bus 174

Katie Beeler

Bus 174’s documentary of the bus hostage situation in Brazil that was aired on live television. The hijacker Sandro Nascimento’s life is also documented in the film and his desperation of being ‘invisible’ is stressed throughout his story. The living conditions that Sandro had throughout his life revel the lives of the majority of impoverished people living in the slums of Brazil.

The conditions Sandro had ever since his mother was killed were horrible. The depiction of the jail that Sandro had to stay in was inhumane and disgusting. I couldn’t blame anyone for doing what they had to do to keep from going back to a place like that. Like the reading said about Carolina Maria de Jesus writing’s did for the allowing a look into the lives of the poor in Latin America, so did this scene of desperation by another poor Latin American. Carolina’s writings were said in the readings to almost shock the middle and upper classes living not far from her about the things that go on in the lives of the poor.

Sandro was one of these people who felt like he was invisible to the rest of the world and was making it known that he was no longer going to be this way. The attention that he got from the media was surely what drove him to carry out the intensity of what he was already doing.

This can be understood and almost seen as justified when you look into Sandro’s life. He literally had no legitimate for of removing himself from poverty. In the reading The Drive-by Victim, the hostage realizes at the end of his story that he can feel for the men that hijacked him. The hijackers gave him money for a taxi and his money back while explaining that they were not doing this for the hell of it, but rather because they had to. I think that the victim realizes this and feels sorry for them. He even states at the end of his writing that he himself was not brave enough to invite the men that hijacked him over for breakfast….

This kind of corruption that keeps the poor in constant need to commit crime in order to survive reveals the underlying corruption in a country. The police forces in Brazil are clearly depicted to be untrained and untrustworthy. If the police that are supposed to be a life support system and be able to be trusted in any situation can’t even be trusted at the lowest forms then that speaks volumes of the country alone. No wonder so many of the poor commit crime, to me it makes sense..