<a href=www.nytimes.com>NY Times March 30, 2003 By TONY SMITH

SÃO PAULO, Brazil -- If Brazilians needed any proof that having a social conscience is in fashion here, they got it recently, when, during São Paulo Fashion Week, the supermodel Gisele Bündchen gave half her $30,000 runway fee to Zero Hunger, a program to eradicate poverty in this country.

Not coincidentally, Zero Hunger is the mainstay project of Brazil's left-leaning new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. For that reason, many executives are eager to emulate Ms. Bündchen, the icon of Brazil's fashion industry, and to do — or at least be seen to be doing — their part. The leaders of a growing number of companies, including multinational giants like I.B.M., Ford Motor, Bayer and Unilever, are clamoring to support Zero Hunger, which says it needs $1.5 billion in financing over the next four years.

Their motives, government officials say, range from naked opportunism to a conviction that Brazil desperately needs to distribute its wealth more equitably. Whatever the reason, officials said, the aid is welcome.

Despite Brazil's success in curbing hyperinflation the last decade, the number of poor Brazilians has stayed stubbornly at around 60 million — more than a third of the population. Lackluster economic growth and rising unemployment in recent years means that 46 million Brazilians — about one in four — still live on less than $1 a day, according to Instituto Ethos, an association of companies that champion corporate responsibility.

According to statistics from the United Nations, Brazil has the third most unequal distribution of wealth in the world, trailing only Swaziland and Nicaragua. The wealthiest 10 percent of the people here take in more than half of the national income, while the poorest tenth receive less than 1 percent.

"Business always tries to please the government currently in office," said Oded Grajew, special aide to Mr. da Silva for mobilizing corporate support for social projects. "If you want to impress this government, then your visiting card has to be the social question."

It appears to be working. Perusing a letter from Bayer in his office as he waited for the chief executive of IBM Brazil to arrive for a meeting, Mr. Grajew said he was "drowning in offers of help."

Nestlé has pledged 1,000 tons of food aid; Ford is donating 440 pounds of food for every truck it sells for a month, while the leading supermarket chain Pão de Açúcar has agreed to help with distribution.

The Institute of Applied Economics Research, a government agency, found that 462,000 companies spent a total of $2.5 billion in 2000 on social projects, from improving adult literacy to financing local dance troupes. While that is only a quarter of what corporate America spent in absolute terms on similar projects, it is four times as much as companies in the United States spend when calculated as a percentage of the economy's size.

Eduardo Monteiro, institutional marketing director at Pão de Açúcar, says his company now spends more than $6.5 million a year on social projects, up from $4 million two years ago. It is increasing its food donations to 250 tons a month from 140 tons and is hiring 500 young people to assist in the Zero Hunger project.

  OR that, Mr. da Silva can be thankful.

With the jobless rate soaring to nearly 20 percent in some parts of the country and violent crime spiraling, underfinanced public schools, the health service and other social support agencies appear increasingly unable to cope.

Ricardo Young, president of Instituto Ethos, said companies "got a wake-up call" when they realized that Brazil's social fabric was so frayed.

"In a country with a social apartheid like Brazil has today, all our businesses are at risk," Mr. Young said.

Instituto Ethos, founded by 16 chief executives in 1998, now has more than 700 corporate members, which employ more than a million people and have sales of about a third of Brazil's annual economic output.

In some projects run by these companies, street youths learn to read, shantytown dwellers get their first jobs and drab streets are brightened with graffiti art.

The number of companies encouraging their employees to join volunteer work programs is also rising. Ford workers paint hospital wards on their own time (the company lends them a truck to carry the equipment), while BankBoston employees help regularly in soup kitchens and tell stories at child care centers.

Recently, 200 employees from Unilever, which sponsors centers for handicapped children and runs volleyball clubs in São Paulo shantytowns, distributed condoms on a beach near the northeastern city of Recife for a local program to fight AIDS.

Milu Vilela, a businesswoman who is president of Faça Parte, Brazil's main volunteer institute, estimates that the number of Brazilians doing some sort of voluntary work more than doubled, to about 44 million last year, from 20 million in 2000.

"Before, people used to think they could buy their place in heaven by writing a check," Ms. Vilela said. "Today they know it's not just a question of dipping into their pockets, but rolling up their sleeves and getting their hands dirty."

