In this aerial photograph, rows of stacked shipping containers are seen at the Santos port in Sao Paulo.
Photographer: Dado Galdieri/ Bloomberg
Brazil’s Dreams and Nightmares Are on View at This Super-Port
To take the pulse of Brazil, drive an hour from Sao Paulo to the port at Santos, the busiest in Latin America.
Curving inland from emerald waters and high-living beachfront condos, the harbor in the five-century old city is home to teeming favelas of huts on stilts, terminals loaded with goods fueling an economic rebound and, increasingly, cocaine. The port complex is a 3-square-mile microcosm of a country buffeted by political turmoil, drug-fueled violence and persistent income inequality as it emerges from a grinding recession. Will the turnaround take hold? There are answers, of a sort, in the sprawl of stacked containers and towering cranes.