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 São Paulo is a rich town, isn’t it true? There is a miniscule minority of poor people in São Paulo. At least that is the theory behind the assertions by the local press in these post-election days.
If I belonged to that race who mistakenly assumes the universe to be a six-squared-feet-circle-around-the-nose, as Ernesto Sábato would say, I would be in total agreement with such statement.
I reside in a Jewish neighborhood, upper-middle class, high level of consumer spending, good restaurants, and a mall next door to my house. There are a few mendigos (beggars, panhandlers, hobos) on the sidewalks, here and there - and allow me here to apologize for the use of the word mendigo.
According to advocates for Human Rights, it’s a word that ought to be erased from dictionaries. It’s humiliating. The new and correct terminology would be street people; or, better yet, the excluded.
Mendigo has become a curse word and sooner or later will lead to suits filed on the basis of racism. In any case, while dictionaries have not been revised, I don’t exempt myself from using it. And, on the day when fanatics for the politically correct have the power to amend dictionaries, it won’t even be worth writing it any more.
Right after the first round election, the daily Folha de S. Paulo printed, in clear words: “The survey confirms what the geographical vote division already indicated: Serra gets the vote of the more affluent and educated, and Marta doesn’t do so badly among lower income residents with fewer years of schooling.”
Look, in the first round of the election, Serra won by an eight percent margin of votes. Thus, we can infer that, in São Paulo, there are more rich people than there are poor.
Next to this brilliant deduction by reporter Pedro Dias Leite, the Folha, in its October 10 edition, featured a chart, entitled “Vote by Category”.
FAMILY INCOME
in minimum wage salary/month
up to 5 from 5 to 10 more than 10
José Serra 49 52 61
Marta Suplicy 41 39 33
Well, no one can pretend that up to five minimum wage salaries per month – or as many as ten – characterizes wealth. Serra won in these first two brackets, as well as the other, of more than ten minimum wage salaries, which neither translates into wealth, if we remain close to the ten.
The reporter, dauntless, in a column next to the charts, points out the opposite of what the charts confirm. Print journalism is rapidly approaching the TV genre, which displays images of an event, with voice-over narration conflicting with what pictures show, while the little lamb – sitting passively in front of the screen – swallows in the words from the newscaster, who negates what the viewer is witnessing.
In the runoff, the margin neared 11%. An obvious deduction by a certain type of journalist: in thirty days, the number of wealthy has risen in São Paulo. It’s the conclusion I would come to were I so short-sighted as to mistake my neighborhood for the entire town.
Despite being the richest metropolis in the Nation, it is eye-catching to any non-myopic individual, that São Paulo is a mostly poor city, with islands of wealth and even lots of luxury.
All it takes is a quick tour of downtown, post card to any city, to get a sense of the poverty that inundates and pollutes São Paulo.
One Sunday, after lunch in Liberdade (São Paulo’s Asian neighborhood), I walked my way back through downtown. I’d never seen anything so depressing and dirty in my whole life, and that having seen many of our little planet’s capitals, in Europe, Africa, and the socialist world.
During quick incursions around what we here call outskirts, the pervasive poverty is yet more appalling. Not to mention the 612 favelas (shantytowns) that do nothing to embellish the city, and whose residents make up 20% of the population.
José Serra beat Marta Suplicy by a margin of 600 thousand votes. And some journalists want us to believe that Serra was elected by the rich. That is, amidst this chaos of 15 million people, there are at least 600 thousand more wealthy people than there are poor. I was living in a city of affluent people and wasn’t aware.
Behind such fanatic reasoning lies the notion that it is the Workers Party alone who is the party of the underprivileged. And if the poor people’s party was defeated, then the rich voted overwhelmingly for the opponent.
Therefore, the majority of the city’s residents are wealthy. On a logical point of view, the syllogism is impeccable. The premises, on the other hand, are immoral.
Right after the loss in the first round, Madame Marta, in her peculiar arrogant fashion, stated: “I will not lose these elections.” That Fidel Castro, Muammar Kadafi, or Kim Il Sung possess such a conviction, it’s not surprising.
But it’s not permissible for a candidate, in democratic elections, to value his/her will worthier than the will of the people. With the unrelenting dance of numbers, lady Alcaide (wife of the commander/governor of a fortress in Spain or Portugal) narrowed her eyes and made a toast to the press with a few crocodile tears.
That some of her adversaries exploited prejudices against her candidacy. She was merely a defenseless woman. Not recalling – that is, recalling but making a point of not doing so – that, as a woman, she had been House Representative, Mayor, and again a mayoral candidate, in this city, where a woman – and even a black man – had previously been elected.
Both with disastrous results to the city, as a matter of fact, but that has nothing to do with gender or race; just look at the administration of the very blonde Marta Teresa Smith de Vasconcellos Suplicy.
Desperate, she appealed to the last recourse to her avail: she began blaming voters who would choose to deny her the vote. They’re unjust, ingrates. Only those who vote on Marta Teresa are just.
She came close to claiming that to the just belong the CEUs (HEAVENs in Portuguese; for those not from São Paulo, it also stands for Unified Education Centers, that Marta Teresa insists on pronouncing céus - to make it sound like “heavens”; actually, these are community centers established in the favelas and outskirts, with swimming pools and sports facilities.
Lady Alcaide then sticks in three schools in these leisure centers, which allows her to divert education funds to capture votes from the people of the favelas). Not voting on Marta would be - according to her own assessment - a flagrant demonstration of bad character.
Of course, she lost. She lost, despite the obscene support from the President; she lost, despite using municipal administrative resources; she lost, despite the four thousand visitors – canvasses hired on a 700 plus reais a month, to visit 25 homes a day – in order to co-opt voters.
But justice be done: the sound defeat ought not to be attributed to this lady alone. In less than two years, the Workers Party ruled federal government, adamant advocates for ethics, has morphed into a sanctuary of corrupt friends.
Certain evils are a necessity, as His Sanctity Pope John Paul II would say – and recently said – in regards to communism. The Workers Party was one.
Former Minister Delfim Netto said more than a decade ago that Lula should have won in his first presidential run. That way, we would already have been vaccinated against the Workers Party and could go on and take care of the serious issues.
The Nation is tired of the Workers Party. The vaccine has kicked in.
Janer Cristaldo—he holds a PhD from University of Paris, Sorbonne—is an author, translator, lawyer, philosopher and journalist and lives in São Paulo. His e-mail address is cristal@baguete.com.br.
Translated from the Portuguese by Eduardo Assumpção de Queiroz. He is a freelance translator, with a degree in Business and almost 20 years of experience working in the fields of economics, communications, social and political sciences, and sports. He lives in Boca Raton, FL. His email: eaqus@adelphia.net.
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Marta Suplicy has increased the public schools and did a great job in the recover of the infra-structure of the city and the fact that she lost the ellection is not due to Serra being better than her, but because she lacked the support of part of the Workers party, including the support of her ex-husband, The Senator Luiz Suplicy, wich was the most voted Senator of the State of Sao Paulo.