Nestled among the brush of the Brazilian cerrado, São Jorge grows out of the red earth like dry grass. Cars with choking exhausts drive in from nowhere in particular, throwing up dust that drifts and lingers in their trail. People with dark skin, people with light skin, people with dark hair, and people with hair as red as the earth all mingle beneath low-slung verandas. There are no fair-haired people here, and so they call me ‘Galego’, and everyone knew who the Galego was. On one occasion when some friends were looking for me, they only asked the closest passer-by if they had seen ‘Galego’, and were notified that he was ‘Reading a book at the bar two streets down’.

In the early evening, locals and São Jorge frequents tread in their Havaianas up an old dirt track that leads up and away from the village. Rising up against…