Caserio

[Tina]

Puerto Rican name for a group of residential buildings at low-cost, generally paid by the government. The name is given is either because it is a group of [casas] or homes (therefore case-rio) or after the word [caza] meaning hunting, because these buildings are famous, especially in the metropolitan area and [Ponce], for daily shootings and killings between drug dealers and [mobsters]. Though most people living in caserios are decent people who cannot afford to pay a more expensive home or [lease] an aparment that may cost about or more per month because do not have a job or do the earn enough, most of them have a minor group of people who own drug dealerships (or puntos de [drogas]) and within a caserio itself there may be more than one dealership which is the cause for daily fights and shootings between rival groups. A caserio in Puerto Rico is similar or equivalent to a ghetto in the United States, though ghettos can be significantly more dangerous, since caserios in areas outside [San Juan] [metro area] and Ponce do not have that much violence.