BRASÍLIA: When Brazil's leftist President Dilma Rousseff loses the support of someone like longtime backer Edson Silva, perhaps she had better start worrying.
Silva is an anti-homelessness activist, traditionally the kind of foot soldier the ruling Workers' Party could count on -- and presumably a natural ally for Rousseff when the rest of the country is turning angrily against her.
So what was Silva, 34, doing this Wednesday?
Fuming against Rousseff's latest economic austerity plan. It entails cutting nearly a billion dollars from public housing, long the jewel in the Workers' Party policy crown.
"Who is paying for the economic crisis? The worker," an angry Silva said at a hotel taken over by some 450 homeless families in the capital, Brasilia.
Surrounded by police, who want them out, the squatters are a vivid example of the inequalities in Brazil and the government's unfinished campaign to end extreme poverty during the Workers' Party 12-year rule. Some 22 million people, about 10 percent of the population, remain homeless.
Silva said the austerity package convinces people like him that they have been forgotten by Rousseff. "The government wants to sweep all the social problems under the rug," he said.
So they are taking matters into their own hands, ignoring police warnings and insisting they will stay in their new lodgings.
The three-star hotel, complete with a chandelier in the lobby and made-up beds, was shut down because of an unrelated legal dispute.
"We'll only leave here when we're dead," Silva said.
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