Ms. Bündchen's agent and manager, Monica Monteira, said her client donated her fee "because she wanted to serve as an example to all Brazilians who could help so that they would help," but it also helped to burnish her image after months of bad publicity for wearing fur on the runway.

In the same way, charitable companies could have a lot to gain by being seen to do good.

Ford became the first automaker in Brazil to set up a department for social responsibility, in 2000, after a struggle with unions tarnished its image.

Ford now spends half a million dollars a year on social projects in Brazil, joining a trade union in an adult literacy program and supplying cars and spare parts to a mechanics' school for underprivileged adolescents. It also encourages workers' committees to come up with ideas and expects to donate and deliver 200 tons of food to Zero Hunger in February.

"It's not opportunism," said Flavio Padovan, director of Ford's truck division. "I won't sell any more trucks because of this campaign, but it's certainly good for brand image."

Nestlé took out advertising in major newspapers to deny an article in the daily Folha de São Paulo that suggested that its donation could influence the government antitrust agency, which is about to rule on Nestlé's acquisition of a local chocolate maker, Garoto.

But for many, motives are not important.

"Yes, some people want to be close to the government; they want to be in the family photo," said Guilherme Leal, chief executive of Natura, a cosmetics company that has burnished its reputation by harvesting rare Amazon fruits and herbs from sustainable forest plantations. "But it doesn't matter, because they end up participating and committing themselves," he said. "Once you're involved, it's costly in image terms to get out."  

BBC

Brazil has secured World Bank loans worth $505m to finance its social programme. World Bank President James Wolfensohn said Brazil could look forward to an influx of foreign investment once the war with Iraq is over.

"You do not have the immediate problems that the Middle East does, or the fundamentalism or trans-Atlantic differences that exist today. After we get out of this crazy situation in the world, there could be advantages for Brazil," he said.

You do not have the immediate problems that the Middle East does, or the fundamentalism or trans-Atlantic differences that exist today

James Wolfensohn

He added he was "extremely impressed" by the present administration's commitment to curbing spending and economic reform.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva used the announcement to explain his social programmes to World Bank officials and Inter-American Development Bank President Enrique Iglesias.

'Zero hunger'

He said the centrepiece of his social reforms is his Zero Hunger scheme to feed the 46 million Brazilians who survive on less than a dollar a day.

Brazilians have worried that the war in Iraq would dampen economic recovery if high fuel prices led to inflation.

Brazil relies on foreign investment which has dropped as companies suspend investments until after the war.

It has been said that up to $10bn could be available in World Bank loans over the next three-and-a-half years.

Reuters, 03.29.03, 4:53 PM ET BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - The World Bank Saturday extended Brazil a $505 million loan and said the Latin American country could become popular with investors after the end of the U.S.-led war on Iraq. At a press conference after meeting with Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, World Bank President James Wolfensohn said investors and banks will begin looking for low-risk places to place their cash after hostilities cease. "You do not have the immediate problems that the Middle East does, or the fundamentalism or trans-Atlantic differences that exist today. After we get out of this crazy situation in the world, there could be advantages for Brazil," Wolfensohn said. He was "extremely impressed" by the Lula administration's commitment to austere finances and economic reform plans. The vote of confidence comes amid worries the Iraq war could stymie a budding economic recovery in Brazil if high fuel prices fan an already worrying level of inflation. Brazil is very dependent on foreign investment, which has dropped as companies suspend investments until after the war. The loan is part of up to $10 billion that could be available in Bank funds in the next three and a half years. Contrary to expectations the money would be used for Brazil's new anti-hunger program, Finance Minister Antonio Palocci said it was not earmarked for any specific projects.

washingtonpost.com By Sean Green Special to The Washington Post Sunday, March 30, 2003; Page E01

Naturally, I had apprehensions about going on a tour of Rio de Janeiro's favelas. I worried that I would be joining the equivalent of a 19th-century slumming party, in which Manhattan elites hired police officers to lead them through the Five Points neighborhood to ogle the other half. I thought, "Could I be such a voyeur? Am I really so bourgeois? Did I really just use the term 'bourgeois?' " As I was on the verge of an identity crisis, our tour guide arrived in a white minivan.

Favelas -- the densely crowded neighborhoods of makeshift houses and impoverished residents that dot the hills of this notoriously festive city -- are an indelible part of Rio's landscape and culture, although many would prefer they were not. The geographic landscape of the city's economic classes is the opposite of most other cities: The poor live high in the hills, encroaching on the lots of the city's wealthiest residents, and look down on the middle class, who live below. This is primarily because the city's hills originally were zoned as public land but were taken over, and continue to be taken over, by destitute families who flock to the city to find work. Consequently, some of Rio's poorest citizens are privileged to some of its most impressive views.

