Latin America: Urban Poverty and Violence - Essay Example

Latin America: Urban Poverty and Violence Introduction While the majority of mainstream society in the United s lives in relative comfort and affluence, this is not true for the rest of the world. Particularly, when one considers the abject poverty that much of Latin American society has grown accustomed one’s perspectives on the true nature of social reality are greatly altered. Many theorists have proposed reasons for why this poverty has remained as persistent as it has in certain cultures, and how society itself contributes to the problem. This essay considers a variety of theories, ethnographic, and first-person accounts to develop a better understanding of what has been deemed the ‘culture of poverty’ in Latin America. While no underlining meta-narrative or explanation has been presented to account for the state of poverty in these regions, through the juxtaposition and comparison of these perspectives on urban poverty, shanty towns, and social violence, a pragmatic understanding of the issues affecting all societies and cultures is developed, ultimately promoting an empathetic understanding of the state of these marginalized poor. Bus 174 and Rio de Janeiro Street Violence The film Bus 174 opens with an overhead shot of the Rio de Janeiro city landscape while voices from inhabitants leaving on the city streets are heard. The effect is very moving as the viewer begins to comprehend the expansive nature of the city and get a feel for the economic depravity facing many residents. The narrative voices explain how they are forced to beg for food, and attest to the difficulties of seeking shelter. They explicitly state that these issues are primary factors in their growing up enraged at the social order. The film consistently returns to the overhead shots of the city leading the viewer to consider the nature of the city landscape and the on-goings that are central to the film. The film is structured around a hostage situation perpetrated by a man named Sandro. The film reveals that it was the rampant crime in the city that led to Sandro’s mother being murdered when he was 6 years old, and ultimately leading to Sandro becoming a part of a street gang. The viewer becomes introduced to the depravity of Rio de Janeiro street life where large amounts of homeless children fend for their daily existence. In a sense, these inhabitants are presented almost like a scavenger or animal-like race that have been cast off from mainstream society. At one point during the film, a man states that if the police officers were aware that Sandro was a street kid they would have been more aware that he was unpredictable. Sociologist Luis Eduardo is featured who argues that Sandro’s behavior is his way of articulating his disgust and rage at his social condition and the city crime. He states, “They do it because we fail to deal with social exclusion, racism, and other kinds of stigmatization.” Eduardo argues that there are two ways this social problem persists. The first is through invisibility; that is, the population begins to become acquainted with people like Sandro and nothing is done to alleviate these childrens’ situations. Another way these problems persist is through stigmatization, wherein the population casts a stigma over the children who have experienced family tragedies, and through this stigma are able to ignore the social problem staring them right in the face. As the film flashes between the background of Sandro, the things that influenced his life, and then his situation in the bus having taken hostages, one begins to understand the inter-workings of the social order and how street crime is a cyclical recurrence. The film even describes police officers as people who were not able to find regular jobs so had to settle for a career as a policeman; this lack of talented and motivated police offers contributes to the rampant street crime in the city. At one point Sandro opens the bus window and delivers a tirade to the police officers. In this diatribe one comes to understand his deep-rooted hatred of the police, his hurt at the street violence that killed his mother, and the society that imprisoned him. It’s a powerful, if slightly psychotic statement, on the nature of crime and economic depravity on the Rio de Janeiro street. For Eduardo, Sandro’s taking of the hostages was a way for him to assume control of a personal narrative in which he was always a subordinate, and indeed highly marginalized, character; that is, “he can recover his visibility and affirm his social and human existence.” Indeed, if there is one recurrent theme it is the inability and unwillingness of the population to act in empathy with the children. The film even details how many people were supportive of a massacre that was perpetrated by law enforcement against the street kids. Culture of Poverty: How Poverty is Cyclical While the culture of poverty concept that Oscar Lewis proposes in his seminal ethnographic analysis Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty (1959), has much in common