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Brazilian haven wakes up to its own `ring of misery'

"We have a pressure cooker in Brasilia and our egotistical elite doesn't see this."

Nikolaus Von Behr, businessman and community activist

Maria Dias da Silva's dreams of a job, a house and safety in Brazil's futuristic capital, Brasilia, lie stuck in the red mud of its largest slum.

She lives beyond the city's modernist government ministries and middle-class suburbs in what locals call the "ring of misery," the slums and poor towns that surround Brasilia.

Founded 43 years ago to populate Brazil's vast savanna interior, Brasilia is now the country's fastest growing city.

As poor Brazilian immigrants flood the region, the city -- hobbled by Brazil's stagnant economy -- cannot create enough jobs. The gulf separating rich and poor is growing wider than anywhere else in Brazil, which has the most unequal distribution of wealth in Latin America. Violence is on the rise in a city once considered so safe some locals didn't lock their cars until the 1990s.

"There are more people arriving everyday," said Dias da Silva, 30, crouching in a cheap brick home in the slum known as Itapua.

Her roof leaks and the toilet drains into a trash-filled lake.

She is too scared to get a job and leave her home unattended for fear squatters will move in. She has been afraid to go out at night since a gang shooting claimed five lives.

Long known as "fantasy island" for its bubble of wealth and safety in a poor nation, the metropolitan area called the Brasilia Federal District now suffers higher per-capita rates of unemployment and kidnapping than Rio de Janeiro, the coastal city it replaced as Brazil's capital.

Like planned cities around the world, it is struggling as it develops beyond the size its founders believed could create an urban utopia for administrators and politicians. It is now beginning to experience the troubles of most big Brazilian cities -- growing slums on its edges and the crime and other challenges that come with them.

Brasilia's middle classes were long isolated from the crime that took place in planned, working-class "satellite" cities where many of their servants live.

Unemployment over 20 percent and the growth of slums like Itapua near the city center have pushed violence into downtown Brasilia.

Most of the Federal District's "lightning kidnaps" -- so called because of the habit of holding victims during the time it takes to bring them to bank machines and withdraw cash -- now take place in the heart of the city.

"We have a pressure cooker in Brasilia and our egotistical elite doesn't see this," businessman and community activist Nikolaus Von Behr said.

Brasilia was built in three years and meant to have 500,000 people by 2000. The population of the Federal District has grown about 50 percent since 1990 and is set to hit 2.3 million next year.

The city is surrounded by poor northeastern states where manual labor and domestic jobs can pay less than US$1 a day. Poor immigrants are lured to Brasilia's average monthly income of 1,047 reais (US$361), which is the highest in Brazil and over five times that of nearby Maranhao state.

Promises from Federal District Governor Joaquim Roriz to build homes for the poor are another attraction.

"Just as with any city, from a certain moment onwards, it deteriorates. It's too many people, and there it goes," said Oscar Niemeyer, the city's architect.

The population of Itapua has doubled to 50,000 in the last two years.

Residents live 7km from Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's palace. The former metalworker was elected on vows to create jobs and shrink Brazil's wealth inequalities. He is struggling to do either after the economy contracted 0.2 percent last year.

His palace overlooks communities that segregate rich and poor, in what critics call Brazil's "social apartheid."

Local politicians are eager to create jobs to help stem violence. Brasilia is planning infrastructure projects like a high-tech business park and a possible bullet-train connection to the neighboring city of Goiania.

Valfredo Perfeito, the mayor of Itapua, plans to offer job training so residents can earn more than the 240 reais minimum monthly wage as maids and gardeners and perhaps start their own businesses.
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