Dangerous Neighborhood and Why It Matters

So, we've come to this area where we're under a huge highway that goes through this neighborhood. Some of the houses are like built there. The highway is inside a room there. So, we're going into some of the more dangerous areas now. Apparently, it's best to bike through these areas so you can get away quickly if anything happens. What's the tattoo on your head represent? These guys all sitting in the gutter here are doing something called paco drugs make him forget about any troubles. So we've arrived at this local couple's house. We have to go up these stairs

right up to the top and then we're going to see the living conditions here. No they don't pay rent. They don't pay water services or any electricity services. They don't pay anything. He used to rob banks. Today we're going to be venturing into one of the most notorious neighborhoods in the whole of Argentina. This neighborhood has been labeled many times in the past as the most dangerous place in the whole of the country. So, let's go and see what it's like inside and see how dangerous it truly is.

We went with machine guns and they robbed the banks. Welcome to Bernesarez, capital city of Argentina, of course. Massive city, mega city, 15, 16 million people, absolutely huge. Great to be here. Wanted to come here for a long time. Today, we're going to an interesting neighborhood called Villa 31. Supposed to be quite the notorious neighborhood. huge sprawl barios next to the skyline. Been told it's quite dangerous. One of the more on edge parts of this massive city. Going to be quite careful in here, but also hopefully go quite deep, meet some interesting people. Let's go have a look.

Okay, so we're here with Lenny. A lot of you guys might remember Lenny from Venezuela a few years ago. And so now we're in Bessares, right, Lenny? Yeah, finally you came here, man. We're going to walk here today into the Pyatuno. Okay. And what kind of a neighborhood is this? It's a main slum here in the capital. I really wanted to know how it is inside. I want to know how is the problem. Really exciting of going inside there. It's a very crowded place where everything or a lot of thing is happening all the time. A lot of bad situations could happen here. No, many local people wouldn't ever go in here, right? If you don't have anything there to see or if you don't know anybody there, you don't have anything

to do there. I mean, you are not going to walk there with no intentions and you need someone there to guide you or Yeah. because easily they recognize that you are not from the place. That's what I heard. Okay. I never had gone. Maybe it's like working another place here in Wenocidis and it would be a surprise. So, we've met a man here, Matias. So, you're living outside this restaurant here. He has a trouble in childhood a hard childhood. So from ch from the children he has been uh in this situation living outside in the streets.

Would you mind telling us what happened in your childhood? It happens everything what whatever anything parents leaving him alone. Abandoned. He was abandoned. Okay. And do people just give you food here? People give him some food. Restaurant. Uh he's talking about the police. Show the police. The police sometimes hit him wherever he's staying. So it's kind of difficult for him to be in this situation.

Are there a lot of people around here using drugs? Hey, look at my child. Yeah, he used a drug here called Paco. Oh, he uses it. Yeah, he um this is it's very cheap for what I hear. And that's like a cocaine derivative, right? Waste product of cocaine production from propane. What does Hakaco make you feel like? Drugs make him forget about any troubles he has. I mean, he feels fine and he can forget by for a moment about any bad situation or the situation he's living right now.

How is he treated by the general public? together. We are friends. There are people who treat him good. Others obviously take treat him bad. Okay. So, we've just come to the entrance of this neighborhood that we're going into. Can definitely feel the atmosphere starting to change a bit. It's a bit uh sketchy feeling at times. We've met our local guide from the neighborhood and he doesn't want to be on camera at all. So, uh yeah, he's going to be showing us around, but he says if I tell you to stop filming, stop

filming. Anyway, let's go inside. So all these cables are run off the main line and they just hijack the power so nobody pays for electricity here. So we've come to this area where we're under a huge kind of highway that goes through this neighborhood. The government, I think, has been working on trying to develop it to make it a bit more safe because some of the building practices here aren't the best. You can see on the other side of this fence, can't get really any closer, but you can

see the huge cages on these buildings here. I've been told not to go up in there and film cuz I asked if I could go and get some closer shots, but they said there's some guys there that don't want to be on camera. I've never seen cages like that in all the places I've been in the world, all kinds of different neighborhoods, and I've never seen quite such high security. So, this used to be houses and the government came and tried to make it a bit more like functional. There's a football pitch and they moved some houses, but you can still see like some of the houses are like built there.

Maybe this the highway is inside a room there. Uh someone who lives there. I don't know. But you can see how the house the houses are cut there. I mean, they remove the some walls and some spaces to create all this space. They just did this because they want to remove the people who lives behind below the highway. So it must be very loud in like a room like this. Well, I can't imagine how this could be living there and have all the cars passing all the time. I hope they don't have a crash near there or some car just passing the fence to the inside the house.

