These are the parts they don't put on the postcards.
Last year, for my History of Urban Society class, I wrote a 20
page paper on the Chicago Public Housing projects and how they came to be as
bad as they are now. This led to extensive research on the Chicago ghetto
neighborhoods, and reading many personal testimonies about growing up there.
Everyone always told me Sevilla was the safest place you
could be. And, realistically, for a city of 700,000 people that doesn’t allow
concealed weapons, it is. However, after talking to one my tutoring kids, she
mentioned a barrio I had not heard of yet, and I think I know Seville pretty
well. The infamous “Tres Mil Viviendas,” is the public housing forum that
Seville has in place. 3,000 federal housing units all in the same neighborhood
(mistake number 1). Similar to those in
the US, it is not exactly the ideal place to call a home. She told me it is
drug-ridden, and I went on to Google the area and was bombarded by articles of
crime and violence that occur there. Having this interest in Public Housing
neighborhoods, I chatted with a friend and we decided we had an overwhelming
curiosity to check it out. My question was though, just how safe it was.
Obviously, going at night in provocative clothing was not an option, but I have
gotten various opinions from people as to whether it is a good idea of not. It
is the home of a lot of “gitanos,” or gypsies, which really didn’t bother me, because
in the Centro, they really don’t bother me. What made me think twice was the
fact that:
Not even the garbage
men, postal services, or firefighters will enter without a police escort.
That is pretty extreme. I was told it’s a land of anarchy,
the people live without laws. They don’t pay taxes, because the government hasn’t
collected in so long, and they have no actual count on the amount of
inhabitants live there. It is just one of those, “you stay in there, and we won’t
bother you.” They are all unemployed and there are fires in the middle of the
streets to keep warm and to cook. The trash is rarely picked up, so it is
strewn all over the street. When I asked my director if it would be a good idea
she panicked and quickly told me no, just to look at Google. When I asked the principal
of the middle school, she asked me why. When I said out of curiosity she said I
could only go through in a car, and not get out. They know who is from there
and who isn’t and it’s safe to say I would no longer have my beautiful iPhone.
When I asked the other teachers, they all said the only way
I could is if I went to the Police station and got a police escort. However, I
asked my host mom, and she told me if I went during the morning on like a
Sunday, I wouldn’t have anything to worry about. I’m still not sure.
Granted, every city has bad parts. And it is true, these are
the only ones in Sevilla, and are really on the outskirts. I wander all the
time around the city and would have easily never seen them. I also want to add
that, “dangerous,” here, means you will get pick-pocketed, “dangerous” in the
US means you will get shot. While the Black Market knows no boundaries,
shootings are not common here, and when I asked if there was any potential of
getting shot they all replied not I did something to provoke someone, and even
then, a very minimal chance.
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