The crowd surges back and forth, hands above heads, mobile-phone cameras snapping one of Brazil's best-known samba bands. It could be almost anywhere in Latin America's largest city on a Saturday night. But this is Paraisopolis, one of Sao Paulo's notorious crime-infested favelas (slums). Casas Bahia, the country's largest retailer, is celebrating the opening there of its first ever store in a favela (pictured above). It is selling television sets and refrigerators in a place that, at first glance, has no running water or electricity.rnAmong the shacks, though, rise three-storey brick structures with satellite dishes on their tin roofs. In the new shop, Brazilians without bank accounts-plumbers, salesmen, maids-flock to buy on instalment credit. In a country with no credit histories, the system is cumbersome: the staff interview customers about their qualifications and get them to sign stacks of promissory notes, like post-dated cheques, before allowing them to take their purchases home. But it works, more or less.
展开▼
