A political debate in the Fazenda da Juta neighbourhood on São Paulo’s eastern periphery

It’s a cool late-April evening in São Paulo and locals have packed out the União da Juta community centre in the residential neighbourhood of Fazenda da Juta, some twenty kilometres east of the city centre. The theme of the meeting is the same one that has dominated Brazil’s airwaves, social networks and dinner tables for weeks – namely the ongoing political crisis and how on earth to make sense of it. Here though, the discussion takes a somewhat different path to those heard in mainstream forums. Rather than focussing on corruption scandals, judicial processes and political intrigue, the central concern instead is what it means for people who live in areas like Fazenda da Juta – that is to say, on the peripheries of Brazil’s great cities.

The legacy of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers’…