SÃO PAULO, Brazil (orlandosentinel.com) -- In Latin America, more than half of the people live in poverty, German Rey told his listeners -- more than one-fourth in extreme poverty. Choosing to buy a newspaper, he said, is a decision to forego food. For many, no such decision is necessary: They can't read.

Rey, who served as the ombudsman for El Tiempo in Bogota, Colombia, for two years, now lectures and writes about society and the press, including Latin American newspapers' coverage of urban criminality.

"Latin America is not the poorest continent in the world," he said, "but it is the most unequal." The richest tenth of the population has 48 percent of the income. The poorest tenth has 1.6 percent.

Crank those figures into São Paulo, the world's fifth-largest city, where 18 million to 30 million people live, depending on who is doing the counting. The magnitude of the disaffection and alienation is easy to imagine.

So it was tragic, but not nearly as unthinkable as it would be in the United States, when a gang war broke out last week with rebellions at 41 prisons, hostages being taken and police being hunted down and killed on the street -- and in their homes. By midweek, more than 140 people in São Paulo had died.

Are newspapers the solution to this tragedy? No, but a widespread ability to read and access to accurate information could go a long way toward that goal. Those very basic tools can help overcome the wealth disparity that leads, eventually, to such lawlessness.

That strategy has similar value outside of South America -- for instance, in Central Florida. Central Florida has a much smaller population than does São Paulo and far less poverty, which may make the situation here seem a lot less urgent. Anyone tempted to dismiss this problem as South America's and nothing that could happen here, though, should visit -- or at least study -- that part of the world.