Parque Villa-Lobos

This guide to Parque Villa-Lobos in São Paulo starts before 1989, when this stretch of the Pinheiros floodplain was known as the Lixão de Pinheiros, a dump where roughly eighty families sorted trash and rubble for a living. It follows the 1988 expropriation under governor Orestes Quércia, when the state paid two cousins in installments to clear the land for a park honoring composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, and the decades of court arguments that followed over interest owed on that payment. Notice the tree-lined paths as you walk them, laid over ground still disputed underfoot.