the government also uses its bottomless reserve of cheap labor for public works. The naked men who built the city of Brasilia almost overnight were Northeasterners transported like cattle to the wilderness site. Today this most modern of the world’s cities is surrounded by a great belt of poverty: when they finished their work, these people—known as candangos—were dumped in outlying hovels. There, always available for any task, 300,000 Northeasterners live off the splendid capital’s leavings.
