The Documentary entitled Bus 174 is centered on a Bus Hostage Situation that occurred in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2000. It focuses on the invisible street children of Latin America and provides the audience with a slight sense of moral confusion, do we empathize with Sandro’s upbringing and strong will to survive or do we detest his violent and deadly methods? What is the attitude of these people? In the introduction of the film, Luciana talks about her dreams, she says “Can I talk about my dreams? My dreams of happiness? I think I’ll never know happiness. I don’t have anybody. I don’t have a mother, a father, I don’t have shit. I only have my kids. There’s no way I’ll ever know happiness.” This is a huge sentiment of the favela area.

People live their simple lives day by day just trying to get by the best way they know how. And similarly that is the goal of the street children dubbed the invisible children by society. According to the film “there are two ways of producing social invisibility. One can be made invisible if his presence is neglected. And one can be made invisible if we cast a stigma over him, replacing his singularity with our prejudices. We only see what we project, not what we really are…invisibility is perfectly accomplished by death.” This is the reason that these kids have to try and stand out in order to be seen enough to survive. This is also evident in the drive-by victim article, a man who radiates false wealth is robbed in a taxi, he is scared, but he complies. In a later sort of Stockholm syndrome episode, he relates to his attackers, who are just trying to get by the best that they can in the situation that they are given. They do not want to be violent, but they also do not want to starve to death. So if a victim complies, then they let them go peaceably, but if they make it difficult, the attackers must subdue the victim and still try to get enough money to survive until the next robbery. It is a high risk-low reward system that they utilize, but unfortunately they do not have any better way of getting by in such a rough area.

According to I saw a city invincible “Police have given up on many barrios in Mexico City, Bogota, Lima, Rio de Janeiro, and elsewhere where their own safety is not guaranteed. It is one of the supreme ironies that urban areas with concentrations  of poverty stricken folk and people of color are today effectively forbidden to public safety officer, the elites’ instruments of power and authority.” This means that the rule of law is left to the most powerful and the best armed. In this system it is the criminals who are in charge of society, those who lie, cheat, and steal to get what they can to survive. In a world such as this, if you are invisible, then so long as you do not do anything that draws too much public attention(like, say, hijack a bus or go on a murdering spree) then you can do whatever it takes to survive. So do we empathize with Sandro or detest his actions. I think it is both to a degree, we feel angered that he made the choices he had to make, but we also understand why he made them.

[this is a prearranged makeup from a doctors appointment- spoke with Tony]