Displaying items by tag: Brazil

On 25 January Brumadinho dam, at an iron ore mine in south-eastern Brazil, collapsed. This caused a sea of sludge to bury a workers’ cafeteria, homes, hotels, cars, buses, and a train. At the time of writing, the death toll is 99, with at least another 250 unaccounted for. 192 people were rescued alive. The chance of finding anyone alive now is minimal. Israeli engineers, doctors, and members of an underwater missions unit joined the search team. The Brazilian police arrested three employees of the giant mining company Vale, and two engineers working for a German company which inspected the dam last year. Many residents were evacuated as a safety measure. The first funerals were held on 27 January. Having a body to bury may be a twisted privilege, with hundreds of people buried and colossal challenges to find them. Greenpeace said it was ‘a sad consequence’ of lessons not learned by the government and mining companies.

Amid rampant political corruption and a crime epidemic in Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro is on the verge of becoming Brazil’s next president on 28 October. He has expressed enthusiasm for former military rulers (particularly Carlos Brilhante Ustra, a colonel who ran a military torture squad in the 1970s). His chosen deputy president, a former general, said that the military may be needed to clean up corruption. For many years former army captain Mr Bolsonaro was a marginal Congress figure, known for defending the military dictatorship and making offensive comments about women, blacks, gay men and lesbians. Earlier this year he was investigated for inciting hatred and discrimination. His critics accuse him of racism and misogyny, and tens of thousands of women organised protest marches with the slogan #EleNão - or #NotHim. But he came out of the first round of voting with a strong lead, thanks to last-minute backing from the evangelical lobby and powerful business and commerce groups.

Oxfam research shows that Brazilians earning the minimum wage would have to work for nineteen years to make as much as a rich person in Brazil’s top 0.1% makes in one month. At the current pace it would take Brazil 75 years to reach the UK’s current level of income equality. Oxfam had already reported that just six Brazilians own as much money as the poorest half of the country. ‘This is an unjust, unacceptable, and unsustainable situation,’ said Oxfam Brazil’s executive director. ‘We cannot dance around this any more; tackling inequality head-on is everyone’s responsibility. This report is our way of kick-starting this conversation.’ Experts say Brazil’s current situation is due to a backsliding tax system; racial and gender discrimination that erodes the rights of women and black Brazilians; a political system that concentrates power; and politicians highly prone to corruption.

Pastor Marcio Antonio stands at the pulpit in a one-room evangelical church built precariously above barbed wire fences and illegally hung electrical cables, exhorting his flock in a Brazilian favela to improve their morals. A former drug dealer in Cantagalo, an informally built hillside settlement where most residents lack official property rights, Pastor Antonio and his flock at the Assembly of God Church are part of a growing trend. Evangelical churches are expanding rapidly in Brazil, home to the world's largest Catholic community, especially in poor favelas. These communities, which developed from squatter settlements, often do not have the same services as formal Brazilian neighbourhoods in terms of healthcare, sanitation, transportation or formal property registration. ‘The government doesn't help us so God is the only option for the poor’, Pastor Antonio, 37, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation following his Sunday sermon.