www. brazzitco
ALVES, LIAN Z IS L SERVED
Year 11 — No: 163 — July 1999
ECONOMY: BEV WANTS TO MAKE THE WORLD TIPSY
POLITICS: CABINET CHANGES BUT IT'S ALL THE SAME
TRAVEL: POOR PIAUl IS RICH IN SITES AND SIGHTS
MUSIC: FAMiLIA ROITMAN PLAYING AGAINST CHARACTER
POLITICS:
SPECIAL: A LEFTIST THINKER AND THE SHRUNK PLANET
SHORT STORY: "A CON FISSAO II" BY CRISTOVAM BUARQUE
is now fully indexed and available for research and reference in electronic format on CDROM
in
nntc News\A'ckh, a full text general reference
database of the publications of the ethnic, minority and native press, dating back to 1990?
is one of more than 180 newspapers, magazines and journals reflecting the ethnic, minority and native Comprehenstve access to the ethnic end minority press in Americo— n•wspepers, magoztnes, journals English ond Spontsh Complete Directory Int ormation.
press (African American, Caribbean, Arab and Middle Eastern, Asian American, European/Eastern European, Hispanic, Jewish, Native American and Multi-Ethnic) that are now part of the Ethnic NewsWatch database.
SOFTWARE BY
For the first time Ethnic NewsWatch gives you fast and easy electronic access to more than 270,000 complete articles, editorials, columns, book, movie, and theater reviews (and more) reflecting the ethnic diversity of America. And, with Ethnic NewsWatch you have news, culture and history with the other sides of the stories.
Nov
Ethnic NewsWatch is available in academic, public, school and government
libraries nationwide.
Ask for
bmI
and Ethnic NewsWatch on CDROM at your public
library as well as local high school and college libraries.
For more inro atoon, contact SoftLine Information, Inc. 20 Summer Street, Stamford, CT 06901 • (800) 524-7922 • Fax (203) 975-8347
.1111MR/M..^ MI IL -MOM . MN •
... %Mk
MIR NM ._I 111,1166W. i, MOMS Anil 'WWI .
'VW - _
ATAN
Avor
- - ..... .."- AI/
MANTEL 'ARC
ZL \A\ TA EV 20
NUN% FOI TAO FACIL VIAJAR
TO
Anr $400
ida e volta
SAO PAULO OR RIO TO LOS ANGELES
$849
A6
Ida e volta
Area de Los Angeles: (310) 549-4333 E-mail: avamt@earthlin .net Atencdo: Quem quer viajar para o Brasi,??? Pare de procurar!!! Comprove: nos venderemos mais barato que qualquer outra agencia.
(Sujeito a restngOes Cu mudangas sem aviso previo)
so ligar, comprovar e vlajar
SF To BELO HORIZONTE
Mais uma vez o "jeitinho brasileiro" mostra que tudo é possivel
a partir de $555
2003457-40 NUNCA FOI TAO FACIL VIAJAR
•
(Sujeito a restrigoes ou mudangas sem aviso previo)
a partir de
lb soT#
(800) 471- 333
LOS ANGELES SAO PAULO OR RIO
a partir de
..o....1 NS" ...4r IMAM .411.1, 1.1.16 IIIIIIIIL.- .M• ILI.AIM MIL__ • . i• II II Mk" sr WIIIM111 a& WIWI .
VEL
TRA
Ida e volta
(Sujeito a restngoes Cu mudangas sem aviso previo)
EXCLUSIVO! GRATIS - LIGAPAO DE QUALQUER CIDADE BRASILEIRA
SF TO RIO OR SAO PAULO a partir de $
a partir de
$490 ida e volta
(Sujeito a restrigoes Cu mudangas sem aviso prevro)
ATLANTA TO RIO OR SAO PAULO a partir de
$485 ida e volta
(Sujeito a restrigOes ou mudangas sem aviso previo)
BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
ESTAMOS CERTOS QUE APOS OCES VIAJAREM COM 0 JEITINHO B ILEIRO SEREROS SEMPRE A SUA AGENCIA NUMERI 1. ASSENTOS LIMITADOS. SUJEITO A RESTRIcOES
411). OVUM 1r 11. 11/1/01:-.11& I II Oh 1N I 11110.0, 'MIMS
TRAVEL
550 Ida e volta
(Sujeito a restngOes Cu mudangas sem aviso previo)
NYC TO RIO OR SAO PAULO a partir de
$445 Ida e volta
(Sujeito a resingOes Cu mudangas sem aviso previo)
MIAMI TO RIO OR SAO PAULO a pair
$440 Ida e volta
de
(Sujeito a restngoes Cu mudangas sem aviso previo)
00-817-471-6333 LAX TO BE LO HORIZONTE OR SALVADOR
IPA b
..-
,
..1.1 la .' .... .I.M. .-gt_II %AL •*I t AIM 11111111111111. ._l a =kw., II W11.4101 /I MI • MIMI .
AFL ...IIIIIII 1.16116 MAR 111,- .111• MI. JINSIR
Mi• /MO&
=maw. ir lemlkiliii III .....,0%.• ..........
luallIAN
souAlsr P,
OilLIAN WO ...1.0 la IAN. ...411011 -
TO
LOS ANGELES RIO OR SAO PAULO
a park de $390
Ida (one way)
(Sujeito a restrigoes ou mudangas sem aviso previo)
_SAN DIEGO TO SAO PAULO OR RIO a partir de
$565 Ida e volta
(Sujeito a restngifies Cu mudangas sem avrso previo)
3
Ik•C‘NO
Long Beach
Brazilian Street
arn al Copynght ©1996-99
Sun. Sept. neon -Elpsx Stage Shows 2 pm: Parade with Float
& Brazilian Independence Day Celebration
19 Downtown Long Beach Promendade The Largest All-Brazilian Event on the West Coast!
Invited Gioupi:
SambaLa Samba School Super Sonic Samba School Fore) for All and more... Swing Brazil Lula Almeida
Parade in your very own "www.tupi-guaram.com" Indian Costume! •;Ala de Indio do Internet! Ca1505 3nda AA
With lots of Beautiful exotic Samba Dancers!!!
we'" malfc6 costuo,!,arade 0 t0
8.
uieY
samba Schools.
This year, join us for our theme:
"Road to Rio!"odu'v1 oo, eo
Brazilian Food Booths!
year
o 10 "kEttlfor
Booth Space Still Available!
Attention International Students!
Reach your language goals with Kaplan's English for TOEFL and University Preparation! • • • •
Listening Speaking Reading Writing
• Pronunciation • Computer TOE FL Prep • University Admissions • Multi-media English Software
Call today. Classes start monthly!
admission is...
FREE!! tel:
(562)
Am ph V eater) Og
438-3669
preseraedbYtheitow.iz.tior, SambaLa Samba School & Samba Collection
1-800-527-8378 www.studyusa.kaplan.com •AOL keyword: kaplan Kaplan Is authorized under federal law to enroll non-immigrant alien students. *TOEFL is a registered trademark of the Educational Testing Service
www.carnaval.org quern quiser passar o Reveillon no Brasil precisa se apressar... As passagens
Mao espere o fim thegar...
já estao quase acabando! For isso ligue hoje mesmo para a ATW TRAVEL e garanta a sua reserva. Afinat, perder esta oporturddade .seria mesmo o firn!
ss, Sts:N
. _ A ATW Travel sabe que sua vragem nao term apes o pouso do aviao. Por isso voce pode contar corn nossa equipe tambern
em terra firme!
Translados, conexOes, hospedagem,
mais... Nossa agencia de Sao Paulo esta disponivel de 9 da manha as 7 da noite para acompanhamento de menores e muito
Airw ILA% SCMUF 0, .11
t.t3
Los Angeles 800-529-2990 - San Diego 800-643-3910 - Sao Paulo 011-258-5901 4
BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
How many people in Bfazil have to survive on less than $150 a month for a family of five and eat less than 1,100 calories a day? The statistics here are not very helpful. Some experts say that there are about 12 million Brazilians living in extreme poverty and going hungry while others maintain that this number could reach as much as 40 million or almost one quarter of the 165,000 souls population. While ominous and urgent, decade after decade the matter has been pushed to the backburner in favor of more rewarding and achievable goals
8
like building roads or erecting hydroelectric power plants. Even the sitting President, a left-leaning sociologist, who won the election on promises of shrinking the gap between the too rich and the extremely poor, has reneged on his pledge. Leftist politicians have criticized the immobility of the governmer t but were not able to advance any of the' r own ideas. That's why Brazilians have been As you might know, Brazzil is a very small operation: one person and some vol= unteers who help as and when they can. The magazine is coming out a little more than a month late and I'm sorry for that. I don't see me catching up soon, but rest assured that the content is fresh and you will get all the issues you've paid for. Thanks and all the best. R.M.
33
9
18 Politics A new cabinet with all the old faces
20 Books Skidmore's take on 500 years of Brazil
22 Pets Fila, a Brazilian who gets all the respect
26 Short Story "A Confissio II" by Cristovam Buarque
Travel Prehistory and sea breezes in Piaui
Passage Francisco Julia° dies in Mexico exile
Cover ACM, this man wants to be the next president
watching with a mix of amazement and disbelief that the most powerful politician in the land today, Baiano senator Antonio Carlos Magalhaes, is taking the lead on pushing for a measure to eradicate misery in 10 years. ACM, known by many as Heartless Tony, has always sided with the power even when it meant the dictator generals who led the country for 20 years. It's doubtful that anyone will able to steal from Magalhaes the title ofBrazzil's Man of the Year. He is our cover story's subject. R.M.
CONTENTS
Economy Brazilian beer goes global
11
http://www.brazzil.com
Cover by Aylan Mello
DEPARTMENTS 6 Rapidinhas 16 Letters 49 The Cultural Pulse 51 Classifieds 52 That's Brazilian
35 Impressions Rio, that giant, noisy open market
39 Music Hello Alves, a daring jazzman
43 Music Familia Roitman rejuvenating samba
54 Special A leftist thinker and the future that's here
Send mail to: P.O. Box 50536 - Los Angeles, CA 90050-0536 Ads/Editorial: (323) 255-8062 - Subscrip.: (323) 255-4953 Fax: (323) 257-3487 - Brazzil on line: http://www.brazzil.com E-mail: brazzil@brazzil.com
TIME TO RENEW? Sorry, we don't send reminders. Look at the label to know when your subscription ends.
Publisher and Editor: Rodney Mello / Commercial Director: Leda Bittencourt Entertainment Editors: Sam & Harriet Robbins / Book Review: Bondo Wyszpolski / Music Editor: Bruce Gilman Brazil Bureau Chief: Marta Alvim - E-mail: mItdalvim@yahoo.com - Tel.: (021) 539-9214 - Fax: (021) 581-0198 BRAZZIL (ISSN 1091-868X) is published monthly by Brazzil - 2039 N. Ave. 52, Los Angeles, CA, 90042-1024. Periodicals Postage rate paid at Los Angeles, CA. Single copy sold for $2. One year subscription for 12 issues is $3 (three dollars) in the U.S., $15 in Canada and Mexico, and $18 in all other countries. No back issues sold. Allow 5 to 7 weeks to receive your first issue. You may quote from or reprint any of the contents with proper copyright credit. Editorial submissions are welcome. Include a SASE (self addressed and stamped envelope) if you want your material DLibrary of Congress ISSN: 1524-4997 mailed back. Brazzil assumes no responsibility for any claims made by its advertisers. ThI POST MASTER: Send address changes to BRAZZIL - P.O. Box 5 536 - Los Angeles, CA - 90050-0536 BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
5
000ingiqunr
NI is lull is it 1_, ar eting as ion
Scandals No More Seven editions in three years of existence have confirmed the Sao Paulo Morumbi Fashion as the most important display for fashion in Brazil. The latest exhibition held in the Pinacotheque of the Ibirapu era Park from July 4 to July 7 to show the 2000 Spring-Summer collections from the main national labels counted on British supermodel Kate Moss, whose girlnext-door looks and humility made her the toast ofthe party. But this reinforcement wasn't needed. White was the color of choice and inspiration was sought in the romanticism and childhood of the '80s. Dresses were of all lengths. When color was needed the favorites were yellow and orange. There were even sunglasses with yellow lenses. Fashion writers were curious to see what Alexandre Herchcovitch—one of the most respected fashion designers—had to show. They were not disappointed with his complex style and use of transparencies and whites mixed with orange tones. Herchcovitch, who used to be an enfant terrible creating among other eccentricities the pants that let pubic hair show, was back though much better behaved. He seems to have adhered to haute couture. M. Officer went for the shocking effect and the show-it-as-it-is look by eliminating the dressing room and making its models change clothes on stage, among the hangers that are known as araras (macaws) in the fashion world, making the act of denuding part of the show. The revealing spectacle—with futuristic wardrobe for the models—was a joint effort by stylist Carlos Miele and iconoclast pop artist Nelson Leirner, whose work is rep-
resenting Brazil in the Venice Biennial, one of the world's most important art expos. Inspired by erotic British photographer David Hamilton and his nymphets, Ellus present a collection it called "sexy innocence" with lots of worn jeans, white shirts and T-shirts. It was Ellus who hired Kate Moss to model with exclusivity for the company. But Brazilian Renata Maciel shone as brightly as the British model. The fashion industry in Brazil has come of age. There are 22 companies generating $300 million in businesses a year while creating 1.4 million jobs. Many
Brazilian models and designers are also getting international attention, among them designer Ocimar Versolatto who has made a name for himself in Paris. Beverly Hill's Giorgio has signed a $500,000 exclusive contract with Brazilian Fause Haten to sell his clothes in the U.S. GiseleStindchen and Isabeli Fontana are two of the best-known models overseas. Fontana was chosen by Vogue as a promise for the new century.
6
Soap Opera Washing machines were still a novelty and most Brazilians were happy—or didn't know better—with the traditional funny-smelling bar soaps used to wash their clothes when Unilever—an Anglo-Dutch conglomerate—introduced OMO to the country. That was in 1957. Brought from England, clothes detergent OMO was an abbreviation for Old Mother Owl and the packaging
itself contained a drawing of such a bird. Since then OMO has become the hands-down favorite laundry detergent in the country representing half ofthe 400,000 tons oflaundry soap produced annually in Brazil. More than that, Gessy Lever, the Brazilian subsidiary of Unilever, dominates 80% of the laundry detergent market with names like Ala, Minerva, Campeiro, Brilhante, and naturally, OMO. Procter and Gamble comes in second with 12%, selling Bold, Pop, and Ace. The rest of the market is shared by Arisco (3.5%), Sanbra (2.2%) and all the others (3.7%). The overwhelming OMO leadership has endured some competition in the past, but most of the products simply disappeared while others only were able to get some modest space on the supermarket shelves. Intent on changing this equation Procter and Gamble is gambling heavily that it can compete with Unilever in Brazil and in the neighborhood. (Unilever has over 500 subsidiaries in 90 countries and is one of Europe's largest multinationals selling more than Sony, Nestle, Coca-Cola and also outselling its main competitor American Procter & Gamble.) To be able to do this the Yankee company has launched Ariel simultaneously in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. Arid l is already the soap leader in all of Latin America with 35% of the sales in the area. This offensive has renewed Gessy Lever's determination to remain the top-seller in Brazil and the
company is increasing its already significant marketing expenses to guarantee that this happens. Procter & Gamble says it will be spending
$120 million dollars in marketing to guarantee the success of its product. Five million free samples of the product have already been distributed. Will the American company succeed? They
seem to be ready to spend on marketing at least as much as the competition. They have an annual budget of $30 million for this purpose. In an interview with economy magazine Exame, Antonio Kriegel, Gessy Lever's detergents director, talked about the mood and intentions of his company: "We intend to make them have the
biggest losses in the history of Cincinnati," in a reference to the city in which Procter and Gamble is headquartered. Things don't bode well for 150-year-old P&G. Their ten-year presence in Brazil has been a
succession of gross mistakes. It has changed chairmen four times in one decade. They were not able to buy Anakol, which produces Kolynos, the toothpaste leader in Brazil and on the other hand bought Phebo, an upscale but obsolete toilet soap. They also tried unsuccessfully to sell a diaper that was too sophisticated and expensive for the Brazilian market.
BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
Novo DDD estreia corn problemas manx
, 'Web°, tenditiao p,ega ELA 4tdol.
mptent • rate Mass
• mei. mt., 34.
SP
Doadora de Covas fi cam melhores obrw Pa0.
Prop aboi maim ri mono0
Ca—mmunicStions
up... •
1p...hip
For five months the public was subject to a publicity barrage touting the virtues of the privatization of telephone services in Brazil. Famous and pretty faces, catchy jingles and TV spots talked about a new era of free competition and better communications. But when it came time for a first taste of the promised goods it was chaos. July 3, a Saturday, the day the new long distance service started, only 6.2 million calls from a total of 29.7 million were completed. During the following days the situation got even worse. On Wednesday, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso intervened, giving an ultimatum of three more days for the problems to be fixed, first making sure that this was the time the companies themselves thought was necessary to normalize the situation. Normalize seems like such a strong word. The telephone blackout brought to light a little known fact of the Brazilian communications world: not completing a connection half the time you try is considered normal. For a whole week, people trying to call long distance became frustrated from having to listen to busy signals, recordings announcing the impossibility of completing the call, and sometimes paying to talk to a person in another city or even another state than whom he intended. The government blamed the new concessionaires while they pointed the finger at each other and at the government. The private telephone companies knew how risky the switch would be. Not only was there not enough time for all the needed tests, but the firms were also having trouble getting knowledgeable technicians to do the work. Embratel, the state long-distance carrier, which continues to offer its services together with the private firms, is accused of rushing things. Despite holding the monopoly of all long distance, Embratel had to distribute 70 percent of this market to the regional telephone companies and they seemed eager to get out of that deal. The government company also wants to have a lead on its service before January 2002 when competition will be wide open with regional firms being allowed to handle long distance calls to areas outside their concession territory. For several months residents of Sao Paulo, where almost half of the country's telephone calls are made, have been fuming at Telefonica, the Spanish conglomerate that took over the system in 1998. The new company was quick in adding two million lines to the five million already in operation in the city to supply a population hungry for telephones, but the addition was accompanied by several problems including constant busy signals, crossed lines and lines that went dead for days. Their sloppiness resulted in fines. And Telefonica—together with the Rio concessionaire—had to fork out $1.7 million. The federal government is again threatening million dollar fines that might reach as high as $23 million against those responsible for the most recent snafu. These companies are also being pressured through the state and local Procons, consumer protection agencies, to pay damages to their customers who lost business or had other losses due to their inability to make calls soon after the switch. Embratel has been mentioned as the biggest sinner of them all. Despite all the problems of privatization it's believed that it will democratize telephone in Brazil. It's expected that by the year 2002 there will 33 lines for every 100 Brazilians instead of the 13 that are available today. B RAZZ I L - JULY 1999
ation
Poverty Chic How much would it cost to eradicate poverty in Brazil? The government was curious to know and a little more than a year ago ordered a St dy from a consortium of private companies and universities led by the firms Bozz, Allen & Hamilton, Bechtel International, a d ABN Amro Bank. The preliminary findings are coming in d according to the surveyors the price tag to is equivalent to the Brazilian GDP: $800 wipe out pove out in eight years. Experts from the Budget and billion, to be Management iinistry have already added, however, that the Brazilian socia debt is inestimable. The study also proposes the development ( a cost of $165 billion) of 350 regional projects. But the federa government would cover only 18% of their costs, with the est coming from states, municipalities and the private sector. According o the Cardoso administration's Pluriannual Plan, which covers t e 2000-2003 period and is being presented in August to Con ress, the government intends to spend 12.5% of the GDP in the social area, what would represent roughly $100 billion. The go ernment has established some goals for the next few years incl ding the end of illiteracy by 2003. While on average childr n in Brazil stay five years in school this should increase to eig t years by the year 2007. At the sam time Brazil has been in the middle of a debate around an ide by the president of the Senate Antonio Carlos Magalhaes to ireate a tax to fight poverty. President Fernando Henrique Card so himselfjoined the battle saying that the idea is impractical nd that he had presented a similar project to tax large fortunes 0 years ago when he was a senator. To the scorn voiced by L iz Inacio Lula da Silva, PT's (Partido dos Trabalhadores Workers' Party) honor president, who called the senator's pr • posal a "marketing ploy", Magalhaes responded: "He lives off p oples' misery and poverty. I want to eradicate all this." A ccordin to the Prodasen (Centro de Informatica e Processament de Dados do Senado Federal—Information and Data Processi g Center of the Federal Senate) there are at least 12 bills dealin with the subject being studied at the moment, some for as lo g as 10 years. Down But Up In anothe front of poverty, changes in the methodology have downgraded Brazil's position in the used by the I world's rank f development despite the fact that all the economic and so ial indexes have improved since 1995 when the previous repo was conducted. The just-released index, which classifies cou tries according to their GDP, education and health, remo ed Brazil from the company of the developed nations where it was placed last year. Brazil now belongs to the second of the hree groups in which the 174 countries analyzed are divided. B sed on data from 1997, the country comes in 79th place with a 0.739 HDI (Human Development Index), placing it between Sa di Arabia and Peru. The country is now considered to have medium human development. Brazil occupied 62nd place in the previous report when it had a 0.809 HDI. From 199 to 1997 the per capita income adjusted for ability to buy in Braz I has increased from $5,928 to $6,480. During the same period I fe expectation grew from 66.6 years to 66.9 and the literacy r e increased from 83.3% to 84%. And, su rise, dispelling the notion that the Brazilian private secto i does not invest in social programs, a new study conducted b Ceats/USP (Centro de Estudos em Administracao do erceiro Setor, da Universidade de sao Paulo— Center of Stu ies in Administration from the Third Sector of University o Sao Paulo) shows that 56% of the companies doing busin ss in the country have social and community programs. T e work, however, shows also there is plenty of room for mo e to be done since 43% of the firms confessed to doing not ing in the social area. While 61% of the multinationals invest in social work, and 56% of the private domestic companies to the same, only 42% of the public concerns reserved any money for social efforts. Children's' issues are the favorite area in which these resources are used. The Ceats/USP study reveals that 40.29% of all the projects deal with education. In second place comes health, consuming 26.01% of the resources. 7
conomy
Super Suds
AmBev Earnings: $5.73 billion Actives: $4.5 billion Employees: 17 mil Factories: 50 Production in liters: 8.9 billion
8
They don't make deals like that, not in Brazil anyway. The largest beer maker in the country gobbled up the second place creating in the process the third largest beer company in the world in a $4.5 billion deal, the biggest ever in the country. Together they will have 71.6% of the Brazilian beer market, which has provoked shouts of "monopoly" from the public, but mainly from the smaller competitors that have names like Schincariol and Kaiser. Welcome to globalization Brazilian style. Due to the passion these beers arouse in consumers, the recent announcement that Brahma and Antarctica would share the same board of directors under the name Ambev (American Beverages) led some to compare the acquisition to their favorite soccer team being bought by its main adversary. Both companies are centenary institutions. While Companhia Antarctica Paulista was founded in 1885, by a group of friends from Sdo Paulo, Companhia Cervejaria Brahma was created three years later in Rio by Swiss Joseph Villiger. Brahma employs 9,700 people, produces 4.3 billion liters of beer yearly, has 28 factories and had $42.2 million of profit in the first quarter of 1999. On the other hand, Antarctica has 6,800 workers, makes 2.1 billion liters of beer a year, has 22 factories and had a profit of $9.95 million in the first quarter. Brahma is already the world's 8th largest beer maker and Antarctica the 15th. Combined they will lose in size only to American Anheuser-Bush and Holland's Heineken. For decades, Brazilians willing to drink a beer had to answer the question: "Antarctica or Brahma?" More recently the choices increased, but both continued to be overwhelmingly the favorites. Brahma and Antarctica have been engaged in an ad war since the beginning of the century. That fight got louder in the '50s and nastier in recent years. Many celebrities were used to sing the virtues of both sides. When Brahma launched it Malzbier in 1914 the beverage was presented as "especially recommended to nursing moms." Antarctica started to sell its Guarana soft drink in 1921, something that was copied by Brahma six years later. This decade the dispute between Washington Olivetto's W/ Brasil ad agency, which had the Antarctica account, and Eduardo Fischer's Fischer, Justus, on the Brahma side made school. The war was never so heated as during the 1994 soccer World Cup in the U.S. when the stadiums were invaded by fans of both beers. Brahma was presented as "Number 1" while Antarctica was "The National Preference." Another rivalry had to do with Carnaval. Brahma has been sponsoring the Carnaval in Rio while Antarctica chose the Salvador (state of Bahia) one. Thinking Global Curiously, the idea to merge the companies came from a man who drinks only mineral water, abstaining completely from beer or soft drink. He is 59-year-old Jorge Paulo Lemann, the chairman of Brahma. Lemann was naturally looking overseas. The international vocation of the new company can be seen in the fact that it was born with three names to fit diverse markets. It will be called Companhia de Bebidas das Americas, in Brazil; Compailia de Bebidas de las Americas in Latin America and American Beverage Company in the United States and the rest of the world. Brahma had everything going for it. After introducing streamlined and modern concepts of World's Top Ten in 1998 management it had a 30% increase in profits in 1998 while Antarctica suffered a 20% decline. Production in millions Convincing Antarctica to accept the merger of hectoliters was not easy though. Many had tried unsuccessfully in the past, including American AnheuserAnheuser-Busch (US) 121.3 Busch whose best deal was to secure a partnerHeineken (Holland) 79.1 ship with the beer company—this arrangement AmBev (Brazil) 64.0 will end now—mainly due to what was seen as Miller (US) 52.9 arrogance by the Yankees. SAB (South Africa) 43.0 Brazilians are not big beer guzzlers. While Interbrew (Belgium) 36.8 Germans drink 140 liters of beer per capita a year, Carlsberg (Denmark) 33.7 and Americans consume 80 liters, Brazilians Grupo Modelo (Mexico) 30.0 survive with 50 liters. On another front Brahma and Kirin (Japan) 29.2 Foster's (Australia) 28.7
BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
NZ=
Antarctica are also soft drink producers, each one producing 1.2 millions liters of soda a year. Combined they represent 14.6% of the soft drink market, which is still no serious competition for Coca Cola (46.5%). Pepsi has miserly 4.8% share. The merger will not happen before the Cade (Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Economica—Administrative Counsel of Economic Defense) studies the case—it has 120 days to do this—but nobody believes there will be a veto, since President Cardoso has already hailed the merger and encouraged other similar deals. He also will be the one to sign the final authorization. Beer and chopp (as draft beer is called in Brazil) has inspired some of Brazil's greatest composers, who not only imbibed the potion as well as sang about it. While Paulista (from Sao Paulo) composer Adoniran Barbosa only drank Antarctica, some icons of bossa nova like Tom Jobim, Vinicius de Moraes, and Joao Gilberto were Brahma guys. Caetano Veloso and Chico Buarque de Hollanda even wrote a famous ditty in which they celebrate the Brazilian way of life and Brahma: Vai Levando Keep on going Caetano Veloso and Chico Buarque Mesmo corn toda fama Even with all the fame Corn toda Brahma With all the Brahma Corn toda cama With all the bed Corn toda lama With all the mud A gente vai levando We keep on going A gente vai levando We keep on going A gente vai levando essa We keep on taking this chama flame Mesmo corn todo emblema Todo problema Todo sistema Todo Ipanema A gente vai levando A gente vai levando A gente vai levando essa gema Mesmo corn nada feito Corn a sala escura Corn urn no no peito Corn a cara dura Mao tern mais jeito A gente nao tern cura Mesmo corn toda via Corn todo dia Corn todo ia Quando nao ia A gente vai levando A gente vai levando Vai levando Vai levando essa guia
Even with all the emblem All the problem All the system All Ipanema We keep on going We keep on going We keep on taking this gem Even with nothing done With the room dark With a knot in the chest With a straight face There is no way We have no cure Even with all the road With the whole day With all the going When not going We keep on going We keep on going Keep on taking Keep on taking this way
The merger has made some people recall with nostalgia a phrase attributed to Vicente Matheus, the late president of the Corinthians soccer club: "We would like to thank Antarctica for having sent us these little Brahmas." The same phrase wouldn't be funny at all today, just a portrait of a new reality. BFtAZZIL - JULY 1999
