Word: bougainvillea
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...through the city to channel the swelling flow of workers and shoppers, traffic congestion gets worse & worse. Sáo Paulo has 15,000 industrial plants and millionaires' mansions such as the U.S. has not seen since the days of Carnegie and Frick. It has burgeoning suburbs of bougainvillea-clad bungalows for the new middle classes, and white-collar workers' cottages along streets that peter out into raw slashes in the red earth...
...cure children of espanto (nightmares caused by fright), the bruja uses a kind of primitive shock treatment. The child is set in front of a container of water in which bougainvillea blossoms-or some other red flowers-are floating. When the child's attention is caught by the flowers, a relative squirts a mouthful of alcohol on the back of the child's neck, and the bruja claps a red cloth over its head. The treatment for clubfoot is simpler: the curandera rubs the afflicted foot with gourds filled with "magical" water containing wine and vinegar...