Backward to Brazil? Don’t We Need to Aim Higher?

Why would we want to emulate Brazil which is no better and in many instances worse off than Perú? When there are "First World" models that are 100%+ more efficient. Shouldn’t Perú set her sights higher and outside of South America to answer the question of poverty?

Both Perú and Brazil have achieved fabulous economic growth through maintaining free and open democratic republics, embracing free trade around the world and by adopting proven capitalistic fundamentals. But neither have bridged the poverty gap successfully.

Much of Brazil’s so called poverty success is a propaganda math trick for world media consumption and the upcoming games. It is a relatively successful scam supported by much of the major media and promoters of business and investor interests. The Brazilian government needs desperately to portray they are solving the problems of poverty, drugs and crime.

Brazil is giving just enough money to a portion of the poor, to lift them ever so slightly above the poverty line, so they won’t be counted by the census takers. The big push is to present an attractive and safe picture of a cosmopolitan Brazil. They need to demonstrate they are seriously making progress in solving the problems of poverty, drugs, out of control crime and child prostitution to enhance the up coming FIFA World Cup 2014 and the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. There is billions on the line. The pressure is on to maximize profits and quell human rights protests during the games. In my opinion maximizing profit is a good thing. But, to use Brazil’s model as representative of a successful anti-poverty program, which Perú should learn from, is ludicrous. 

Perú’s population is estimated at 29.5 million. In Brazil 8 million “kids” (equal to the entire population of Lima) live on the street. They have to sell drugs, ambush victims, burglarize or sell their body to survive. Over a third of Brazil’s 193,733,800 occupants still live in Favelas (slums) adjacent to the wealthy and prosperous modern city skylines. And that of course doesn't include the rural poor of Brazil. This is no model to follow.

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Links:

Walls Around Rio's Slums Protect Trees But Don't Inspire Much Hugging

Rio's state government calls this wall and others like it "ecobarriers" to prevent Rio's favelas, or shantytowns, from steadily expanding across the city's scenic, heavily forested hillsides.

Opponents see a darker purpose: to imprison Rio's poorest residents. The walls have become a symbol of the inequality between the notoriously violent favelas and the people who live below on "the asphalt," as Rio's wealthy beachside neighborhoods like Copacabana are known.

The debate over the walls has quickly become larger than the walls themselves. In May, United Nations human-rights officials quizzed Brazil over "geographic discrimination." Rio's Union of Civil Engineers called environmental worries a pretext for a "tremendous attack on people's right to come and go." Other critics use the word apartheid.

Drug gangs battle Brazilian police for favelas

The Street Children of Brazil (part 1) 
The Street Children of Brazil (part 2)

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For inspiration and paradigms Perú's leaders should be looking “up.” Not to the side nor down!
 
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