The Summer Olympics will be held in Rio De Janerio in 2016. Brazil has already cinched one gold medal: It is the country with the highest rate of homophobic murders in the world. According to a report released last month, a gay person is killed in Brazil every 36 hours.

In the past five years, there has been a 113% increase in the number of gays killed in Brazil, with 65 gay-related murders occurring in the first three months of 2011 alone, according to the report released by the Grupo Gay da Bahia. In 2010, 260 gay men, transvestites and lesbians were killed in the South American country.

Because there are no official hate crime statistics in Brazil, those numbers are but the trip of the iceberg reports Luiz Mott, the anthropologist responsible for the survey. Of those slain in 2010, 54% were gay men, 42% ladyboys and the remainder lesbians. Mott believes the danger to gays is extremely troubling and under-reported in the local news. Comparatively, the risk of a gay person being killed violently in Brazil is 785% greater than in the United States.

According to Mott, the increase is the result of an increase of violence “There is an overall increase in murders. Besides that, fewer than ten percent of the murderers are sentenced and imprisoned. Currently, the visibility of gays is greater, since many are coming out and that provokes an increase of intolerance.”

Unfortunately, street crime, murder and official murder are far from unknown in Brazil where kidnapping has become such a common part life it was even the subject of a Simpson’s episode.

The northeastern portion of the country, where 30% of the Brazilian population live, is the most homophobic region of the country, responsible for 43% of the gay murders in 2010. Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, the two cities receiving the highest number of tourist visits, each saw 23 gay murders last year, averaging one killing every two weeks.

Mott feels this situation could be reversed with sex education in the schools, better law enforcement by the police and the judiciary, affirmative policies guaranteeing full citizenship rights for the country’s gay population, and more caution on the part of gay men, transvestites and lesbians themselves.

Homosexuality is legal in Brazil, the largest country in South America, and there are gay scenes in most cities. Homosexual acts have been legal in Brazil since 1831 and discrimination based on sexual orientation is prohibited by Brazil’s constitution. Last week, the Brazilian Supreme Court approved civil unions for same-sex couples. On paper, Brazil seems to be oozing with equality and acceptance. But the tradition of machismo dies hard, and despite the wide embrace of transsexual performers and the overtly homoerotic content of much of Carnival, homophobia is still deeply rooted and homophobic attacks common, especially in smaller towns.

Even in Brazil’s big cities, there’s an ugly undercurrent of homophobia present and gay visitors are advised to be cautious. Catholicism, the country’s predominant religion, is largely to blame according to Mott. “A whole cultural and institutional homophobia exists and has, in Evangelical churches and Catholic churches, the great manufacturing centers for such ideological weapons.”

Images of flamboyant Pride celebrations in cities like Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro give Brazil an international image of a gay-friendly place. Rio de Janeiro, one-time capital of Brazil, was selected as the most popular gay destination in the world by a prestigious gay magazine, and the “Sexiest Place on Earth” by the popular gay travel site TripOut Gay Travel in 2010. An estimated 1 out of every 4 foreign tourists coming to Rio are gay or lesbian, though even there the scene is remarkably discreet when compared to cities in the U.S. and Europe.

In Rio, gay life centres on Ipanema and Copacabana beaches rather than on its night-life. It’s not just the parades, parties, and beaches that attract gay visitors, 19.3% of Rio’s population identify as being gay or bisexual. And if you haven’t noticed, those Brazilian boys are hot! But beneath the facade of acceptance, there runs a current of anti-gay sentiment. High levels of homophobic violence occurred in Brazil. The government of Brazil corroborates this fact, noting that homosexuals are frequent targets of violent acts and homicides.

Though Rio is often viewed as a global oasis of tolerance, the shooting of a gay youth by men in military uniforms after the city’s Gay Pride Parade and celebration in November, 2010 sounded an alarm about continuing homophobic violence. Douglas Igor Marques Luiz was hanging out with friends at a rocky outcrop between Ipanema and Copacabana beaches when three men in military uniforms approached. The 19-year-old said they told everyone to leave, but held him back and started verbally abusing him. The aggression escalated, and eventually he was shot. Two Brazilian soldiers were taken into custody by the army following the shooting.

Decades of campaigns by pro-tolerance groups have prompted Brazil’s state and national governments to increasingly battle culturally entrenched attitudes that feed the violence, but their effectiveness is questionable. In Sao Paulo, home to what is billed as the world’s largest gay pride parade and where gay night-life is more established and thriving than in Rio, the president of Sao Paulo’s Gay Pride Association was beaten unconscious by an unknown number of attackers. And in early December 2010, a 60-year-old American, a presenter at the International Lesbian & Gay Organization World Conference, was attacked by an assailant while walking back to his hotel from Sao Paulo’s major gay neighborhood of clubs and bars.

Back home in New York, he retold his story of the unprovoked attack. “A man in the street started screaming at me in Portuguese. I got to the hotel entrance, the guy jumped me, I got up. I started screaming ’Help help!’ At that point, he smashed his fist across my face and then ran away.“

Apathetic authorities, a concern to any visitor in a foreign country, the American decried the lack of assistance and poor attitude of those he felt should have come to his aid. “I went into the hotel entrance; the security guy was right inside the front door. I tried to explain. Nobody there spoke English. They saw the bleeding. I sat in the blood. I started crying. I never thought this would happen. I asked them to call the police. Four came; none spoke English. They refused to make a report.”

A fact of life in South America, a country’s laws and the actions of its people – and law enforcement – seldom match. As popular as Brazil is among gay travellers, it is equally well known for its dangers. The government has five years before the Olympics come to town. By then it is hoped that they can provide a safe holiday for the additional million of visitors, gay and straight alike, who will soon flock to Brazil.