la ley y el orden

Many of you have pointed out that the picture I’m painting here appears to be rather negative. I’ll address that more generally elsewhere. But for starters, here are the facts about crime minus the spin:

None of my friends here have been mugged, beaten or even pickpocketed, with the exception of the Bush family, who are no friends of mine – an event that, I’m proud to say occurred a block away from my house (I’ve been trying to find her mobile at the bazaar for weeks so I can prank call ‘Daddy’ at three am). In fact, the only place my friends have actually been robbed is Spain.

I have never felt threatened and I live in an essentially ‘bad’ neighborhood according to most locals – a ‘no go’ area at night, according to the more conservative tour guides. I go out a lot at night and so, have to leave from and come back home at night or early in the morning, respectively, and have never had a problem.

People used to say the same things about the East Village when I lived there in the early 90’s before my rent shot up by a factor of six. Fact is it’s probably a bit more dangerous now that people have more than $10 in their pocket and won’t put up a fight for it (and probably don’t have a gun as well), as was the case back then.

The streets of my neighborhood, especially mine, Defensa - the oldest street in the city, are busy to packed with locals, tourists, cops, cartoneros, passing buses and taxis almost 24 hours a day. Restaurants are open until 2 am, bars until at least 4, clubs until 8. Many places are 24 hours. I have never felt unsafe coming home at night, usually on foot, crossing most of the neighborhood from the center or from much further afield. Actually, what often happens is I meet someone on the street and we wind up going for beer and breakfast, talk for a few hours and never see each other again.

Buenos Aires is no more dangerous than New York or Madrid and much less so than much of London, Paris, Poughkeepsie or Middletown. My 'bad' neighborhood, San Telmo, is much safer than Žižkov.

These urchins I keep going on about are just very unsupervised, misguided and rather uninhibited kids who build social structures according to the degree of risk involved in a particular shenanigan. Not really a positive cycle of behavior reinforcement. Their damage (depending on what your wearing at Carnaval) to society is minimal and they’re actually learning valuable lessons in socializing in the process. My childhood wasn’t very different. It beats sitting home alone watching television.