Word: benedita
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...elite to take a firsthand look at the living conditions of the impoverished voters that had elected them. On a makeshift stage in Brazil's northern scrubland, Lula, like a triumphant band leader, presented his troupe one by one. The crowd welcomed them all politely, but cheered raucously for Benedita da Silva, the black, former housemaid who picked to oversee Lula's social programs, for Culture Minister Gilberto Gil (one of the country's best known musicians) and for Marina Silva, the tiny, dark-skinned, former rubber-tapper from the western Amazon...
...land titles for squatters. This mix of ideologies is also evident in Lula's cabinet. The President himself is a high school dropout, former metalworker and labor union leader, but his handpicked Central Bank president, Henrique Meirelles, is a Harvard graduate and former president of BankBoston. Welfare Minister Benedita da Silva rose from a squalid Rio de Janeiro favela, or slum, and was Brazil's first black female Senator, while Vice President José Alencar is a textile multimillionaire from the right-wing Liberal Party. Culture Minister Gilberto Gil, a pop music star, sports dreadlocks; Chief of Staff...
...Benedita Da Silva Born in a Rio slum, Da Silva is set to help Brazil's poor as the new Welfare Minister...
...addition to food relief, the ministry is charged with attacking the causes of Brazil's malnutrition, such as laughable rural infrastructure and the nation's paltry $60 monthly minimum wage, which Lula hopes to double by the end of his term in 2006. More important, Graziano and ministers like Benedita da Silva say they're kiboshing the waste, inefficiency and indifference of Brazil's social-welfare programs, converting them from political patronage rackets to engines of economic growth. Zero Hunger, says Graziano, "is meant most to raise the productive capacity of poor Brazilians." It includes churches, NGOs and, significantly...
...should have - I thought others would be more useful, that he might need someone with more conventional qualifications. But he opted to be daring. He touched my hair and said, 'I want you with your dreadlocks.'" Though Brazil's population is 45% black, Gil and Social Assistance Minister Benedita da Silva are only the second and third black ministers in its history (football legend Pelé was the first). "We belong to the real Brazil that is finally starting to win a place in power, a place in the national leadership," he says. Gil grew up with the inequities Lula...