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Ah, São Paulo! A queen that vainly shows her skyscrapers that are her crown of gold. All dressed up in velvet and silk but with cheap stockings underneath—the favela.

Carolina writes this amusing metaphor in her entry of May 22, 1958. Her message is clear: São Paulo’s glory is all surface, and the hidden spaces of the favela, her rotten underside, shine through. The gently chiding tone fits in with her stance during the rest of the narrative: though no one else may see what’s really going on, she herself is keeping score. The image of the beautiful woman is similar to the metaphor of São Paulo being like a house where the favela is a backyard garbage dump. In both cases, Carolina recognizes that the fates of the rich and the poor are intertwined, and one cannot exist without the other. At the same time, she chides the city’s rich for not being willing to see its garbage dump or cheap stockings. Underneath the prized accomplishments, the “crown of gold,” a seedy underside roils with unrest.

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