase in poverty, in the number of poor people,” Azedo said. “And they are isolated from the rich.”

Feeling Besieged

Members of Rio’s moneyed minority are finding refuge from the city’s rough edges in heavily guarded apartment buildings and high-walled houses.

“The rich are building their forts with their security systems,” Azedo said. “They run the risk of being besieged by the misery and poverty that is created and increased by social injustice.”

Many Rio residents, rich and poor, already feel as though they were under siege. Muggings, burglaries and holdups have reached epidemic proportions in many parts of the city.

In beachside Copacabana and Ipanema, muggings are so common that hotel doormen warn tourists not to venture into the streets or beaches with handbags or jewelry. The U.S. Consulate receives several calls a week from American tourists who have been mugged, often at knifepoint.

Growing Crime

A foreign diplomat said crime has grown noticeably worse in the four years he has lived here.

“When we first got here, street crime was purse snatchings,” he said. “Nobody got hurt. There is much more crime now where people are armed.”

Criminal lawyer Virgilio Luiz Donnici says Rio’s homicide rate has reached an “intolerable level.” In a study based on official figures, Donnici said the number of homicides in the state of Rio de Janeiro increased to 4,875 in 1986 from 3,307 in 1985. All but about 300 of the 1986 slayings were in the greater Rio urban area, he said.

Social scientist Helio Jaguaribe said Rio’s muggers are generally poor, unemployed youths. He said most homicides are committed by drug traffickers and “professional holdup gangs that are prepared to kill.”

‘An Absolute Crisis’

“What is most in crisis is the public security system,” he said. “It is an absolute crisis.”

Jaguaribe is an adviser to Wellington Moreira Franco, the governor-elect of the state of Rio de Janeiro. The new state administration, which will take office March 15, will double the number of police to deal with urban crime, according to Jaguaribe.

But he emphasized that more police will not be enough to control crime. He said there are at least 40,000 criminals in Rio who should be in jail, but the state’s prison system can hold only 15,000.

“What is happening now is that the police can’t even make an arrest because they don’t have anywhere to put people,” he said.

Also woefully inadequate are Rio’s schools, health services, public transportation network and sewage systems.

Crowded Schools

Thousands of elementary pupils spend only three hours a day in school because much of the crowded educational system works on a triple-shift system.

In Baixada Fluminense, a vast industrial and suburban area on greater Rio’s north side, there is only one full-fledged government hospital to serve a mostly poor population of more than 4 million.

In Nova Iguacu, an impoverished community of about 1 million people in Baixada Fluminense, 155 of every 1,000 babies die before they are a year old.

To get to work and back, many residents of Baixada Fluminense must spend three hours or more a day on overcrowded trains and buses. The trains are notorious for breaking down. In recent years, workers have expressed their fury over long delays by tearing apart passenger cars in what the press calls quebra-quebras, or “break-breaks.”

A $2-billion subway system was built in the late 1970s, but only 18 miles of the planned 85-mile system are in operation, and it does not reach Baixada Fluminense.

Polluted Bay

In much of Baixada Fluminense, the sewage system consists of open canals running along streets and into Guanabara Bay. The 160-square-mile bay is sick with pollution; the dark, smelly waters leave long black lines on the sands of once-fashionable Botafogo and Flamengo beaches.

Governor-elect Moreira Franco is negotiating for loans totaling $400 million from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank to install sewage systems in Baixada Fluminense and clean up the bay.

Rio sewage, pouring into the open Atlantic, pollutes the waters that lap at some of Rio’s most upscale beaches. The State Environmental Engineering Foundation has classified waters at parts of Ipanema, Leblon and Gavea, near some of the city’s best hotels, as unsafe for bathing.

The foundation reported in January that the sand in some areas of Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon is infested with tiny larvae that cause skin ailments.

‘Smell Knocks You Over’

When it rains heavily, polluted run-off from hillside favelas spreads over some of those same beach areas.

“There are times when you can drive along Copacabana and the smell just knocks you over,” a foreign resident said.

Air pollution and noise also plague Rio. Analyses by the Environmental Engineering Foundation have shown that in large areas of Rio, including Copacabana, air pollution surpasses limits considered acceptable.

The Brazilian Acoustics Assn. reported recently that Rio is the noisiest city in the world because of heavy motor vehicle traffic and faulty mufflers. One of the noisiest Rio streets is Copacabana’s main business thoroughfare.

Throughout Rio, major arteries become clogged with massive traffic jams during rush hours. Illegally parked cars turn sidewalks into obstacle courses for pedestrians.

According to the state transportation department, as many as 10,000 new cars join Rio’s vehicular congestion every month.

Clean-up Campaign

Fernando Gabeira, a politician who was once an urban guerrilla, has made saving Rio’s ravaged environment his chief cause. He helped found the Brazilian Green Party and ran for the Rio de Janeiro state governorship last year, winning 7.7% of the vote.

Gabeira’s latest project is a campaign to clean up the heavily polluted Paraiba river, which he said is the source of 80% of Rio’s water.

Although the water is treated to remove impurities, it retains an unpleasant taste, and Gabeira advises against drinking it.

“That water is poisoned water that they have treated,” he said.

He said he has focused on environment because the deterioration in the quality of life hits poor Cariocas hardest. Its impact on high-rise residents of Copacabana is light compared to how it hurts the people of the Baixada Fluminense, he said.