A New York Pizza Man’s Brazil Nightmare and the Mess It Exposed

Sei Shiroma is, frankly, a tiny player in Brazil’s $2 trillion economy. A 29-year-old immigrant from New York, he runs a pizzeria out of the ground floor of an old apartment building near downtown Rio de Janeiro. The place seats, when tightly packed, maybe 10 people.

But Shiroma’s saga as an aspiring entrepreneur, and the bitter attitude it instilled in him, underscore one of the great ills plaguing Latin America’s biggest economy. It can be excruciatingly painful to open -- and then operate -- a business in Brazil.