No more half-soles. It’s high time for inclusion.

Brazil is an exclusionary country. This praxis is what has caused the social inequality and shameful distribution of income that we have today. To borrow from the language – and profession – of a century ago, governments come and go, each doing a shoemaker's repairs, putting in a “half sole.” Or, in the language of seamstresses, the once famous “invisible darning.” In short, no one adjusts the social fabric and political structure properly. It's being patched up here and there. Holes are covered and attempts are always made to disguise the road to development with a thin layer of new asphalt.

Returning to the manly Brazil of the 21st century, we will find in the North the same negligence we had at the time of "Great Brazil" (Brasil Grande) or… if you prefer, "Medium, Small Brazil“ (Brasil Médio, Pequeno) and other rhetorical knick knacks that the political class invents. The cartoonist Henfil (brother of sociologist Betinho), who played a prominent role in political and social movements in the country, even mocking the dictatorship with his art, already spoke, in the 1980s, of the "The Southern Wonder“ (Sul Maravilha) and raged against the North and Northeast, in an attempt to draw attention to the brutal social inequality that existed. And how are we today? The extremely rich North, a region magnanimous in natural resources, still suffering as the country's worst standard of living. There is lack of education, of access to income, of sanitation and information technology. Proportionally, it concentrates the highest percentage of people whose parents' low level of schooling has limited their offsprings' ability to generate income, as is portrayed by the Institute for Mobility and Social Development (IMDS) in its most recent study, to which this column has had access.