The poverty of Sao Paulo is astonishing. I saw so many empty, burned out buildings. Like Newark in the 1970s. Whole blocks of squatters making do in decimated structures.
And there is a bizarre sort of acceptance of it. The beggars are polite, even diffident, and people either give them money or say no, and the whole thing borders on civility.
We did some late night sightseeing, visiting famous parks and monuments and such. The homeless were very visible, but we weren’t approached. I also noticed the street cleaners. In New York, we have the street cleaning trucks that move through the city around dawn. But in Sao Paulo, there were also men walking through the streets with hoses, washing down statues, pavement, stairs. At the Municipal Theater, there were homeless people wrapped in blankets, asleep on the benches at the front of the theater. The street cleaners hosed the pavement anyway, coming within a few feet of the sleepers; close enough that some of the spray surely reached them.
I don’t know what struck me more; the cruelty of spraying them, or the nonchalance of accepting their presence.
