A paz é 10!

Montreal is a paradise of virtue compared to Rio and Mexico 
    
By JOSH FREED, The Gazette, March 21, 2009 
  
I was walking down St. Urbain St. late Wednesday night - on a lonely, deserted stretch of pavement. Yet it felt as safe as my living room. 

That's because I've recently spent time in two world crime capitals - Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City - that reminded me just how innocent Montreal is. 

Last week I was in Rio, a staggeringly beautiful Brazilian city with endless beaches and miles of string bikinis. 

During the day, Rio feels like any first-world city, with sleek high-rises, fashionable shops and streets bustling with shoppers. 

But once the sun sets, you fear for your safety, because everyone tells you to - from your hotel clerk and other locals to the Lonely Planet Guide that warns: "Tourists seen downtown at night are considered fair game for muggers." Every second Rio resident seems to have been mugged. Many advised us to not to wear jewellery or carry much money, apart from 50 Brazilian reals (about $25) - the minimum mugger's fee you should hand any robber if you don't want him to get annoyed. 

Robberies are rarely violent, however, and sound more like business transactions. They say, "Hi! My name is Jorge and I'll be your mugger tonight." Then you hand over 50 reals and they disappear. 

As instructed, we took taxis everywhere at night or stuck to crowded streets filled with Rio residents who were also seeking safety in numbers. During my week there, nothing happened - but I paid the price in paranoia, studying every passerby with suspicion. 

Are those two young guys following me? What about those two old men with canes? Or that nun - could it be a disguise? Even schoolchildren seemed scary, and they should - because 13-year-olds with guns are the most lethal force in town. 

Most of the crime stems from the huge gap between rich and poor in this city of about eight million. Rio has an enormous middle class, but it also has huge shantytowns, called favelas, where millions live in slums. 

These are grim twilight zones where even police rarely tread. Many favelas have their own informal justice system where tough law and order is dispensed by teenage "drug lords" who are often dead by 17, in a Brazilian version of West Side Story. 

This violence leaks out of the favelas and into the street, causing much of the crime. 

After a week in Rio, you somehow get used to it and learn where to walk at night, like all the other law-abiding Rio residents. 

But things can go wrong. Gregory, a schoolteacher we got to know, walked out of his ATM booth and was followed onto the bus, where he was robbed and shot through the middle of his chest. 

Like most Brazilians, he takes it philosophically, with the optimism that marks this ever-cheerful carnival of a country. 

It's summed up perfectly by an old Brazilian saying: "If you have a problem and you worry about it, then you have two problems." Yet even Rio's problems are outdone by Mexico City, where I visited earlier this year. It's another sprawling city with vast slums, and Mexico is plagued by an organized crime war that caused 5,000 murders last year alone. 

But Mexico has an added danger - kidnappings. Last year, there were more than 1,000 kidnappings reported, though many unofficial estimates put it as high as 4,000. 

A Mexico City filmmaker friend of mine knows six people who were kidnapped in recent years - like her friend's father, who was seized in his own home and held for $100,000 in ransom. 

Another friend was grabbed off the street in a so-called "express kidnapping" and forced to withdraw money from her ATM. 

But my friend says: "You never call the police - they're often part of the extortion and will just charge you more." As in Rio, I learned to adapt - but I eyed everyone carefully, partly for my own good and partly to spare my friends back home from having to raise money for my ransom. 

Both Rio and Mexico City are colourful, exciting cities, and I loved visiting them. But it's a pleasure to be back in peaceful Montreal, where we had 29 murders all last year, the lowest homicide rate of any big Canadian or U.S. city. 

In many parts of the world, murder and kidnappings are just daily life, but here they're as rare as being struck by lightning. Stephen Harper keeps talking about tough new laws to fight Canada's crime wave, though crime has fallen steadily since the mid-1970s. 

Perhaps Harper should take a visit to Rio and Mexico - and see what crime is like.