A Proud Subversive It was in Cuernavaca, Mexico, the same city that became famous in the beginning of the 20th century for being the center of Emiliano Zapata' s uprising for agrarian reform, where Brazilian leftist revolutionary and House Representative Francisco Julia° chose to live and ended up dying on July 10, 1999 from a heart attack at age 84 while in the kitchen preparing spaghetti—his fvorite dish—for a friend. Accused of subversion, the lawyer and leader of the Peasant Leagues— together with Pernambuco governor Miguel Arraes— was jailed, stripped of his political rights and forced into exile after the 1964 military coup. He used to defend agrarian reform forcefully arguing that it had to be done "by law or by force." Julia° went into exile to Mexico City and stayed there until 1979 when he was amnestied by the military regime. Back to Pernambuco he once again tried unsuccessfully to be elected a representative. His old friends from the left abandoned him and Juliao, disappointed, in 1987, once again headed to Mexico. The Pe sant Leagues originated in the little town of V it6ria d Santo Ana() in the interior of Pernambuco state in 1954. Peasant Jose Ortencio, who with 140 other families leased the Engenho Galildia farm, created with hi colleagues the SAPP (Sociedade Agricola de Plantad res e Pecuaristas de Pernambuco—Agricultural S ciety of Planters and Cattle Raisers of Pernambuco). Harassed and roughed up by the police they looked for help among their House Representatives. Francisco Juliao from the PSB (Partido Socialista Brasileiro—Brazilian Socialist Party) offered his support. He had been elected to the post of deputado federal (House Representative) first in 1950. The press started calling the new organization led by Julia° Peasant League since it looked like a similar movement from the '50s, which had that name. Their main demand in the beginning was merely that peasants got minimum wage and that women were paid the same as men. By 1962 the movement had spread to 13 states under the leadership of Julia°. The next year they creat d the Conferencia das Ligas Camponesas do Brasil nd had planned a national congress for 1964, but ljhen the military took over in April and the leagues belcame extinct. At the time, despite laws on the books assuring their rights to wages, peasants were "hired" through a method called "regime de cambao", in which the landowner acquired the worker for a low price in an auction similar to those used to sell black slaves in the past. The hired hand was then forced to work just for food during ten days. Julia° was writing his memories and kept on writing them until the day before his death. The first volume, which tells how the Peasant League started, is finished and should be published at the end of the year. He had moved to Cuernavaca three years ago where he lived with his Mexican wife Marta, whom he had met soon after going into exile. Both were divorced and had children from their previous marriages. He, six; she, ten. 9
mum Off Tune Tourism minister Rafael Greca, cried when he heard the country duo Chitaozinho & Xororo singing "500 Anos" (500 Years) on the phone. He had asked the successful singer-composers in March to write the official hymn for the celebration of the 500 years of the discovery of Brazil, which will be celebrated in the year 2000. And they were giving him a first taste of the completed work. Paulo Debetio and Paulinho Rezende wrote the lyrics for "500 Years." The song talks about the wanderings of a cowboy throughout the country's history starting with the arrival of Portuguese Pedro Alvares Cabral to the state of Bahia in 1500 up to the Independence of Brazil in 1822. The news about the moved minister brought plenty of attention to the tune, most of it, however, negative. Other composers complained about the way the choice was made without using a competition or a commission of notables to pick the winner. Rio Assemblyman Chico Alencar, who also teaches history and is one of the co-writers of the upcoming multivolume book A Redescoberta do Brasil (Brazil's Rediscovery), criticized what he called the "official and jingoistic" tone of the composition. Talking to Rio's daily 0 Globo, Tom Jobim's partner, Paulo Cesar Pinheiro, didn't think it was important to get an official song: "From Pixinguinha up to now we have excellent compositions that can be used for the date. I cite for example "Aquarela do Brasil" ("Brazil"), An Barroso's masterpiece. Anyway, a competition would have been the best way." Chitaozinho & Xororo credited the criticism to jealousy from composers who are not as popular as they are and to prejudice against the sertaneja genre of music that they do. "Everyone has his own space," they said. "If the minister invited us it was because he likes our work. This is our merit, something we conquered throughout our career." 500 Anos O meu pals ĂŠ uma arena gigantesca Onde eu bebo agua fresca Nas cacimbas do sertao Sou berranteiro andarilho, sou matreiro Sou peao, sou boiadeiro na poeira desse chao E la se vao 500 anos de galope Nao duvide que eu tope Contar tudo que eu ja vi No meu cavalo por esse Brasil afora Eu passeio pela hist6ria Do Oiapoque ao Chui Eu vi chegando caravelas do futuro La no meu Porto Seguro Quando o sol trazia luz Vi bandeirantes atras de ouro e diamante Nos lugares mais distantes Da terra de Santa Cruz Andei nos pampas Vi a Guerra dos Farrapos E por urn triz eu nao escapo No meu ligeiro alazao Vi Tiradentes, vi Antonio Conselheiro Lampiao, Indio guerreiro Padre Cicero Romao Eu vi Zumbi, nego arisco dos Palmares Feito uma oracao De urn cavaleiro, escutei urn grito forte De independencia ou morte A beira de urn riachao Eu sou o tempo Fui eu que mudou os ventos Mas jĂĄ sao outros 500 E eu you cantar noutra cancao
10
500 Years My country is a giant arena Where I drink fresh water In the backlands' cisterns I am a boisterous wanderer, I am cagey I am peon, I am cowboy in the soil's dust There we have 500 years of gallop Don't you doubt that I dare Telling all I have seen On my horse throughout Brazil I walk through history From Oiapoque to Chui I saw caravelles from the future arriving There in my Porto Seguro When the sun brought light I saw fortune soldiers looking for gold and diamond In faraway places Of the Holy Cross land I walked on the pampas I saw the Ragtag War And I barely escaped On my swift sorrel I saw Tiradentes, I saw Antonio Conselheiro Lampiao, warring Indian Father Cicero Romao I saw Zumbi, elusive black from Palmares As a prayer From a knight, I heard a mighty shout Of independence or death On the banks of a brook I am the time I am the one who changed the winds But this is another story And I will sing it in another song
BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
Or You dan Just Call Him God He has always sided with the powerful and the right. But now Antonio Carlos Magalhaes emptied the left by im of being the sole stealing their thunder and their defenders of the poor. He is willin • to eradicate misery in Brazil. And he mans it. ALESSANDRA DAL VI Twice this doctor was governor of Bahia, f representative (58, 62, 66). He was also mayor Communications minister, and has been the presi legislatures. At age 72, Antonio Carlos Peixoto de man in the Brazilian Republic, even more po Henrique Cardoso, according to many. His foes call him Toninho Malvadeza (Heartl BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
r three times he was a House f Salvador (capital of Bahia), ent of the senate in the last two agalhaes, is the most powerful erful than President Fernando ss Tony), for his admirers he is 11
God on earth. He makes new friends as easy as he makes enemies, and his friends today might easily be his foes tomorrow. ACM—the initials of Antonio Carlos Magalhaes—as he is often called, doesn't seem to care. He hits hard and is far from being a diplomat, always personally attacking and threatening those who dare cross him. And there is no day that goes by without him being mentioned in the media. All he does becomes news. He seems to thrive in polemics. President is the only title he does not have in his political curriculum, but this could change soon. The senator has not yet admitted that he is going to seek the presidency in the coming 2002 presidential election, but many in Brazil believe that he will and Baianos (those from his home state Bahia) are sure of that. The man who is received as a king when he visits Bahia back from Brasilia is already being hailed as the next Brazilian president. At the end of May, Magalhaes talked about his interest in becoming a presidential candidate: "Evidently I am not going to tell that I would not like to be a candidate. But I am very realistic and a pragmatist. I will only do this at the proper moment and if this is convenient." He seems to think that 2002 is way too far, but for others all his recent moves don't leave any doubt that he will be going for the grand prize. On a recent trip to Salvador—capital of Bahia— Magalhaes was enthusiastically received with bands, celebratory speeches, and chants of "Hei, hei, hei, ACM é nosso rei." (Hey, hey, hey, ACM is our king.) Together with governor Cesar Borges—both are from the PFL (Partido da Frente Liberal—Liberal Front Party)—he launched an educational program called Educar para Vencer (Educate to Win). The senator used the occasion to criticize Horacio Lafer Piva, the president of FIESP (Federacao das Inclustrias do Estado de Sao Paulo—SAo Paulo State Industry Federation), one of the few in Brazil who opposed ACM's just-announced proposal to eradicate poverty in the country. Relishing the adulation he rebuffed Piva by telling the crowd, "This is a kind of seal of approval since we have here a man who is not popular at all." He also guaranteed that his party will not stop backing the government "and for the additional reason that the government's popularity situation is not good." ACM's own popularity could not be better. His recent bill proposal to end abject poverty in Brazil after being initially ridiculed was backed and adopted by the right, the center, and the left, all afraid of being
buried under de dust raised by the cunning senator. The initial skepticism and criticism turned into praise after a twoweek strategic retirement Magalhaes took to put his ideas together. It took a little more than one hour in a speech to the senate for ACM to present his vision to the nation and turn around his detractors. (You can read ACM's entire speech, in Portuguese, in our site: http://www.brazzil.comicvriu199.htm) Filled with citations, demagoguery, and jabs at his foes, the speech was interrupted several times by applause. The Brasilia daily Correio Braziliense compared Magalhaes to the Apostle Paul, who from a persecutor of Christianity, according to the Bible, became its main proselytizer after his vision of God on his way to Damascus. It was typical ACM. The senator, who is in a fight against some of the ministers of the current administration, started the speech with the invocation: "0 Lord, make that my enemies become ridiculous." He was repeating the French writer, philosopher, and freethinking advocate Voltaire (16941778). Besides bringing up Voltaire, ACM also cited late popular rock songwriter Raul Seixas borrowing his verses "I have a lot of things to conquer. I can't just stay quiet here," to express his own sense of urgency. He even praised the "ironic, humane, and exemplary poetry" of composer Chico Buarque, an intellectual in the left and one of the main supporters of the leftist PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores— Workers' Party). Among the supporters he won after his address there was the leadership of the main parties of the opposition, PT and PDT (Partido Democratic° Trabalhista—Workers' Democratic Party). Centrists PMDB (Partido do Movimento Democratic° Brasileiro—Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement) and President Cardoso's party, the PSDB (Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira—Brazilian Social Democracy Party) also backed his project to eradicate misery. He almost got a unanimous vote of confidence. Thanks to all this backing, the conservative senator should be able to have his bill approved fast, quite differently from other similar projects dealing with poverty—including one by then senator Fernando Henrique Cardoso—that have dragged in the legislature for years or even more than a decade. Carlistas, as ACM's followers are sometimes referred to, naturally exulted. A special senate commission will be analyzing for three months ACM's proposal and dozens of others dealing with the fight against misery. Suddenly the subject became priority burying other pressing subjects that would have been discussed if it weren't for the senator's seizing of the legislative agenda. By Decree If Needed Similar to what Bill Clinton did in the US using Republican ideas as his own, ACM emptied the left by stealing their thunder and their claim of being the sole defenders of the poor. Suddenly, in a brusque shift, the senator was attacking Finance Minister, Pedro Malan, who has been an ACM's protégé, but dared to defy him, criticizing his fight against poverty fund and the idea to use tax increases and budgetary changes to raise the needed money. To Malan' s declaration that "we do not solve this kind of matters just by decree", ACM responded: "Mister Minister, we will do it by decree if needed. This has to be solved. It does not matter what you wish. By the way, to evaluate the BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
poverty situation I would ask my friend minister Malan whether, in five years of government, he received a poor man, just once, in his cabinet? I am sure he did not. And let me add this, how many went to your cabinet to talk about getting richer, forgotten about the obligation of reducing the poverty?" The First Lady Ruth Cardoso's project Programa Comunidade Solidaria (Solidary Community Program) was spared from his diatribe though. He mentioned her work as done "with seriousness and without politicking." In his proposal to amend the constitution creating a Fund for the Eradication of Poverty, ACM gave up his initial idea of taxing wage earners and small and medium businesses. Instead, resources for the fund will come from a "progressive social contribution" from companies making at least $500,000 a month with up to $100,000 being deductible from the income tax. "We have a GDP of $784 billion and a per capita income of $6,400, superior to the $6,300 world average, but our improvements in the social area have been insufficient to fight poverty," said the senator, citing statistics about the huge gap between the rich and the poor: "The poorest 20% enjoy only 2.5% of the wealth, while the richest 20% gobble up 63.4% of it." According to the senator, more than 40 million Brazilians are in a "miserableness situation that put us to shame and waters down the good results of the economic policy." The Next President ACM's goal, he says, is to eradicate poverty in Brazil in ten years promoting a transference of wealth that will narrow the huge gap between the haves and have-nots. The fund should collect from $3 to $4 billion a year. And he added, "May all be analyzed without prejudices. I don't insist on being the author of this proposal. I wish all parties contributed to it. I reaffirm that in no way did I have the intention of making this proposal a finished work." Magalhaes criticized the government's thesis that you can only fight poverty with economical growth, citing UN statistics that in 174 countries "the economic growth, by itself, did not improve life quality of people." To those who questioned his intentions he said, "I don't intend to be a presidential candidate, but to come back to the senate." After listening to the senator, Roberto Uzeda, the leader of Rio's Federation of Favelas (Shantytowns) Associations, declared enthusiastically: "If this bill passes, ACM will be the next President." The left rejoiced when Magalhaes praised the educational program Bolsa-Escola from Brasilia's former governor Cristovam Buarque and the Campaign Against Hunger created by late sociologist Herbert de Souza, better known as Betinho. Marina Silva, the PT leader in the senate, was euphoric and it was hers the promptly accepted proposal to create a mixed commission to put forward the project. "It was necessary for someone from the government basis to assume that the social policy of the government is timid." Another legislator from the PT, Jose Eduardo Dutra, also had praise for ACM and reminded the senators of the song "Metamorfose Ambulante" (Walking Metamorphosis) from Raul Seixas to explain how Magalhaes had become the leader of the fight against misery after participating in so many conservative governments. "Maybe his self-criticism," he said, "can be explained by the finding that it is better to be a walking BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
metamorphos s than to have that old preconceived opinion about everything." The only d ssonant voice in the senate after ACM's speech was at of Roberto Freire, president of the PPS (Partido opular Socialista—People's Socialist Party), Robe o Freire. "We do not eradicate poverty with compens tory policies. Your Excellency knows well the probl m since you have participated in all the governments at didn't solve the misery problem." The senat r's charisma was evident when he left the Senate a r the speech. Surrounded by a group from Rio that had come to Brasilia to try to get back the jobs they ost at the Fundacao Nacional de Sailde (Health Nati al Foundation) and that shouted, "Intercede for us." he answered: "I obtained assurances from Preside t Fernando Henrique that there will be a fast solutio for your case." His words were greeted with applaus and tears. For Jose enoino, the PT's House leader, the senator's pro osal reveals the incompetence of the Brazilian le and Magalhaes's genius. "We have always talke about the things he is saying now. There was no repercussion because he is much stronger with the edia. He recognizes that the left is right. ACM is the ompetent right." Now, I Am Two When M galhaes's favorite son and rising political star in th •House of Representatives died in April 1998 of a s dden heart attack, the senator was so visibly shoe ed that some analysts wondered if that did not me the end of his political career. There were insiste t rumors that he would step down from his post and bandon politics for good. ACM was in such a state f shock that a friend commented, "Before Antoni Carlos can recover to politics he needs to recover t life." The man depicted as a heartless politician w 11, seen crying in public and before the TV cameras aga n and again. At that t e, while waiting in line to take a last look at Luis duardo' s body; homemaker Edna Aranjo Sales told re oilers, "I am gonna pray for the senator to be health , if not, the state of Bahia ends. It was a huge loss fe•r Bahia. Luis Eduardo was our future president." i his statement from a modest citizen seems to stil represent the prevalent mood and faith of the 13aian population. Luis Ed ardo, 43, an apparently healthful man, was being n rtured to become the president, an ambition that the senator had transferred to the son. Ac13
.4M111 cording to the script—something that only death, as it happened, could change—the young Magalhaes should have been elected governor of Bahia in the October 1998 election by a portentous landslide as a preparation for the 2002 presidential election. Upon returning to Brasilia after his son's death, ACM declared, "I am feeling a little bigger because I am two: l am myself and I am part of him, because he would like for me to be here." To a friend who asked later why he did not want to dispute the Bahia governorship himself, ACM answered: "I don't want to. I am trying to find out what Luis Eduardo PM* would like for me to do." His recovery was also quick when his daughter died under tragic circumstances. In eight days he was back as his post as Communications Minister of the Jose Sarney's administration (1985-1990) . After reading the most news he could about his son's death, the old Magalhaes complained that many papers had written that Luis Eduardo followed his lead. "This is a mistake," the senator said. "I did not maneuver Luis Eduardo. He was the one who did it. He helped me to change my ideas. I, for example, used to be was a staunch defender of the state." ACM and Luis Eduardo had become complementary. Why the older one was a conservative, the younger was a IIEMP moderate liberal. Luis Eduardo was many things his father was not, including an excellent negotiator, a charming man capable of listening to the other side and to get a no or two along the way without seeing red. May God Incinerate Me ftakiOsg 117
ACM's power and self-assuredness are legendary. In 1982, a few days before the election, a helicopter accident took off the life of Cleriston de Andrade, the man ACM had handpicked to succeed him as governor of Bahia. They were old allies and good friends. Recovered from the blow in a few days, Magalhaes chose Joao Durval to take the place of the dead. "I elect whomever I want," he told at that time in an interview with Rio's daily Jornal do Brasil. These and other similar phrases are constantly replayed by friends and foes as a proof of power for the former and of prepotency by the latter. In that same interview ACM said that he governs with a whip in one hand and a moneybag in the other. Former Finance minister Ciro Gomes thus described Magalhaes in his book No Pais dos Conflitos (In the Country of Conflicts): "He draws mortal hatreds because he has a flaw, he is extremely authoritarian. He wants to squash criticism, he doesn't accept living with those who disagree
with him." ACM knows how to capture and audience. "I live in the intimacy of those who are the poorest," he says. "I don't frequent the homes of the rich. I swear we are going to fight. I swear that I will not fail. If I fail, I ask God to incinerate me in the eve. The moment of action has arrived. Don't ask me why. What I do not want is to put off this fight for tomorrow. Our crusade is this: to end, if possible, to diminish for sure this suffering imposed to our people, not for charity, but for obligation." And he adds: "Despite the poverty in which millions of Brazilians live, we have exceptional conditions to promote a great self-help work collective that, above any ideology or lesser interests, will take us to lasting changes." Many people, however, will never forget the senator's alignment with the military dictatorship, which lasted from 1964 to 1985, during most of the time they remained in power. He started his defense of the military making speeches in the House of Representatives in their favor. The opposition to them only started during the general Joao Baptista Figueiredo administration, which lasted from 1979 to 1985. After in 1984 backing Tancredo Neves for the presidency instead of Paulo Maluf, the man favored by the military, Magalhaes was called traitor by then Air Force Minister Dello Jardim de Mattos. His answer: "Traitor is whoever supports someone corrupt." This opposition, however, didn't prevent him from later forging political alliances with Maluf. During the Collor de Mello administration (19901992), after a brief period in which he became opposition, ACM maintained his support to the President even after he had fallen in disgrace and was impeached by congress. While his enemies use this episode to diminish him, Magalhaes presents it as proof that he is a faithful friend who does not abandon friends in need. "The best proof of dignity that I have given was to stay with Collor when I knew he was defeated," he says. The senator has been a similar argument today when people ask if he is going to abandon the government's ship. "Not now, with the falling popularity of the President," he explains. Worried with the insistent rumors that he bosses the President around, Magalhaes, who calls this an "unfair impression," announced recently that he was going to maintain his distance from Cardoso. To the criticism of President Cardoso who said that while presenting a project to end poverty in the nation was not able to solve the problem in his own Bahia when he was governor there, ACM retorted: "I did not reduce poverty in Bahia because I am not president." Short Fuse
With minister Malan
Magalhaes, who does not take a no for an answer, seems to get whatever he wants these days. He owns a media empire that include a TV station (TV Bahia) and the daily Correio da Bahia, which the senator started in January 1979. One of his most glaring victories was to recently get Ford to install its new factory in Bahia, something many other states were interested in. For that, he needed the help of the President who had to sign some executive measures BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
granting privileges to the American automaker. ACM has become famous for his verbal intemperance. Among those who were hit by his verbal machinegun was senator Teotenio Vilela Filho from the President's party. He was called incompetent. Against a group that opposed the end of the state oil monopoly he shouted, "Scum." A woman college professor who called him filho da puta (son of a whore), arguably the most offensive insult in Brazil, had to hear the senator repeatedly calling her filha dd puta. In 1996 he called brigadier general Ivan Frota "a scoundrel and incompetent." To senator Paul Simon, who dared criticizing him, he answered: "He is envious, slanderer and abnormal", adding defiantly: "Go to my cabinet later and I will break your face." Senator Ney Suasstma was called a "thief' by ACM while he screamed and tried to punch the legislator. There was in mid-June a sharp exchange of insults between ACM and the speaker of the House, Michel Temer. Since both are from parties that make the progovernment coalition, the spat forced the intervention of President Cardoso to calm the spirits down. The fight started when Magalhaes criticized Temer for moving in on the inquiry of the Judiciary that the Baiano senator had started. "Worrying about moral matters was never Michel Temer's strong point," he said. To which Temer replied, "When it comes to morality, I have Antonio Carlos beat 10 to nothing." •But he has also his kind side and love the adulation of the crowd. Wherever he goes in Bahia he is recognized by old and young and he sometimes just stops the car in the middle of a trip to put his popularity to the test. Often people in the streets gather around him asking for autographs. Antonio Carlos MagaLhaes Jimior, the senator's eldest son did not get the political bug as his brother. He is the one who manages the family business and he is also the alternate for his father in the senate. But there's already a third Magalhaes generation taking to the political stage. He is 18, a law student, and is called, what else, Ant8nio Carlos Magalhaes Neto. The grandson of ACM and nephew of Luis Eduardo made his political speech debut last year in August, during an appearance by President Cardoso in Bahia. He asked the President for social justice and resources so that "poorer youngsters can have access to education and work." Magalhaes Neto is part of the movement PFL's Young Power. His way of talking and his intonation are very similar to that of his dead uncle. Listening to the grandson talking in public ACM once again succumbed to the emotions and cried. Luis Eduardo Magalhaes Junior, 16, the son of the dead house representative also seems interested in following on the famous grandfather's footsteps. Legends and Jokes PT's national president Jose Dirceu accused ACM of acting like "a shadow of the Republic" and of considering himself "above the law and the Constitution, as if he wanted to restore the moderator power of the Brazilian emperors." Dirceu was commenting on the fights ACM picked up recently against Carlos Velloso, the president of the Supreme Court, and representative Michel Temer, president of the House, BRAZZIL -.JULY 1999
when in a 25-r note, he wrote: "It's evident the lack of moral authority of Mr. Antonio Carlos Magalhaes, who dictatorship and the Collor government, served the mili to criticize citi s who served or were appointed by those administrations. And he adde : "This is what the whole country is asking: how is it possib and who would be interested in so many crises created b Mr. AntOnio Carlos Magalhaes?" Dirceu question: "It's evident that, since Mr. answered his o ACM is not u table, he only wishes to destabilize the minty to reach is goal of controlling all the power." From Paris where he as vacationing Magalhaes dismissed the criticism as "a j alousy crisis." In June 199 , while flying from Cuba to Africa, Fidel Castro made at chnical stopover in Salvador to pay a threehour visit to se ator Antonio Carlos. The man who many leftists see as th right's great Satan prepared special Baiano meals for his est and they posed for happy-face pictures after the meetin -cum-eating. The Comandante's coziness enraged the le which was able to get a mere 20 minutes with Castro. On of those admitted to the meeting (Fidel did es to be taken here) told the Cuban leader: , not allow pic "You made a s rious booboo, Mr. President." This is a jo that friends of ACM like to tell. President Fernando Hen ique Cardoso, senator Ant8nio Carlos Magallaes, so cer hero Ronaldinho, and a hippie called Raul are all in a ittle jet crossing Brazil. Suddenly there is an explosion and hile the smoke starts to fill up the cabin, the pilot shows up nd announces: "Gentlemen, we have but a few minutes be ore the plane crashes. There are four parataking one. Farewell." And he jumps. chutes and I Ronaldinho f gets hold of one of he parachutes arguing, "The world ne ds great athletes and I am one of the best. Good bye." • he jumps. Fernando enrique grabs another parachute and makes his own little s eech, "I am the smartest politician in Brazil. Nobody else • t me was able to get reelected president. Brazil needs s art politicians. Farewell." And he jumps. s to Raul, the hippie, and tells him affectionThen, ACM ately: "My so • take the last parachute. It's yours. I don't need it. I have ived my life, I am a celebrated politician and will enter hist si as the man who ended poverty in Brazil." To what Raul replies, "Stay cool, senator. The smartest politician of B azil has just jumped with my backpack." There is a essage circulating in the Internet about what Many Brazili celebrities think. The message reads in part: "Cardoso thin she is the President. TV host Hebe thinks she is Carioca. Ti zinha simply doesn't think. Luciano Huck thinks he is W It Disney. Ronaldinho thinks he is number 1. • Caetano think he is God. ACM is sure about that." 15
Letters SHAME OR WORSE T e picture on page six o your Marc issue is really in poor taste. I hope that model isn't as young .as she looks. My copy of Brazzil was delivered to another apartment in my building by mistake. If someone else saw that photo, it could cause me serious embarrassment, or worse. I wish you'd be a bit more tasteful. Showing degrading pictures of women isn't an "enlightened .Brazilian attitude to sex", it's more to do with economics. Your magazine, and Brazil, is worth so much more[
B. M. San Francisco, California
I aiscovereci your magazine w en visiting the Website of the Brazilian Embassy Information Service. I am greatly looking forward to my first issue. [must say that browsing through your latest issue on the Net, really has encouraged me. It is wonderful to see just how wide the Brazil fan club stretches. I had no idea that samba schools of the magnitude described ever existed outside of Brazil. It is just great to see that my passion for Brazil is shared by so many others. I love everything Brazilian starting with the timeless bossa nova to samba to Carnaval to bromeliads to Rio in all its magnificence to the Pantanal and Fernando deNoronha. Why? Who knows, maybe it is just the spirit of Brazil and that mystical magical thing that is Brazil. Try explaining those feelings to most people, they don't understand.. I think that when you visit Brazil something captures your sprit and fills it with .a permanent celebration of life feeling, i.e., it is great to be alive and live life to the fullest! Good luck with the magazine and thank you to the Brazilian embassy for making those of us on the other side of the world aware of Brazzil. Enclosed please find my check for a year's subscription. I have already subscnbed on the Net.
