From the 16-year-old mother who occupied a school, to the cleaner who opened a nightclub, it’s often women who are leaders on the city’s embattled outskirts

Inequality in São Paulo, the biggest city in Latin America, is felt most keenly on its periphery – and most keenly of all by women. They have the lowest incomes and the highest teenage pregnancy rates of any women in the city, and are more often the victims of violence.

At the same time, women are often leaders in these disadvantaged communities. From Paraisópolis to Cidade Tiradentes, they emerge as activists, educators, entrepreneurs and philanthropists, shaping their communities for the better.

Despite being at different points in their lives, these five women have known similar struggles. Glória, 16, and Talita, 26, are students who overcame adverse circumstances to succeed and now fight for others; Priscila, 27, an indigenous leader who oversaw a radical change in how her tribe is governed; Iris, 47, a cleaner who became a nightlife entrepreneur; and Cléo, 60, who discovered her power to change lives through music.

Sharing their stories with us through reporters from Énois, a NGO and journalism school for young people on the outskirts of São Paulo, these unexpected leaders offer glimpses of the hidden parts of São Paulo’s human puzzle – and how the city is influenced from its fringes.

Énois are crowdfunding tuition fees for ten aspiring young journalists, in memory of the late Guardian journalist Claire Rigby. Donate here

‘Activism woke me up’ – Glória, 18

Glória Maria Britos dos Santos was 16 with a baby daughter in her arms when she seized a school.

It was November 2015, and activists, many of them teenagers, were outraged by proposed cuts to education that would force the closure of 94 schools and the relocation of thousands of students.

In 2015, Glória had only recently arrived in São Paulo from the capital, Brasília, where she had lived with her grandmother since she was five. She found herself in Paraisópolis, São Paulo’s biggest favela – an ever-changing flux of people, where cars and pedestrians share the streets with food stands, and the sound of funk, pagode and rock mixes with motorcycle engines.

“The grey landscape, the traffic, the crowds – all that caused me huge distress,” she recalls. “Paraisópolis is a boiling pot.”

If city living was hard, living with her abusive father – the reason she’d been brought up by her grandmother – was harder. Often she slept with a knife under her pillow in case she had to defend herself or Ana, her mother. Glória had also been sexually abused by a close relative in Brasília when she was in her early teens; her family members sided with him. “People don’t believe the victim,” she says. “I know that for a fact.”

Her experiences of domestic abuse gave her a new perspective on the world. “I first got in touch with politics through feminism,” she says, describing how she changed her opposition to legalising abortion. “I started reading about women’s rights and our bodies’ autonomy. ... [It] put my experience in perspective and got me thinking, ‘Man, I survived domestic violence and that’s hard as hell.’”



When the protests over education cuts broke out, Glória, accompanied by one-year-old, Emanuele, led the action at her high school. Suddenly, she saw not just the ideas but the power of activism: the authorities backtracked the following month.

“It woke me up,” she says. “It was a great time – not just for me, but for many people.”

Glória went on to participate in another student movement last year, occupying vocational state schools in protest against poor food, following a scandal over misappropriation of students’ lunch money.

She is preparing for the vestibular admission exam to study economics at university – “to be an intellectual, and sit at the table with neoliberal big-shots”.

“I want to defend the working class, that’s my strongest desire ... and bring awareness to racial discrimination,” she says. “That’s why I’m here now, to make that contribution.”

Yuri Ferreira

‘It’s as if your family passes the exam with you’ – Talita, 26

Talita Amaro knows well the paradox of Brazilian education: the free, public universities have competitive entrance exams, for which richer students who went to private school are better prepared.

Talita grew up in Cidade Tiradentes, a poor neighbourhood in the eastern outskirts, home to one of the largest housing estates in South America. Life expectancy here is just 54 years, the lowest in São Paulo – 25 years less than in wealthy Alto de Pinheiros. The entire area, when Talita was a child, had just one public transport line and one police station.

Her family lived in a tiny 40 sq m apartment, which her father bought with the proceeds of a robbery. He did not go to prison for that particular crime, but did for several others, leaving Talita’s mother, Andrea, as sole provider. “She waited tables during the day and sold cosmetics in her breaks,” Talita says. “At night and on weekends, she sold lingerie at home.”

Andrea wanted to enroll Talita into a more central school, but many institutions would not accept students from the periphery. It was only by asking for help from a political adviser Andrea met at a restaurant that Talita – now wearing brand-new sneakers – was able to start school in the more middle-class district of Tatuapé.

