In most respects, pardos are as badly off as the 6% of the population that declares itself preto.

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As mayor of Ribeirao Preto, a city of 500, 000 in Sao Paulo state, Mr Palocci privatised some municipal services and brought businessmen into his administration.

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Forbes readers should strive to visit it, sample the local porco preto and olives, and revel in the unique, and ancient landscape, of the Alto Alentejo.

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In one of the cases Teixeira posts about, he claims AC Milan owes Botafogo FC of Ribeirao Preto compensation involving its training of the player Sergio Ceregatti.

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For the first chunk of his career he was playing full-time for Botafogo while going to medical school at the University of Sao Paulo's campus in Ribeirao Preto.

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In the early 1990s, when privatisation was still heresy in Brazil, Mr Palocci, then mayor of Ribeirao Preto, a city in Sao Paulo's farmbelt, sold the municipal telephone company and called on private investors to build a water-treatment system.

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But Brazil has rarely been willing to find the money or the energy to do anything beyond cosmetic work in some of the smaller colonial towns, like Ouro Preto, in the country's richer southern half, which has a flourishing tourist trade.

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