After Hours with Wagner Cinelli

Tinker, tailor, soldier - virtuoso. Brazil has all of these and more. But what do all these hardworking professionals do when they aren't at their day job? Work after hours, of course. Brazil in Focus is pleased to present After Hours, a feature dedicated to those who keep working when the workday is done.

Foreign talent flocks to Brazil for jobs and opportunities

by Adriana Marcolini
And suddenly, they are everywhere. They are Portuguese, Spanish, Greek, Irish, French, Italians, Americans. You can find them in the bars and restaurants, on the streets and public squares of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. They are engineers, marketing executives, financial wizards and oil industry experts. And gradually, this high-skills immigrant tide is transforming the landscape of major Brazilian cities - indeed of Brazilian society itself.

by Rolf Kuntz

President Dilma Rousseff is nearing the halfway mark of her first mandate with the economy idling, inflation above target, public finances a mess, exports flagging, government investment stalled and national infrastructure crumbling. Officials have yet to come up with a convincing explanation for the frequent blackouts or the drought of investment that plague the electric sector (In the first half of 2012, Eletrobrás spent only 20.8% of its projected annual budget). Federal management is inefficient, even after a major cabinet cleanup, because the bureaucracy remains a haven for patronage and political cronyism.

Brazil's Supreme Court takes on corruption, sort of

by Matthew Taylor
Brazilians have been anxiously watching their country's high court's deliberations over one of the most significant corruption scandals in nearly thirty years of democratic rule. Seven years ago, President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva's administration was shaken to its core by allegations of illegal payments to coalition partners. Members of the government admitted to the payments, but chalked them up to nothing more than the repayment of campaign debts. This too would be a crime, far less serious than bribing members of Congress, but nonetheless severe enough to force the resignations of Lula's chief of staff and leading coalition members.

Rio's long road to recovery

by Mauro Osorio da Silva
The rise of Rio de Janeiro from colonial jewel to seat of the modern republic is a story that Brazilian schoolchildren know by heart. What's less familiar, and much less understood, is the more recent history of the Marvelous City's stagnation and decline. Knowing and confronting both sides of the Rio story is essential to reinventing Brazil's fabled metropolis. The good news is that effort has begun. How long the recovery will take and how far reaching it will be are decisions that only the Cariocas can make.

Brazil shrinks the wealth gap

by Marcelo Côrtes Neri
Long known and criticized for its world beating gap between rich and poor, Brazil has seen income inequality decline to record levels in recent years. This is the mirror opposite of the picture in almost every other country in the world where income inequality spiked before the global economic crisis, receded briefly during the downtown, and now is on the rise again. This is the case in China and India, where simultaneous economic booms lifted the poor but helped the rich even more, widening social inequality. It was also the story of Brazil during the 1960s.

Photographer Ricardo Azoury explores the gemstone mines of Minas Gerais where dreams of fortune still fire the imaginations of today's garimpeiros.