Silicon Valley's Favelados.

RIO DE JANEIRO WAS MY HOME FOR seven years before I moved here late last year, and frankly I had be dragged out of there. I loved everything about living in Brazil--the beaches, the cold chopinhos, the bonhomie, the bikinis--everything, that is, except for one thing: the gnawing contrast between its rich and poor.

Everywhere, the unavoidable images took your breath away: the begging paraplegic lying in front of a tall residential wall topped with glass shards, the street children besieging tanned, chic matrons strolling out of the palatial Copacabana Hotel, the more than 600 favelas, or slums, scattered throughout the city. And when I got on the airplane bound for Silicon Valley, the most prosperous place of our time, I was relieved to think my conscience was going to get a rest: things would surely be more fair here.

But the income gap was in my face again when I recently drove by Hewlett-Packard's posh Palo Alto headquarters and noticed some 1,000 janitors linked arm in arm parading down the street with signs that said "Share the Wealth," and "A Bedroom for Our Kids."

The protestors chanting "Justicia!" were almost all immigrants from Latin America. They represent a growing Silicon Valley underclass despite the booming New Economy led by such multibillion-dollar firms as Cisco Systems, Oracle and Sun Microsystems. They eventually won a US$2/hour increase over three years after taunting corporate bigwigs with signs reading: "HP: 2 minutes," referring to the time it would supposedly take the Palo Alto firm to earn enough revenue to pay the 5,500 janitors' wages.

The janitors, most of whom speak little English, typically earn less than $20,000 a year and can barely afford the cramped conditions of a single room, garage or mobile home in the Valley's worst neighborhoods. Many hi-tech companies have justified the low pay by arguing the problem was not their's since the immigrants, who clean offices, scrub the toilets, mop, vacuum and empty the trash, are hired through contractors.

Gemma Martinez, who used to clean Mexico City subway stations, receives an annual salary of $16,723 for cleaning the offices of software giant Oracle Corp. in Redwood City, which earned $1.3 billion in profits last year. This 34-year-old widow helps support the second-richest man in the world--Oracle founder Larry Ellison, whose $47 billion bankroll trails only that of Microsoft's Bill Gates.

Alicia Sosa, also a Mexican immigrant, is a janitor for Sun Microsystems. She, her husband and three children rent a small room in an East Palo Alto house for $500 a month, sharing a kitchen with 17 others. Their dream is simple: a two-bedroom apartment.

But that dream will likely never come true. The median home price in the Silicon Valley is now $577,820-$760,000 in pricey Palo Alto--a one-bedroom dump of an apartment easily rents for $1500. A journalist friend of mine whose income, combined with her husband's, is more than $100,000 a year. told me she recently became eligible for low-income housing. The Valley is slowly becoming an exclusive enclave for the elite as landlord after landlord succumbs to the greed of supply and demand.

Teachers, police officers, nurses, firefighters and, if you can believe this, some doctors, can no longer afford to live in the communities where they work. "In this rarefied Valley ... we are finding it more and more difficult to maintain ourselves," wrote Dr. Martin Bonk, president of the Stanford University medical staff in a recent local newsletter.

If Valley prices have professionals moving farther away, one can only imagine what will happen to the thousands of unskilled laborers from Latin America, who came here attracted by unprecedented prosperity and opportunities. In Santa Clara County, which includes the bulk of Silicon Valley and is now 24% Hispanic, the median income for a family of four is $54,900.

In Brazil, the economic elite has, for the most part, cared little about leveling the social playing field. As the widening income gap and decaying public services feed escalating crime, many have chosen to move to Miami, or build higher walls and hire, armed security guards.

Is this the future for the Valley that claims to be showing the world the way? If so, where will its elite move when policemen can no longer afford to live here and the poor are pressed to resort to crime?