Regional Discrimination in Flood Response?

Deep in this article in Monday's New York Times about the horrific flooding in Northeast Brazil, is this point not to be ignored:

Mr. [Jânio] de Sousa Freitas [mayor of a city in Maranhão affected by the flooding] has not been alone in alleging that the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has done less for affected areas of the northeast than it did for wealthier Santa Catarina last fall.

Piauí and Maranhão, two of the states most affected by the floods, are also two of the country’s three poorest in per-capita income, with most residents earning far less than Brazil’s minimum monthly salary of $225.

“The people in the south treat the northeast as a subrace of Brazilians,” said Roberto Quiñiero, who owns a small food market in Pedreiras.

Several years ago I read an article in the Times about attempts by officials in Blumenau, a city in Santa Catarina that celebrates its German immigrant heritage by proudly holding the largest Oktoberfest outside of Munich, to send migrants from the Northeast of Brazil  - seeking nothing more than to improve their lives as the German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Ukrainian and Japanese immigrants whose descendants fill the South of Brazil did - back to their homes:

His blue eyes matching his blue inspector's smock, Milton Dallavalle patrols Blumenau's tidy bus station, looking for poor people.

"They come in daily," the inspector recently said of his job intercepting the jobless and the homeless from Brazil's less fortunate regions. "Just today a family arrived with six children. The bus station administrator offers to pay their fares home."

Conceding that Brazil's Constitution guarantees freedom of movement, city officials say that the most their unfriendly policies will do is to slow a flood of migrants. In the last 20 years, Blumenau's population doubled to 225,000 people. Despite an official policy of browbeating poor visitors, Blumenau officials predict that the population will again double in the next 20 years.

The differences in the financial aid going to the region is dramatic:

Brazilian officials denied any regional favoritism. “The citizens of the northeast will receive the same support that Santa Catarina received,” said Franklin Martins, the president’s chief spokesman.

Through last week, about $2.5 million had been donated for relief efforts in the north, compared to some $16.4 million that was donated to Santa Catarina, according to civil-defense figures, which include private donations.

Piauí in particular is bound to suffer greatly from this flooding. Unlike many of the states in Northeast, a region celebrated for its stunning coastlines and arguably the best beaches in the country, Piauí has a sliver of coastline (41 miles), much of which is at the mouth of the Parnaiba river and is cursed with brutal heat; its capital,Teresina, has an average temperature of 104 Fahrenheit. There are precious few opportunities for a rapid economic rebound.

This is where the national government should take the lead. If Lula's administration doesn't take the lead and drop the business as usual tradition in the region, it will be a massive letdown by him to his most ardent supporters.