“Mom didn’t want me to be bullied in a place where kids talked about buying computers,” she says. “The sneakers were expensive for us and made me feel bad, without even knowing why exactly.”

Her mother was right to be worried. In front of Talita, a school inspector humiliated one of the few other pupils from Cidade Tiradentes. “She said, ‘If you don’t change your behaviour, you’ll go back to the hole you came from’ – meaning my neighbourhood.”

Talita had learned in church not to put up with injustice, and began challenging her teachers on social inequality. “I learned that the believer’s word is a straight one: what’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong.”

She also began taking free classes at a school that supports low-income youngsters to reach university. Curso Mafalda is Brazil’s largest free school, with over a thousand students and impressive results: a pass rate of 75% in the vestibulares. Talita excelled, winning a place in both the history and social science programmes.

“My mom got home from work that day carrying a bouquet of Colombian roses with a small sign that read ‘Success’,” she says. “When you’re the first in your bloodline to get into college, it’s as if your family passes the exam with you.”

Only one other of Talita’s childhood friends made it to college. Talita was subsequently accepted into the most competitive medical school in the country, at the Universidade da Cidade de São Paulo, on a scholarship, and now teaches at Mafada on the side – her bit, she says, to help the many children who grew up like her, locked in the paradox.

Beá Lima



‘Any day we could wake to news we’ve lost our land’ – Priscila, 27

Although it is just 40km from downtown São Paulo to the house she shares in Parelheiros with her husband and two children, Priscila Para Poty Silva always returns home exhausted. “It gives me intense headaches,” she complains of the noise of the city.

But it’s necessary: though only 27, she is a leader of the indigenous Guarani people in Aldeia Tenondé Porã, a group of villages in the shadow of the mountain ranges of Serra do Mar.

Her seniority is a recent phenomenon: two years ago, the Guarani people voted to abolish the position of cacique, or chief. Instead, they opted for more democratic decision-making. Women, once discouraged from leadership positions, now form the majority of the 30 leaders.

Priscila, as the village’s representative, regularly meets with authorities in the city centre to lobby for indigenous land demarcation. In the past, that has included protesting on Paulista Avenue, trips to Brasília to meet federal authorities, and even seizing government buildings.

Though it falls within São Paulo’s boundaries, her settlement is mostly green space, with houses made of clay and wood. About 1,000 people live here in the six villages; the few cars that travel between them are community property. There is some basic infrastructure, including a health unit and a school, where Priscila teaches the Guarani people’s ancestral language; she also oversees some of the villages’ dance, prayer and chanting ceremonies, as well as “dealing with city people”.

The last of these has become an increasingly threatening nuisance, as authorities attempt to undermine the demarcation of indigenous land. In May 2016, a federal decision enlarged the Guarani’s official area from just 50 hectares to nearly 16,000 – an enormous area, representing almost 5% of São Paulo’s territory.

But only a week later, the president, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached, and indigenous leaders fear the land ruling will be reversed by her successor, Michel Temer.

“Any day now we could wake up to the news that our regulation has been overturned,” Priscila says.

That would be a disaster, she says. Even the nearest market – 11km away, near the bus terminal – is a reminder of her people’s struggle. “We only have to buy food [in the first place] because we lost our land long ago, and are unable to develop our traditional agriculture.”



One strategy to hang on to the land is to physically occupy it. Next year, Priscila and her family will move to a neighbouring village, Kalipety, currently home to just 60 people.

At least it won’t be the city, where she feels odd and everyone makes her use the official Portuguese name on her documents. “Priscila is just a nickname,” she points out. “My real name is Para Poty.”

Tiago Aguiar



‘It isn’t rare for clients to enjoy my place all night’ – Iris, 47

Iris Araújo was 46 years old and working as a cleaner when she began having trouble leaving the house. Her strength seemed to vanish, she was nervous in crowds and she couldn’t get on the bus. Doctors diagnosed her with depression and anxiety, and prescribed rest. Her family, however, was dependent on her for financial support.

So she made soup.

She’d tried selling soup before at a Festa Junina, the traditional winter celebration in Paraisópolis, where it was a hit. This time, she opened a tiny stall on Baile da 17 , a street where baile funk parties raged all night, centred around cars with enormous speakers.

Born of soul and traditional funk in Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, Brazil’s special brand of funk had become central to favela nightlife in the 1990s. The genre’s explicit lyrics and gangster connections saw it repeatedly banned, but baile funk, AKA funk carioca, has gone on to respectability, and the “fluxos” parties remain hugely popular.

