CLIMATE OF CHANGE LEAVES LOCALS COLD

At a famed Brazilian market, rats are out, tourists are in. Is that a good thing?

- ANA IONOVA

People shop at the Ver-o-Peso market in Belém, Brazil, on June 24.

At an Amazonian market by the river, the rats are mostly gone and the tourists are plentiful. Still, nobody can agree on whether that's a good thing.

The Ver-o-Peso market, one of the oldest in Belém, a Brazilian city on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, had certainly been in rough shape. To prepare for the tens of thousands of visitors arriving for the UN Climate Change Conference, it did some sprucing up.

The shabby wooden stands, rotting from humidity until a few months ago, were swapped for masonry with a faux-wood finish. The ageing tarpaulin tents shielding the market from the scorching Amazon sun were replaced with new, bright white versions. The market was repaved, rewired and refurbished to put a stop to flooding, pests and electrical mishaps.

The new glistening market has won over many vendors, grateful for the cleaner workplace and the thicker crowds of visitors.

"It looks spectacular, doesn't it?" said Roberto Pontes, 53, who was selling huge slabs of cured pirarucu, a giant prehistoric Amazonian fish with a pungent smell, from one of the new stalls. "Word is travelling that the Ver-o-Peso is changing."

But to others, the transformation has stripped the market of its authenticity and character, turning it into more of a faux tourist attraction than a genuine local gem.