Leigh Nieuwouldt Skeepoort, South Africa UNITING PEOPLES
My current subscription did not expire yet. However, I am enclosipg. a check in advance to renew my subscription to show how much I appreciate receiving y.our magazine. I look forward to its arrival every month. Brazzil is diversified and has something of interest for everyone who is interested in the history and development of South America's largest nation. The historical and biographical articles provide a great deal of information about the people and topics discussed. The information Brazzil provides does a lot to advance greater understanding of Brazil by people of different nations and cultures.
Donald J. Slazinski Ann Arbor, Michigan BRAZILIAN SOUL Wit t e increase, interest in eco ogically and culturally rich regions of the world, such as the Brazilian Amazon, I believe that readers are eager for thoughtful introduction to new peoples and ways of I iving. Thus lam You are invited to participate in this dialogue. Write to: Letters to the Publisher
P.O.Box 50536 Los Angeles, CA 90050-0536 or send E-mail to:
brazzil'a brazzil.com Please, include a phone number in the event vve need to reach you. Thanks! 16
submitting the enclosed essay, about my visit to a Caboclo family in the Brazilian Amazon, for your consideration. My writings on Brazil have won the Society forHumanistic Anthropology's Ethnographic Fiction Prize and been publisted in The Journal for Humanistic Anthropology. As a writer and cultural anthropologis I crafted this personal essay with a concern for emotional and cultural detail. My knowledge of Brazilian culture comes from the many months that I lived and studied in the Amazon as a Vassar undergraduate and a Watson Fellow and is further grounded by my studies at Yale where I recently completed my Masters of Philosophy in Cultural Anthropology. My writing experience includes master level workshops at New York City's 63rd Street YMCA and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference as well as publication in Out ofthe Cradle: An Uncom-
mon Reader. Simone Isadora Flynn New Haven, Connecticut SOFT SPOT
Toninho, San Francisco toninh o@earth lin k. net
home.earthlink.net/--toninho
TRAVEL COMPANION Ienjoye I Dpie aT ompson s escrip-
I on t ave a computer so can t e-mai you, but I want to let you know how very.much I love and am enjoying my .subscription to Brazzil. I very much appreciate the articles about the economic, political and social climate/changes happening. I confess, however, that Bruce Gilman's interviews with and articles about musicians are of special interest to me. I fell in love with Brazil and her music in the '50s when I saw Black Orpheus. I've never been the same. Thank you. Keep it going.
Gabrielle Martin-Neff San Diego, California MUSICAL KUDOS ongratu ations to Bruce or t e ergio Santos' article. Very Good!
Adalberto Carvalho Pinto (Beto) Brasilia, Brazil I just love Brazzil. Congratulations an keep up the great work! I have been sending the magazine to Brazil after I read it. A friend of mine has a language school in Paraguacu, state of Minas Gerais, and he loves to get them.
Maristela Danville, California PORTUGUESE CLASS
T es ort stories gy As e a le Bouc ar etDavis are just great for readers like myself who are not fluent in Portuguese. Each one of her sentences offers me a chance to practice and review Portuguese grammar and which rules I have forgotten many years ago.
William Hicks Beverly Hills, California
25¢ A COPY
MORE, PLEASE Dame a ompson s artic e"Rio W en It Drizzles" just blew me away. Thanks for some great reading. What I like reading most about in Brazzil and other books and mags on Brazil is Rio, and specifically,. Rio s many neighborhoods, Santa Teresa is a favorite subject and so is anything that has to do with the Centro area. (I'm curious about the oldest parts of Rio that are still standing, that haven t been torn down for condos and tunnels). I love to read about the "real" neighborhoods, where real people live, rather than the usual touristy stuff about the beaches, museums, churches hotels... Next time Daniella travels to Ai° may she write us another one! Abracos.
tive article "Rio When It Drizzles" very much. She is such a wonderful writer. I felt as though I had taken the trip with her.
Elizabeth Fairchild Littleton, Colorado WHERE'S HERMETO I'm interested in reading your magazine in general. Specifically, I'mlooking for hard to find Hermeto Pascoal and Milton Nascimento albums. I've had no luck with on-line CD catalogs. Can you help me?!!
David A. Justh New York, New York BRAZIL BOUND
T an you or giving apiece o Brazil to us far away Americanos. I travel to Rio several times a year and one day plan to move there! Your magazine helps keep in touch with issues that concern us all, [am very interestedin trade, American-based volunteer organizations, and the rain forest. Thanks for taking the time and show Brazil for what it is, a beautiful place with beautiful people all with so much potential.
Sonja Smithson Via Internet
FOR MORE LETTERS AND ENTIRE LETTER SEE: http://vvww.brazzil.com
Can't you find Brazzil at your Brazilian consulate? Don't ask us why, ask the consulate. For info: (323) 255-4953 E-Mail: brazzil@brazzil.com
Allow 5 to 7 weeks to receive your first issue. No back issues sold. No subscriptions by phone.
SORRY, NO CREDIT CARD FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS
Make check to Brazzil and mail it to:
BRAZZIL - P.O. Box 50536 - Los Angeles, CA 90050-0536
$3 D ill take 1 year (12 issues) 0 NEW 0 RENEWAL WHY NOT SEND A GIFT TO 10, 100, EVERYONE YOU KNOW,
NO COUPON NEEDED FOR SUBSCRIBING OR RENEWING NAME: COMPANY: ADDRESS: CITY, ST, ZIP: TEL.:
E-MAIL:
1 early rate for Canada & Mexico: $15. All other countries: $18 (surface mail). BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
ENTREGA OR TIS PELA NET* FREE SHIPMENT ON THE NET*
www.sendex.com.br
eillefascatia (714.1139-2000
OS MELHORES PRO DUTOS BRASILEIROS ENTREGUES EM SUA CASA OU EMPRESA SEM NENHUM CUSTO ADICIONAL
15122 1 Rosecrans, La Mirada, Ca 90638
3iIlLiIii PRODUTOS BRASILEIROS, CD'S, VIDEOS, REVISTAS, ETC. *Transporte gratude corn limitatoes Ex: Guarani. Restrictions apply
Sendex e um grupo de empresas brasileiras voltodas para atender brasileiros nos Estados Unidos. Nosso objetivo é oferecer servisos e produtos de alto qualidade, e corn presos atraentes. Para moiores informasoes, nos Estados Unidos, ligue agora
1(206)524-3391
LINKS ITASIIIILCS ** COME TRY TIEBEST BRAZILIAN BM** * OPEN 7DAYS A WEEK!! * Picanha, Alcatra, Costela, Espeto, Banana Frita, Palmito, Pao De Queijo, Feijoada, and more!
COMPRE, PELO CORREIO PEA CATALOGO GRATUITO
I_USCm[UAVI]AS [COES P 0. BOX 170286-N BROOKLYN, NY 11217
*LIYE 110 BRIM" SHOW SAMBA BEAUTIFUL GINS, BRAZILIAN BM 8 CARNIVAL
TEL: (718) 624-4000 http:www.lusobraz.com
" fRIDArS 630PM-9:30PAr SETE RAZOES PARA VOCE ADQUIRIR 0 CATALOGO # 1 DAS SETE NACOES!
"IL
INE A SUA VIDA!
• Aprend: como prosperar em todos os sentido de sua Vida. • Particip das Reunioes da Seicho-No-le em Por ugues. Realizadas mensalmente em Long Beach, CA.
1) Lista de: advogados, medicos, publicagees e todos on comercios & serviyos da nossa comunidade ao seu alcance 24 horas por dia, 7 dias por semana, 365 dias por ano, em 10 estados Norte Americanos. 2)Estatisticas oficiais, informacties comerciais, educacionais e socioculturais sobre Angola, Brasil, Verde,Guine•Bissau, Cabo Mocambique, Portugal e Sao Tome e Principe em podding.
11
Informe-se pelo Tel: (562) 498-3238 Sra. Euzebia Noleto
hI 3) Lista de universidades nos Estados Unidos corn Uepartamento de Lingua Portuguesa, contendo nome, endereco, telefone e fax.
EN PE
1132 NI
h- ,----,-
98-99
4) Representacifres drplomaticas e camaras de comercio intemacionais da nossa comunidade, em nossos respectivos Rises. 5) Informacees Oteis sobre coda um dos 52 estados e territorios Norte Americanos (em portugues e ingles), incluindo: capital, clima, populayao, turismo e etc... 6) Lista dos consulados e embaixadas da nossa comunidade corn suas respectivas jurisdiyees em todos os Estados Unidos. 7) Guia Internacional - war, com indice independente, destinado ao auxilio do intercambio comercial e social, entre a nossa comunidade e empresas estrangeiras.
OUR GUIDE 98-99 AINDA MELHOR! GUM PAPEL LUSTRADO MUITO MAIS INFORMACOES. VISITE-NOS NO www.our2uidecom PREcO ANUAL: Apena›3‹ $1.95 °feria de Lancamento! Procure nas maiores lojas da nossa comunidade. Par correio, adcione $3.00 para os custos de envio. Envie oedidos tiara: DiretOrio de Lingua Portuguesa P.O. BOX 5446, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33310-5446 - USA Tel: (305)374-0096/Fax: (800)300-1178, e-mail: nossoguia@ourguide.com BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
BRAZIL-USA International Service Carga Aerea ou Maritima e Mudancas para o BFtASIL Gratis como preparar sua mudanca Tel : ( 310 ) 542-9594 Fax: ( 310) 542-0479 E-Mail : aj@brazilusa.net Web-Site : www.brazilusa.net
Futile Shuffle Why insist on playing with fire, which is precisely what this government and its so-called allies are doing when so much time and effort are wasted on a nearly pointless cabinet shuffle, while vital matters at hand go unresolved? ADHEMAR ALTIERI Over the past few weeks, Brazilians witnessed a series of displays of the ostrichstyle politics that has this country in a firm grip. Politicians at all levels, in and out of government and of all shades and stripes, consistently focused on their own navels without so much as a glance at the overall picture, or consideration of the very real consequences that so much disregard for reality can bring. One of the better examples of this began to take shape in June, when talk of a cabinet shakeup intensified. As it became clear that changes were on the way, some in government described it as an opportunity to clear the decks and start fresh. The more blunt political observers, however, said ironically that a revised cabinet might just mark the actual start of Fernando Henrique Cardoso's second term in office. Keep in mind he was re-elected in November of 1998, so talk of a fresh start at this point is hardly a compliment. As the government played musical chairs with its cabinet members behind closed doors, the rumor mill picked up steam, and speculation about who would stay and who would be replaced dominated the news for a few days. Gradually, expectations grew as well. Over the years, and particularly these days, cabinets in Brazil have been the end result of backroom political commitments and power swaps. A Minister of Agriculture, Trade, Education or Culture in Brazil is not necessarily qualified for the position. But he or she will certainly rank high enough on the power structure of a particular group or party that "owns" a share of the government. For a while, there was a feeling some of this might change. Even with his popularity way down—about 13 percent approval in the latest polls—Fernando Henrique Cardoso is recognized by most Brazilians as a man of substance and quality. Was he about to introduce the cabinet of his dreams, qualified for today's demands and reasonably free of purely political considerations? Well.., let's not blame Brazilians for having dreams... When the dust settled, it was difficult to see the point of it all. The so-called shakeup turned out to be almost entirely devoid of any practical purpose. Six ministries received new incumbents, and five of the so-called newcomers had been in government previously, under different administrations. And once again, qualifications had little to do with the appointments. A couple of examples: the head of the Brazilian Exporters Association, Pratini de Moraes, is the new Agriculture Minister, and the president of the National Confederation of Industries, Senator Fernando Bezerra, now heads the newly-created and vaguely defined Regional Integration Ministry. The only real relevance here is political. Not one "new" minister can be held up as potentially instrumental in some sort ofgovemment re-launch. As shakeups go, this one was all smoke and mirrors. 18
There is one exception in this scenario, and it's been the exception at least since Fernando Henrique himself was Finance Minister in 1994, prior to becoming president: all key positions and ministries that have to do with the economy were unaffected by cabinet changes. Occupants remain where they were, or have been moved to more powerful positions. Finance Minister Pedro Malan and Central Bank President Arminio Fraga continue in place, both generally recognized for successfully steering the country through the economic turbulence in the first quarter. The results show that when it comes to the economy, the lesson seems to have been learned. Competence and relevance do count. Which begs the question, especially from an outside observer of things Brazilian: why is this not the case elsewhere in government? Why insist on playing with fire, which is precisely what this government and its so-called allies are doing when so much time and effort are wasted on a nearly pointless cabinet shuffle, while vital matters at hand go unresolved? One simple, but not necessarily acceptable explanation, is just the way things have been done in Brazil for eons, something President Cardoso has been far more hesitant to challenge than society had hoped, given his center-left political past. Instead, and this explains much of the disappointment that results in the President's current low approval rating, Cardoso has chosen to play the game, negotiating and accommodating a variety of interests in order to win support for his own initiatives. Too often though, what the President wants— or says he wants—ends up on the back seat so others can be appeased. It's a deadly combination for the President's image and credibility: more and more, he is being perceived as just another politician, not unlike those he criticized and opposed in the not too distant past. Another reason for the seriousness with which the economic side of government is handled, is the President's own, personal experience in getting to where he is now. Although a nationally-recognized political personality for years, his candidacy only became viable when he led the successful introduction of the Real stabilization plan while Finance Minister in 1994. The Real Plan's performance was also the basis of his successful re-election bid BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
and without solid displays of leadership, the presidency relast year. So the President is keenly aware of the political mains as lame as ever. What's worse, the inaction means Brazil importance of maintaining economic stability, and keeping may blow the incredible opportunity presented by its unexcompetent aides in charge of that part of government. pected success in dealing with the economic crisis that opened Finally, there's a compelling outside reason for the ecothe year. The window of opportunity remains open, and must be nomic side of Brazil's government to remain serious: the taken advantage of. The cost of ignoring it will be a serious country's debt and deficit numbers, a constant cause for consetback for Brazil, with unpredictable—but certainly negacern. They require frequent negotiations with international tive—consequences. bodies like the IMF and the World Bank. If things don't appear serious enough to them, investors and corporations around the Adhemar Alttert is a 21-year veteran with major news outlets world will not look to Brazil when deciding where to go with in Brazil, Canada and the United States. He holds a Master's their capital. Brazil would not get the flow of investments it Degree in Journegismfrom Northwestern University in Evanston, needs not only to stay afloat, but also to return to economic Illinois, and spent ten years with CBS News reporting from growth. No crystal ball is needed to understand that allowing Canada and Brqzil. internal politicking to enter the economic arena could spell Altieri is a member of the Virtual Intelligence Community, disaster for Brazil, with repercussions around the globe. formed by The Greenfield Consulting Group to identify future To recognize that it takes that level and amount of pressure trends for Latitt America. He is also the editor of InfoBrazil to keep a portion of the government serious and competent, is (http://www.infobrazil.com), an English-language weekly e-zine a sad indictment of the Brazilian political elite. The fact that with analysis aid opinions on Brazilian politics and economy. much of the pressure must come from institutions outside You can reach the author at editors(Onfobrazil.corn Brazil, makes the indictment an outright condemnation. This illustrates the lack of progress in Brazil's political ranks, where old habits truly die hard, and short-term, mostly personal or sector-specific interests continue to take precedence over broader objectives. A difficult task for any political observer in Brazil is identifying a handful of politi"Ship to Brazil with the company that really knows how." cians that stand out in the crowd for positive, performance-related reasons. BEST SERVICE + BEST RATES The majority are emulating the osAIR - IATA 01-1-9279-012 trich, heads firmly stuck in the ground, OCEAN - FMC 3853 committed to the status quo. What's more disturbing is the fact that pressure from within Brazil for positive change does exist. Society has progressed, in great measure beTO ANY AIRPORT IN BRAZIL cause of the changes introduced by the Real Plan, and is far more vocal and organized than it was as little as five years ago. Brazilians learned with the Real that more and better is indeed possible, and now expect more from ON T S X LIP DATIR SO FULL CONTAINER & DIRECT CONE li their elected representatives. Most WITHOUT TRANS LOADING IN MIAMI major news outlets have read the mood accurately, and now reflect the changes in society's expectations, with more and more space dedicated to identifying wrongdoers, and pointing out solutions. Brazilian politicians, on the other hand, by and large are out of step with the new reality, still believing they can carry on as they always have, disregarding the common good and using their elected or appointed positions for personal or indescribable gains. At times, it's almost as if politicians in Brazil speak an entirely different language—one that only they can understand. Useless cabinet shuffles become 12833 SIMMS AVE. - HAVVTHORNE, CA 90250 useful examples in this context, if only to illustrate what must stop happening. Real government action is a must, instead of facades designed to make it look as ifthere's some thought going into how things should be done, or who might be best for the job. Brazilians aren't buying it any more,
TOUCHDOWN FREIGHT INCI
iig BRAZIL CARGO SPECIALIST
AIR EXPORT
TEL: (310) 973,7112
FAX: (310) 973-7113
E-mailti@touchdownco.com
BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
19
Next April, Brazil will be commemorating the 500th anniversary of its discovery by Pedro Alvares Cabral. When the captain and his crew sailed from Lisbon earlier that year, Portugal had a total population of just one million. If only a single person could have peered half a millenium into the future, what would he or she have made ofthis vast land, first claimed in the name of King Manuel of Portugal, with its massive territory and its 165 million people? A lot has happened since 1500! Thomas E. Skidmore, who heads up the Center for Latin American Studies at Brown University, has written the most up-to-date and thoroughly considered one-volume study on Brazil now available. What makes the work particularly engaging is that Skidmore is able to relate his information clearly, in as straightforward a manner as possible, without succumbing to the urge to dazzle his readers with a flamboyant or idiosyncratic style. If there were lapses of comprehension on this reviewer's part, they had more to do with the graphs (called exhibits) than with the text itself. The opening chapters read like an adventure story, as well they should, with the seafaring Portuguese depicted as brave and confident, a fact evident enough from the many trading posts they established throughout the world. Not surprisingly, in Brazil there were skirmishes over borders with the Spanish and the French. Later, the Dutch muscled their way into Recife, and it was thirty years before they could be ousted. Skidmore explains how the colonizers and the native Indians impacted upon one another. To a large extent, and this is true even today, Brazilians clung to the coast like crabs, and did not have the inclination (or the self-righteousness) to make a clean sweep of the natives as pretty much happened in the U.S. On the other hand, the development of Brazil as an agrarian nation depended upon raw manpower, the cheaper the better, and so (to a larger degree than transpired in North America) slaves from Africa were brought in to work the fields. If this is a dark episode in the United States, it's a dark episode in Brazil as well, and Skidmore treats it at some length. By the latter 1700s, Brazil started to realize that, economically, it was already more important than Portugal. Spurred in part by our own declaration of independence from England, resentment and sporadic rebellion ensued. However, if the path to Brazilian independence was not entirely smooth, neither was it anywhere as violent as in Spanish America or the United States. This was due to one of those interesting turns of history, set into motion by Napoleon's invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 1807. At the time, Portugal was an important client of England, the real superpower of the day, and to safeguard the royal crown of Portugal the English suggested to Lisbon that it temporarily remove its court to Brazil. There's a bit ofhumor in this, with Brazil's first monarch, Emperor Pedro I, being a member of the ruling family of Portugal against which Brazil was rebelling. Perhaps the move of the entire court from Lisbon to Rio eased the eventual transition of the country and prevented it, unlike what happened elsewhere in Spanish America, from splintering into smaller countries. Brazil, as you know, occupies nearly half of all South America, and there are twenty-something different nations there. Which isn't to say 20
500 ears of Inquietude Possibly for good reason, the one president-general that Skidmore does not mention by name is Emilio Medici, who ruled, according to Lawrence Weschler between 1969 and 1974, "when torture was at its worst." BONDO VVYSZPOLSKI
Brazil: Five Centuries of Change, by Thomas E. Skidmore (Oxford University Press, 254 pp., $30)
BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