"I am taking you to a place where most Brazilians would not go," our guide, Marcelo Armstrong, said as we pulled into the traffic on Avenida Atlantica, where the beautiful chaos of New Year's Eve preparation was taking place on Copacabana Beach. "Rio is far more than Copacabana, Ipanema and Sugarloaf Mountain."

Now I felt better. "I'm no voyeur," I thought. "I'm just a tourist who wants to experience as much of the city as possible." After all, according to one guidebook, Armstrong's tour is "highly recommended for anyone with an interest in Brazil beyond the beaches." Of course, I wanted to experience it safely, which is what landed me in the minivan.

I've always believed that organized fun is no fun, which is another reason I felt odd on this organized tour. I prefer walking aimlessly through every city I visit. Two days earlier, however, this thinking had led me under a bridge where three young boys had encircled me, trying to grab at my pockets.

It was innocuous enough, this attempted mugging. They walked away with nothing, but I felt emasculated by their attempt. The fact that my 115-pound girlfriend frightened them off with an assertive "Hey!" and a lunge in their direction did not help matters.

Although I was lucky, no one venturing into a favela on his own should expect to be so fortunate. Permission and protection come from one source in the favela: drug dealers. Favelas operate almost outside the governance of the city. Inside these neighborhoods, the dealers fill the roles of legislature, executive and judiciary. They make the rules, enforce them and, when they are broken, issue punishment.

Armstrong assured us that we would be safe, telling us he had received permission from the resident dealers when he began giving tours of Rocinha, Rio's largest and most visible favela, 11 years ago. Nothing happens in a favela without their approval. When director Fernando Meirelles made "City of God," the critically acclaimed Brazilian movie about favela life, a convicted drug dealer approved his script and gave him the nod to shoot the film about his neighborhood.

As the van climbed the narrow road to Rocinha, we witnessed, as Armstrong said, "the social contrasts we have here." Rio's poor and rich seem to live in closer proximity than anywhere else in the world. Rocinha is adjacent to Sao Conrado, one of the city's wealthiest neighborhoods, with its white mansions strung like enormous pearls along the green hillside. The size of the homes and vastness of the properties juxtapose starkly with the labyrinth of concrete boxes that spreads down the hill, somehow accommodating 60,000 residents in its cubes and crevices.

"There is one of the city's most prestigious schools," said our guide, pointing to the American School with its "Home of the Panthers" sign in large red letters that hung above the entryway. Despite such close proximity, Rio's socioeconomic classes do not mingle. It is clear that most Cariocas (residents of Rio) go to great lengths to avoid the favelas.

One of the preconceptions Armstrong said he wants to alter is the belief that those who reside in the favelas are inherently violent, lecherous and miserable. "Poverty is very different than misery," he said as we arrived in Rocinha.

He invited us to get out and walk around, saying we could leave our valuables in the unlocked van. Robbery, he said, is strictly forbidden in Rocinha -- a mandate from the drug dealers. This is not the result of idealism or respect for one's neighbors; the no-robbery policy, like the permitted tours, is good for business: If Rio residents are afraid for themselves or their valuables when they enter the favela, they will not come to buy drugs. The added attention from the police would also threaten their trade.

We admired the works of Claudio Lezino, a street artist who sells paintings and photographs of Rio's most distinctive landmarks -- the statue of Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf Mountain. According to Armstrong, the stretch of road where Lezino has set up shop -- and where he also teaches local boys to paint -- is the only place in Rio where the Christ statue and the mountain can be captured in one photograph.

We next stopped at a resident's home, for which Armstrong had a key, although he said he never needs it because the door is always open. Like all the homes we saw, this one was nothing more than a stack of cinder blocks, lighted primarily by the sun beaming in through paneless windows.

The inside was barren. As with every other place we visited in Rio, life takes place outside.

Streets are rare in the favela, so most people move to the open space of their rooftops. Women hung up laundry while children chased each other around the flat concrete surfaces. From the rooftops, many of the kids launched kites of all colors, miniature versions of the hang gliders that soar down from Pedra Bonita to Pepino Beach, overlooking the favelas and the rest of the city.

