Poor Town Brazil's Chief Left Is Unchanged

<a href=www.nytimes.com>NY Times By LARRY ROHTER

CAETÉS, Brazil — Half a century ago, Antônio Ferreira de Melo and his older cousin Luiz were playmates here in the poor and arid interior of Pernambuco state. They would chop down tree branches and pretend they were riding horses or use their slingshots to hunt birds and lizards for their families to eat. Advertisement

Drought eventually drove Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his family 1,300 miles south to São Paulo, where he became a factory worker, labor leader and, as of Jan. 1, the president of Brazil. But Cousin Antônio and most of the president's other relatives remain here, living much as they did when he was a child and confronting many of the same problems that led to his departure.

"Things here have changed very little since Lula left," Mr. Ferreira, a 54-year-old farmer, said as he watched his wife and some neighbors grind yucca into flour for sale at a market. "We're still poor, and the government down there in Brasília still doesn't do much to help us. It's always been like that."

The hermetic rural world that Brazil's new president was born into in 1945 is a shrinking one. Today, 80 percent of the country's 175 million people live in urban areas. But Mr. da Silva has talked often of how the parched poverty of his early years here continues to color his view of the world, and he refers frequently to his experiences and the experiences of others like him who escaped indigence by migrating south to Brazil's big cities. Yet the battery of glaring social and economic inequalities still on display here in his hometown are a microcosm of the challenges he now faces on a national level.

With 11 head of cattle and 23 acres of land on which he grows corn, beans and "a bit of cotton," Mr. Ferreira considers himself one of the lucky ones here. In a good week, he said, he earns as much as $50, which he estimates is enough to put him "in the top 1 or 2 percent" of the 26,000 people who live in this municipality about 1,000 miles northeast of the capital.

But there is no school nearby, so Mr. Ferreir, whose education, like that of the president, ended when he was 12, insists that his eight children go to the county seat to study. An emergency medical post is two miles away, but it is often out of vital medicines, which most local farm families cannot afford anyway.

In the last decade, electricity has finally been extended to remote rural hamlets like this one, allowing residents to install refrigerators, lamps and televisions. But telephone service, sewage disposal and even running water remain distant, much yearned-for dreams.

"We don't even have a well at the ranch where we live, so any time we need water, one of my daughters or I have to walk two leagues," said Raimunda Josefa de Farias Xavier, 48, an illiterate mother of eight, referring to a distance of about eight miles. "After all these years, I've got back problems that I think have come from walking such long distances with a heavy bucket on my head."

With opportunities lacking here, the traditional outlet for the young has always been to do as the president's family did and head south to São Paulo and find work in a factory or store. That is still the case, but with Brazil's annual growth rate having slowed from a high of 8 percent in the 1970's to 1.5 percent last year, their chances of success have diminished.

"Of every 100 who leave here, only 10 do well, and some end up so poor that they can't even afford the bus fare to return," said Aurino Duarte de Almeida, the municipal government's secretary for administration. "For a guy who is illiterate, has no job skills, training or experience, the best he can hope for when he comes back is to work in a neighbor's fields at $1.50 a day."

Some of those coming back from São Paulo may have also brought with them the maladies that afflict Brazil's big cities, like crime and violence, but have been rare here. Mr. Ferreira complained that hooded gunmen not long ago robbed his son-in-law in his own home, and the authorities blame migrants for a recent string of daring bank robberies and highway assaults.

"People who have gone south tell crime gangs like the Red Command that the pickings are easy up here, and the criminals are taking advantage of that," said Adelvando Alexandre de Pontes, the chief of staff of the local government. "We're not used to robbers armed with machine guns, and our police sure aren't equipped to confront that."

Official corruption also appears to be a problem. Most of the people here are poor enough to qualify for a government food relief program known as "the basic basket," but many say that the monthly $4 payment often does not get to them, and that when it does, it takes the form of inferior products.

"We end up with all the merchandise the store owners can't get rid of because no else one wants it, like black beans that have been sitting around for six years and spoiled cooking oil," complained Nelson Vieira da Silva, a 63-year-old farmer. "Some of the stuff is so putrid that I've tried to feed it to my pigs, but even they won't eat it."

The president-elect returned to his birthplace in November, and at an outdoor barbecue that Mr. Ferreira helped organize, his relatives and former neighbors besieged him with grievances and complaints. Having one of their own in power is a novel situation, and they are looking to him to remedy all the social ills that afflict the world he long ago left behind.

"We hope he is thinking of us," Mr. Ferreira said. "It is a miracle and a dream that he has become president, and we know that all of Brazil wants to talk to him. But we really need for our lives to improve."