that Brazil doesn't have its own history of violence: the War of Cabanagem (1835-40) left about 30,000 dead in Belem, out of a population of maybe 150,000. Pedro I returned to Lisbon in 1831, leaving behind his five-year-old son. Coronated in 1840, Don Pedro II was to become the New World's Queen Victoria: he reigned for most of the latter 19th century. Although no one thinks of Brazil as a belligerent country, the Paraguayan War (which lasted from 1865 to the death in 1870 of Paraguay's dictator, Francisco Solano Lopez, was a sobering experience. Sometimes the little guys fight the hardest, but, bearing in mind NATO's campaign against Serbia, that's often because there's one strongman at the top who brings ruin upon his entire nation. Brazil became a Republic in 1889, but in the 1920s, with so much of Europe flirting dangerously with all kinds of alternative governments, the ongoing feasibility of a Republic was often questioned—a progression of events that led up to the Getfilio Vargas dictatorship in 1930. By the end of the decade, the United States was worried that the German influence over Brazil might prevail. When the Vargas regime eventually sided with the Allies in 1942, they were actually siding with the democracies against authoritarian governments. This was a curious irony that did not go unnoticed. Vargas stepped down after the war, but stepped back up a few years later, this time being democratically elected. His suicide in 1954 stunned the nation. His successor, Juscelino Kubitschek, is remembered for pushing to completion the new capital, Brasilia, but his government spent money like it was going out of style. President Janio Quadros resigned a little less than seven months in office, and was followed by Joao Goulart, who lasted less than three years. In Skidmore's overview, we see the unraveling. Then the military stepped in for 21 years. In all, there would be five general-presidents, beginning with General Castelo Branco. He was succeeded by Costa e Silva in 1967. Although the military was now firmly in power, it took about four years—until 1968—for them to establish a complete dictatorship. Armed resistance began in the late 1960s, and this included the kidnapping of Burke Elbrick, the U.S. Ambassador, which was depicted in Bruno Barreto's film, Que E Isso Companheiro? (Four Days in September). Possibly for good reason, the one president-general that Skidmore does not mention by name is Emilio Medici, who ruled, says Lawrence Weschler in his book, A Miracle, A Universe, "between 1969 and 1974, the period when torture was at its worst." General Ernesto Geisel assumed the presidency in 1974 (holding it until 1979), and seems to have paved the way for a gradual transition back to democracy from military rule. But it didn't happen overnight, and Brazil had to put up with a fifth general-president, Joao Batista Figueiredo. When democracy returned in 1985, it didn't get off to a very good start. The first civilian to be elected president, Tancredo Neves, died on the eve of taking office. Jose Sarney, who'd been Neves' running mate, was unable to curb the runaway inflation that was continuing to plague Brazil. The country's economic boom of the late '60s and early '70s had collapsed, and the pieces kept on scatterBRAZZIL - JULY 1999
ing. By the time Sarney left office, inflation had gone through the roof (in 1988 it was 1038%!). As he bringi his story closer to the present, Skidmore also surveys the changes in sociological, economic, and healthrelated conce s. He writes about race relations, and on the improved con itions for women. After the 1 fting of military rule, high culture did not quickly regain the momentum and flair it had shown in the 1950s and '60s. Skidmore quotes novelist Ignacio de Loyola de Brandao, w o proclaimed in 1988 that "There is a crisis of creativity a ifecting the older writers, who are producing nothing, and hich is blocking the young." Brazilians, it seemed, were more attracted to pop-psychology and selfhelp books th n to literature, the culmination of which—at least through he best seller lists of this country—is Paulo Coelho. Skidmore oes not devote much more than a passing glance to the a s (neither writer Jorge Amado nor composer Heitor Villa- obos merit an appearance), but he does mention a few recent authors and the novels they wrote which made a difference. There's Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro's Viva o Povo Brasileiro, for instance, att epic historical novel set in and around Bahia; Moacyr Scliar's Sonhos Tropicais (1992), "a fictional portrait of turn-ofrthe-century public health hero Oswaldo Cruz;" and Rubem FOnseca' s Agosto (1990), "based on the last days and suicide if Getalio Vargas in 1954." Of these three works, only baldo Ribeiro's has been translated into English, as An I vincible Memory. Back whe Robert Wyatt headed up Ballantine's Available Press, se eral of Scliar's novels and short story collections were e sy to find, and these included such delicious tales as The entaur in the Garden. Today, one of the few people reall pushing for Brazilian literature to be better known in thi country is translator Clifford E. Landers. Back to o r history of Brazil. When Fernando Collor de Melo was ele ted president in 1990, he was seen as a political messiah, m ch as Janio Quadros had been thirty years earlier. But i Collor went in looking like JFK, he came out more like ' ichard Nixon. After his resignation, Itamar Franco took • ver but with limited success, his most notable deed being t at he appointed Fernando Henrique Cardoso to head up the inance Ministry. To curb i flation, there'd been many stabilization plans, but Cardoso s (which involved the introduction of the real to replace the uzado, which had replaced the cruzeiro only a few years b fore) seemed to work. Its success helped him win the pre idency in 1994, and, because the good times were still ro ling, to win re-election in 1998. Brazil: ive Centuries of Change stretches up to the middle of I St year. Although Skidmore eyes the financial crisis in Ea.t Asia, his book went to press before Brazil suffered its own crisis in the third quarter of '98. Recent reports indi ate that Brazil's recession has come to an end, but it wou d sure be nice to have an up-to-the-minute appraisal frOm the author. Although he writes that "Events since 1985 are less easy to put into historical perspective," one finishe Skidmore's concise, clear-eyed portrait of Brazil with the knowledge of where the country has been and with an un erstanding of the potentially splendid road that lies ahead. 21
Blue Blood Due to his self-confidence the Fila Brasileiro shows a calm disposition as long as he is not defied or threatened. He is most happy while in company of his master. Filas love to sit very close to their owners, craving for physical contact. CLELIA KRUEL
1.4 It all happened back on June 1983 when the American magazine Dog World published for the very first time my article on the Fila Brasileiro breed. The response was a very impressive one and since then, like a snowball it is still rolling. Fila breeders are in debt with this magazine for the continuous promotion of these so-called "rare breeds." It is interesting to point out that the Fila Brasileiro breed though recognized by the worldwide FCI (Federation Cynologique International) organization and also by the SKC (States Kennel Club) is still among the breeds not recognized by the AKC (American Kennel Club). Still more interesting is the fact that 96% of the Fila owners in the United States voted against the acceptance of the Fila by the AKC fearing it would change the Fila's original standard and the natural aggressiveness of the breed. Fila puppies are playful and friendly until the dog reaches between five and seven months old. From there on the Fila starts showing a highly protective attitude unless the dog is duly socialized. Nevertheless if the owner over-socializes his puppy, it will become as friendly as a cocker spaniel. I prefer to give the basic obedience lessons to my Filas and keep them under control but preserving its natural protective instincts. The Fila is very humble, docile and devoted dog to all members of his family accepting stoically the rough play of children. Nowadays the Fila is still a "rare breed" in the States, but thanks to the two clubs The Fila Brasileiro Club of America in Georgia and The Fila Brasileiro Association in Texas it certainly is not an unknown breed any longer. In one of our last shows in Texas we had 33 entries. This is a great achievement considering that when I arrived in Burleson in 1989 there were only two breeders in Texas. Now there are over 50. Devoted Pet The rare breed clubs also put on shows in different parts of the country and so does the States Kennel Club giving the opportunity for Filas to participate in the conformation shows. Fortunately the Federacion Canofila de Puerto Rico is affiliated to the FCI (Federation Cynologique Internationale) permitting the registration of the Fila Brasileiro within the United States. Their pedigrees come with the stamp of the FCI on. When discussions about "vicious dogs" take place, Fila breeders point out that Filas never turn against their owners or members of the family and that accidents registered with other breeds are far higher than with Filas even in Brazil where this breed is the most popular one after the German Shepherds, showing 5.000 puppies being officially registered per year. Their faithfulness became a Brazilian proverb: "Faithful as a Fila" is an old Brazilian saying. Courage, determination and outstanding bravery are also part of the Fila's characteristics. Due to his self-confidence the Fila shows a calm disposition as long as he is not defied or menaced, not being disturbed by strange noises or when facing a new environment. He is most happy while in company of his master. Filas love to sit very close to their owners, craving for a physical contact. An unsurpassed guardian of property, he is equally inclined, by instinct, to hunt big game or to herd cattle. Filas are wonderful with children and can also be guides for blind people. I remember a bitch called Elza who worked BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
as a guide for a blind man in Germany. She was extremely cautious looking at both sides before walking her master across the streets of Einbeck, a little town close to Hanover. Elza would bring to his master anything he asked for: keys, glasses, the stick, handkerchief, etc. Her sweet brown eyes were full of love but that loving look changed as soon as anyone tried to put a finger on a lighter or anything belonging to her owner. She growled and showed her teeth in a very convincing way. As soon as I showed no intention to take anything away she was perfectly friendly and at ease again. Elza had this Fila's trait to evaluate different situations in the most amazing way. From my twenty years of experience breeding Filas I found out that the most protective dog in the litter is also the most intelligent one. The dog showing a dominant trait always ends up being the leader of the pack. Intelligence and aggressiveness are part of their leadership. They are in command of the pack and will determine their positions while guarding their territory or in the moment of stopping an intruder, besides giving directions to the pack while hunting. The "alpha" dog may be a male or a bitch. In their society what prevails is the strongest character and personality. During nine years Nubia de Samor has been the leader in our kennel until the day of her death. The hierarchy is established in a natural way and all the members of the pack respect it maintaining an orderly relationship. Police Dog Today not only in Brazil but around the whole world as well the Fila Brasileiro is considered the main breed for personal and property protection. Only a few dogs are still used for jaguar hunting or as cattle herders in the hinterland of Brazil. His abilities as a police dog have been highly appreciated in different countries as by the naval police of Peru, the army in Brazil and K-9 units in the United States. The nose of a Fila is comparable to a Bloodhound therefore the breed is also used for sniffing bombs and drugs successfully. The great advantage is that a Fila will get hold of the suspect at the end of the trail. The word "fila" means "to grab, to hold" in archaic Portuguese. There is no doubt about the increasing popularity of such a formidable guardian and devoted companion not only here in the U.S.A. but also all over the world, though a lot of responsibility is required by anyone owning a Fila. One cannot forget that the Fila Brasileiro was not man made but rather a product of its environment and the bare necessities for its own survival in the jungle, shaped by Nature in every detail to perform well any task with endurance and efficiency. A Fila must not only be loved but also understood above all. Evidently the deterioration of so many other wonderful breeds due to their popularity should serve as a warning of what may happen in the future. Selective breeders and their clubs will try to avoid the most distressing situations that seem to pursue the most popular breeds. Popularity always claims for a very high price, but maybe the Fila Brasileiro will be an exception due to its own characteristics, as the Fila is not meant for the average person. The BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
deep love, respect and devotion must be mutual. We are living in a very perturbed world where man systematically destroy the only available shield in the sky, our precious rain forests, our fountains and rivers are poisoned and our food transmit irreversible diseases to our children. Is there any room to preserve what i still pure and primitive? We do hope so with the help of people who care. Over one decade and a half passed by I since my first article showed up about the Fila Brasileiro. Since than we saw the breed taking its own place of honor around the world with the help of the Fila Brasileiro Association, which is an international organization following all CBKC/FCT regulations. The Fila Digest is a quarterly bulletin distributed for free to all its members. Our goal is to preserve and to protect this wonderful breed handing out useful information on breeding, nutrition, diseases and above all asking each owner to x-ray his producing stock to avoid hip dysplasia. We are serious about x-raying all the producing stock and discarding those with bad hips. A FBA champion must have proof of being Hip Dysplasia free before getting his title. There will always be commercial kennels interested just in making money, producing quantity not quality. They do not x-ray their dogs and do not give a sales guarantee as it is customary among conscious breeders. They will present a very poor excuse saYing that "as long the dog moves well he does not present dysplasia". Well, I had to put down more than one Fila I had imported for being severely displastic in spite of his moving like a feather. I lost the dog, the money and I had to go through all the trauma of losing a friend knowing that it was better for him to be sacrificed than to suffer an endless pain. Besides x-raying our dogs we incorporate the use of vitamin C in their diet in order to enhance collagen production. Collagen is the intracellular cement that gives strength to ligaments, tendons, and muscles. Dr. Wendell Belfield, published several works about HD and came up virith a biochemical concept. He affirms that since he incorporated the use of collagen and vitamin C for the prevention of HD he saw very few cases of it in his pra tice. In order to fight this problem that is a plague to all giant breeds, we hand out all available information besides asking the breeders to study well the pedigrees of future litters. If you buy a puppy haNiing in mind the objective to enter it at shows in the future, or if you plan to breed your dog some day, the pedigree of your puppy is of great importance and certainly you should try to know as much as you can about its ancestry. Old-timers are the best people to talk about the champions, if any, listed in the pedigree of your dog. Possiblyl they will remember something about their quality and structure besides the temperament of the dogs. This will prove very helpful while planning your breeding program. Selection is the key of success and the American breeders are being very giccessful following the breeding regulations of CBKC (Brazilian Confederation) and trying to breed only good to good or good to excellent specimens. The results can be seen in the World Shows where the American stock came out as winners. Top winners came out 23
mostly of the Samor, Embirema, Tamuana, Kartagena and Camping bloodlines, which are very well represented in the United States with dogs certified free of hip dysplasia. Be Patient
If you are new at breeding, remember that your devotion and perseverance to the breed will not always get immediate results. It may happen that the wonderful champion you have in your hands, after years of intense work, does not produce well. Be prepared to start all over again. Besides time and money you will need a lot of patience as well. There are several different levels of dog qualities: There are some top winners, there are dogs of champion quality that are able to gain sometimes but lack that "extra quality" that makes them so special, and there are those who are good dogs but not outstanding. It is better to look for a consistent winner strain and not for just an occasional "star". Try to make a survey on the best existing dogs, their pedigrees and health records, besides paying special attention to their temperaments. Do not try to guess about the breed. It is worth to start a serious investigation to see how many HD free dogs there are in a pedigree. Ask the breeders about the hips of the parents, siblings, brothers and relatives. Be sure to get the best possible bitch to start your breeding program. Read the official FCI standard of the breed until you know it by heart and be prepared to accept the responsibility of raising an aggressive dog towards strangers.
I you are interested aI in Brazil, We are interested in you. Discounted Airline Tickets, Carnival & New Year's Packages, Ecotourism, Groups, Incentives.
Welcome to the services of
Saar% 704114 TRAVEL & TOUR
MOW 533-3423 (3101568-8426 Email:sowinds@aol.com CST#2015978-40 24
His aggressiveness will depend on the way you raise and train him. It is up to you to preserve his natural aggressiveness or to transform him in a mellow and friendly dog. Read The Fila Brasileiro Guide where you can find advice about the several different stages of puppyhood and changes in the temperament of the dog. This is just the beginning before you go further into the mysterious and complex paths of genetics. If you have a computer visit the internet site http://www.dt.fee.unicamp.br/ —amaury/filanet.html If you want to join the Fila Brasileiro Association, which is an international club handing out information on how to preserve and promote the Fila Brasileiro breed, please write to: FBA, 5029 CR605, Burleson, TX 76028 USA and ask for a membership application form. The international annuity starts from the day of payment ($35.00). The Fila Digest is distributed for free to all FBA members. Clelia Kruel is the president of the Fila Brasileiro Association. She also founded the Fila Brasileiro Club of America with Jerry Loftin and the Fila Brasileiro Association in Texas. She wrote three books on the Fila breed: The Fila Brasileiro, All About the Fila and The Fila Brasileiro Guide. You may contact her at clelia*swbell.net for further information.
Brazil Air
Travel Services Excellence is a habit. Tony Banos, Owner 42 years travel industry experience. Pala-se Portugues.
SOT# 203 2 79 1 -40
AIR $590* RIO DE JANEIRO HOTEL PACKAGE 6 nights. Based on double occupancy p/p 9284* * Low Season • Plus applicable taxes.
(800) 441-8515 10700 SANTA MONICA BLVD., SURE 15 LOS ANGELES, CAUFORNIA 90025. (310) 441-8500•FAX (310) 441-8502
E-mail:Tonybanos@brazilair.com http://www.brazilair.corn © Brazil Air llavel Services, 1999
BRAZZIL -JULY 1999
RIO-SP
INTERNATIONAL TOURS LOS ANGELES INC. THE BEST OF BRAZIL FOR A VERY LOW PRICE OW
RI
$410 $450 $450 $450 $450
$479 $545 $545 $545 $649
FROM LAX
wok*
*gm (RI) A
PLUS TAX-RESTRICTIONS APPLY
RIO/SAO PAULO BELO/VITORIA/BRASILIA PORTO ALEGRE/CURITIBA/IGUAZU
RECIFE/SALVADOR/FORTALEZA ARACAJU/MACE10
VISIT BRAZIL 5 COUPONS $440 LIMA SANTIAGO, CHILE BUENOS AIRES MONTEVIDEO TOKYO-JAPAN
OW
RT
$289 $470 $480 $579 $329
$390 $570 $629 $729 $590
THER DESTINATIONS AVAILABLE. PLEASE CALL US, AND COMPARE OUR PRICES AND OUR SERVICES. THEY STAND ON THEIR OWN MERIT AND YOU ARE THE JUDGE.
BRAZIL TOURS
TOUR
WORLD WIDE SERVICES
Established 1963 - Same Ownership
We have discounted prices for Mexico, Central and South America, Asia, Europe and Australia. Please call us for quotes.
l80()927 83 5 Visit us at http://www.braziltours.com
2
PRICES SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE 688W BAKER ST - SUITE 3 COSTA MESA, CA 92626
771-1,4; t211=101571t
321 E. 2ND ST. - SUITE 1001 LOS ANGELES, CA 90012
i'llit11-1t131((Sra?
;
9841 AIRPORT BLVD - SUITE 506 LAX, CA 90045 (310) 641-4894 (ENG ONLY)
2130 SAWTELLE BLVD - SUITE 112 LOS ANGELES CA 90025 (310) 575-4544 (ENG ONLY)
Fa
(818) 990-3114
E- mail: bfoster734@aoLcom 14615 Ventura Blvd.. Suite A, Sherman Oaks, California 91403
Viaje para qualluer parte do mode corn o jeitinho brasileiro e o pafirRo internacional da Cheviot Hills NEW SPECIALS TO
IATAN
Tel. (818) 990-4995
310 202-6264 818 501-4426 310 837-2214 (FAX)
VIOT HILLS CH; TR VEL SERVICE
LOS ANGELES: 527 SAN DIEGO: 582 LAS VEGAS: 582 SEATTLE: 617 PORTLAND: 617 PHOENIX: 598 DENVER: 598
1 (800) 58511023
SAN FRANCISCO OR OAKLAND: 569 MIAMI, ORLANDO, TAMPA, NEW ORLEANS: 445 NEW YORK, BOSTON, CHICAGO: 370
Sua ag ncia brasileira ern L.A.
DEPARTURE TAX NOT INCLUDED FARE IS GOOD TILL OCT 31,1999
9819 National Blvd., Ste. #1 Los Angeles, CA 90034
E-mail: Ifer@aol.com
RESTRICTIONS APPLY
SOT # 2038129-70
VASP BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
DELTA
KOREAN AIR
VARIG
UNITED 25
A Confissa
The onfession
0 dono do destino é aquele gue sabe a hora,da saideira e n4o fica bebado corn a propria vida. Mas e melhor nao botar coma na sua cabeca. Fique pensando mesmo e que nao exist°. Que so o senhor 6 que 6 de verdade. Na sua cabeca,,eu sou somente urn vagabundo de pagina de livro, que distrai sua afencao das coisas serias deste mundo.
The master of his own destiny is he who knows the hour of his last drink and doesn't stay drunk with his own life. But it's better not to put such ideas in your head. Just keep thinking that I don't exist. That only you are the real one. In your head I'm only a bum from the page of a book, who distracted your attention from what's important in the world.
