The very name of Paraíba's capital symbolizes Brazil's eternal conflict between popular democracy and oligarchy. Governor João Pessoa was beloved for his crusade against Paraíba's entrenched oligarchy, even as he was an oligarch himself. His murder in 1930 prompted nationwide outrage and the city from which he governed was renamed in his honor. But the problems faced by João Pessoa today are even more fundamental than corruption. It is by far the least developed of Nordeste's port cities, with scarcely any industry to speak of, and exists almost entirely as a juncture in the export of luxury crops from the Paraíba countryside just as it was two centuries ago. Nonetheless, it is still subject to the same population pressures as every state capital, with the continual decrease of commodity prices pushing Paraíba's rural poor to the outskirts of João Pessoa in search of better work.