By Georginho Bentley...

Should it be surprising to hear Nick Clegg make comparisons between Brazil and Britain in his recent speech in Brasilia during his tour of Latin America? Or describing Brazil as "one of the world’s fastest growing economies," instead of using rhetoric that invokes images of beaches, crime, football and poverty. In recent times there have been notable changes in Brazil. Who would have thought that a country that faced hyperinflation levels of up to 8000% in 1994 would now actually be able to help re-boost the British economy.

Welcome to the 21^st century, where the former Portuguese colony and the world’s fifth largest country has shown signs of prosperity at a speed which has taken the world’s economists by surprise. Ex-president Lula da Silva’s government made some successful measures such as the constant observation and continuation of the economic policies adopted by the previous government, which has steamrollered Brazil onwards and over the economical problems of its past and into a new era.

We are now in an era where Brazil has become an economical powerhouse of the future, alongside the fast developing economies of China, India and Russia. Further to ex-President Lula’s credit, he created eight new state companies, introduced by the bolsa familia program, which helped provide money for poorer families who, in return, would send their children to school; and thus slashed poverty by more than half. Brazil has confronted these problems on a regional basis and there was even a proposal to distribute the bounty from a gigantic field of crude oil amongst the states in 2009, as opposed to leaving it to the main oil province of Rio and it’s powerful cousin São Paulo.

Brazil, over the past 15 years, has recognised the need to spread its wealth. This has encouraged rapid growth in the less well-known cities in the north-east of Brazil, which have started to reflect the busy and tourist-friendly states of the South.

The main reason for Brazil's sudden climb is not the new resurgence in investment in southern regions like Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo, but the increasing interest in the more modest, but by no means inferior north-eastern cities of Fortaleza and Teresina. These two cities are the capitals of the states of Ceará and Piauí respectively, which are squeezed between the other North Eastern states of Maranhão and Bahia. Unlike their more famous neighbouring states, they haven’t quite been able to attract the same masses of foreign tourists.

Nevertheless Fortaleza, with a population of around 2.5 million and a land area of about 121.1 square miles, still manages to compete with other major Brazilian cities by having the infrastructure to sustain the waves of Brazilians from the south, who come every year to enjoy the beach resorts, like Beach Park, in order to escape the heavily tourist-crowded resorts of the south. As a result of this, European construction companies are investing heavily in building apartment blocks, hotels and shopping centres. In fact, demand for such constructions projects has far exceeded supply.     

Teresina, the capital of Brazil’s second poorest state, is considerably less populated than Fortaleza, with a population of around 900,000 and a land area of 64.8.9 square miles, and is unable to boast Fortaleza’s beaches and palm trees. Nevertheless Teresina has grown on a large scale to complete with Fortaleza and neighbouring state capitals for the attention of migrating Brazilians by revealing plans to develop more apartment blocks and shopping centres – even to expand the main shopping centre, Teresina Shopping, by 200 shops and 2400 parking spaces. 

However, one notoriously prominent feature that both Fortaleza and Teresina have in common is the amount of rubbish that accumulates in the streets. Teresina is said to produce 500 tonnes of rubbish per day, and rubbish collection fails to clear it. The public cleaning service companies have had serious financial difficulties in recent times, and politicians are left to explain these unacceptable and often suspicious financial problems.

In Fortaleza, the concern with rubbish is even greater, not only because of the greater quantity of rubbish produced, but because there appears to be no official recycling system in place nor any real effort expressed by the local authorities to introduce one. Instead, the job has been left to people known as ‘Catadores de lixo’ (rubbish searchers’), who have made the separation of the rubbish they find in the bags in the streets an unofficial business. However the bags are often left open and some rubbish is left uncollected on the streets.

The collection of rubbish is a concern shared with several cities in Brazil. In Rio, for example, the recycling of rubbish failed to reach 1% in May last year. The lack of clean running water for all citizens in Piauí is another problem as only 20% have access to it, and in Ceará the authorities have to deal with drugs, arms and sex trafficking as well as accusations of political and judicial corruption on almost a daily basis.

In a country nowadays, where a family of three can easily spend up to £200 a night for a three star hotel, Brazil has created a new social contradiction to replace the old iniquitous gap between the rich and the poor. Brazil has become an extremely wealthy country within the past decade, showing the longest investment cycle in its history since 1970, which has been spread out into economic sectors, especially in infrastructure and commodities. However, Fortaleza and Teresina have shown that there is still a dark side to this new found wealth, as heavy investment is still required to foster further growth in basic areas, ranging from water and street cleanliness to other social problems like illegal trafficking of various kinds.