CRISTOVAM SUARQUE
CRISTOVAM BUARQUE
Continued from last issue. Os homens vieram e ja nab foi para me dar peia. Já no era cabra do Coronel. Era soldado •fardado de mesmo. Quando eles chegaram perguntando mansinho corn aquela voz nao-sei-o-que-quero-dizer de soldado, perguntando se au i vivia Astrogildo, contador de estoria, eu me senti confortado, contente na minha posicao. Ingenuidade medonha. NA° era para ouvir estOria. Era pan me levar a cidade grande. Me botaram trancado corn muitos outros, e eu me calei pela primeira vez sem saber contar estOria a cara estranha. Essa la° era minha maneira. Mas os hornens aui foram todos bons comigo, e corn os dias passando eu fui 26
Continued from last issue. Some men came, and this time it wasn't to beat me up. This time they weren't the Colonel's bodyguards, but soldiers in uniform. When they arrived, asking softly with that I-don't-know-how-to-describe-it soldier voice, asking if Astrogildo, the storyteller, lived there, I felt comfortable, content with my position. How naïve I was! They weren't there to hear stories. They were there to take me away to the big city. They put me behind bars with a lot of others, and for the first time in my life, I shut up because I didn't know how to tell stories to strangers. That wasn't my way. But the men BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
chegando para perto e as estorias saindo de dentro. Contei muitas est6rias velhas porque eles ainda nao conheciam, e meu juizo preso estava cansado tambem. Mas ai, quando acabaram as velhas, o juizo ja estava acostumado de novo e outras estOrias sairam. Eu vi que já nao precisava de cortar o chao nem sentir o vento na chuva. Estava tudo dentro de mim. Já nao precisava sair ao mun0o, ele estava aqui dentro, ainda que o senhor nao veja. Foi al, eu acho, que sairam das boas que eu já fiz; sabe a do "Presos Soltos e dos Soltos Presos"? Foi al que eu fiz; sabe a do "Mundo Todo de Cabeca Para Baixo"? Pois foi al que eu fiz tambem. E fiz e fiz mais e ja nao parava de fazer. Ja os presos de outros lados tambem queriam ouvir, e eu tinha de gritar. Foi quando um dos de la comecou a escrever o que eu dizia. Ele nao inventava e Cu nao escrevia. Passei a viver dele e ele a viver de mim. E os meses passavam a gente escrevendo, falando, e todos depois recebiam. Dizem, eu nunca sei sea verdade mentira ou se a mentira e verdade, que o Doutor da prisao, o chefe supremo, ha e gostava tambem e por isso que ele nao proibia. No sei. Eu ia assim ate sempre, lhe digo corn certeza, nao fosse o medo que veio quando soube que ia ficar so. 0 outro, o amigo do lado, ja ia embora. Eu nao ia pedir que ficasse, mas nao queria que ele fosse. E fiquei corn medo, ate que ele disse "Astrogildo, you ensinar voce a escrever". E assim foi. No foi facil. Me veio raiva de mim, por ter esperadotanto. Por que nao tinha dado mais atencao a D. Lurdinha? 0 Padre AmbrOsio, de ruim que era, tinhatentado bem. Eu devia ter feito isso antes. Mas assim foi, me tornei urn letrado. Do a ao z eu sabia tudo. Bern antes de partir Sandoval, já carta eu copiava. Ate livro sabia tirar corn uma letra caprichosa que nao era ma. E eu me senti o rei corn um lapis na mao. E peguei no lapis e quis parar de copiar o dos outros e botar no papel uma iddia das minhas. E assim tentei. E tentei mais. E fiat) gala. E nao saia nada. E nao saia nunca. E nao enchia o papel branco. Era por praticar que eu precisava. E foi por isso que eu fiquei contente quando os de la de cima me levaram como ajudante do homem. Ate maquina me ajudaram a aprender e eu sabia escrever tudo o que ele dizia. Nao tomou muito e eu era rapid() e tudo saia perfeito. Mas quando queria escrever ode mim, o meu mesmo, como via o mundo, nada saia. Fui deixando para depois, para o outro dia, enquanto praticava escrevendo o dos outros. E o meu nao saia. E a pratica tomava todo o tempo e o tempo de pensar ja nao vinha. E o vento que me falava foi ficando caladinho, e a terra que eu ouvia foi mudando aos pouquinhos, e eu continuava praticando, esperando, escrevendo os pensamentos dos outros que eu sabia errado. E assim levei urn tempo. Muito tempo. E mesmo agora, tantos anos e tantas voltas depois, ainda nao voltou meu juizo ao tempo de antes das estOrias boas que gostava de contar. Ta ai mesmo o senhor diligentemente a me ouvir, e o so que sai é a estoria minha propria, nao as boas, do mundo. EstOria da gente nao tern valor. E so lembranca. Que valor tern? Mas o senhor quer BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
there were all good to me, and as the days passed I felt closer to them, and once again the stories were corning from inside me. I told a lot of the old stories because they had never heard them, and also because my imprisoned mind was tired. But then, when the old ones were all told, my mind had gotten used to the situation and other stories came to me. I saw that now I didn't need to hoe the ground or feel the wind in the rain. Everything was inside me. Now I didn't need to go put in the world because the world was inside me, even though you can't see it. It was there, I think, that the best stories I ever made up came out[ Have you heard of "The Freed Prisoners and the Imprisoned Freemeit"? It was there that I made up that one. "The Whole World Upside Down"? Well, I was there when I made up that one, too. And I made up more and more and didn't stop making them up. Now the prisoners on the othet• sides also wanted to hear the stories, and I had to shout. That was when one or the other prisoners began to write down what I was saying. He didn't know how to invent, and I didn't know how to write. I came to live thrOugh him; and he, through me. And the months were passing while we were writing and talking, and later the stories went to everyone. They say, I don't know if it's true or not, that the head of the prison read them and liked them too, and that's why he didn't forbid them. I don't know. I do know I could haye gone on like that forever, if! hadn't found out that I was going to be lefl by myself. The other man, my friend in the next cell, was getting out. I sn't going to ask him to stay, but I didn't want him to go either. And! as afraid until he said, "Astrogildo, I'm going to teach you to write." And that's how it w . It wasn't easy. I became so angry with myself for waiting so long. Wh hadn't! paid more attention to Dona Lurdinha? Father AmbrOsio, as b d as he was, had done his best to teach me. I should have done this b fore. But that's how it wa . I became literate. From "a" to "z" I learned it all. Well before Sandov Ileft I was already copying entire letters. I could even copy a book with andwriting that wasn't too bad. And! felt like the king of the world wi a pencil in my hand. And! picked up the pencil and tried to stop copyi g what others wrote and put my own ideas on paper. I tried. Then I tried some more. And the ideas didn't come. Nothing came. And nothing ever came. And the blank paper never filled up. What I needed was practice. So I felt happy when they took me upstairs to be the man'sl assistant. They even helped me to learn to type, and I knew how to write everything that he said. It didn't take me long and I was fast, and everything came out perfectly. But when I wanted to write my own words, how I saw the world, nothing came out. I was leaving it all for later, for another day, while I practiced writing other people's words. And rriy own didn't come out. And practicing took all my time, and I didn't haye time to think any more. And the wind that used to talk to me was falling silent, and the earth that I used to hear was changing little by little and I continued to practice, waiting, writing the thoughts of others that l knew were wrong. And I did that for some time. A long time. Even now, after sb many years have passed and so much has happened, my mind isn't what it was before, the way it was when! could tell the good stories. You're here diligently listening to me, and all that's coining out is my own story, not the good ones, the stories about the world. Your own sto has no value. It's only a memory. What value does that have? But yo still want to hear it. I'm telling you—why should I lie?—some of those ories that! already tried to tell. Before going up to work in the man's office. When I was still Astrogildo, the storyteller. I tried to tell stories doing back in time, back in the direction of the backlands. Have you ever thought how good everything is that's told going back in time? But it seems that the Lord God didn't give us so much power. Changing thi gs is possible, but time, no. That's why time continues going straight ahead. Straight ahead is the direction of time, 27
ouvir ass im mesmo. Eu lhe digo--para que mentir?—estorias dessas ja quis contar tambem. Antes mesmo de subir la para cima no escritorio do homem. Quando ainda eu era o Astrogildo contador. Quis estOrias voltando para tras no tempo, na direcao do sertao. 0 senhor pensou que born era tudo contado as avessas do tempo? Mas parece que o senhor Deus nao deu tanto poder a gente. Mudar as coisas td certo. Mas o tempo nao pode. E por isto que o tempo continua certinho. Tudo na frente da direcao dele que para mim é no sentido de costa da direcao minha. SO que, Deus me livre, mas essa frente é mais volta do que ida. Que frente é essa, se sO tern a morte depois? A frente devia ser a vida. Devia ser a mocidade já gasta. E estragada ate. Eu nao sei, mas a minha ela so foi estragada depois. No comeco, sO foi gosto. Gasta no certo. As matinadas na procura de est6rias perdidas. As serestadas no conto das est6rias achadas. Mas nao dizem que a gente é levado a esquecer os pedacos ruins que carrega o juizo? Nao dizem ate que o juizo tudo traz, mas lembrar que vale s6 o que a gente quer?! Nao sei nada direito no. S6 sei que era tudo born. E no born que era, eu nem me percebia do ma!, se mat houvesse, nem do mel se no mel estava. Mas nao me arrependo, doutor. Olhe aqui. Se no mel eu ficasse sem enfrentar o padre nem o coronel, o mel desaparecia sozinho. 0 mel da vida nao existe por ele s6. E mentira. E a vida que a gente faz, que faz o mel que a gente vive. Pois saiba que saida eu nao tinha. Deixar de contar estoria para agradar o coronet, era morrer vivo estando. S6 me restava o que eu fiz e nao.posso me arrepender. Nao tern arrependimento de ter cumprido o destino da gente. Se encruzilhada nao ha, o caminhante nao pode maldizer de estar perdido. Eu so segui meu caminho. SO foi o que eu fiz ate aquele dia em que os outros decidiram me carregar por uma estrada diferente. Eu na hora nem percebi. Tao pouco vivendo eu estava naqueles dias, que so me dei conta da mudanca nos tempos que já em terras estranhas estava. 0 que aconteceu, foi que por decisao dos outros, do govern°, e por ordem na briga corn os homens da luta que tinham prendido urn doutor embaixador, eu me vi, de repente: sem saber porque nem onde. Fui trocado. E o que disseram os que junto comigo estavam. E todos levados para fora. Para longe; o alem eu diria ate se de la nao se pudesse voltar como eu voltei. Sera que voltei? Sera que nao era mesmo o alem e que na aparencia da volta ainda estd por la o meu juizo e minha alma perambulando, enquanto a visao de urn corpo sem dono é o que esta, aqui corn o senhor conversando?! SO sei que meu destino que era uma linha reta, passou a ser uma encruzilhada de mil cam inhos. Mas eu nao sabia que rumo tomar. Deixei aos outros a decisao de me conduzir. 0 de corner, no gosto estranho, me era trazido. 0 de vestir, no frio estranho, me era levado. Ode escutar, na lingua estranha, me era dito. 0 de ver, diferente, me era mostrado. E eu no meio do turbilhao, fua danado; corn fome, corn frio, sem entender e sem gostar. Mas ali. Olhos arregalados no mundo todo, a observar. Acho que tern razao os que dizem das lembrancas escolhidas apenas. Por isto, daquele tempo, eu quase nao lembro nada. Nem sei mesmo quanto tempo foi. Anos, nove, ate eu vi urn dia a conta.
the reverse of my direction. ,Only, God help me, this going forward is more a return trip than an outgoing trip. What's so good about moving forward if only death is waiting? Moving forward should lead to life. It should be the youth you've already spent. Wasted even. I don't know, but mine was only wasted later on. In the beginning it was so good. The dawns looking for lost stories. The evenings telling the stories I'd found. But don't they say that we forget the bad fragments that we're carrying around in our minds? Don't they even say that the mind carries everything around with it, but only remembers what we want to remember? I can't say for sure. I only know that it was all good. I never even saw what was bad, if anything was. It's like everything seems sweet if you're immersed in honey. But I have no regrets, Doctor. Look here. If I had stayed immersed in the honey without confronting either Father or the Colonel, the honey would have disappeared on its own. The honey of life doesn't exist for itself alone. That's a lie. It's the life that we ourselves make that's the source of the honey. But, believe me, I had no way out. To stop telling stories just to please the Colonel would be like joining the living dead. I could only do what I did, and I can't repent for what I did. No one should have to repent for fulfilling his destiny. If there's no crossroads, the walker can't curse the fact that he's lost. I only followed my own road. That's what! did until the day that others decided to carry me down a different one. At that time I didn't realize what was happening. In those days I'd lived so little that I only perceived that the times had changed when I was already in strange lands. What happened was that I found myself, all of a sudden, without knowing why or where, mixed up in the government's dispute with the revolutionaries who had kidnapped an ambassador. I was one of the prisoners exchanged. That's what those who were with me said. And we were all taken away. Far away; so far away, I'd say, that one couldn't possibly return like I did. Can it be that I did return? Could it be that my mind and my soul are still wandering around over there, while the vision of a body without an owner is here talking with you? I only know that my destiny, which was a straight line, became the intersection of a thousand roads. But I didn't know which direction to take. I left the decision to others. What I ate, with its strange flavors, was brought to me. What I wore, in the strange cold, was given to me. What I heard, in the strange language, was said to me. What I saw, what was different, was shown to me. And I, in the middle of the whirlwind, the wicked disorder, hungry, cold, not understanding anything and not liking it. But I was there. Eyes staring at the entire world, observing. I think those who say that we select what we want to remember are right. Because of this I hardly remember anything about that time. I don't even know how much time passed. Years, nine years, until one day the bill arrived. When I lived in the backlands I thought that it was the whole world. And that I was part of the world. And that there was only one world. I had heard stories about places that were different, of people who spoke strange languages, of the cold that froze water. But I thought that there was only one world. Or that maybe that other, different world was like BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
Quando eu morava no sertao Cu achava que aquilo era o mundo. E que do mundo eu era. E que o mundo todo era urn so. Estorias eu ja tinha ouvido de lugares que eram diferentes, de gente que falava estranho, no frio que parava a agua. Mas eu achava que o mundo era urn so. Ou talvez fosse que aquele outro mundo diferente era como os que eu via no meu juizo. E que eu fazia como queria, as vezes. Mas, quandO'eu'vi que o juizo nao controlava o que eu via, nem as falas que eu escutava, e o frio que eu sentia me apertava o coracao e o mundo todo que rodeava vinha de fora para dentro e nao de dentro para fora do meu juizo; al eu desesperei, gritando um dia e me levaram para aquela casa grande onde entre outros iguais eu vivi urn tempo. Era uma casa corn fres tipos de gente. Os iguais a mim que eram, os que vestidos de branco estavam, e os outros que eramos e nao eramos. Quando eu queria, aui tudo era igual ao meu Sertao. 0 mundo todo voltou as origens e eu ate talvez pudesse dizer ao senhor que dali gostei. As estorias que antes eu inventava jĂĄ Tao precisava de inventar mais nao. Eu dormia corn a Serpente de Sete Cabecas, conversava corn o Urubu Louro, fazia caretas para o Gato Despenteado e pedia a bencao a Fada das Mil Varinhas. Eu plantei no Engenho da Lua e comi chocolate corn a Donzela Sonhadora. De dentro para fora que eram minhas estOrias, elas passaram a ser de fora para dentro, e de dentro e de fora, tudo no igualzinho do mundo onde eu estava. 0 senhor talvez hoje nao acredite. E eu mesmo olhando de reves, como a gente sempre olha o tempo passado, ficam as dirvidas das coisas. Mas eu the digo que vivi corn os que eu havia inventado. Mas eu perdi o rumo das coisas. Foi assim que o doutor me disse urn dia. E eles, os inventados, passaram a ser mais fortes do que eu. E o dia chegou em que Cu fui menos que eles, quando um deles disse que eu nao existia e rin dizendo que ele era urn contador de estorias da capital e que para enganar a todos la do sertao e do mundo tambem, contava a estOria falseada que era a minha: a de urn contador, dos bons, que contando estOria contra padres e coroneis foi preso um dia e levado na vassoura de uma fada brilhante para terras estranhas, desconhecidas, onde estava. De mestre contador, eu virei pedaco de estOria. Mas aqui estou eu de volta, doutor. Voltei, mas vi que o caminho da ida era uma vela: beco sem saida. Levava a parede fechada, a lugar nenhum; um vazio que bem podia ser la chamado Nada. Acho que na verdade ate demorei a voltar. Devia ter vindo antes de chegar. Mas a meia volta C mais dificil do que andar. E na virada, a gente as vezes perde o equilibrio e continua em frente sem nem saber. Felizmente voltei. Sera? Olhe em volta. Esta tudo igual como antes estava. Aqui nasci. Nesta casinhamesma. Naquele quarto ali, onde eu durrno toda a noite agora, sem mais sonhar. Ali m,esmo, nurna cama diferente, foi onde fui parido e dei entrada no mundo. Mas sera que voltei? Olhe ao redor. Tudo isto, quase,jĂĄ existia. E assim mesmo 6 tao" diferente. A volta nao C para onde a gente quer no tempo. Voltar C facil nos caminhos sobre a terra. Mas no tempo ninguem volta, nAo. Estou eu aqui para provar. Mas a minha nao foi igual nao. So nas aparencias do que me rodeia C que voltei ao meu lugar. No que eu mais queria, no coragao das coisas desabrochando BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
those I saw in y mind, the worlds! made up. But, then, I saw that my mind idn't control either what! saw or the talk that I heard, and t e cold that I felt seized my heart and, instead of moving ou from inside my head, the entire world surrounding me came rushing into my head. So, one day, shouting, I ga e up hope, and they took me to that big house where I fived or a time, amongothers like me. It was a ho se with three types of people: those who were like me; those ho were dressed in white; and the others that we were and e weren't. When I wanted, everything there was equal to y backlands. The entire World returned to its origins and in ybe I could even tell you that I liked it there. Now I di n't have to invent stories. I slept with the Seven-Heade Serpent, spoke with the Blond Vulture, made faces at the C Who Needed to Comb his Hair, and asked the Fairy with the Thousand Magic Wands to bless me. I planted cane on the.S gar Plantation on the Moon and ate chocolate with the Dre Damsel. Before, my stories came from the inside out now they came from the outside in, and from inside and fr outside. It made no difference in the world I was in. Maybe y won't believe me today. And, looking backwards, they ay people always look at the past, I still have doubts about ome things. But! can tell you that! lived with the character that! had invented. But! lost y way. That was what the doctor told me one day. And the ,the characters I had invented, became stronger than I w The day came when one of them said that I didn't exist; e laughed, saying that he was a storyteller from the capital d that to fool everyone there in the backlands and also out i the world, he told a false story, the story of my life: the sto of a storyteller, a good one, who, after telling stories that c iticized the priests and the colonels, was taken prisoner one ay and carried away on a broom by a shining fairy to dis t, unknown lands, where he was now. After starting out s a master storyteller, I had become a mere fragment of omeone else's story. But here am again, Doctor. I came back again, but! saw that the road ack was only a dead end. It led to a blank wall, to nowhere, an emptiness that could be called "Nothing." Truthfully, I think that I even delayed returning. I should have come ack before arriving at that point. But turning around is m re difficult than walking forward. And turning around, we s metimes lose our balance and continue going forward wi out realizing it. I return d happily. Could that be? Look around. Everything's like it was before. I was born here. In this very house. In that room there, where I sleep right through the night now, but without dreaming anymore. Right there, in a different bed, was where I was born and came into the world. But could it be that I returned? Look around. Almost all this already existed. And, just the same, it's so different. We don't return to where we want to be in time. It's easy to return on the roads of Earth but no one returns in time, no. I'm here as proof of that. But I only returned to the appearances that used to surround me. What I wanted most, the heart of things that I wanted to see again— at's all lost. Look at my hands. I really wanted to return, t wash from them the sins that I committed wandering round in the outside world. I wanted my hand to 29
•
que eu queria voltar a ver, esta tudo perdido. Olhe bem para estas minhas mdos. Eu queria voltar de. verdade para limpar ela dos pecados quejá cometi andando por este mundo afora. Eu queria que ela ficasse inocente das estOrias que escreveu, do dinheiro que ja contou. Tanto, diante da miseria dos outros. Eu queria que minha lingua enxugasse de tudo ruim que ja disse, e que meus pes ficassem limpos como os dos apostolos. Mas na volta, minha mao pecou mais vezes, os pes pisaram onde ndo deviam, e a lingua continuou mentindo ate para mim mesmo. E estou eu aqui, a todos dizendo que voltei. Outra mentira que digo a cada instante desde que acordo e deixo meu corpo circular pelas coisas que parecem o de antigamente. Maio ha nunca volta. Isto é tudo que descobri nos caminhos que percorri. E pior é que nem parar podemos. Olhe bem o senhor e eu aqui tambem, os dois sentados a conversar. Quem olhasse a gente, la de longe, ia dizer: ali esta urn velho e um jovem proseando. Como quem diz: ali estdo mesmo os dois, que sera que conversam aqueles. Agora, aqui entre nOs, bem baixinho sem que nos ougam: sera, que estamos nos mesmos aqui neste lugar? e sera que proseamos nos dois? Veja bem. Um dia disseram daquelas est6rias que eu contei, de que elas ndo existiam. De que era tudo mentira. Mas, mais mentira do que a gente esta aqui neste lugar, nao pode ser. Se urn coco caisse na minha cabeca um instantinho atras, eu ja nao estava mais aqui. E quem garante que ele ndo caiu sem a gente ver. E por que o senhor veio ate aqui? As forcas do mundo sdo sem controle; a gente apenas segue, e se elas por capricho ou ma vontade mudassem urn quesinho que fosse, ja toda a verdade seria mentira e uma so mentira, de entre todas, passaria a ser a verdade. Que verdade é esta que s6 ndo é mentira por causa de um coco maduro? E agora que eu ja voltei das terras estranhas, sendo trazido como daqui fui levado urn dia, sem controle de escolher o cam inho da encruzilhada por onde seguir, e perdido de todo jeito, eu ficaria aqui onde estou. E mais por mais, a conversa esta ficando cansada. A prosa foi boa. 0 senhor ndo se preocupe comigo nao. Eu fico aqui. E agora, tido e o tempo que eu queria, mas pelo menos é agora mesmo. E isto basta. Estou cansado de esperar amanha lembrando o ontem que ja passou. Ndo sairei mais do aqui e do agora. 0 senhor porem tern todo direito. Feche o ouvido e saia devagar. Eu nab you nem pressentir. Depois, quando eu abrir os olhos, o senhor ja ndo mais vai estar. E eu pensarei comigo: "ndo foi ninguem, ndo. Eu cá pensava sozinho mesmo comigo: o doutor nunca existiu." E que pensa o senhor que meu juizo vai pensar? 0 de verdade: que o senhor, doutor, corn toda sua sabedoria, corn toda sua paciencia de me escutar, o senhor nunca existiu, doutor. Minha vida foi rodeada de fantasmas que eu mesmo pensava criar. E assim passei a vida esquecido de que era tambem urn fantasma, de fantasmas criar. 30
remain innocent of the stories that it wrote, of the money that it counted. So much money, and with others living in such misery. I wanted to wring out of my tongue all the evil it ever said; I wanted my feet to be washed clean like those of the apostles. But when I returned, my hand sinned again, my feet stepped where they shouldn't have, and my tongue continued lying, even to myself. And here I am, telling everyone that I've returned. Another lie that I repeat each second from the instant I wake up and let my body walk among the things that seem the same as before. There's no such thing as returning. That's all I discovered on all the roads that I traveled. And what's worse, we can't even stop. Look at you and me sitting here, the two of us seated here conversing. Anyone seeing us would say,c`There's an old man and a young man talking." They could say, "There they are. What could they be talking about?" Now, just between us, in a whisper so that they can't hear us: Could it be that we are here in this place? And are we really talking to each other? Look. One day they said that those stories that I told didn't really exist. That it was all a lie. But, there can't be a bigger lie than saying that we two are here in this place. If a coconut had fallen on my head just a second ago, I wouldn't be here any more. And who's to guarantee that it didn't fall without us seeing it? And why did you come here? The forces of the world are out of our control; we only follow them, and if through some whim or ill will they should change something that has happened, everything that was true would become a lie and only one lie, among all of the lies, would then become the truth. What sort of truth is this that only is not a lie because of a ripe coconut? And now that! have returned from strange lands—brought back just as I was carried away from here one day, without control, with no choice as to which road in the crossroads to follow, and completely lost—I'll stay here where I am. And this conversation is becoming tired. The talk was a good one. You shouldn't worry about me, no. I'll stay here. Here and now. Though it's not the time that I wanted, at least it's now. And that's enough. I'm tired of waiting for tomorrow while remembering the yesterday that's already passed. I'm not going to leave the here and now again. You, though, you have every right to leave. Close your ears and leave slowly. I'm not going to even sense it. Later, when I open my eyes you won't be here any more. And I'll say to myself, "Nobody was here. There was no one. I was here by myself, just thinking out loud. The doctor never existed." And what do you suppose my mind is going to think? The truth, Doctor: that you with all your knowledge, listening to me with so much patience, that you never existed, Doctor. My life was surrounded with phantasms that I myself created. And so I spent my life creating phantasms, forgetting that I Was one myself. And now it's late. I'm tired. Almost too tired to discover that I also have the right to live. To raise my hand and leave the paper. Well, that's the way it is. Now everything is finished. Better that we have one last drink. And then wait for the coffin to arrive. You're laughing because you're still young. You think that you still have a lot to look forward to. I don't want to destroy any illusions. Go ahead. You can go. One day, when you least expect it, while you're drinking a cold beer in the beautiful house that you must have, because every doctor has a beautiful house, you're going to remember me. Then, lower your eyes, look within yourself and think to yourself, "This drink could be my BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
E agora ja é tarde. Estou cansado. Muito cansado para descobrir que tenho o direito de viver eu tambem. De levantar a mao e sair do papel. Pois & assim. Já esta tudo terminado. Melhor a gente tomar a saideira. A saideira mesmo. E depois esperar o caixao chegar. 0 senhor ri porque ainda é moco. Acredita que tern coisa muita pela frente. Nao quero tirar sua ilusao. Va. Pode ir. Urn dia, quando menos esperar, tomando uma cervejinha gelada na sua casa bonita que o senhor deve ter, como todo doutor, o senhor vai lembrar de mim. Al, baixa os olhos, olha dentro de voce e pensa baixinho: "esta podia ser minha saideira". Saideira mesmo, antes de esperar o caixao. Mas logo chega sua dona, ou um garcom fardado que au i esta para the servir, e faz que nao entende, pergunta se ainda quer outra e o senhor diz que sim e• toma outra e mais uma, pensando sempre que nAo vai acabar mais e, de repente, o caixao chega sem avisar: antes da saideira. triste, eu sei. Mas é o que chamam verdade. 0 dono do destino é aquele que sabe a hora da saideira e nao fica bebado corn a propria vida. Mas é melhor nao botar coisa na sua cabeca. Fique pensando mesmo é que nao existo. Que s6 o senhor que é de verdade. Na sua cabeca, eu sou somente urn vagabundo de pagina de livro, que distrai sua atencao das coisas serias deste mundo: trabalho e familia e lutas e politicas de grande. Mas eu cá comigo, interesse já nao tenho. Que interesse me da, se pedaco continuo a ser das estOrias de outros que nem sei mesmo se existem, porque a eles fui eu que urn dia inventei. Mas, mesmo que diferenca nenhuma fizesse, eu s6 queria voltar ao tempo de la. Antes eu era. Ou sera que nao era nao? Eu acho que era. S6 isso: antes eu era. Agora eu s6 sou nada. SO isso: agora so sou nada. E o senhor a me escutar? 0 senhor tambem s6 é isso: sO é nada. Mas eu quero continuar a contar. Urn dia, volte. Talvez eu conte mais. Est6ria, nao de antes nem de agora, estOria do de depois. Porque estorias de mim já nao bastam, desde o dia que eu deixei de ser e virei esse corpo sem alma. Ou sera mais essa alma sem corpo. Um contador que eu mesmo inventei, e que pensa existir e ser eu quem ele inventou. E nao sera mesmo? Nem me importa, lhe digo. Apenas aqui fico. E se quiser, ouca as outras estorias. Se quiser vá embora, tambem. Eu nao careco de quern me ouca. Meu juizo fala corn meu ouvido. Nao careco do senhor. Nao careco do aqui nem do agora. Eu sou o de sempre e de toda parte. Em Astricia vivo. Eu sou nada. Meu nome é Astor. Alma sonambula que urn contador inventou. "Eu quis um dia, como Schumann, compor Urn carnaval todo subjetivo: Urn carnaval ern que o s6 motivo Fosse o meu proprio ser interior..." Manuel Bandeira, Epilogo. Excerpted from Cristovam Buarque, Astricia (Rio de Janeiro: Civilizacao Brasileira, 1984). O Cristovam Buarque Cristovam Buarque (cbuarque@brnet.com.br ) is the Brazilian author of fifteen books of essays and fiction. He is a professor at the University of Brasilia, where he was the Rector from 1985 to 1989. From 1995 to 1999 he was the Governor of the Federal District of Brasilia. BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
last." But the your wife arrives, or maybe a uniformed butler who' there to serve you; and, pretending that he doesn't und rstand, he asks if you want another beer. And you say ye and drink another one and then another, thinking that it will never end. And, suddenly, the coffin arrives unannounced. It's sad, I know. But it's what they call the truth. The mater of his own destiny is he who knows the hour ofhis last drink and doesn't stay drunk with his own life. But it's better not to put such ideas in your head. Just keep thinking that I don't exist. That only you are the real one. In your head I'm only a bum from the page of a book, who distracted your attention from what's important in the world, from work and family, from struggles and politics. But here inside myself I'm just not interested anymore. How could I be interested, if I'm only a fragment • f other people's stories? People I'm not even sure exist ecause it was I who invented them one day? But, ev n if it makes no difference whatsoever, I only want to ret rn to that time. Before, I was. Or could it be that I neve was? I think that I was. Only this: before, I was. Now. I'm only nothing. Only this: now I'm only nothing. And w at about you here listening to me? You're also only this: nly nothing. But I ant to go on telling stories. Come back someday. Mayb I'll tell more. A story, not of before or of now, but of late . Because stories about me aren't enough now, since the uay that I ceased to exist and turned into this body with • ut a soul. Or maybe, this soul without a body. A storytel er that I myself invented, and who thinks that he exists a. d that he invented me. And isn't that the same thing? It does 't matter to me, I tell you. Just that I'm staying here. List n to the other stories if you want. Or, if you want, lea e right now. I don't lack listeners. My mind talks with y ear. I don't need you. I don't need the here and now. 'm the same as always and everywhere. I live in Astrici . I'm nothing. My name is Astor. Sleepwalking soul that storyteller invented. "I attempted one day, like Schumann, to compose A carnival completely subjective: A car ival in which the only motif Woul be my own interior being..." Mann! Bandeira, Epilogue Trans ited by Linda Jerome (LinJerome@cs.com) from "A I onfissao," published in Brazil in 1984 by Civilizac • Brasileira as part of Cristovam Buarque's collection of short stories Astricia. Crist yam Buarque (cbuarque@brnet.com.br) is the Brazilian author of fifteen books of essays and fiction. He is a profe sor at the University of Brasilia, where he was the Recto from 1985 to 1989. From 1995 to 1999 he was the Cove nor of the Federal District of Brasilia. 31
OVERSEAS MOVING SPECIALISTS pLomEGA sHip13161q (Va.), INC.
