WITH ten million inhabitants, and nearly ten million more in its satellite cities, São Paulo is South America’s megalopolis and the biggest city in the southern hemisphere.

It is the capital of São Paulo state which, with 40 million inhabitants, is the richest and most populous in Brazil.

Founded by Jesuits in 1554, the city became wealthy on the back of a 19th-century coffee boom which attracted millions of immigrants from Europe, the Middle East and Japan.

Overshadowed by the appeal of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo has long been the engine of Brazil’s economy. Its endless skyline of high-rise office buildings and apartment blocks cannot compete with the postcard glamour of Rio’s Christ the Redeemer statue, but it is the undisputed financial, industrial and cultural capital.

Mainly descended from the 19th-century immigrants, middle-class paulistanos like to think of their city as South America’s version of New York, offering the continent’s best restaurants, most luxurious shopping and a rich cultural life.

But with its chaotic, unchecked suburban sprawl, permanently congested multi-lane expressways and smog, many visitors are reminded more of Los Angeles.

São Paulo is a victim of the inequality that afflicts the rest of Brazil. When the country industrialised in the 1950s, the city led the way.

This time the newcomers came from Brazil’s arid northeast, fleeing drought and hunger, but housing was hard to come by and shantytowns ringed the city limits.

The arrival of crack into many of these poorer neighbourhoods in the early 1990s resulted in a steep rise in violent crime.

This division also falls along racial lines. Residents of well-off neighbourhoods are predominantly white, Asian or Middle Eastern, while the people of the periferia are far more likely to be of African descent.

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