s transformation? We hear from game-changing politicians and spiritual leaders to athletes, TV stars, industrialists and a police chief about their everyday lives – and what they want from 2014. Read Portraits of Brazil here Brazil is hosting a back-to-back World Cup and Olympics. When it was announced, the then-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva summed up the mood. "Our hour has arrived," he proclaimed...
I fear Brazil will become a theocratic republic', says Jean Wyllys, a gay professor who won Big Brother and is now a member of the Socialism and Liberty party Having gone from poverty to parliament via Big Brother and Brazil's first gay-rights election platform, Jean Wyllys must rank among the most postmodern of politicians. How else to describe a professor who exploded into the national consciousness...
Don't they think black people feel the cold,' says Karen Ferreira who, with her identical twin Karina, is a catwalk model Karen and Karina Ferreira, identical twins and catwalk models from Brasilia , insist that Brazil's modernist capital is one of the best places to live in the world. And that's partly because it is unlike much of the rest of Brazil. "I feel calm, secure and peaceful here," says Karina....
There are about 40 indigenous villages in the Kayapó – an area the size of England,' Tribesman Bep Torim tells Gibby Zobel Gazing down from the light aircraft as we fly into the Amazon we can just pick out an aldeia , or indigenous village, as a round dot in a vast expanse of unbroken rainforest. This is the land of the Kayapó , a warrior-like people, and there are 40 of these aldeias in a protected...
Politicians receive so much money. If I could change one thing it would be to reduce their salaries,' says health worker Ines Ferreira de Abril Inês Ferreira de Abril's position in the community where she lives and works is halfway between guru and local hero. Walking through the tight red-brick maze of the Borel-Indiana favela, a poor settlement of some 20,000 just a 10-minute cab ride from Rio's...
The next step is to build villages,' says Bernardo Paz, whose country-park-cum-open-air-art-complex, Inhotim, is home to 5,000 plants species and an impressive art collection A remarkable country-park-cum-open-air-art-complex set among the mining-scarred hills around Belo Horizonte, Inhotim is home not only to 5,000 plant species, but also to an impressive art collection. Two works in particular reflect...
I am happy with the part I've played in pacification,' says Major Pricilla de Oliveira Azevedo, a key player in the world's most ambitious policing operation When the world's most ambitious policing operation was shaken last year by reports that officers tortured and killed a resident in Rio de Janeiro's biggest favela, the authorities knew exactly who to call. Major Pricilla de Oliveira Azevedo –...
I want the people of the world to hear a different narrative from the World Cup; from a point of view of people on the street, not the stadiums or the press,' says Bruno Torturra, leader of the Mídia Ninja collective of citizen journalists It is hard to imagine anyone who looks less like a Japanese assassin, but Bruno Torturra is a leader of the self-styled Mídia Ninja collective, which emerged...
What [my characters] say is morally dubious and drenched in sex, drugs and gaming,' says Reinaldo Moraes, whose novel Pornopopéia exploded onto the Brazilian literary scene You may not like the person talking in your ear. You may not want to listen to what they have to say – which is by turns shocking, morally dubious, drenched in heavily sexual content, illegal drugs, or gaming, or worse. But you...
To mark world leprosy day on Sunday, campaigners and patients discuss how Brazil's network of colonies have excluded people with the disease and hampered efforts to raise awareness ...
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CCTV captures the moment a five-year old boy and his grandmother are run over by two cars that collide in Anápolis, Brazil ...
Fifa general-secretary Jérôme Valcke visits Rio de Janeiro and announces the governing body will contribute $3m [£1.8m] to 108 football-related outreach programmes around the world ...
s unique collections. The British public has responded en masse to the profound spiritual and aesthetic message expressed by the gold objects displayed in the museum. But now it is time to consider the ethical and political implications of that message: not as a relic of the distant past, but because it may contain some of the answers we desperately seek to the most relevant questions of our time....
Work has begin to repair the Christ Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Two fingers and the head were chipped during recent lightning storms ...
s Arena da Baixada risks losing games over delays • Labour force to be increased to resolve 'delicate' situation The Fifa secretary general, Jérôme Valcke, has given a four-week ultimatum to one of Brazil's World Cup host cities to accelerate stadium construction or risk being excluded from the tournament. With less than five months until kick-off, the Arena da Baixada in Curitiba is so far behind...
Jérôme Valcke says Brazil must sort out its problems quickly if it wishes to see a successful World Cup ...
the developing middle class' – a group earning between $4 and $13 a day When a million people swarmed on to the streets of Brazil last June there was consensus that the protest was a phenomenon of the "new middle class" – squeezed by corruption and failing infrastructure. As the Thai protests continue, these too are labelled middle class: office workers staging flashmobs in their neat, pressed shirts....
a thief whom we believe had some help' and claims Obama NSA speech created 'uncertainty...
s swankiest malls on Sunday as Brazil's protest movement shifted from the streets to the shops. Shopping Leblon – a mall consisting of 200 upmarket shops, restaurants and cinemas – was closed after it became the latest target of rolezinho flashmobs. Over the past month, almost a dozen malls in Brazil have been hit by the rolezinhos – gatherings of predominantly poor, black youths who party in malls...