Picking Coffee in Brazil

After passing by so many women searching for the bad beans,
it is very likely that what finally fell into the containers was pretty
clean. At the end of the time, a company employee came and
examined each woman's little bag, and gave her a paper with
a number indicating how much money she had made.
Eva P. Bueno


What year was that? I don't recall precisely the date, but it may have been 1962, when I was about to start the third grade of the elementary school. What I do recall precisely, however, is that my family was going through a rough spot. Christmas had come and gone without one single toy for any of us. My mother had managed to make me a simple new dress for church, and a new shirt and shorts for my brother Zico, who is two years older than me.

The older people in the family had to make do with their same old Sunday clothes to go to church both for the Missa do Galo and for the Missa of December 31. Now that both my oldest sisters were married, one of the big brothers was in the Suez Canal working with the United Nations, and the oldest one had left to look for a job somewhere else, the only two people working and making money in the house were my father and my 16-year-old brother Elton. The money they both got was barely enough to pay the rent and buy food.


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