Yeah. So now we're going for a bit of a motorbike ride through the neighborhood. There you go. All right. So, we're going into some of the more kind of dangerous areas now, but uh it's best not to uh walk through there. Apparently, it's best to bike through these areas so you can get away quickly if anything happens. These guys all sitting in the gutter here are doing something called Paco, which is like a cocaine derivative, like a cheap cocaine, but it's super sketchy. They're making pipes out of old scraps of metal, smoking off cans. It's quite blatant. I have to try and be discreet with this camera. But you can see we just met one of our gues friends and uh he's jumped on a motorbike and he's going to do some wheelies for us. See

So you can see here some of the newer style houses the government have helped build. basically just corrugated iron with concrete block. So, we've arrived at this local couple's house. We have to go up these stairs right up to the top and then we're going to see the living conditions here. Nick, your daughters are inside. Oh, she has three rooms. No, no pagamos. No, they don't pay rent. They don't pay water services or any electricity services. They don't pay anything. Did she build the house herself? She bought it. Oh, she bought the house. She actually bought the house. Used to pay rent and now she used to pay rent, but now the she is the owner of the place.

Can I ask the price? $50,000. Wow. Must have taken a long time to save up for saving all this years. She was earning like $1,000 at that time. So she Yeah. $1,000. It was a lot of money. Yeah, that's so much money. A lot, I guess. I see. Okay, Lenny, we've come into a local house here and we've met a lovely lady, Maria. How is life living here? Maria is from Bolivia. She has been living here from 20 years ago. Life here at the beginning was kind of hard, but has been transforming into something better. So, was it quite dangerous here a few years ago?

It was dangerous, but with the years, the safety sensation has grown. So, she feels that he can live here without feeling insecure. Can you tell us more of the specifics of what the danger was? this kind of trouble in between criminals. Sometimes some other people came here to look for some guy, specifically guy. And of course there are this kind of confrontation with guns. Kind of dangerous sometimes. But just like any onion or any other place in Argentina that still happens. Yeah. Especially when criminals are drunk using drugs or alcohol problems.

Why did you leave Bolivia? She wants another opportunity for her. Situations there were bad. She is a mother of two. She left her partner because violence situations with him. Her partner was violent towards her. Yeah. She told me that she's study food technology in the university in Bolivia, but she couldn't finish the university. Right now she's trying to get into work as a bartender but she needs food manipulation workshop is a requirement that the company is asking her to do this papers for working with this

Thank you. Argentina. This is a traditional Argentinian barbecue asalo. They used to do this every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. They gather and they share all this beautiful meat. The Argentina meat is so good. I really love it. Look at this. Never miss him. Never miss. I like it. Very nice. How is life here? They play football together and they gather for this meeting because of football. Football unites a lot of people here and well they say that they likes to live here and they are happy living here. So

so a lot of the people who were living underneath that bridge were given an opportunity by the government to move into some of these houses. They had to pay for it a little bit but the government subsidized. So you can see these cage buildings here are a big upgrade from those brick buildings right underneath the highway. Honestly speaking in Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti. I've never seen such harsh security in a slum or a barios or a flla. Okay. So we've met a local man, Alejandro, who owns a business here, right? Yeah. Alejandro lives before below the highway and he was relocated here to these buildings. He owns this place. Did the government help pay for the move from underneath the bridge?

He got some help from the government when they had to move. I asked him about how he feels living here in this new park. He has more clients there inside over there. The shop is moving, is working, but not like it was before when he was inside. Why did the government knock down those buildings? The government says it was a risk to live below the building, below the bridge, but there are still people living there. He says that never happens to anyone there while they were living below the bridge. The bridge for him it wasn't a risk. And are you happy with the current state of Argentina current situation here with the economic problems what can we do? Had to live with this government ruling but at the end they just had to work and more

work. There's nothing else that they can do. He has his family, so he has to work like just like anybody else here living in. You have to do whatever you to put your family and be happy with your family. This neighborhood, I've heard from Argentinians, it's known to be a bit dangerous. Would you say that's true or how do you feel? yes, you have to be aware and like any other places you visit. I mean you have to be careful with your stuff, your phone. Don't don't walk with your phone or your camera just like we are doing right now. Alejandro. So Lenny, how does the rent or the ownership of these houses work? Well, for what I heard, uh, if you want to rent, it's complicated because they just

want to rent. The owners just want to rent here to long people. I mean, if you have some children, they don't they won't rent you because they don't it's a problem to take you out after you rent. Okay. So, if a family rents and they're protected by the government. Yeah. So, if you have children, it's complicated to rent here. The rent is about $30,000 pesos. I guess it's something I heard it's pretty cheap. If you want to buy a house here, well, you buy, but you don't have any paper because a lot of these houses are illegally built, right? Yeah. I mean, the these people has no owner paper. Yeah. So, you can buy, but you don't have anything that says that it's your only that if you live there, that's your

place. So, here is the bomberos. We're here with Javier, who's a local fireman here. And here's the local fire station. And it's actually just two shipping containers stacked on top of each other. Are there a lot of fires in this neighborhood? They had some fires in the villa sometimes. But what they really had more is people who falls who fells from the houses. There are a lot of people every time they had to go as an emergency bring people that fells from the floors. And how often do people fall? Two or three sometimes? A day. Oh wow. And what do you do with people like when you pick them up?

