Non Brazillian, but I spent two months traveling parts of the country (São Paulo, Niterói , marituba (near Belém) - and the favela's (where I spent a lot of my time) made me initially think that Brazil was a very, very poor country - until I had a chance to look up the OECD stats [1] on Brazil - they are ranked firmly in the middle (on a GDP per capita, PPP). The security situation is pretty sketchy - I thought it was bad in the United States (having come from Canada) where everyone locks the door - even when they are at home - Every apartment I visited in São Paulo had a full-on-data-center-class man trap, with an elevated (and shielded) security guard to let you in. I've never seen anything like that in the United States outside of Data Centers.

[1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...