Despite her age and her nerves, Iris’s soup stall was a hit with the young people: she dished out bowls of mocotó, made with calf’s foot, all night long. But just a month later, the police banned the party. So Iris decided to start her own.

She asked two friends for financial help in renting a shop, which she named Cachaçaria das Gêmeas: cachaçaria is a place to drink the popular Brazilian spirit cachaça, and gêmeas means twins, after her daughters. Dandara and Melissa, both 17, marketed the event on Facebook, roped in a friend to DJ and posted directions so those coming from outside Paraisópolis didn’t get lost in the favela.

The Sunday parties began modestly, with two old fridges stocked with drinks; soon, however, word spread and the relatively quiet street became Paraisópolis’ new bohemian quarter. Iris rented cars with speakers, but the noise annoyed her neighbours, whose dissatisfaction was made clear to Iris in a written death threat put under her door. “It was a painful process,” she says.

Iris responded to the complaints by reducing the numbers of cars from three to one, and setting a firm end time: 2am. “Our strategy to disperse the crowd is by changing to sertanejo [Brazilian country music],” she says. “It works wonderfully!”

As the party grew, other neighbours opened their own garages to sell beers and snacks. Street sellers made sure of stopping by the new fluxo, while bars in Paraisópolis thanked Iris for bringing them business.

Mindful of her civic duty, Iris asked for contributions to clean the streets after the party, bought barrels for rubbish and is now waiting on chemical toilets. She also makes a point of hiring her gay friends. “We can’t really count on the job market to prioritise them,” she says. “This is a pretty homophobic society we live in.”

Her evolution from cleaner to businesswoman was cemented six months ago with her second cachaçaria, at the end of the same street. Sometimes she sees the sun rise. “It isn’t rare to have clients enjoying my place all night through,” she says. She doesn’t drink, but “I do dance and have fun with them. I even go up on the car hood to perform dance moves.”

One year after launching her business, Iris has stopped taking antidepressants, and the fluxo partygoers call her tia (“aunt”, a moniker of respect). “They come around the counter and help me serve when it’s busy – I get treated very well.” Though she doesn’t see herself as a community leader, the experience has transformed her mental health. “Being in touch with all these people helps,” she says. “If you take that away from me, I’ll fall sick again.”

Jeferson Delgado

‘I may be a nobody to society, but I don’t see it that way’ – Cléo, 60

Creusa Lima da Silva, one of seven children, was brought up in the 1960s to be a good wife and mother. She was decidedly not raised to be a singer.



When she told them her dream, her parents feared for her prospects. “They didn’t believe it would work out as a career,” says Dona Cléo, 60, as she is known today by the thousands of children to have passed through her music school. “They thought it had no future.”

Indeed, music education in Brazilian public schools had gone from mandatory to optional under the military regime in the 1970s. In the under-resourced schools on São Paulo’s city fringes, it was the last of their priorities.

Cléo learned to sing and read music at school, but dropped out in seventh grade. It was only after meeting her husband, Roberto Jordan, that her dreams were revived. Jordan taught guitar, percussion and cavaquinho, a small string instrument essential to samba, and the couple started performing as a duo, with Cléo singing. They raised their only daughter, Beá, now 22, on an income from concerts and music lessons.

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Determined to encourage others, the couple started Associação Meninos do Toque Tambor in 2001, offering free private music lessons to disadvantaged children. From their living room in Vila Formosa, in São Paulo’s south-east, the programme would expand to 35 public schools, nine youth shelters and other social and educational centres in remote neighbourhoods.

São Paulo’s vibrating pulse comes mostly from periferia culture, argues Cléo. Over 16 years, she has seen firsthand how children and teenagers broaden their perspectives by learning to play instruments. “It’s as important as mathematics,” she says. She feels the same way about her own work: “I may be a nobody to society but I don’t see it that way because of my achievements.”

In 2008, the president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, reinstated mandatory music education; but many schools integrate music into art lessons, and others struggle to find teachers. And this year, Cléo’s organisation’s funding was cut.

But she insists her house will not be silenced, and asks Roberto to perform a samba by the late Brazilian composer Gonzaguinha. One lyric in particular, she says, speaks her mind: “We want to see our sweat be worth something.”

Evelyn Oliveira

Guardian Cities is in São Paulo for a special series of in-depth reporting and live events. Share your experiences of the city in the comments below, on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram using #GuardianSaoPaulo, or by email to saopaulo.week@theguardian.com