An Invitation to Thieves

I lost my cell phone in Shopping Leblon the other day; it must have slipped out of my bag at some point. Some kind soul was considerate enough to turn it in at the customer service desk instead of just keeping it (cell phone theft is big in Rio). Luckily, I had “Casa” (Home) listed as one of the numbers in my phonebook, so someone from the mall called my host mother to say that they’d found the phone. I was able to pick it up the following day without a problem. Wonderfully convenient, right? Well, not exactly.

Apparently I should never have had “Casa” listed in my phone at all. I put it in months ago, without thinking twice about it. I never expected to actually call the number, but put it in just to be safe in case my keys got stolen or lost and I found myself locked out of the apartment at some point. Plus, if I were to come across a lost cell phone on the street, the first three numbers I’d look for to help locate the owner would be “Home,” “Mom,” and “Dad,” and if someone were to find me unconscious and bleeding in a street somewhere, I’d definitely want them to call “Home” right away. Not so in Brazil.

My host mother informed me immediately that I should never have put “Casa” in my phonebook. When I apologized and said that it was common practice in the United States, she told me in Brazil people can’t do that because of kidnappers. She said she got scared when she answered the phone and heard someone had found my phone, and that she wouldn’t give out her name, believing the caller to be of malicious intent. It makes me sad to think I live in a place where a good Samaritan can be thus vilified automatically, simply because people here live with the fear of being robbed (or kidnapped, in this case) constantly in the back of their minds. It was easier for my host mother to imagine a kidnapper on the other end of the line rather than just a person trying to do a good deed.

The host mother of a friend of mine went through a similar sort of panic. My friend got robbed, and within her lost belongings was something with her home address on it. When her host mother found out, she became extremely afraid that the thief would then come and rob their apartment. As far as I know, that never actually happened, but the threat was definitely very real in the mind of her host mother.

As you can see, in Rio one cannot carry any sort of information that is tied to a home or family. An American driver’s license, the most basic of ID cards that almost everyone over sixteen carries, lists the person’s home address prominently on the card. Nobody bats an eye. If anything, for us it is a measure of security, the assurance that if something goes wrong, loved ones can be easily located. In Brazil, it is an invitation to thieves, a careless way of making one’s family, the most cherished of institutions, vulnerable to danger. Everyone in Brazil is required by law to carry identification at all times, but the nationally-issued Brazilian ID card omits this piece of information.