with the elements of poverty identified in Bus 174 the theoretical understandings both texts are constructed around differ in slight ways. In one of the case studies in Five Families Oscar Lewis examines the family of Pedro Martinez who live in the poorest of eight barrios in San Jose. In this portrayal the reader is exposed to the inter-workings of poverty, as the text notes that, “Until a year ago the whole Martinez family had slept in the other room” (Lewis, pg. 25). Reference is made to the lack of running water and the necessity of members of the family going on a trek with a bucket to retrieve it. In order to maintain subsistence Pedro has to work a series of jobs and contract his sons out to work. A portrait emerges of the Martinez family as perpetually in-debt and stuck in an endless culture of poverty. While there are educational opportunities available the pressures of poverty cause Pedro to be removed from school to work in the fields and raise money. Soon the reader discovers this same cyclical pattern occurring with Pedro Martinez’s children as he thwarts their ambitions to encourage them to work in the fields or help the family at home. While Pedro participates in the Zapata Revolution, he believes that it was ultimately a failure as it just replaced one mode of oppression for another. Indeed, this sense cyclical sense or ‘culture of poverty’ has become a prominent sociological theory since Lewis’ first introduced the concept in this ethnographic study. Whereas Bus 174 cast poverty more along terms of tragedy to which individuals are thrown into without escape, Lewis’ concept extends this understanding to include an entire sub-culture of society that through oppressive government or business mechanisms, as well as the culture that they understand and pass down to the next generation, are forever caught in this culture of poverty. In this understanding of the urban poor, poverty is understood as consciously pushed on them from social forces, rather than merely perpetuated by social apathy. Child of the Dark: A 1st Person Account Carolina María de Jesus’ diary Child of the Dark considers poverty from the perspective of a woman living in a favela in Sao Paoulo, Brazil. The favela is a ghetto of great poverty. Carolina describes it, “"I classify Sao Paulo this way: The Governors Palace is the living room. The Mayors office is the dining room and the city is the garden. And the favela is the backyard where they throw the garbage" (pg. 24). The diary begins in 1955 upon the birthday of Carolina’s daughter Vera Eunice. The reader comes to understand Carolina’s state of abject poverty as she must scavenge the streets and attend charities to receive food to feed her children. Even with the undeniable poverty that is experienced in the favela one comes to understand that the residents therein in some cases exhibit great levels of understanding and care for each other. Carolina describes one instance in which she pays a man to build a teeter-totter for her children so they will remain in the yard and stop causing the neighbors trouble. While these examples are balanced against Carolina’s proclamations that many people are unkind, the effect demonstrates the underlining humanity of the residents. While one could argue that Bus 174 and to an extent Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty emphasized the horrific elements of urban poverty, Carolina’s account is arguably more effective as it humanizes the citizens rather than emphasizing their abjection. The diary addresses the government and public perceptions of the favela. Carolina describes how her son is called into court. She eventually goes in and the lieutenant she encounters is sympathetic to her struggle to find food and survive. The diary discusses how politicians will address the favela in speeches and in similar ways to gain popularity, but ultimately nothing is done to alleviate the troubles by the citizens living in these towns. As the diary progresses the reader becomes aware of the extremity of the poverty problem in the favela. Carolina tries to give food to a homeless man but he refuses, saying that she should give it to her children because he will be dead soon. Food is consumed out of dumpsters and public trash and in many instances the people will get sick and die. Merchant even throw rotten and dangerous food away and watch the people dare eat it. Carolina writes, “In my opinion the merchants of Sao Paulo are playing with the people just like Caesar when he tortured the Christians. But the Caesars of today are worse than the Caesars of the past. The others were punished for their faith. And we, for our hunger" (pg. 134). Ultimately, Child of the Dark demonstrates the inner perspectives of the favela from the inside. The vision indicts the dominant society for their complicity in oppression these citizens, "Actually, the world is the way the whites want it. Im not white, so I dont have anything to do with this disorganized world" (pg. 63). It also explores the cyclicality of poverty through the tensions that arise between its very