BRAZIL-USA
"
International
0`.
' t %dr
Service
MAYFLOWER . INTERNATIONAL z AGENT •t,' •
Carga Aerea ou Maritime Para o Brasil somos Brasileiros, Entendemos suas
tilis
Necessidades Temos a Solucao que voce Precisa • C.
..
_.._:
Confira as Informacoes que Estamos Oferecendo Visite Nosso Web-Site www.brazilusa.net E-Mail : aj@brazilusa.net
:-.r:-...---=.;.,.., 44-.
.... ' .,-,c.__,,: -, Ind L t fig Distance
Hawaii • Australia • U.K. • Europe • New Zealand. Far East • Middle East • Commercial Cargo Household Goods Door to Door '• Sea & Air Shipping • Antiques & Fine Art • Secure Storage • Automobiles Service • All Risk Insurance •• Export Packing IAJ Worldwide Free Box / Wardrobe Delivery • Commercial Office Moving •
Member of Household Goods Forwarders Association ot America Licensed by the Federal Maritime Commission 1-EAF2r4791 Faxt (213) 264-1657
(213)
264-2644
Office at: 4379 Sheila, LA, CA 90023
P.U.C.7. 161457 Free, Accurate Written Estimates
Via: E-Mail — Web Site - Fax ou Correio Gratis : Como Preparar Sua Mudanca Para o Brasil
Email: info@omegashipping.com • Visit Out Web site: www.omegashipping.com
-Tel. : (310) 542-9594 -*Fax: (310) 542-0479
ARC
THANKS FOR MAKING US
NUMBER ONE AGAIN
TROPICAL
WE WILL KEEP ON GIVING YOU
TRAVEL
Tropical Travel won as top producer for VASP for two consecutive years.
THE BEST FARES
WE HAVE SPACE FOR NEW YEAR'S CALL NOW
WE WORK WITH ALL AIRLINES
CALL US TOLL FREE RIGHT NOW TO VERIFY:
1 (888) 7BRASIL 1 (888) 727-2745 TEL: (510) 655-9904 32
FAX: (510) 655-9229
E-mail: tropical@slip.net
4168 PIEDMONT AVE., SUITES C & D - OAKLAND, CA 94611
BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
by the government in 1937. Piaui, one of the largest states in the Northeast, is also one of the poorest Admission is free, and the museum is states in Brazil, due to the oppressively hot and arid climate in its eastern and open Tuesday to Friday from 8 to 11 am and southern regions. The odd shape of the state—broad in the south, tapered at the 3 to 6 pm, and on Saturday and Sunday from coast—is due to a unique pattern of settlement, which started from the serteio in 8 am to noon. the south and gradually moved towards the Palacio de Karnak coast ii This Greco-Roman The climate on the Litoral Piauiense structure once func(Piaui coast) is kept cool(er) by sea breezes. tioned as the governor's If you're heading into the interior of the residence and contained state, the best time for festivals and cool valuable works of art and breezes is during July and August. The antiques. In the late '80s, worst time, unless you want to be sunbaked the outgoing governor to a frazzle, is between September and made a quick exit, December. together with many of Although Piaui is usually bypassed by Although usually bypassed by the valuable contents. travelers, it offers superb beaches along its tourists Piaui has much to offer, Centro Artesanal short coast; interesting rock formations among other things prehistoric This is a center for and hikes in the Parque Nacional de Sete sites, rock formation, rock artesanato from all over Cidades; prehistoric sites and rock paintings paintings, great hikes, besides Piaui and it is a pleasant in the Parque Nacional da Serra da Capivara, some exquisite beaches. spot to come browse which ranks as one of the top prehistoric among the shops which sites in South America; and the chance for sell: leather articles; rock hounds to visit Pedro Segundo, the furniture; extremely intricate lacework, only place in South America where opals are mined. colorful hammocks; opals and soapstone TERESINA (from Pedro Segundo); and Teresina, the capital of liqueurs and confectionery made Piaui, is famed as the from genipapo, caju and hottest city in Brazil. maracuja. Promotional literature The Cooperativa de Rede stresses heat and yet more Pedro Segundo, a producer of heat, with blurb bites such high-quality hammocks, sells as 'Even the Wind Here beautiful linen hammocks at Isn't Cool' or 'Teresina— prices ranging from $55 to $130. As Hot As Its People.' Cotton hammocks start at around It's an interesting, $26. quirky place which seems Mercado Troca-Troca: addicted to giving a Middle In an attempt to perpetuate Eastern slant to the names the old tradition of troca troca of its streets, hotels and (barter), the government made a sights. The city itself is a permanent structure out of what Mesopotamia of sorts, was once an impromptu barter sandwiched between the market. Unless you are curious to Rio Poty and Rio Parnaiba. see the river, it's not worth a visit. Teresina is untouristed and Potycabana unpretentious, and the inhabitants will stop you on the street to ask 'Where If you hanker after aquatic frolics and are you from?'. Like the British, residents of Teresina instantly warm to games as a respite from the discussion of the weather, and especially of their favorite topic: searing heat, visit the o ca/or (the heat). Potycabana, an aquatic We recommend a visit if you yearn for attention or would entertainment center with like to feel famous for a day or so. And there's got to be water tobogganing and a surf something good going for a city that hosts an annual festival of pool, close to the Rio Poty. humor! Festivals Information The main festivals, with Tourist Offices typical dancing, music and PIEMTUR (223-4417), the state tourism organization, at cuisine of the Northeast are Rua Alvaro Mendes 1988, has helpful staff who happily dole out held between June and literature and advice. It's open from 9 am to 6 pm Monday to August. The Sarao InternaFriday. cional de Humor do Piaui The IBAMA office (232-1652), at Avenida Homero Castelo (Piaui Festival of Humor) is Branco 2240 (Jockey Club district), was one of the most active held during the second half we encountered in Brazil. Leaflets about the national parks in of November and features Piaui are available here. It's open from 8 am to 5.45 pm Monday comedy shows, exhibitions to Friday. of cartoons, comedy routines Museu Historic° do Piaui and lots of live music This state museum is divided into a series of exhibition Places to Eat rooms devoted to the history of the state; religious art; popular If you feel like seafood, art; archaeology; fauna, flora and minerals; and an eclectic try Camarelo do Elias, at assortment of antique radios, projectors and other ancient Avenida Pedro Almeida 457, or 0 Pesqueiwonders. Hidden in the corner of one room is a pathetic cabinet containing rinho, which is at Avenida Jorge Velho a flag, kerchief and some scribbled notes from comunistas, a flexible term 6889, several km outside town on the used here to describe a group of independent thinkers, who were wiped out
Surprise Box
BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
33
riverside. It serves crab and shrimp stew. For a splurge, visit the Forno e Foga°, inside the Hotel Luxor, which charges $8 per person for a gigantic buffet lunch. There's also a good restaurant inside the Teresina Palace Hotel serving regional food. Chez Matrinchan, at Avenida Nossa Senhora de Fatima 671 (Jockey Club district), is divided into three elements: a restaurant serving French cuisine, a pizzeria and a nightclub. There's live music here on Friday and Saturday nights. LITORAL PIAUIENSE Parnaiba Parnaiba, once a major port at the mouth of the Rio Parnaiba, is a charming town, which is being developed as a beach resort, along with the town of Luis Correia, which is 18 km away. It's well worth a trip from Teresina, and onward travel to Maranhao state is possible for adventurous travelers. Porto das Barcas, the old warehouse section along the riverfront, has been carefully restored, and contains a maritime museum, an artesanato center, art galleries, bars and restaurants. Beaches & Lagoons Praia Pedra do Sal, 15 km north-east ofthe center, on Ilha Grande Santa Isabel, is a good beach divided by rocks into a calm section suitable for swimming, and a rough section preferred by surfers. Lagoa do Portinho is a lagoon surrounded by dunes about 14 km east of Parnaiba on the road to Luis Correia. It's a popular spot for swimming, boating, sailing and fishing. The prime beaches closer to Luis Correia are Praia do Coqueiro and Praia de Atalaia. The latter is very popular at weekends and has plenty ofbarracas selling drinks and seafood. The nearby lagoon, Lagoa do Sobradinho, is renowned for its shifting sands which bury surrounding trees. Delta do Parnaiba The Delta do Parnaiba is a 2700-sq-km expanse of islands, beaches, lagoons, sand dunes and mangrove forest, with abundant wildlife, which straddles the border of Piaui and Maranhao. One photographer recently described the amount of wildlife as 'comparable to what I saw on good days in the Pantanal'. Sixty-five per cent of its area is in Maranhao state, but the easiest access is from Parnaiba. Day trips by boat around the delta run from Porto das Barcas on weekends, with a stop on Ilha do Caju—the cost is around $30. Ilha do Caju has been owned for several generations by a family who are now trying to establish an ecological reserve there. There is one pousada on the island. For more details, contact the Piemtur office in Porto das Barcas. PARQUE NACIONAL DE SETE CIDADES Sete Cidades is a small national park with interesting rock formations, estimated to be at least 190 million years old, which resemble sete cidades 34
(seven cities). Various researchers have analyzed nearby rock inscriptions and deduced that the formations are ruined cities from the past. The Austrian lustorian Ludwig Schwennhagen visited the area in 1928 and thought he'd found the ruins of a Phoenician city. The French researcher Jacques de Mabieu considered Sete Cidades as proof that the Vikings had found a more agreeable climate in South America. And Erich van Daniken, the Swiss ufologist, theorized that extraterrestrials were responsible for the cities which were ruined by a great fire some 15,000 years ago. There's clearly lots of scope here for imaginative theories. See what you think! The road around the park's geological monuments starts one km further down from the Abrigo do IBAMA (IBAMA office and hostel). The loop is a leisurely couple of hours' stroll. It's best to start your hike early in the morning and bring water because it gets hot; watch out for the cascaveis—poisonous black-andyellow rattlesnakes. The park is open from 6 am to 6 pm. Ask at the IBAMA office for information; guides are available at a small cost. Sexta Cidade (Sixth City) and Pedra do Elefante, the first sites on the loop, are lumps of rock with strange scaly surfaces. The Pedra do Inscricao (Rock of Inscription) at Quinta Cidade (Flfth City) has red markings which some say are cryptic Indian runes. The highlight of Quarta Cidade (Fourth City) is the Mapa do Brasil (Map of Brazil), a negative image in a rock wall. The Biblioteca (Library), Arco de Triunfo (Triumphal Arch) and Cabeca do Cachorro (Dog's Head) are promontories with good views. PEDRO SEGUNDO The town of Pedro Segundo lies in the hills of the Serra dos Matties, around 50 km south of Piripiri. Close to the town are several mines, which are the only source of opals in South , America. The only accommodation in town is the Hotel Rimo Pedro Segundo (2711543), on Avenida Itamaraty. PARQUE NACIONAL SERRA DA CAPIVARA The Parque Nacional Serra da Capivara, in the southwest of the state, was established in 1979 to protect the many prehistoric sites and examples of rock paintings in the region. There are over 300 excavated sites which are opened to the public depending on the research scheExcerpts from Bra:11 dule. If the staff have time, A Travel Survival Kit you may be lucky enough to receive a lift and be shown 3rd edition, around. For details about by Andrew Draffen, access and archaeological Chris McAsey, sites, contact Doutora Niede Leonardo Pinheiro, GuBdon at FUMDHAM and Robyn Jones. (Fundacao Museu do HoFor more information mem Americano) (582call Lonely Planet: 1612), at Rua Abdias Neves (800) 275-8555. 551, Sao Raimundo Nonato. Copyright 1996 Lonely There are plans to open a Planet Publications. museum and conduct guided tours of some of the sites. Used by permission. BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
Wanna Buy the Sugar Loaf? When you see two buses alongside one another and about-four arms on each side extended swapping business cards, passing them down the aisle on the Taus, you really come to understand commerce is the center of human activity. JOHN MILLER
Postcards from Rio My PC The thing that I love about working in Windows-95 in Portuguese is it is so easy to do things that you do not expect to happen. The other day I was wandering around the screen, and I enter some piece of software by accident, that I have no idea what it does because it is all in Portuguese. All of a sudden I got those lovely flapping wings that show your files are being trashed and removed from the system. Now I had not done a backup for about 4 weeks (I know naughty boy), and I am just watching weeks of work go flying out the window. So I just act really relaxed, calm, and ripped the FUCKING power cord out of the wall as quick as I could. This is one reason why I was such a lousy engineer. I just resort to extreme measures when the machine does not behave the way I want it to. And like, as if pulling the plug out of the wall is going to work any faster than switching the machine off. But that's the point, I do not think this way, I just imagine all those electrons are better cut off at the source. As if my files are going down the earth wire and I can catch them at the power lead and stuff them back in, and hence the pull the plug approach. Ended up! lost only about 15 files, but oh boy, using Windows-95 in Portuguese is a little challenging. And why does Microsoft not say on the front of the box: "Warning, any moron Australian who does BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
not understand Portug ese should not attempt to use this software". I t ink they assume too much. The Rio de Janeiro Zoo Ma a, the Bugs Ear (Marta's niece, Ana-Paula) and I ent to the Rio de Janeiro Zoological Gardens one Sa urday. Sounds dull eh? Read on... Ri de Janeiro Zoo is just like most other good zoos, i has elephants, bears, giraffes, monkeys (I am told th re are more monkey species in South America than aijy other continent), and some close relatives of Ron C sey from 2KY (for my North American readers sulistitute Ken Starr or Charlton Heston). Ficr it cost about 2 coconuts to go to the zoo,! like the pri e for a day's entertainment. The best way to get there is to catch the 474 bus from Ipanema. It does a wonderful tour of the city to get to the gardens that surround the Zoological Park. Next to the park is the old Imperial Palace of Rio de Janeiro, where Emperor Dom Pedro I & II used to hang out, just your average Buckingham Palace type thing with about 200 rooms, etc. The palace is now the one of the main museums in Rio de Janeiro. The park is about the size of Centennial Park in Sydney. This is family country, picnics, BBQs, kites, rug rats everywhere, fairy floss, all sorts of sweet thi gs that are not good for your teeth, plus the ubiquitous buttered s eet-corn (I love the smell, but just deadly on my constitution for s me reason). • So we go inside he zoo and the first thing you have to do is negotiate your way ast some of the most dangerous and savage animals you have ev r seen in South America. These are the professional photographers who are hawking Polaroid snapshots of you with any animal in th zoo (or not in the zoo for that matter). They use painted backdrops of nimals in the zoo for the photo of your rug rat. So you do not need t go any further, just take your kid for a photo with the animal of y ur choice and then you have seen the Rio de Janeiro Zoo. Why w ste all that valuable time in the zoo learning about animals, havin to push a pram around, kids whining at you all day, when you can ave the whole experience by just having a photograph taken fo $11. Even mount it on a plate so you can have the experience every time you feed your son or dau hter. So we buy a photograph of Ana-Paula and lea e the zoo. This ends the visit to the zoo. ust kidding. Lets check out the birds first. You hay to understand that the South American continen is home to some pretty weird animals, and bir s. Most notable the tucano (that is toucan). Now I h ve never seen a toucan in the flesh before (or we ing feathers for that matter), and some species are very rare now. Tucanos are just amazing, the col rs incredible, the beaks look like they have been ha -painted. I keep thinking of Pro Hart paintings on mmy Durante's nose (I am having a little help tonight with the cac cc:writing this section, so my typing is terrible, I will tidy up tomorr w). The Rio Zoo has 5-6 tucanos species, and a separate aviary ar a for other birds of the Amazon. Parrots of all sorts and sizes, maracan'a's (yes the football stadium is named after a bird), eagles, jaburu, owls, wow even a guy dressed as a Power Ranger in one cage (Am I really writing this stuff or getting divine inspiration. No, just my third glass of cachaca). I have not seen so many colorful birds since the previous Sunday on Ipanema Beach (not the most politically correct joke, but come and get me). Thejacare swamp is also impressive. (Does anyone know the collective noun for a collection of crocodiles, alligators? A pod ofjacares I think). The turtles and tortoises share the same swamp pen an lay about in one giant heap warming each other in the sun. (This I am told is a misconception by my resident anthropologist Tim Moulton who stopped over to share a glass of cachaca. Tortoises re cold blooded, so it does not make any differ35
ence). The tortoises were performing very very slow sexual salesmen on the bus is that they all sell the same stuff. Marta acts, I could tell, because the female tortoises were all yawning made a good point though, they have been doing it for a living and polishing their nails. Can you imagine the female tortoises a lot longer than !have (no, !have not tried selling wine on the saying, "George, can't you go any faster?" bus, yet), so they know their consumer. They have a great range of felines here, every type of cat Anyway later in the month I did some mathematics on this you can imagine, all the great jaguars, panthers, leopards, plus bus selling. Lets say the guy selling on the buses starts at 9:30 the imported bengals, lions, Gary Ablett, Benny Elias, etc. (Do am, and finishes about 7:00 pm (they are allowed to work the I have to explain this as well?). Mais uma cachaca Marta, por evening peak hour). Now I reckon an hour off for lunch. That favor. means 8.5 hours. The bus salesmen would do about 6 X 5 Other interesting animals in the zoo inminutes trips per hour, and clude the armadillo, tapir, capybaras, and an average would be 1 sale per anaconda that could swallow Dean Lukin in trip. Average sales price = one sitting. I think it had a pig half digested 0.50 cents. Average cost of in its guts when I saw it. goods = 0.25 cent. So that Like most zoos, it has turned to private equals 6 trips per hour X 8.5 enterprise for sponsorship, and all the exhibhours X $0.50 = $25 per day its have tastefully made signs showing who is less 50% costs = $12.5 per financially supporting the animals including day * 25 days per month = Ernst & Young, Petrobras, McDonald's $312.50 per month profit (no (funny, it was the Brahma cow cage; was this tax). Double this as! put Marta some Carioca attempt at corporate humor), 0 out as well, then you put your Globo newspaper. This is a great way to family of 8 children out to do spend corporate dollars, a great learning and the same, hey I'm in the wrong educational tool and a lot of fun for the adults game. (I think the kids like it too). I use the 123 bus from Only one range of animals not found in Ipanema to Centro pretty this zoo, you guessed it. Boy, you wonder why no one knows regularly. Even know some of the drivers, they all have their Australia in South America, and the Australian Government & own personality behind the wheel. One of my favorite drivers Zoological people cannot even get one single Australian is a really big Brazilian guy, maybe 250 pounds of black, rolyMammal in the zoo here. poly, huge smile, loud singing voice, the works. This guy is a No kangaroo, no wallaby, no emu (plenty of ostriches), no natural at his job, good driver, and is known by everyone for koala, no platypus, no fairy penguin, no blue tongue lizard, no his good humor at the wheel and singing to entertain the kookaburra, no Oz salt or fresh water crocodiles, no black passengers. Only one thing I do not like about his driving swan, no dingos, no magpies, no pelicans, no bandicoot. No abilities; I am pretty certain he only has ONE EYE, the other Tasmanian Devil, no possums (but plenty of opossums— is glass!! m "Hey driver, do you mind not blinking so much! !!" South America has lots of marsupials like gambcis, cuicas, One of the favorite pastimes of the bus drivers is drag marmotas, four-eyed opossums, wooly Opossum), no racing the intersection. Imagine a couple of buses pulled up wombats, no quokkas, no Major Mitchells, no unusual Austraalongside each other at an intersection in Avenue Nossa lian marsupials full stop. No frilly lizards or deadly poisonous Senhora de Copacabana. The traffic signal is red. The two snakes, no cane toad (oh that's right, we got the cane toad from drivers look across at each other, grinning, give the old thumbs Latin America, please, Australian does not up sign, and then starting revving and clutch need any more cane toads, we have enough burning awaiting the change of signal from already). red to green. The green light comes on, and How can Brazilians be expected to learn you get thrown back in your seat as the two about Australia if we have no animals in bus drivers try to nail down any straggling their zoos. l am dumbfounded about this. It pedestrians on the other side of the intersecis not as though this zoo is not up to stantion, and race for the imaginary checkered dards, it is a good quality zoo, and they flag. Once through the intersection, the guy have loads of space. I really had a tough on the inside track plays chicken with the _ time explaining this to the Bugs Ear, Ana Imperial Museum in Petropolis guy on the outside. All of this is done while Paula. She was so disappointed not to see a both drivers are grinning away, thumbs up kangaroo. signs, and smiling as if getting the passenLook, !know this sounds all very Barry McKenzie, Crocogers on board from A to B was a distraction from the real dile Dundee and Paul Hoganish, but that is where the cultural objective, which is practicing for Formula 1 racing. All in a thing is at the moment. Maybe Australians want to show the good day at the office. world that we are more sophisticated than cute animals with Another pastime on the bus is doing business in traffic. In pouches and good beaches and great wine & beer, but the fact, this is done on all forms of transport, cars, buses, golden rule is "give the punter what he wants". And if they motorcycles, bicycles. Lets say it is gridlock time, you already want to see kangaroos, give them kangaroos, including meat have the windows open, and the person in the next lane is no exports for the BBQ (anyone want to invest in a refrigerated more than spitting distance from you. This is the ideal time to container of jumping steaks, por favor?). start handing out the business cards. It just never stops here. Anyway we left after Ana-Paula ate me out of $18 of hot When you see two buses alongside one another and about four dogs, fairy floss, Pepsi, freshly crushed sugar cane juice, arms on each side extended swapping business cards, passing roasted cashews and cheese pastels (Where does she put it them down the aisle on the bus, you really come to understand all?). OK, so I chugged 3 pasteis (turnovers) and a couple of commerce is the center of human activity. beers as well. Give me a break, I'm tired and going home to The telephone, Cariocas and Australia sleep this off. But a fun day I must say. Let me give you a couple of examples of a typical phone More Bus Adventures conversation. I am going to break this down into a couple of When are these salesmen (it does seem to be mostly men) categories, so you get a feel for things. going to get something different to sell? ! had a serious talk to I. Inbound call from within Brazil ( I answer the Marta about this, and I said half the problem with these phone) 36
