Every night at 1am, thousands of sweatshop workers emerge on to the streets of Brás to sell Minnie Mouse and Nike knockoffs. When 7am strikes, the police break it up. But is this nightly choreography hiding something more dangerous?

Every two months, Aziz Abdel Rahman boards a bus in Brasilia. The journey takes all night, 700 miles in total. At 2am he reaches his final stop, disembarking into the dark and crowded – and largely illegal – Feirinha da Madrugada: the secretive “little dawn market”, the biggest informal market in South America.

Rahman travels all that way to find the cheapest clothing in the country, and the few hours before the sunrise are the best to browse. Here on the streets of Brás, a downmarket but bustling neighbourhood of São Paulo, Rahman scours the seemingly endless racks and piles of clothing, looking for bargains such as sports trousers at R$10 (£2.30), which he will later sell back in Brasília for up to five times as much.

The scale is difficult to convey. If you could walk quickly and unimpeded, it would take at least two hours to cover the Feirinha. In practice, however, during peak trading hours – 4am to 6am – it is nearly impossible to plough through the thousands of buyers with their huge bags. Vendors shout out the deals of the night: dresses for R$10; seven pairs of socks for R$5; late-night “lunch” for R$3. The aroma of fried snacks and barbecued meat fill the air.

Selling isn't bad. Better than hiding behind a sewing machine Leidi Laura

Business here is strictly under the counter: very few of the thousands of traders have a licence. And yet from 1am-7am, uniformed police officers patrol the market, watching the proceedings and doing nothing.

After 7am, however, the behaviour of the police is suddenly transformed.

They sweep down theatrically in groups of 10 or more, warning vendors to leave, and occasionally confiscating their wares – often violently. The vendors, however, know it is about to happen, and most dismantle their stalls before the police arrive.

When they do, some vendors move quickly away – only to return seconds after the officers leave. The police action seems as choreographed as a play – and how this arrangement has been allowed to run every night for 13 years is one of the Feirinha’s many mysteries.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Labour inspectors regularly shut down sweatshops in the neighbourhood over the use of slave labour

Calvin, Minnie ... and slavery

Rahman doesn’t have a license either. Like his late father, who was born in Palestine, he is one of a long line of Arab immigrants to Brazil who made a living trading textiles. “This man is following the steps of his father, who made good money as a merchant,” says Francisco de Assis Silva, the bus driver, who has shuttled hundreds of street vendors from all over Brazil to the Feirinha since it opened in 2004.



But the trade is no longer exclusive to the Arab community. The faces that dominate the market now are Bolivian, dotted with Chinese, Koreans, Haitians and Africans.

They come to sell what are, for the most part, sweatshop goods: thousands of colourful T-shirts, blouses, shorts, trousers and dresses. Some bear the logos of Adidas, Nike, Calvin Klein and others, but most display no brand at all.



Disney’s Minnie Mouse is a hit. “Everyone wants it, but they drive such a hard bargain that we only make one real per piece,” says Leidi Laura, 18, the first of her family born in Brazil. Wearing stylish eyeliner and blond highlights, Leidi works alongside her aunt, who sports traditional Bolivian braids.

Like Leidi, most of the Bolivians toil in improvised home sweatshops, churning out the cheapest possible clothing away from Brazilian labour laws. Families often pull double shifts, putting their health at risk, sewing by day and selling by night.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An informal agreement with city authorities allows the Feirinha to operate undisturbed from 1am to 7am

Although these sweatshops are family-run, the law is clear: long work hours and degrading conditions often amount to modern-day slavery. Labour inspectors regularly shut them down across the neighbourhood.

The sweatshops supply not only the Feirinha, but known labels too. A number of brands producing clothes in the country, including Spain’s Zara, have been held responsible by the Brazilian government for using slave labour in their supply chain.

For many in the Bolivian community here, however, the market represents not slavery, but a way out of poverty.

“The Bolivians are building up their own businesses,” says René Cesar Barrientos of the Institute for Latin American and Caribbean Cultures and Justice, an organisation that helps Bolivians in Brazil. “The majority of them have become entrepreneurs and this is how they’re are managing to free themselves.”

Having witnessed the harsh lives of many families who fail to prosper, Barrientos takes pride in seeing vendors find their feet in the Feirinha. “This is a really important achievement, and they’ve done it without any help from the government.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest In the Feirinha, Bolivians sell their goods alongside vendors from China, Korea, Africa and Haiti

Most of the Latin American vendors wear a similar sense of self-made pride. Their optimism is offset, though, by awareness of the Feirinha’s inherent danger.

