Stolen cars : a journey through São Paulo's urban conflict

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"It's November 2015. A white Suzuki Jimny moves slowly through the streets of Vila Mariana, a middle-class neighborhood in southwestern São Paulo. Inside, three researchers talk about the best way ...

"It's November 2015. A white Suzuki Jimny moves slowly through the streets of Vila Mariana, a middle-class neighborhood in southwestern São Paulo. Inside, three researchers talk about the best way to get to Vila Cisper, an old working-class neighborhood in the East Zone. Vila Cisper was settled in the 1950s after a glass bottle factory was set up there. The factory belonged to one Olavo Egydio de Souza Aranha Jr, scion of a family from the Portuguese nobility, who studied engineering and architecture in Europe. His employees were migrants from the Brazilian countryside, descendants of Christianized Indians or blacks freed from slavery, or even poor whites, especially Italians, who had come to São Paulo as beneficiaries of Government population whitening policies. They were taken on by the factory as they came: mostly illiterate, no surname, no papers. We don't know the way for sure, so it's best to strictly follow the Google Maps directions. A cell phone fixed to the vehicle's dashboard with the help of a plastic holder begins telling us the way to go. We continue on our way, talking about the fact that we are in a Japanese car, made in Brazil, with a cell phone from an American multinational company, powered by Google, one of the largest companies on the planet. Our conversion comes to rest on the subject of the plastic holder that allows us to attach the cell phone to the car windscreen that was made in China and bought at a São Paulo traffic light. Informal workers born in the favelas of São Paulo sell plastic supports, but so too do immigrants from the slums of Lagos and La Paz - they all sell them throughout downtown São Paulo"--Provided by publisher.

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