Explaining Brazil #269: Why São Paulo was left without power

Brazilians like to say São Paulo is the city that never stops. But this past Friday, it kind of did.

A massive storm hit the state of São Paulo on November 3. Winds of over a hundred kilometers an hour killed eight people, wreaked havoc in several cities, and left millions without electricity.

To give you an idea of the damage, more than 300,000 homes in Greater São Paulo were still without power on Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday morning, roughly 11,000 remained in that situation.

This raised questions about the sale of utility companies to private groups — and revived old privatization ghosts, which were associated with an increase in tariffs but a decrease in the quality of services.

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This episode used music from Uppbeat and Envato. License codes: Aspire by Pryces (B6TUQLVYOWVKY02S), Detective Thriller Ident by Crypt-of-Insomnia (6NCD45WAV3), Dramatic Anxious Cinematic Documentary by Tonydrumer (5G9KHWR), and Dark Documentary GETAWAY by Enrize (EJQKT9A)

In this episode:

• Euan Marshall is a deputy editor at The Brazilian Report and hosts the podcast in the absence of editor-in-chief Gustavo Ribeiro.

Background reading:

• In our latest Brazil Weekly newsletter, we explained what happened on Friday — and how the city of São Paulo is unprepared to deal with extreme climate events.
• Extreme weather events are becoming increasingly common in Brazil —be it an uncharacteristically warm winter, historic droughts in the Amazon, or cyclones in the South of the country.
• Besides the impact on people, extreme weather is also an economic threat. About 90 percent of Brazil’s farmland relies on rainwater irrigation, so the El Niño weather pattern is causing some concern for farmers.
• Extreme climate events only serve to deepen Brazil’s inequality, as the degree of vulnerability increases or decreases according to gender, race, and social class.
• The Enel fiasco sparked calls for authorities to halt the privatization of São Paulo’s sanitation company. Back in episode #60, we discussed why Brazilians resist so much to privatizations.

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• #infrastructure
• #privatization
• #sãoPaulo