Word: silva
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva did make a halfhearted attempt to spur a national debate last year, calling abortion a public-health issue - even as he declared himself steadfastly against it. But with the Church quick to stifle such talk and the general public not sufficiently engaged to demand action, the debate never took off. In truth, abortions and unwanted pregnancies are a sad constant in Brazil. Although abortion is illegal, an estimated 1 million women each year have one. The poor are forced into clandestine clinics or take medication, while the better-off are treated...
...favelas, the vast urban slums that are desperate even in the best of times. Walk through São Paulo's sprawling Brasilândia, though, and you don't sense the relentless doom and gloom gripping other cities in the world. Take Efigênia Francisca da Silva, who exudes middle-class expectations and remains positive despite the tsunami of bad news. Thanks to a government scheme to encourage entrepreneurs, the once dirt-poor housewife has received some $8,000 in low-interest bank credits in recent years and now owns three shops that sell everything from shampoo...
...Lula" is President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (no relation to Efigênia), and most Brazilians believe he's the reason their country is surviving the current downturn better than other places. In past crises, Brazil was usually the nation in need of the largest life preserver. If it wasn't drowning under fiscal recklessness, it was being held under by draconian austerity plans. Brazil, the old joke goes, is the country of the future - and always will be. Now, in the middle of the worst global downturn for decades, Brazil could finally be the country...
...global meltdown, economists and laborers alike say Brazil has become an example of what Lula likes to call "the financial strategy of the future." By that he means a postideological approach that is equal parts wealth creation for corporations such as Embraer and wealth redistribution for underdogs like Da Silva. All this under the kind of prudent financial regulation that seems to have gone missing in the developed world of late...
...vanquish Prabhakaran, he will have just one foe left: the economy. The cost of the war may be more than the country can afford, with the defense budget far exceeding the government's revenue after servicing of the national debt. "It just doesn't work," says Harsha da Silva, an economist and consultant to the Asian Development Bank. A victory would reduce that spending but might also bring down with it a rural economy propped up by soldiers' salaries and pensions. In many villages, the army is the main employer, and without it, families will begin to feel the full...