I feel obligated to him. . . . If my children didn't work with me, we would have to go hungry. In Povoado de Jose Valerio, home to 85 families, a lot of people are living meal to meal. It is a region where people's lives are as harsh as the landscape. Lack of rain has left acres and acres of parched fields.
Trees are feeble, with brittle, bare branches.
Its unemployment rate tops 60 percent. Illiteracy hovers at 70 percent. Like Povoado de Jose Valerio, most of the villages know no modern conveniences. The area also has suffered from spectacular mismanagement. The only school in Povoado de Jose Valerio remained shuttered for four years during the 1990s because the Teofilandia government did not pay the teachers.