A year ago, I witnessed a police officer yanking a Bolivian woman by the hair, to stop her walking away with her clothes. Another time, I saw an officer kicking clothes on to the wet pavement, to punish vendors who had stayed out past 7am.

More troubling still is what many vendors say about the “fee” they pay for their stall. Is it roughly $25 per week, and is meant to cover “rent”, light and protection from theft – but privately, some of the vendors admit that what they really need is protection from the fee collectors. They keep their voices low, casting glances over their shoulders as they talk about what they call “the association’” or simply “the mafia”.



Certainly, the Feirinha plays host to different shades of illegal activity. During the six-hour window when the city turns a blind eye, the vendors are vulnerable. Two vendors said colleagues had “disappeared” after rejecting mafia demands. One man told us he had seen his friend stabbed in the stomach for not paying the fees.

The day after one visit, two sources called to say some “associates” had been warning vendors not to talk to journalists.



“I’m sorry, my friend, I want to help you with your story, but my life is more important,” said one, cancelling a scheduled interview.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Police supervise the closure of the market as day breaks

Deep roots

Brazil is the fifth-largest garment producer in the world. But, unlike the production and export-oriented economies of China and India it has a predominately domestic garment market. “This why the Feirinha grew – as an alternative, with producers finding a way to sell directly,” says sociologist Carlos Freire.

Life was difficult in Africa, but this is hard too Alfa Dihllo, 25, from Guinea

He points to the global overhaul of the garment industry in the 1990s, when clothing producers began creating rapidly changing designs to follow trends. The companies outsourced the seamstresses, creating a network of small studios, which were slowly occupied by immigrant workforce.

One Peruvian couple who were feeding their children – Gabriela, 1, and Leila, 7 – said they see the trade as temporary: their plan is to save money and return to Peru. It is not easy to build up savings, however, when the risk of losing a whole batch of work is just around the corner.



They try to ignore the police, they said – and indeed it is common to see large group of vendors fleeing from the police with their goods, only to return moments after the officers leave.



“I am completely used to it,” says Sanaé Chaanar, a 24-year-old Lebanese woman who was rearranging T-shirts on a tarpaulin just after the police had passed by.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gabriela, 1, and Leila, 7, play on the family stall

Alfa Dihllo, 25, from Guinea, is less sanguine. “Life was difficult in Africa, but this is hard too,” he says. He has dark circles around his eyes, and explains that a few days ago the police took 20 of his umbrellas. “I don’t have money, so I had to borrow to buy more.”



Despite all the risks, a kerbside stand remains more coveted than a store in the official indoor market, a 4,000-stall venue that was built nearby in 2006, two years after the birth of the Feirinha, in a vain attempt to formalise sales.

“We’ve had a stall in the covered market for five years, but now I’m giving this spot outside a shot,” says Vicente Flores, 41, a Bolivian resident of Brazil for 14 years who sells beachwear made by his family. “There are more customers on the streets, and the rent is cheaper.”

Nor is life for the vendors inside the covered market any easier. The market is operated by an association with legal permission to charge vendors R$910 per month; 4,000 stalls would translate to R$3.6m in monthly revenue. Even so, the association has been accused of demanding still higher rents; federal prosecutors and the city council are investigating.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest An overhead shot of the market

Many say the Feirinha should simply be shut down. The sweatshops that supply it produce the textil industry’s worst cases of slavery, says labour inspector Luís Alexandre de Faria. In Brazil, slavery violations are usually pinned on large companies – but in the case of the Feirinha it’s hard to know who to blame. “It’s difficult to [hold violators to account] when there is no employer,” Faria says.

He is not convinced by the argument that the Feirinha can be a stepping stone to a better life. “There is something terribly wrong with our society if toiling away 15 hours a day under precarious conditions is seen as an improvement,” he says.

But, thanks to Brazil’s growing economic crisis, the Feirinha is likely going nowhere. Even Brazilians are now trying their luck as vendors: Maria Aparecida Ferreira, 46, once employed 12 seamstresses making high-end for Daslu, a Brazilian luxury label, but after the owner was convicted of fraud and tax evasion, Ferreira now sells Minnie T-shirts on the street.

Indeed, if anything, the market’s informal tentacles are spreading. Near Brás station, one of Brazil’s oldest railway hubs, a tight-knit group of Haitians is reselling clothes from the Bolivians at the slimmest of margins. The Feirinha did not even extend this far out a few days ago.

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