Many of these women lost their jobs when the ripples of the 1997 South East Asian crisis reached Brazil in 1998, where it took its own form -- largely massive capital flight and devastating inflation They became informal entrepreneurs in the favelas.
Block-busting and white flight were devastating its neighborhoods, while a corporate exodus was bleeding away the employment base.
Crowded Gazan towns close to the Israeli border have seen devastating clashes and the flight of tens of thousands of Palestinians as tanks and troops swept in to confront dug-in guerrillas.
What prevents cities whose economies have been devastated by the flight of human and monetary capital from returning to self-sufficiency?
Such airy cliches were neither welcome nor comforting at a time when Russia is devastated by the flight of foreign investors and turmoil in Russian markets has helped trigger a nose dive of the U.S. stock market.
Or worse, it will manage to take off but be unable to sustain itself in flight, with sometimes devastating consequences.
Devastating floods, inflation and mass capital flight have caused further hardship.
He said people in west Kent were "already devastated" by Gatwick flights over the area and, when asked about the effect of an estuary airport on residents in Medway and on the Isle of Grain, he said: "We want to share the burden".
But, like all former national carriers in Europe, it is facing devastating competition on its short-haul flights from low-cost airlines.