For all of the city's and nation's fear of the poor, the favela residents' contributions to Brazilian life and culture are invaluable. Many of the samba schools, which prepare every weekend for Rio's famous carnival by dancing and performing in massive dance halls from midnight to sunrise, draw upon favela residents as performers and patrons to fill their venues. In addition, some of the country's greatest celebrities, their soccer players, hail from the favelas.

We moved on to the marketplace, where street vendors, mopeds, pedestrians, public buses and private vehicles negotiated the obstacles of the one-lane road that leads in and out of the favela. With so many people and so much activity crammed into such limited space, trash, sewage and the animal waste of the marketplace make an abhorrent stench. I briefly feared that I would vomit in the van. "Perhaps I don't have the grit for this," I wondered.

We stopped the van and were allowed to roam for 10 minutes. "There are a lot of drug dealers out on this part of the street today," Armstrong said, pointing south. "Be cautious of the pictures you take." We were free to photograph the landscape and crowds, but no shots of individuals.

We drove on to Vila Canoas, a relatively small favela of just 2,000 people. As he had been in Rocinha, our guide was greeted by residents as a local celebrity. We all received smiles and handshakes from the adults, and laughter and smiles from the children.

Vila Canoas seemed more alive than Rocinha, its residents more hopeful. The exterior of every home is covered with colorful tiles, part of a government initiative called Bella Favela, or Beautiful Favela. From the open windows came the sounds of samba music and, from one, U2's song, "Where the Streets Have No Name." Perhaps they knew the gringos had arrived.

We toured a school and handicrafts center, vacant because the students were on summer vacation. The school is funded partly by Rotary International and the proceeds from Armstrong's tours. Favela children have access to Rio's public schools, but they are often difficult to reach and offer subpar education. The community schools are nonaccredited schools where parents can drop off their children and be assured of their safety.

As Armstrong explained Brazil's mandatory voting system and fielded questions about the nation's new president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, I watched two children play in a wading pool outside their home. They couldn't have been more than 5 years old, and seemed unaware of my presence as they splashed and wrestled in the water, laughing unchecked as only children can. They were too young to know about poverty, and they certainly knew nothing of misery.

Marcelo Armstrong's favela tour is offered twice daily and runs for three hours; the cost is about $17. Tours leave from major hotels and hostels. Details: 011-55-21-3322-2727, 011-55-21-9989-0074 or 011-55-21-9772-1133, www.favelatour.com.br.

Sean Green is a teacher and freelance writer living in Virginia.

Andy Jackson Saturday March 29, 2003 The Guardian

The Latin American papers, positioned in what the US regards as its "backyard", have been divided over the war in Iraq. "This unilateral decision to attack Iraq is an unprecedented step," lamented La Nacion in Argentina. It felt the US had gone too far this time: "Even its regretful incursions into Latin American politics have been limited to supporting domestic groups."

In Mexico, Reforma questioned why its northern neighbour had blocked the signal of the country's Canal 40 TV station after it showed footage of dead Iraqi civilians. "One of the US's greatest strengths has always been its freedom of expression," said the paper. "But when it denies the right of its people to see what it is doing in their name, it does a great disservice to the principles it is trying to enforce in Iraq."

Less enthusiastic still was Gilberto Lopez y Rivas of La Journada, who wondered in the Mexican paper what principles the US was espousing. "The US has long used the pretext of liberty to commit crimes against the rights of Latin American people," he said. "They did not establish democracy in a single one of the countries in which they intervened - only fictional representations of that promise ... Now it is time for Iraq to be liberated, and Latin Americans know only to well what that liberation means."

Journal de Brasil noted that the war had caused the end of President Lula de Silva's political honeymoon. "The quarrel between George Bush and Saddam Hussein is of little consequence to us," it said. "What is currently at stake for Brazil is our democracy and, above all, our right to live in freedom from fear."

Venezuela has a turbulent and besieged leader of its own, and La Nacional wondered whether President Hugo Chavez could deal with his country's problems. Reports of Colombian guerrillas and drug traffickers operating within Venezuela led the paper to question Mr Chavez's defence policy. "The government can no longer continue on its ambiguous course," it said. "It is obsessed with the defence of Caracas as if it is there that our sovereignty is at risk. But concentrating troops in the capital puts the security of all the regions at risk. Under the indifferent gaze of the government, the rural population has been placed between the sword and the wall. If it is not already too late, our leaders must take responsibility, speak truthfully to the country, and preserve our nation from potentially damaging threats."