Blood, sweat and fears in favelas of Rio

More than a million of Brazil's poor targeted in an attempt to 'clean up' the city

Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Saturday October 29, 2005
The Guardian

Glorinha rarely leaves her rickety wooden shack. But, sat in the shade of a towering banana tree that flanks her house in southern Rio de Janeiro, the 68-year-old still has memories to help her while away the days. They are of her Portuguese father, one of the founders of the Vila Alice favela perched on the hilltops above the middle class borough of Laranjeiras; of the 14 children she has raised in her makeshift home; and of the hours spent nurturing the fruit trees that encircle it.