Rio's Lady Liberty

The rough district, far from the city's glitzy beachfront, boasts no cinemas, no museums, no Central Park -- in fact, no park at all.

But Vila Kennedy does have a Statue of Liberty.

Right there, on a stone pedestal overlooking the main highway, amid trash, traffic and sundry shops, stands a 9-foot-high replica of the iconic monument at the entrance to New York Harbor. And it does indeed look down on Brazil's tired, poor, huddled masses -- Vila Kennedy ranked 151st of 161 Rio communities on a United Nations development ranking.

The story of how the statue came to stand in one of Rio's humblest communities rivals the epic tale of the 225-ton original -- given to the United States by France to commemorate 100 years of American independence (though it was a decade late, dedicated in 1886).

According to Brazilian historian Milton Teixeira, Vila Kennedy's replica was commissioned in the early 1900s by Jose Maria da Silva Paranhos, an acclaimed Brazilian diplomat and historian. Why Paranhos, known as the Baron of Rio Branco, sought the statue remains unclear.

The baron passed it on to his cousin, a wealthy coffee merchant, and for years it resided in a home in the picturesque Rio neighborhood of Urca, Teixeira said. When the house was demolished in 1962, the statue went to Carlos Lacerda, then governor of Guanabara state and an admirer of President Kennedy, whose vision, charisma and Roman Catholic faith clicked with many Latin Americans.

At the time, authorities were clearing shantytowns known as favelas from downtown and moving residents to planned communities outside town. Some new developments, such as Vila Kennedy, were built with the help of U.S. funding from Kennedy's Alliance for Progress, an initiative meant to counter communist influence in the region.

Someone in the government, with no apparent irony, decided that the ideal spot for the "Mother of Exiles" would be with the Rio inhabitants banished from their former homes.

Authorities placed the statute in a central site known as Miami Plaza. Its soaring grace amid the drab surroundings, along with JFK's message of hope, stirred impoverished neighbors. Some even named their children after Kennedy and his family.

"My mom always spoke about him and what he did for the poor," said Kenedy da Silva, 43, a government worker whose sister was christened Jacqueline.