The north-east: politics, water and poverty Blame its
droughts—but still more its decades of misdirected public
subsidy BY MID-MORNING, the sun has burned off the early,
misleading, puffs of cloud and starts to roast the caatinga, the
spiny scrub that stretches, fawn-grey, without end across the
backlands of north-east Brazil. Around Ouricuri, a small town
far inland in Pernambuco state, farmers expect 500mm (20 inches)
of rain a year, spread from late December to March. This year,
they got 250mm in January, half of it unhelpfully in one day;
and since then, nothing. Underfoot, the dry caatinga crackles.
Maize and beans have failed, cattle risk running short of feed.
As the sun relents towards evening, along country roads women
and children trudge home, balancing on their heads cans of water
drawn from muddy ponds, even they fast disappearing. Every few
years this scene repeats itself in the semi-arido, the dry lands
at the heart of the north-east. Each drought briefly
concentrates national attention on the a