BFtAZZIL -JULY 1999
Brrrnminnnnnggggg, Brrrrnininnnnnggggg, Barrninnnnnnggggg, John: "Hello". (If it is a long distance call, you get this lovely chiming sound and a voice in Portuguese saying that unless you hang up straight away, you are wearing the cost ofthis long distance or international call). 3rd party: "Boa noite. Eu gostaria de falar corn Maria Lisboa, por favor." John: "Who, sorry, quern?" 3rd Party: "Droga. Eu gostaria de falar corn Maria Lisboa, por favor." (Now at this point, ifMarta is around, I usually say "momento" and hand off to Marta, but if not, it gets real fun" John: "Desculpe, eu nao falo Portugues". 3rdParty: "NA° falar PortuguêsIii .3 Hey gringo, when you going to learn Portuguese, this is Marcos Frota here. I was just testing you". (He is always pulling pranks like this on me). OR
3rd Party: "Nao falar Portugues 111 Can you speak me Maria Lisboa, por favor?". John: "Desculpe, there is no Maria Lisboa here". 3rd Party: "E cinco, oito, nove, nove, dois, tres, sete (5899237)? " John: "This is 521-8568". 3rd Party: : "E cinco, oito, nove, nove, dois, tres, sete?" John: "This is 521-8568". 3rd Party: Beep beep beep beep beep beep. 2. Outbound Call - John Miller to customer / business in Rio de Janeiro
Dial 681-3297 (engaged) Beep Beep Beep (This is the worst part, because you are encouraged that A) you got a line B) you know someone will answer the phone when they hang up, so you try again.) Try Again. (nothing, no line ) wait ten minutes. Ahh, dial tone 681-3297 (vacuum, nada) Hang up, wait ten more minutes. 681-3297 Brrrrniunnnnnggggg, Brrruninnnnnnggggg, Brrrriiiiinnnnnggggg, Brrrnininnnnnggggg, Brrrmininnnnnggggg, Burriminnnnnggggg, Brrrnitunnnnnggggg, Brurriminnnnnggggg, Brrrrinunnnnnggggg, Brrrniiiinnnnnggggg, BrnTruninnnnnggggg, Brrrniiiinnnnnggggg, Brrrruninnnnnggggg, Brrrrriiinnnnnnggggg, Brrrniiiinnnnnggggg, Brrrnininnnnnggggg, Burrnininnnnnggggg, ; Petropolis Brrrnininnnnnggggg, (Where did they go?) Wait 10 minutes. 681-3297 Brrrnininnnnnggggg, Brrrrriminnnnnggggg, Brrrnininnnnnggggg, Brrrnininnnnnggggg, 3rd Party: "A16, cinco, nove, tres, quatro, quatro, zero, urn (593-4401)". John: "Desculpe, wrong number". Hang up. Could have BRAZZIL -JULY 1999
sworn I keyed in the right number! 681 3297 Bruniumnrinnggggg, Brurrinunnnnnggggg, Brrrnintnnnnnggggg, Brrrnininnnnnggggg, 3rd Party: Alo, seis, oito, urn, tres, dois, nove, sete." Hooray. John: "Boni dia, could I speak to Marcello Luiz Henrique Vicente Paulo Lopes Goncalves, por favor?" 3rd Party: 1 "Marcello Henrique Luiz Marcello Yuri Goncalves?". John: "Yeah, the same one". 3rd Party: "Errrrrrrr, voce nao fala Portugues?". John: "Mio, desculpe. Eu ndo - falo Portugues." 3rd party: "Momentinho You would think I would have worked out the problem by now, but no, I am such a slow learner. 3. Inbound call from Australia
(4:30 am Rio de Janeiro time). Bruniiiinnnnnggggg, Brurriminnnnnggggg, Brrrnininnnnnggggg, Brrrruninnnnnggggg, Hmmmmmmmmm, What the f.... Marta: "John, wake up, the phone's ringing". John: "Hrrtmmmmmm, ok, ok, I'll get it". (In the back of my mind I am thinking, 'gees, if you heard the phone ringing first, why did you wake me up to have the phone answered?' I could sleep through WW III with this much cachaca in my body.) Stumble around in the dark, kick my toe against the bed, walk into wardrobe door that mysteriously swings open during the night, swear profanity, race to the phone. John: "Unimm, hello". Look at clock next to the phone. Kevin: "Hey John, its Kevin, I got your message on the answering maichine, what's happening?". Yawn, wipe sleep from face, try to get eyes to focus. John: "Do you know what time it is?". Kevin: "Yeah its 5:30 in the afternoon, just finished watching the sydney Swans trounce Collingwood". John: "I neant do you know what time it is here?". Kevin: "Lm I guess it is, oh sorry about that. Anyway what's up? What do ya want?". John: "I j st called the other day to say hello, see how things are goi g, you know, stay in touch type thing". Kevin: "Oh, is that all. Yeah, well nothing much has been happening. GO your message the other day. Gee, you sure are having fun. I 'bet that bus adventure was a real experience. Keep up the good work, we really love to receive your mail, and we photocopy and send to all our family and friends. They really appreciate us doing this. My wife (Noreen) and I have been meaning to write, but you know, we have been kind of busy you know". John: "Yeah, not me. I just sit on the beach all day, reading 0 Globo, and drinking beer. Business is just flocking to my door. I have so much free time that I just sit and write letters all day to stop the boredom setting in. By the way, I hear John Howard and Peter Costello are putting the razor about, some Asia debt crisis or something". Kevin: "Yeah, bloody hell, it's bloody tough here at the moment, things are really bad, looks like recession time again. Well I have to go, this phone call is costing me a bomb!!! When are you coming back to Sydney?" John: "When I can afford it, real soon I hope. Love to see 37
you all." Kevin: "Yeah, we would to. Bye." Beep, beep, beep John: "Tchau". 4. Outbound call from Rio de Janeiro to Australia Dial Global Access, get line to connect from Brazil to USA. OK Dial Australia +61 Brrrrinunnnnnggggg, Brrrrrninunnnnggggg, Brrmininnnnnggggg, Brurniiinnnnnggggg, Beep Beep Beep Beep Receptionist: "Hello, this is Company X, Norelle speaking, please hold MUZAK, 2DAY FM, some banal advertisement for their product. Meanwhile back in Brazil, the hour glass is ticking at $3.00 per minute courtesy of Embratel. 10 minutes later. Receptionist: "Hello, this is Norelle, how may! help you?" John: "Yeah, my name is John Miller, I am calling from Brazil, can I speak to Mr. So and So?" Receptionist: "I'll just see if he is in. One moment please." This is where you hear the receptionist whispering in the background something like this, "I have a guy on the phone calling from Argentina or some place in the jungle, he says he wants to speak to you. What do you want me to say?" Receptionist: "Mr. So and So is not in right now, if you leave your number I'll make sure he gets your message.' Now at this point, you really have to make some tough decisions. So I have developed a couple of work around strategies using a fake accent or two: John: "Goddamn Aussies, this is NEW YORK calling, put me through to Mr. So & So straight away". Receptionist: "Yes sir, right away. Who may I say is calling?" John: "Henry Kissinger for all it matters. Look I am planning to buy your little Australian company in the next week or two, so I suggest you put me through NOW!!!" Receptionist: "Putting you through Petropolis In mid August we were invited by an amigo to his house in Petropolis. His name is Otavio, an architect who designs and builds houses in Petropolis. We had lunch with Otavio, his wife, two rug rats, and some other friends who lived in Melbourne for four years in Parkville. They were keen to refresh their fond memories about Australian wine. So it's bus adventure time again as we travel from Rio de Janeiro to Petropolis one Sunday. Petropolis is about 1.5 hours by car or bus from * -Botanical Gi arden Rio de Janeiro. Petropolis is situated in the surrounding tropically lush mountains, elevation about 1200 meters, a climate not unlike Cairns in Northern Queensland. It is very green, lush, very steep, beautiful tropical rainforests, paradise. Petropolis is famous as a weekend retreat for Cariocas, some older wellpreserved hotels (ex casinos), and a beautiful place to walk around. Population of Petropolis is about 300,000 although it felt more like 500,000. We hit the bus about 10:30 am and about V2 hour into the journey the freeway hits a snag. Well lets say a 5-km snag, right in the middle of Baixada Fluminense. We are stuck here for a while, but it is not dull either, in fact I have never been so entertained in a traffic jam in all my life. What can possibly be entertaining in a traffic jam? 38
Selling of course. Now a traffic jam for a street seller is like the Second Coming of Christ, and Jesus has descended and made his day. There are guys just racing from the surrounding suburbs setting world records for the 200M sprint, some on bikes carrying, ice cream, Coca-Cola, beer, you name it you can get it. And boy, when you are in a traffic jam, the thermometer is starting to climb, you got mum, six kids, probably your in-laws in the car as well, it's thirsty time. And just out the window of the car is a guy waiting to sell you that icy cold, thirst-quenching, refreshing, Coca-Cola. Man, what a product. Go anywhere, any time. 'Hey, pass the Marlboro Lights while you are at it, and maybe a chokito or two, hey Pedro, you want an ice cream? Marcia, here is a copy of the Sunday 0 Glob() to read? Hey, they look good, pass me a couple of those pastels, porfavor. And that coconut ice, man you say your Mum makes this, she is fantastic, you accept a check?" Now a bus is just like cream on a cake for these sales guys, because the bus has all these bored people inside just needing a can of icy cold Coca-Cola to pass the time. Man, the local Coca-Cola sales rep would have been proud of his distributors today, they were working double time. I was very tempted to do a wine tasting on the bus at this stage to the fellow passengers, but I just got so absorbed in all the action going on around, that I forgot. SD the jam lasts about 45 minutes and we climb the mountains to Petropolis, a really scenic drive, very windy road, lots of tunnels through the mountains, and finally arrive at the house of Otavio. Now I am in Australia, this is 1/4 acre block country, lawn to be mowed (not much, the house took up most of it), beautiful garden, brilliantly architect designed house, and the usual exotic colored pet tortoises! The land is very steep here, but just the most beautiful surrounding rain forest, just breathtaking. It's actually quite cool, and they even have a fireplace, which they use on the colder winter nights. And a very well stocked cellar, this guy knows his wine very well. It is like Sunday in Australia today, great lunch, veal, salad, potato, rice, some vegetables I do not know, Aussie wine, and some imported liqueurs from Italy, France and Germany. The wine flowed, the bossa nova played, the conversation stimulating. A cleansing ale to finish the day. And a sale of two dozen wines (I feel like an Amway person). Next stop a Tupperware party. We finish the day about 6:00 pm and Otavio gives us a lift back to the bus terminal in Petropolis. His parting words to me were: "John, as you know I lived in Los Angeles for five years and when I first arrived in LA I knew no one. So I know what you are going through. Just remember you are not alone in Brazil. Call me anytime, it is a pleasure to help". I am pretty sure that if I die here, it is because the Brazilians have killed me with kindness. Totally humbling experience this. Totally. John Miller is an Australian, living in Rio de Janeiro, selling Australian wine. 'Postcards from Rio' is a journal of his journey in the land of the Cariocas. For contact: John and Marta Miller Rua Joaquim Nabuco, 106 / Apt 1001 Copacabana CEP 22080-030 Rio de Janeiro Brazil Tel: +55 (021) 521 8568 E-mail: milleri(&,rio.nutecnet.com.br BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
Inside the old Helms Bakery building in Los Angeles lies the city's best performance venue, The Jazz Bakery. Major elements of allure include near-perfect acoustics, a gourmet café, and a policy that allows patrons to select their own seats. Encompassing both an art gallery and a café, the club's technoindustrial foyer is a utopia of modernism that creatively reconciles a daring combination of curving fluid spaces and contrasting rectilinear grids. It's an urban free zone of art and music that attracts a broad swath of hedonists from elderly jazz buffs and Venice Beach bohemians to L.A.'s chic society. It is also the ideal place to listen to jazz and diffuse the tensions of a hectic day on the freeway. That top Brazilian musicians prefer the room to others in the area is attested to by the increasing number of performances at the "Bakery" by notables such as Dori Caymmi, Badi Assad, Geraldo Azevedo, and Helio Delmiro. A few months back the club's calendar aroused my curiosity when it announced a one week stint by a trio comprised of drummer Duduka da Fonseca, bassist Nilson Matta (both of Trio da Paz) and pianist Hello Alves. I couldn't miss this group, because a pianist friend of mine in New York had told me, • Johr P ucci:Nils Matta uster "Who's a mother-fucking, killing piano player, nice cat too. Lives here in NYC and has been getting all the great gigs lately, Duduk DaFonseca :;1-aga like Joe Henderson and Airto." Although Alves had worked with Airto and Flora, Paquito D'Rivera, and Oscar CastroJohn Coltrane s harmonic structures. A soft-spoken, but confiNeves and had toured with Joe Henderson in support of his dent young m who has the look and manner of some benign Jobim tribute CD, Double Rainbow; the gig at the "Bakery" marked the 33-year-old pianist's first seducer, Hello has apclub date as a leader and the release of peared on numerous rehis debut CD, Trios. cordings including Joe Trios displays Helio's skill in Henderson's Big Band building on the examples ofhis idols, (1997), Hendrik Meurwhile at the same time seeking his kens' s October Colors own highly personal means of com(1995), and Claudio Rodiing to terms with the dialectics of the ti ' s Samba Manhattan jazz milieu. Because of the flexibility Style (1995) and Double of his concepts and the intense daring Standards (1997). In May of his execution, Helio assembled Hello played the Bern Jazz different rhythm sections for the reFestival in Bern, Switzercording, each with a comparable ealand, with Claudio Roditi, gerness to surprise themselves. The Paquito D'Rivera, Raul de players—John Patitucci, Al Foster, Souza, and the superb BraDuduka da Fonseca, Nilson Matta, zilian singer, Rosa Passos. and Paulo Braga—unite in unmistakAt the end ofJuly he toured able combinations to delineate the Austria, again with Clauinnovative and expressive force of dio and Paquito, and this Helio's music. Presenting a broad coming October he will Exemplifying an unbeatable peak cross section of tunes ranging from be going to Germany with within the B-razilian jazz idiom, Helio Bud Powell's "Hallucinations" to Hendrik Meurkens for a Alves releases a new CD and marks JoAo Bosco's "Bala corn Bala," from two-week tour. his debut as a leader. Gershwin's "My Ship" to Jobim's "0 I attended two of Helio's shows at the The Jazz Grande Amor," and from Hermeto BRUCE GILMAN Pascoal's "Santo Antonio," to three Bakery, and both his performances were techniof Helio's original compositions, cally astonis ng, showing great rhythmic, harmonic, and imTrios presents a striking balprovisational strengths, which few, if any, could match. His ance of craft and instinct that melodic free rm inventiveness and sense oftime stood out like can only be experienced by lisa free spirit s eking to liberate itself from all traditional contening—a summary would be straints. Fier and modernistic harmonies, and their powerful virtually impossible in just a tensions of in ependence and control were in perfect sync and few passages. struck a dyn ic equilibrium with the exotic infrastructure of Born in sao Paulo in 1966, the venue. M friend in New York had been right. I lingered Alves started piano lessons at 6 after the seco d show so we could talk about the trio, his new years old. Initially attracted to CD, and payi g dues on the jazz scene. pop standards and classical music through his parents' inBrazzil—Gr at chemistry! You guys were so relaxed. fluence, Hello became absorbed Were you e i joying yourselves? in jazz after hearing a perforHello -Yeah, it's always a lot of fun to play with Duduka and mance by Chick Corea. In the Nilson. We' e good friends, and I'm so glad that they're mid-eighties, he attended here. This is a big deal for me. It's my first major gig as a Berklee College of Music in leader, so I' e been approaching it as if it were my very first Boston where he focused on gig. Of cou e, I've done little things, small gigs in New composition, performance, and
10 AVS
BRAZZIL -JULY 1999
39
York. And whenever Romero (Lubambo) is not available, I do a lot of things with Duduka and Nilson as Trio da Paz. But this is my first major gig, and having friends of mine here playing with me really makes me much more. comfortable. It's so cool having them here. You know, schedule-wise and everything, it worked out. I'm honored they came. Brazzil—I wouldn't call touring and recording with Joe Henderson small gigs. Helio—I learned a lot just hearing Joe sound great every night. I mean no matter what, he would always do his thing and always sound great. Even ifthere were technical problems or the sound wasn't good, when everyone was tired because we'd been traveling all day or when things were just not going that well on stage, like sound-wise or whatever, he would still give 200 percent. And he always sounded beautiful... Every night! No matter what. There could be a war going on behind him, and he would still sound burning. A bomb could explode next to him, and he would still be playing those beautiful lines. I mean nothing phased the guy. Total concentration. And just that alone taught me that there are no excuses. There are no excuses. Sometimes you go play a gig and afterward the guys are saying, "Oh man, the sound wasn't good," or "The guy in the third row was wearing a red shirt." (laughs) You know what I mean? Musicians find excuses, and you really can't. Joe was burning every night. And beside that, he was just so cool to us. He was an excellent leader in the sense that he would let us play. Brazzi/—Stretch out a little bit? Helio—Totally! We were all equals on stage. He would just let us blow. Nilson played bass in that band, but on the record (Double Rainbow) there were actually two bands. The Brazilian group was Nico Assumpcdo on bass and Paula Braga (drums) and Oscar Castro-Neves (guitar) and Eliane Elias (piano). And then he had an American group with Herbie Hancock (piano), Christian McBride (bass), and Jack DeJohnette (drums), which was beautiful. I mean, it was so happening. Brazzil—Y ou have a similar situation on Trios, with basically two rhythm sections. And I was wondering whether your trio concept changes when you move from a Brazilian to a North American rhythm section. Hello—It is definitely different, but I try to play the same way, just play my own thing and adapt to both. Of course, I've played with the Brazilian rhythm section so much more, but you know, I like doing both. I love Brazilian music, and I love jazz. Basically, I want to do Brazilian music within a jazz approach. I want to open things up more and mix the Brazilian and jazz information, because sometimes Brazilian musicians have a tendency to do too much of one thing or another, too much groove or too much of that specifically Brazilian thing. It's kind of hard to leave that, to get away from it. But it's good to be able to free things up and go back and forth, just like what players do in jazz.
different. What was happening in that arrangement? Helio—It's similar to what I did on the recording. I'm looking for something different with that tune, you know? I don't want to play it like just another bossa nova. Of course, it is a bossa nova, but the approach I'm taking is more of a free form kind of thing. I'm looking for alternate ideas, different spaces, following them, and then going back into the groove. I'm trying to go back and forth between being a Brazilian and being sort of transcendental like Keith Jarrett. I like it very loose, in the sense of not having a specific groove, and then all of a sudden going back to the groove. It's refreshing that way, you know? Sometimes when people play a bossa nova they get stuck. They get into the "Oh man, we've got to play a bossa nova" head space. And it's the same thing with straight ahead. It's like, "Oh man, we've got to play straight ahead." Brazzil—I hear that "back and forth" thing a lot on Trios, especially on Bud Powell's "Hallucinations." It's more like samba than bebop. Hilio—Exactly. It is samba. Again, there are spots where it's very locked in and then some others where it's very loose. I like having those open spaces and then going back into the groove. I like having both ideas happening, not one thing or the other. Paulo (Braga) plays on that track, and you know, he is "the man." He worked with Jobim for many years and so many other great artists. He's a master Brazilian drummer, but he lives in New York now. We worked a lot together with Joe Henderson. It's interesting in a way because his approach is so different from Duduka's. They come from different schools. Duduka definitely comes from the Edson Machado school, that samba-jazz school of Raul de Souza, and those guys. Paulo, on the other hand, worked a lot as a studio musician in Brazil and had to play so many different styles that his take is a little bit different. Both of them will meet the same thing differently. And I love them both because of that difference. Brazzil—It's kind of interesting that Al Foster also plays drums on Trios, because he played on Joe Henderson's tribute CD to Miles (So Near, So Far) and both Foster and Henderson played with Miles. Hello—You know, that's my favorite Joe Henderson album. He sounds so hip on it. And I love what Al Foster did on it. It's so happening. Brazzi/—You've probably heard the story that during the sessions Foster had a picture of Miles propped up in front of his drum set. Helio—I have heard that story. That's so happening! All those guys—Scofield and Dave Holland. It's such a hip album. I always liked Al Foster's playing with Miles too, and I knew that if I ever had the chance, I would love recording with him.
