Brazil’s devastating floods hit ‘Black population on the periphery’ hardest

Men look at a flooded street in Sarandi, one of the hardest hit by heavy rains in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil, on 27 May 2024. Photograph: Anselmo Cunha/AFP/Getty Images

It had been raining for nearly a week when the floodwaters first reached Marcelo Moreira Ferreira’s home in Porto Alegre, the capital of Brazil’s southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul.

His wife and their four children left to seek shelter with relatives, but Ferreira, 51, wanted to stay: his father had built the modest one-storey structure and he had lived there his entire life.