America, that is. Let’s see, I think this blurb has it all. Tell me this doesn’t sound strangely like someplace you know, fast foward a few years:

“People of the suburbs,” Amelia wrote, “with no work and no future started to invade the city, sometimes taking empty old abandoned houses and turning to street robbery to get by. The result: growing unsafety and insecurity for the society… There are a lot of tourists coming all the time and sometimes they are very visible for these desperate people, making them obvious targets, not to say that locals do not suffer this unsafety as well, probably far more, in fact.” Here’s a piece of Amelia’s blog entry that explains it:

Regarding major crime— like kidnapping and car theft sometimes leading to murder— it is often that we find bands of ex-policemen working in combination with lumpen proletariat from the exurban villas (barrios), doing all this, most frequently in the suburbs. I’ll call this a residual of last military government (what is called mano de obra desocupada, this meaning that these people were employed in kidnaping and robbing people for political reasons and when democracy came back, they had no “legitimate” work… so they changed their targets. We have been in “democracy” since 1983 but this situation continues today.)

A stable middle class is the best buffer between the rich and crime. How’s that for cold-blooded? Still, it’s true. The rich in this country can destroy the middle class and unleash upon the unfortunate a mass of unemployed former military types scarred from years of war, and this is what they will reap from that. Gated communities are fine until you realize they also make great targets for those on the outside, who only have to wait for those who want to leave for a time.