The Bullets Move Closer

There was a shootout in Alto Leblon, a section of Leblon that borders Gávea, last week. It was a clash between a drug gang and the police again, and it was by the favela that's around there. In Portuguese, the name for the people who get into clashes with the police is "bandido," or "bandit" in English. I like it. It's simpler to call them bandits than drug lords or gang members. Nobody died this time, and only one person was wounded.

Last Sunday I heard something that sounded like gunshots in the distance and went on intermittently for quite awhile. It wasn't the same time as the Alto Leblon shootout, and I don't know for sure that it was gunshots. It could have been firecrackers or something - my untrained ear certainly can't tell the difference. Even so, it's interesting to live in a place where the possibility of gunfire is nothing extraordinary. At home, if I heard such a sound, I would of course dismiss it as nothing more than bored kids shooting off firecrackers. I've heard that the "bandits" also shoot off gunshots when large shipments of drugs arrive, so in some places it's possible to hear gunfire even when there isn't a shootout occurring.

Don't worry, though - I'm still not concerned. The area around my house and PUC has been completely tranquil. Even in the extremely unlikely event of a conflict, I think it would difficult for a stray bullet to enter my bedroom. My room faces another building that's only a few feet away and there's not really much open space around, so a stray bullet would have to richochet quite a lot to come anywhere near my room. News of shootouts is sensational, but it's sensational from a distance - I'm still out of range of the trouble.