BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) – The most fortunate of them have tents. The rest use black-and-blue plastic tarps draped over bamboo trunks to keep the brutal tropical sun from melting them at midday.
About 3,000 people from Brazil’s Homeless Workers Movement, which invades open lands and buildings in cities across the continent-sized nation, pitched their shelters a few days ago on six large tracts in and around the capital of Brasilia.
“I came to Brasilia over 20 years ago and I’ve not been able to find housing,” said Amanda Santana, a 39-year-old mother of three girls in one of the camps. “I work as a maid and on what I earn I can’t pay rent. … My only hope is to receive government housing.”
On Wednesday, leaders of the homeless group and government officials came to an agreement that might make Santana’s dream come true. Authorities promised to set aside land for low-income housing for those in the camps, in return for them leaving the land they have occupied since Saturday.
Until that happens, the reluctant nomads of the homeless movement in Brasilia go about their days in as normal a fashion as possible.