Social Violence in Latin America

CONTACT _Con-3CA6B54A1 \c \s \l Javier Figueroa

HIS 357

Instructor : D . Stein

DRAFT - Social Violence in Latin America

Latin America is regarded as a region with abject social and income inequalities and a vast number of people living below the poverty line The diversity of races and cultures prevalent here and the social inequalities have also classified as one of the most racially divided regions of the world . In addition to being impoverished and indebted the news service Agencia EFE of Madrid states that it is also one of the

most violent regions in the world . Taylor (1999 ) quotes statistics cited by director Jorge Nieto Montesinos of the United Nations Educational Scientific , and Cultural Organization in his article "Every year in the region , 140 ,000 people are victims of murders and street assaults that occur on an average of 24 aggressions per minute

This is a region characterized by unequal income distribution unemployment , the crisis of values , the lack of confidence in institutions , the collapse of the family system , and the consumption of drugs which lead to a socially violent society . This factor is evident in the movies which are based on this region . One such movie is 'City of God ' or Cidade de Deus in Portuguese , which was released in Brazil in 2002 and internationally in 2003 . Adapted from a novel of the same name the movie does a superb job of depicting the desperation and violence which afflicts the slums . The story told is not fabricated it is a real-life story of the conflict between the residents of a lower class quarter west of Rio de Janeiro . Drug abuse , violent crime , and a boy 's struggle to break free from the slums ' grip are the focal points of the movie

The movie aims to portray the horrific lives of those who live in favelas (shanty towns or slums . The term favela is specific to a community where people do not own the land they occupy and are not authorized to do so . Favelas in Rio were constructed at the time when the city was going through a phase of rapid industrialization , and they served the purpose of keeping the poor away from the urban center

The entire movie spans from the 1960s , when the favela first came into being and the youth shown in the movie become small-time thieves as they enter adolescence . It continues into the 1970s and 1980s when these characters grow up , and from thieves , become minor and then major drug lords . The drug trade depicted in the movie is very realistic as drug cartels and trafficking is one of the major problems which plague the region today . In Rio especially , as Laurier (2004 ) quoted the director Fernando Meirelles 's explanation "the drug trade has been so consolidated that currently all the favelas have fallen under the control of three criminal factions

An interesting fact in the movie is that all three decades shown in the movie are instrumental in imparting significant information about the...