One hot afternoon last week a truck braked to a halt in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. The dust-covered tarpaulin was pulled away, and out of this one truck climbed 40-odd men, women and children sunburned, dirty and ragged under wide-brimmed straw hats. At the end of a ten-day trek from Brazil's drought-afflicted Northeast, they shouldered their clothes bundles and started out for one of the 300 hillside favelas (slums) that are home for almost 1,000,000 cariocas. Said one new arrival, the father of four: "God will help us. We will get jobs." Throughout most of Latin...
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