They give people the first aid if they don't need to take it to the hospital. They bring it here. They have this health center there. transport services, ambulance services. There's lots of cables which look not the best job in terms of the electricity. Does that sometimes cause fires? Um, so it hits um the connection, the cable connection. You see that there's a spider net there of electricity cables and they heat and of course they explode. Is there a lot of crime in this neighborhood from your perspective? This is like any other places in Argentina. We had walk here and we felt comfortable. He feels the same the first time he arrived here. He feels afraid of

what to expect here. But at the end now he feels safe here. He come from a place that is 40 minutes away. So he doesn't live here. So he has to come here and work and he feels that people is very good with them. But why does this neighborhoods have such a bad reputation? Does he think? The perspective outside comes from the first years of the village of the bar of the neighborhood because it used to be dangerous before but now they felt like it changed. I mean they try to urbanize and people are trying to live in more dignity I guess right so it has transformed the neighborhood from what it was before.

Okay. So, we're here with Duving, who's been hanging out with us all day. We met him at the start of the day and he kind of came along and hung out. You're a homeless man, is that correct? He has been living since four years ago on the streets. He has some difference with their with his family. So, well, he has to move and start living on the streets. It's hard living in the streets because it's cold sometimes, especially in winter. What's the tattoo on your head represent?

He was the woman who fell in love since he was a child. His mother, he has a special relation with her and he decided to tattoo her name. Do you still talk with your mother? She passed away. How long ago? Four years ago. There's another tattoo on the cheek. This tattoo means he was a div. When another thief saw see this, he recognized him. Yeah. You still a thief or that's in the past? He read about religion and God. So he tries to do something good, helping other people. Every time he does something good for others, something good returns to him. And when he says thief, what does he

mean exactly by that? Yeah. He used to rob banks. But the transportation money transportation. Yeah. The security trucks are important. Can he elaborate? Yeah. He went with machine guns and they robbed the machine the bank transport like how many years ago? He got into a situation into a gunire gunfire and there was a guy there. No, no, no. The police guy was killed. The cop was killed by they caught him and he spent how many years?

20 years he went spend there at 20 years in prison. Oh my god. Wow, man. Were these done in prison? Yeah. Now he's telling me that his mother was a criminal also. So what's quite interesting, we come out of that uh slum area over there and just behind that building there and you cross and then you hear you have the main financial district of Buunesares. One of the richest neighborhoods in the city is

just there as well. Right slam bang next to it. that neighborhood there that we were just in, we were being told that it's safe and things and it's like got a bad reputation, but just honestly speaking, there was a lot of guys doing Paco. Didn't feel 100% safe and also a local guide said there was like specific streets that we should be careful of. Although it might be safer than it used to be, I wouldn't necessarily call it 100% safe. Really kind, friendly, warm, welcoming local people. Obviously, Bunes are like a huge destination for tourists from all over the world. It's not like this entire city is like dangerous or anything. There's no way that's what I'm trying to say.

There are some parts like any huge mega city that aren't the safest, but I mean, a lot of it is completely fine. And that, you know, I'm not breaking news by saying that there's been one long-ter Look at this. As you can see, the reputation of that neighborhood doesn't exactly reflect the reality on the ground. Sure, it's dangerous in places. And at one point, we did come across a dangerous guy cuz our guide knew who he was. So, we just went down a different street. It is somewhat dangerous, but I think that the reputation of that neighborhood is far more drastic than the reality on the ground. But who knows? I'm just some guy that showed up and had a look around.

Unfortunately, this is going to be the only video I have of Argentina because after filming this video, I got extremely ill and spent almost a week in my hotel room just extremely sick. I'm not sure what it was. Maybe flu and food poisoning or something, but it wasn't good. So exploring more of this incredible country will have to wait till next time. There's so much more to this country obviously full of vibrance, culture, the people are incredible. It is facing an economic crisis at the moment. However, the second worst inflation in the world. Believe it's around 120% inflation. So the money is just losing so much value so quickly.

People are really suffering in this country. So, I wish everybody in Argentina the best and hope that your country can climb back to some more stability. A huge thank you to Lenny for showing me around. If you want to check out Lenny's Instagram, I highly recommend it. He's a very talented street photographer. Here are some of his photos. So, check him out on Instagram here. I also had some leftover clips from this video, a couple of interviews. I'll be putting them up for my Patreons. A link down below for that. Huge thanks to all my patronons for the constant support and thank you all for watching. I'll see you soon for another trip. And in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night.