residents, "Why is it that the poor dont have pity on the other poor" (pg. 73)? While no direct prescriptions or overarching sociological theories are offered the impressionistic account has many thematic similarities, including the increasing tension and violence as a result of the poverty, as well as a general distrust of the government or dominant social order -- both themes that are demonstrated strongly In Bus 174 and Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty. Myth of Marginality While the cultural artifacts that have been investigated thus far have exemplified and indirectly offered insight into the causes and perspectives surrounding poverty, Janice E. Perlman’s The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro is a prescriptive sociological investigation into urban poverty in Rio de Janeiro. Perlman argues that policy makers and the general public hold similar stereotypes about the urban poor. For Perlman the concept of marginality is viewed as a central concept among researchers and policy-makers, even though it is a problematic term and fraught with stereotypes. Perlman traces the emergence of the marginal member of society and argues that it has always been the policy of the urban elite to disregard this subculture and stunt its growth. For Perlman the concept of marginality is indicative of the section of society that is unable to be absorbed into the workforce. As a result public discussions of this section of society have masked the inability of the economy to accommodate them. The extent to which members of shanty towns or fevalas are labeled as socially deprived or even ‘social cancers’ is considered. This concern with the individual attitudes of this sub-culture has many similarities with Oscar Lewis ethnographic research that attributes the cyclical recurrence of poverty to the development of these cultural patterns. The extent of Perlman’s investigation functions to examine both the mainstream social understanding of marginality and the real-to-life existence and conditions of the marginalized. For Perlman these are two divergent concepts, with the dominant social understanding of the marginalized relying heavily on stereotypes as a means to mask the reality of a social system that is unable to accommodate all its members. It’s this erroneous concept of the marginalized that willfully, tacitly, and even unknowingly functions to continue promoting a cycle of poverty and oppression. In the Myth of Marginality Revisited Perlman revisits the concept of marginality by considering the historical factors that have changed in the intervening years. While many economic factors, including access to water, food, and financial resources have been alleviated in the intervening years, Perlman argues that the underlining stigma attached to this section of the social order still remains blatantly prevalent. Perlman furthers her meditation on the ‘marginal (ized)’ term stating that its very existence implies, “residents of the favelas—are actively excluded by an unjust and corrupt system that is complicit in the reproduction of inequality and the production of violence.” For Perlman, it’s the very existence of this marginalized sub-culture that creates tension within the dominant order as they challenge the mainstream claims to power. One notices in this tension many of the same themes that were evident in Bus 174, namely the established order’s attempts to eradicate this population rather than successfully deal with it as a social issue. Perlman’s discussion brings new insight to the instance when a group of street kids were massacred by corrupt police officers. Conclusion Even as the cultural artifacts examined add incredible insight and offer testament to the abject poverty that is rampant in many parts of Latin America, a number of pressing questions remain. The most overriding question is what actually can be done about the problem. Indeed, this seems the great mystery or Holy Grail of such sociological investigations and is well beyond the scope of this critical examination. While well-fare programs seem a possible alternative, it’s notable that in many instances accepting such help was demonized by the poor themselves. One sees such rejections in Carolina Maria de Jesus’ diary as well as in the lyrics quoted in Perlman’s Myth of Marginality Revisited, “My people are workers/ I never had social assistance.” It seems such rejections are a reminder to the mainstream establishment that the urban poor are not merely lazy, but have been oppressed by a social order that functions by keeping them in a sub-culture of poverty. Ultimately, the solution may not be as simple as social well-fare, but rather the complete restricting of the social system. References Bus 174 Carolina María de Jesus, Child of the Dark Perlman, Janice, The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio De Janiero Perlman, Janice, “The Myth of Marginality Revisited: The Case of Favelas in Rio De Janiero, 1969-2003 Lewis, Oscar. Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty. Lewis, Oscar “The Culture of Poverty” Read More