网络赌博与沉重债务正在改变巴西。就在周日选举前夕，总统路易斯·伊纳西奥·卢拉·达席尔瓦禁止了网络赌博。但创纪录的债务正在颠覆数百万人的生活。
Online Gambling and Crushing Debt Are Transforming Brazil Just days before Sunday’s election, President President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva banned online gambling. But record-high debt is upending millions of lives.
巴西尼泰罗伊一家提供个人贷款的店面。该国面临普遍的家庭债务问题，这是由宽松信贷和在线博彩的快速增长共同推动的。
A storefront offering personal loans in Niteroi, Brazil. The country faces widespread household indebtedness, fueled by a combination of easy credit and the rapid growth of online betting. Credit...
几个月来，巴西总统竞选一直被对美国干预的担忧、卷入最高法院的丑闻以及数十亿美元银行腐败调查的政治影响所占据。
Supported by For months, Brazil’s presidential race has been consumed by concerns over U.S. meddling, a scandal embroiling the Supreme Court and the political fallout from a multibillion-dollar banking corruption investigation.
但对于许多巴西人来说，在准备周日投票时，最紧迫的问题是一个更贴近生活的危机：沉重的个人债务。
But for many Brazilians, the most pressing issue as they prepare to vote on Sunday is a crisis much closer to home: crushing personal debt.
根据零售团体全国商业联合会的数据，超过80%的巴西家庭负债，这是该国历史最高水平。
More than 80 percent of Brazilian families are in debt, a historic high for the country, according to the National Confederation of Commerce, a retail group.
巴西中央银行数据显示，巴西在40个主要经济体中拥有最高的基准利率，家庭将近30%的收入用于偿还债务。而在美国，这一比例约为11%。
Brazil also has the highest benchmark interest rate among 40 major economies, and families spend nearly 30 percent of their income on debt payments, according to Brazil’s central bank. In the United States, that figure is about 11 percent.
与大多数家庭债务由抵押贷款驱动的美国人不同，巴西的债务是由信用卡、工资贷款和零售店分期付款计划推动的，这些计划承载着世界上最高的利率之一。
Unlike in the United States, where most household debt is driven by mortgages, in Brazil debt is fueled by credit cards, payroll loans and retail store installment plans carrying among the highest interest rates in the world.
左翼总统路易斯·伊纳西奥·卢拉·达席尔瓦与右翼对手弗拉维奥·博索纳罗陷入胶着战，他在竞选的最后几天抓住了这一关切。周五，卢拉签署了一项禁止网络赌博的命令，该赌博形式于2018年合法化，并极大地加剧了家庭债务危机。
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist who is locked in a tight race against a right-wing opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, has seized on this concern in the closing days of the campaign. On Friday, Mr. Lula signed an order banning online gambling, which was legalized in 2018 and has supercharged the household debt crisis.