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The Town In Brazil Where Girls Are Married Off Before 14

CARTA CAPITAL (Brazil)

Worldcrunch

One year has passed since Carlos Augusto Catanheide first noticed the girl with brown skin and green eyes who went to his tiny shop to buy flour. She was 13 and he was 47. They got married soon after in Conceição do Lago Açu, a small town with 15,000 inhabitants in the countryside of Maranhão, in northern Brazil.

Her story and others like them were described in a recent reportage in the São Paulo magazine Carta Capital that explored the lingering phenomenon of underaged wives in Brazil. For girls, marrying before 14 is common in many parts of Brazil, even if the legal minimum age is 16.

In this case, the girl`s mother, Tânia Fonseca, felt nothing but relief with the wedding. "I told him she wasn't a virgin anymore. And that if he wanted her even so, he could try. They spent the night together. The next day, he came here to say that she would stay with him."

In Conceição do Lago Açu, 16-year-old girls are considered too old to get married, she told Carta Capital. Tânia's daughter lost her virginity when she was raped at the age of 12. Her first boyfriend ended up in jail. The second one hit her frequently. The third one was Catanheide. "We're very poor," , says Tânia. "This was a blessing. She had left school two years before she met him. Now she is studying again."

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Economy

Globalization Takes A New Turn, Away From China

China is still a manufacturing juggernaut and a growing power, but companies are looking for alternatives as Chinese labor costs continue to rise — as do geopolitical tensions with Beijing.

Photo of a woman working at a motorbike factory in China's Yunnan Province.

A woman works at a motorbike factory in China's Yunnan Province.

Pierre Haski

-Analysis-

PARIS — What were the representatives of dozens of large American companies doing in Vietnam these past few days?

A few days earlier, a delegation of foreign company chiefs currently based in China were being welcomed by business and government leaders in Mexico.

Then there was Foxconn, Apple's Taiwanese subcontractor, which signed an investment deal in the Indian state of Telangana, enabling the creation of 100,000 jobs. You read that right: 100,000 jobs.

What these three examples have in common is the frantic search for production sites — other than China!

For the past quarter century, China has borne the crown of the "world's factory," manufacturing the parts and products that the rest of the planet needs. Billionaire Jack Ma's Alibaba.com platform is based on this principle: if you are a manufacturer and you are looking for cheap ball bearings, or if you are looking for the cheapest way to produce socks or computers, Alibaba will provide you with a solution among the jungle of factories in Shenzhen or Dongguan, in southern China.

All of this is still not over, but the ebb is well underway.

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