"Fortaleza - Ceara" Fortaleza by pure1942

Fortaleza is one of the mojor cities of North-East Brazil. Fortaleza (meaning 'fortress' in portuguese) has a population of over 2,500,000 and could be considered the main tourist city of North-East Brazil.
Having not expeienced the city from a commercial and tourism point of view I can not review the city fairly as a potential 'go-to' spot for holiday goers or backpackers.
All I can say is that there does seem to be a nice beachfront area and a lively, cultural atmoshere surrounding this commercial area.

Locals scrape a living at a city dump

My experience of Fortaleza centred around a visit to one of the city's many 'favelas' or shanty towns where the underprivileged of the city have set up temporary dwellings.
Having no where else to go these people literally stake out an area of unused or rarely used government owned land and set up their dwellings.
Violent conflicts between these squatters and nearby landowners are widesread and often leads to violent attacks and even murder.
Landowners attempt to intimidate these people into leaving the area.

One of the most harrowing sights I experienced in Brazil (and believe me I saw many) was the sight of men, women, boys and girls, sortiong through rubbish in a dump in Fortaleza, trying to scrape a living by finding recyclable materials and selling them on to a middle man before he sells them on to recycling planr. As you can probably imagine, they don't receive very much. Most people working in these conditions are lucky make 10 euro a month!!!