Brazzil—Rudy Van Gelder is the recording engineer who created the famous "Blue Note sound." How did he get involved with the project? Hello—The producer from the ReserBrazzil—Great players like Herbie. voir label works with him all the time. Hello—Exactly. He can play anything. Even the Keith Jarrett trio, the way And I had actually recorded at the Van they approach straight ahead tunes is a Gelder Studio with Claudio (Roditi) different kind of information, with for Reservoir. And, you know, it's the Duduka, Hello, Nilson different ideas. I like that freedom. same Van Gelder studio in New Jersey where Chick Corea; Herbie (Hancock), Brazzil—That freedom certainly and Jobim recorded. It's the studio came across in the show tonight, especially with where all those famous Blue Note recordings from the sixties arrangements like "0 Grande Amor." It was more than were made. Al Foster kept saying, "Oh, I was here in 1965 Duduka just double timing. It was almost like everybody playing with ah..." And Van Gelder's saying, "Jobim was was in the same orbit but doing something completely sitting right there when I..." And I'm thinking, "Man! He was BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
there!" Van Gelder has seen it all. Coltrane recorded there. Joe Henderson was there a lot. All those guys, everybody. Van Gelder recorded all the greats, so recording in that studio was really meaningful for me. Brazzil—Can you tell me a little about your composition "Song for Claudio"? Hilio—I wrote that tune for Claudio Roditi, the trumpet player who was so helpful to me when I first arrived in New York. My first gig in New York was with Claudio. It's a mid-tempo tune where I used some of the techniques that I learned from Charlie Banacos, and Duduka sounds incredible on it. When I wrote it, 1 was thinking mostly about the kind of settings Claudio likes to play in. He's been like my godfather in the United States. Brazzil—How did you wind up coming to New York? Helio—Right around the time I was getting more into jazz and playing less classical, I was in this high school band. And there was this festival, like a high school band competition, and Xu Viana— a really great guy and a very well-known bass player who played a lot in clubs in Sao Paulo, and I think even had a big band there for a while—was one of the judges. I was really interested in learning more about harmony and jazz, because I didn't know much about it. Well, I met Xu and started studying harmony with him. It was Xu who mentioned Berklee (College of Music), so he was definitely the guy responsible for my move to New York. He had their catalog; Berklee has a beautiful catalog. When I looked at the pictures of those guys rehearsing and performing there... I was 15 years old and I went nuts. I was like, "Wow! I have to go there!" Brazzil—Is there much of a jazz scene in Sao Paulo today? Helio—Night life in Sao Paulo is very big. It's happening. It's not like New York, but it has that same vibe. Lots of great restaurants and night clubs. Not a lot of jazz clubs, but there are a couple, and a few of the younger players are starting to get some recognition. But New York is still the definite center. Everybody in the world is there. I was talking to John Patitucci the other day about this. John had been living in L.A. for many years, and he told me, "You know, I wanted to play. I wanted to play jazz!" And no offense, L.A. is a great town and everything, but New York is still the center of the music world. There's no question about that. John was doing a lot of studio work and making good money in Los Angeles, but as far as playing jazz... That's why he moved back to New York. Brazzil—Jazz players in L.A. say that if you go to New York, even if you don't play, you'll come back a better player. Helio—Oh yeah, it's a fact. Everything is practically walking distance and everything is there. And there are so many clubs where you can just hang out and hear the world's best players. Brazzil—How would you compare the scene in L.A. to New York's? Helio—It's very different. The thing is that in L.A., you have BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
to buy your ticket ahead of time and allow enough time to get to where you're going—especially if you're going to eat somewhere else. You leave your house, get into the car, drive to the club, find a place to park, and stand in line, just to hear a particular artist. I mean literally, you have to plan. You have to know exactly what you're going to do and when. In New York, you could just be walking down the street and see some club you want to go into, and go in. Clubs in New York get a lot more walk-in people, walk-in crowds. And there are crowds anyway, no matter what. But here in L.A., going to hear some music is more like a specific event, so it's tougher in a way. The musicians and clubs here have to make huge promotions so that people know way ahead of time and can make plans. Brazzil—Will the younger jazz musicians in Brazil have to come to New York in order to have performing careers? Helio—Well, as far as the players living in Brazil... It's tough anywhere, but in Brazil it's tougher for jazz guys to make money. Often they end up having to do lots of different things, commercial music, maybe accompanying singers, which is a great thing too, but your chops... You can't help it. If youre not playing (jazz) all the time, your chops won't be as good. Accompanying singers is great, but it's a different thing. You're not really using your jazz chops and getting all those opportunities to solo. And that's what a lot of guys in Brazil have to do. They play with, I don't know, like Ivan Lins or they get gigs here and there. It would be nice to be doing both, to be playing some of those accompanying gigs and also making money playing jazz so you could keep your jazz chops up. It is really tough. Brazzil—Would you say that Berklee was the turning point for you? Helio—Oh, definitely! I went there when I was eighteen. •Brazzil—Sonle people go there, and they don't survive. It's just too Much work. They go back home because they can't handle it. Hello—That as exactly howl was feeling. I was wondering whether I could handle it and if I could hang in there with those crazy pFople who practice twelve hours a day. I was concerned about getting sick, getting sick of music, because in Boston there was nothing else for me to do. I went there in January and itkvas snowing. Really, the only thing I could do was practice. Brazzil—Wel, you're burning, man. I can't get over your chops. You never let up! When some guys play fast, it just sounds like they're playing glissandos, like a blur, but you distinctly bring out every note. Does this come from your work at Berklee or more from your classical training? Helio—Yeah; it's a lot from the classical. Definitely, because I played a lot pf classical as a kid. Until I was 14 or 15 years old, I was plaYing classical. I started when I was 6 years old and played until I was 15. I wasn't that serious about it, but I played a lot of classical. That's where it comes from. Brazzil—Do you maintain any sort of regular practice routine now, or is it just playing, composing, and 41
arranging? Helio—No, I always work my technique every day, some scales and stuff. You know, it's a prevention for any sort of tendinitis—knock on wood. Thank God I've never had any problems. A lot of guys have got tendinitis in their arms. When you play piano there is tension in your arms. You know, even your shoulders. But if you practice every day very slowly... I start in the morning and play very, very slowly. If you heard me practicing, you'd think I was a 5year-old. After about forty-five minutes to an hour I start speeding up. But the slow stuff is what helps the most. It builds up strength. The muscles build up, so when you go to the fast stuff, you're more precise. Brazzi/—Another one of your original compositions on Trios is dedicated to Charlie Banacos. Can you tell me a little about the tune and your studies with him? Helio—"Tribute to Charlie" is a bossa, but it's a tune where I have incorporated more of the techniques that I studied with Charlie. One of the really interesting exercises I practiced with Charlie was the use of four note combinations in every possible variation over the changes to Coltrane's "Giant Steps." I would work out those four note combinations and changes in every key.
Selected Discography: Artist Helio Alves Claudio Roditi Joe Henderson Hendrik Meurkens Claudio Rodin
Title Trios Double Standards Big Band October Colors Manhattan Style
Label Reservoir Reservoir Verve/PolyGram Concord Picante Reservoir
Date 1998 1997 1996 1995 1995
Malandro
1998
Worth checking out: Trio da Paz
Partido Out
in the summer of 1998. Airto and Flora are such great musicians and such a big part of music history, you know? Even back with Hermeto, and with Chick Corea on the Return to Forever albums—Airto playing drums and Flora singing tunes like "500 Miles (High)." That stuff was key for me when I first started. Those albums are probably one of the reasons that I'm playing now. I heard that stuff and I was like, "Man!" Brazzil—I couldn't believe Nilson's playing tonight, doubling the melody on Hermeto's "0 Ovo," the harmonics and the double stops—jeeez! I've never heard anyone else cover that tune, let alone play the melody on contrabass. I don't even think there is a recording of it except for that old one by Quarteto Novo. Helio—Actually, I think you're right. I've only heard it on that one recording. It is a great tune, and Nilson plays it beautifully. He also plays beautifully on Hermeto's "Santo Antonio" on Trios. That's an interesting tune because I actually played it with Hermeto at Berklee. He came to do a clinic and they needed a band to play with him. So I played piano and Hermeto played flute and this other keyboard. I was having so much fun, I forgot to give back the chart. That's how I learned the tune (laughs). It was only afterward that I got the album. Hermeto does it much slower than we do on Trios, and, of course, he brings in some very colorful voices and sounds from the Northeast of Brazil.
Brazzil—W hen you say the "Giant Steps" changes, you mean moving harmonically in major thirds? Hello—Movement in thirds, yeah. It moves to different keys, from one key to the next every four bars. And it keeps moving in thirds, yeah. And the interesting thing about it is that it's almost like a mathematic formula, like a computer thing. Seems kind of mechanical, but once you put it all together, it sounds great because you have all the possible combinations of just those few notes. And when you throw in a few other ideas, you come up with some great surprises. I haven't actually based any of my compositions strictly on that progression, but I've written a lot of tunes using formulas like that. I'd move the chords in thirds, kind of like "Giant Steps," and go into Brazzil—Are you planning to write arrangements different keys while the melody moved for a larger ensemble on the next CD? Nilson at the Jazz Bakery only in seconds—only in seconds and Hello—I have been studying arranging with Mike the chords only in thirds. Longo, an excellent piano player who used to work Or sometimes I'd move chords in whole with Dizzy (Gillespie). He was the musical director steps or half steps and use only minor or major chords. If for Dizzy's big band during the seventies, and he's a fantastic you limit yourself, you can uncover fresh, new ideas. Those arranger who writes really well for big band. Working with are Charlie Banacos concepts, and they're cool. When you Mike has got me more and more excited about arranging. So sit down to write a tune and have a blank sheet of paper in who knows? Maybe some day I'll have some horns. front of you, the possibilities are so great that sometimes you get stuck. By limiting your possibilities, all of a sudden, Brazzil—Helio, thanks for staying so late and sharing so ideas open up. Sounds weird when you start, but then you're much. like, "Oh man, yeah! I can only move this way and that Helio—Thank you for coming. way." You come up with solutions that are pretty interesting and that can go from simple to complex. Trios is available at Virgin, Borders, and Tower Records or from Heti° directly at: halves@aol.com Brazzil—Speaking of complex, that was a killer version You can also obtain Trios from Reservoir Music: of Milton's "Vera Cruz." It's a shame that it's not rsriazz@worldnet.attnet included on Trios. Hello—Yeah, I love that tune. We played that a lot with Bruce Gilman, music editor for Brazzil, Airto and Flora. received his Masters degree in music from California Institute of the Arts. Brazzil—W hen did you work with Airto? He leads the Brazilian jazz ensemble Axe Helio—I played with him a lot last year. We did a tour in and plays cuica for escola de samba MILA. Europe and played at Yoshi's in San Francisco. It was just You can reach him through his e-mail: a quintet with a sax player. But we also played the John cuicaAinterworld.net Anson Ford Amphitheatre in 1997 and the Hollywood Bowl 42
BR477IL - JULY 1999
A6ainst the Tide -
They're young. They're white. They're middle-class. Why are they playing traditional samba'? What is this anomaly known as Familia Roitman? DANIELLA THOMPSON Samba as we know it—the carioca variant of the Afro-Bahian dance—was born in Rio de Janeiro a little over eighty years ago. Its creators were blacks and mulattos who gathered at the homes of several legendary Bahian tias ('aunts') to make music. The first recorded samba, "Pelo Telefone" (Donga; 1917), was the result of a communal effort at Tia Ciata's house in the historic Praca Onze, now vanished from Rio's cityscape. In streets, parlors, and back yards, samba remained almost exclusively a non-white musical style, looked down upon by people of European descent. But the late 1920s ushered in the radio era, and with it white singing stars who broadcast samba far and wide and made it the most popular Brazilian musical form for the next fifty years. The first great radio star, Francisco Alves, made his recording debut in 1920 with Sinho's Carnaval hit "Pe de Anjo." Before long, he was driving to the morros (hills on which favelas are built) in search of material and buying sambas from composers of color, often adding his name to the authors' credits. Alves was the first singer to record Cartola's sambas when the composer was a mere lad of twenty. In 1928 Alves gained a singing partner and rival in Mario Reis, a wealthy socialite 0 SAMBA who had studied guitar with Sinh6. Mario NAS REGRAS Reis was the man who revolutionized the art of popular singing in Brazil and influDA ARTE enced generations to come. He was the first professional vocalist to sing naturally, taking advantage of the newly electrified microphone. Reis initiated the school of 'nasal' singing (as opposed to Chico Alves' 'chest' singing), among whose practitioners we find another revolutionary: Joao Gilberto. During the Golden Age of samba, in the '30s, '40s, and '50s, the music market became more integrated, enabling singers of color—Orlando Silva, Silvio Caldas, Aracy de Almeida, Moreira da Silva, Ataulfo Alves, Cyro Monteiro, and Elizeth Cardoso, to name a few of the most brilliant—to rise to the top of their profession. It wasn't until the late '60s that blacks began to dominate samba again, but when they did, they reclaimed it with a vengeance. During the past thirty years, practically all the first-line traditional samba and pagode performers—Cartola, Candeia, Clementina de Jesus, Nelson Cavaquinho, Jamelao, Ze Keti, Elza Soares, Cl a Nunes, Roberto Ribeiro, Paulinho da Viola, Elton Medeiros, Dona Ivone Lar Monarco, Martinho da Vila, Joao Nogueira, Nei Lopes, Wilson Moreira, Nelso Sargento, Grupo Fundo de Quintal, Alcione, Jovelina Perola Negra, and Zeca Pagodinho—have been people of color, the notable exceptions being Beth C alho, Cristina Buarque, and few others. BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
43
Samba agora é artigo de luxo, é luxo so —Paulo Cesar Pinheiro Paulo Cesar Pinheiro, a poet with his finger on the pulse ofthe nation, noted in the song "Artigo de Luxo" that samba today is an article of luxury, only luxury (also a reference to Ary Barroso's standard "E Luxo So"). In the past decade, traditional samba has become an artigo de luxo, completely overshadowed by pop pagode. The latter, performed by young black male bands, dominates both radio waves and record sales to such an extent that numerous Cassandras have taken to prophesying the imminent death of samba. It's in this musical climate that a group of white, well-educated and wellheeled young men decided to form a band and play traditional samba. Clearly, they never consulted a marketing expert, for it's impossible to go against the current more radically than they've done. To top it off, they go by the bizarre name of Familia Roitman, the most un-sambalike moniker imaginable. Perhaps only the well-heeled can afford to indulge in such luxuries. The amazing fact is that, regardless of adversarial market forces, Familia Roitman is alive and well, with two discs to its credit. The first disc, 0 Samba nas Regras da Arte (Samba in the Rules of Art), recorded when they were still in their early twenties, includes sambas by old masters such as Noel Rosa, Ismael Silva, Lamartine Babo, and Assis Valente, as well as more recent tunes by living samba legends like Ze Keti and Paulinho da Viola (who appears on the album). The group's second album, titled Coisa da Antiga (Stuff of Old Times), continues to mine the same vein, placing an emphasis on the new but remaining faithful to the traditions. For this work the group received approbation in the press and collaborative support from stars on the order ofJodo Bosco, who recently shared the stage with the Roitmans. The current lineup of Familia Roitman consists of Leo Tomassini (voice), Felipe Trotta (acoustic guitar), and Di Lutgardes (drums & percussion), although their recordings are augmented by the participation of many guest musicians. What propels these lads to persist in bucking the trend? I paid a visit to the group one evening in an attempt to plumb this mystery. Brazzil—How long has Familia Roitman been in existence? Felipe Trotta—Our first performance was in 1988, although we met even earlier. I studied for almost my entire life at CEAT (Centro Educacional Anisio Teixeira), a school in the South Zone of Rio de Janeiro which at the time was attended by the children of artists, 44
musicians, and other liberal professionals. At CEAT I met Leo, who also passed almost his entire scholastic life there. I began to study guitar because my mother had several musician friends and she took up playing. But she soon stopped and I continued; I was thirteen at the time. In 1988 I graduated from CEAT and enrolled in the music school of the Universidade do Rio de Janeiro. In our final school year at CEAT, we organized a group for a performance at the closing evening of a congress that took place there. We called the group Familia Roitman, because at the time there was a very popular novela [soap opera] on TV whose villain was a character called Odete Roitman. Leo Tomassini—This series, Vale Tudo, was watched by the whole country. The role of Odete Roitman was played by the wonderful actress Beatriz Segall, who gave a true-to-life representation of the elite of our country: dishonest, selfish, concentrating money in the hands of the few, socializing prejudices, acting as the lackey of rich countries like the USA (it's interesting that samba may be one of the few positive points created out of the relationship between rich and poor, be they countries or individuals). But the name Familia Roitman at that time—and still today—stimulated laughs. A good way to translate the spirit of this name would be to compare it to Walt Disney's cartoon characters the Beagle Boys, that band of scruffy outlaws who're always trying to rob Uncle Scrooge McDuck's money bin. Brazzil—So your beginnings were strictly amateurish. Felipe Trotta—In the beginnings the work was a big joke about mitsica popular brasileira, it included little comic sketches and satirized songs, as well as jingles from famous advertising campaigns of the period. Leo Tomassini—We were dressed in jackets and ties, dancing and singing with ridiculous choreography; the audience was delirious. But in addition to the jingles, we performed musical genres forgotten by our media: bossa nova ("0 Barquinho"), Jovem Guarda ("Detalhes") and a foxtrot by Lamartine Babo, "Cancdo Para Ingles Ver." This attention to the forgotten is what's remained of that beginning and what made Familia Roitman what it is today: a band that plays samba, but samba that's profoundly tied to its origins and to the loyal followers of the traditions of the 1930s—the Golden Age of samba. Felipe Trotta—After two performances at CEAT and later in a club called Perestroika, we decided to make our work more professional, since we thought it was of low quality but contained good ideas. Brazzil—How difficult was it to professionalize? Felipe Trotta—When we made this decision, we lost one of our members, Marcelo—a great friend of ours who was only interested in having fun and wasn't a musician, preferring to abandon the work so as not to be in the way. We remained three: Leo, myself, and Andre Weller, a pianist, also a friend from CEAT, who also studied music at the university but specialized in piano, while I studied composition. So we had a singer, a guitarist, a pianist, and some ideas. We needed a drummer. I met Felipe Decourt at a party; he was the boyfriend of a friend of mine. He played drums, was interested in our idea, and we started rehearsing together. Felipe was one of the first to perceive that in our rehearsals—which still had an undefined repertoire—our results with sambas were better than with other rhythms. He suggested that we play only samba. I remember that I fought against this, but in the end I went along, as I realized that samba has an enormous variety, and that in samba we succeeded in doing something different—especially through the use of piano and drums, which are little-used in this genre. In this way we came to rehearse a repertoire and to search for old, unusual sambas. Leo Tomassini—The rehearsals, all in a room in Andre's apartment in Flamengo, were profound experimentations, because we didn't really know what we were looking for. Certainly, we were looking for the 'forgotten,' but this 'forgotten' was vast: bossa nova, Jovem Guarda, sambas of the '30s, MPB, and even Arrigo Barnabe. I remember with nostalgia the rock 'n rolls of Roberto & Erasmo Carlos from the Jovem Guarda period; the song we sang was "0 Sosia"—simply hilarious. And next to this we rehearsed "Nem E Boni Falar" by Ismael Silva and Nilton Bastos. Andre and Decourt, who're no longer in the band, suggested that we play only samba, and the funny thing is that Felipe and I resisted this idea. Brazzil—How did you go about choosing your repertoire? BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
Felipe Trotta—Here it's important to mention a person that we haven't yet thanked publicly, but who was critical in defining the repertoire of our early work: the journalist Hugo Sukman. Hugo was a friend of Andre's and came to the rehearsals whenever he could, making various suggestions for the repertoire, indicating composers' profiles, showing us the work of some composers that I in particular didn't know, like Geraldo Pereira, Ismael Silva, Sinho, and Noel [Rosa] himself! Leo Tomassini—Little did we know what world we were entering. Our knowledge of samba was limited. Perhaps it was this ignorance that allowed us to initiate a voyage through this immense universe. All four of us were seduced by this magical carioca music. We immersed ourselves in this enormous and enormously glamorous world of the 1930s, populated by malandros, cabrochas,MadameSata [a famous transvestite], Noel Rosa, Francisco Alves, and fantastic stories. We perceived that we were entering into a relationship not only with a musical genre but with the soul of the city of Rio de Janeiro. Orestes Barbosa said: "Samba is carioca. The city's emotion is musical and poetically defined in samba." Chico Buarque said in the introductory text to one of his early LPs: "Samba comes to you via long and strange ways, without much explanation." Samba came to Familia Roitman chronologically. Our most profound contact was with the samba of the '30s. Of course, we already knew bossa nova, Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Paulinho da Viola, and Joao Bosco, but the discovery we made of the '30s vintage gave a new dimension to all of Brazilian popular music. It's impossible to think of Chico, Caetano, Paulinho, Gil, Gal, Maria Bethania, Jorge Ben Jor, Tom Jobim, and Joao Gilberto without evoking the '30s. For me, this discovery was revolutionary; it made me look at Brazilian music from another angle—the angle of samba. All our great modern composers take forward the tradition of the Golden Age. Bossa nova is samba. Joao Gilberto always said that what he did and does is samba. And Chico Buarque says that before everything else, he's a sambista Felipe Trotta—Eventually we mounted our first real show on 21 September 1991, in a club called Lugar Comum (I still have one of the entrance tickets we sold). This, for me, is the true founding date of Familia Roitman. Earlier, it had been play, hobby, amusement, preparation; intention but not fruition. Brazzil—This show led to your first record. Felipe Trotta—The first shows, all at Lugar Comum, were attended by relatives and friends; but surprisingly, our work also came to the attention of some important newspapers, and a critique of the show was published. We spent three years playing the show in Rio, without much regularity and always changing the repertoire. We played a variety of lesser-known clubs, with the exception of two shows at Mistura Fina, an important club here in Rio. In 1994, we were invited by Teca Calazans to record a CD for a Brazilian music collection that she was coordinating at the French label Buda Musique. Teca is a friend of Deco, who at the time was our producer and who played a tape of our music for her. She found it interesting, but her husband, the music critic Philippe Lesage, loved it and thought it important to release our CD in France. Brazzit—Philippe Lesage clearly has a great interest in older Brazilian music, as demonstrated by his historic samba and choro compilations for the French reissue label Fremeaux & Associes. At the same time Buda was releasing your first album, it also released Marcos Sacramento's A Modernidade da Tradicdo, with the same type of repertoire. Felipe Trotta—In addition to repertoire, we also have the participation of Clara Sandroni in common with Sacramento. We entered the studio to record the CD, which was expensive, because Buda wasn't going to pay anything for the recordings—we had to deliver the disc, and they would only press and distribute it. Since we had little experience, we called Jayme Vignoli to work with us as recording coordinator and artistic producer. Jaiminho sweated a lot, because we were really green, but the result ended up being really fine. As I said, we had the illustrious participation of the singer Clara Sandroni, and also of the great sambista Wilson Moreira and of Paulinho da Viola, which was the greatest honor and proof that we were on the right track. Paulinho came to record twice; the first time he noticed an error in the pre-recorded material and advised us to correct it, offering to return to the studio later, which sets apart the great artist and great personality he is. Leo Tomassini—The disc was extremely well received by music critics, something incomprehensible to me today. I look at this album and see ingenuousness without precedents in the history of samba. The space it gained in the media was immensely greater than it deserved. Several factors contributed to this phenomenon: we were all middle-class youths from the Zona Sul, playing old sambas, a fact that caused a lot of wonder; and Brazil appeared to have forgotten the sambas of the '30s. Brazzi/—Apparently there was enough interest to launch a Brazilian edition of 0 Samba nas Regras da Arte. BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
Felipe Trotta—It was launched here in 1995 by Dubas Miisica. We spent two years 'working' the disc: doing shows, interviews, participations. We were working, but still much less than necessary and still not earning any money from this, which acted as a disincentive for Andre and Decourt, who left to study industrial design and engineering, respectively. With this, our work suffered somewhat, but we continued to perform: in Sao Paulo, in Campos, in Rio. Our CD was being played on an important radio station in Sao Paulo, and we appeared in some important TV programs Brazzil—How did you finalize your present lineup? Felipe Trotta—In 1997 came an invitation to participate in the Projeto Pixinguinha, touring central-eastern and northern Brazil along with the sambista Nelson Sargento. It was a not-to-bemissed trip, but it required being away from Rio for two weeks, and Decourt couldn't go. So we needed a substitute drummer for the tour and called Di Lutgardes. I met Di a year ealier, when I was asked to play guitar and write arrangements for a beginning singer, Tatiana Dauster, in whose band he was playing. After this, we worked again together with another singer and playing at a hotel in Rio. I decided to call him because I knew that he liked the sound and the idea of our music. Di Lutgrades—When my two sisters and I were little, our dad used to take us on his knee and sing "Boogie Woogie na Favela." For a long time we thought that our father invented this song. Years later, when I got to know Familia Roitman, I went to one of their shows and bought their first disc. And there was "Boogie Woogie na Favela" by Denis Brean. It was a very emotional discovery for me. When Felipe called to ask if I wanted to go on tour with them, I just said, "Give me the dates." Felipe Trotta—When we returned, Decourt announced his official departure from the group. Once again we were three, the same three as in the beginning: Leo, Andre, and I. But this didn't last, for, Andre began to work as an art director in films and had to abandon ship as well. This was the worst crisis: Familia Roitman had been reduced to just Leo and myself. But we resolved to continue and record our second CD, for which we'd already selected all the tracks and prepared the musical arrangements. So we invited Di to turn himself into a Roitman. He hesitated, fearing a financial drain (unfortunately, the work still doesn't produce income), but ended up accepting. Brazzil—Did you have an easier time in the studio with the second disc? Felipe Trotta—The recording was a big party. We invited the best musicians of Rio to participate, and they all came and contributed to making a mature, 45
elaborate disc with a good technical level from all points of view. It's a work of which we're very proud and for which we feel a lot of love. The CD was launched at the end of 1998 by Rob Digital, a label that puts an emphasis on high quality and in which it is a pleasure to participate. Leo Tomassini—Coisa da Antiga is, in my opinion, our true launch in the music market. The maturing we've undergone is almost unbelievable. This second disc manages to inaugurate the most important value in all our work: the search for a new sound for samba. The tracks "CoracAo da Gente," "Hora do Adeus," and "Habeas Corpus" are the best realizations of our esthetic ideal and are the moments when we're most radical. The principle behind the repertoire selection in this album is almost the opposite of what it had been in the first one. Earlier, we were oriented toward the past, whereas now there's a clear attempt to express the continuity of tradition from the Golden Age to the present. With the exception of "Habeas Corpus," a previously unrecorded song by Noel Rosa & Orestes Barbosa, all the tracks are the creations of modern composers who advance the musical and poetic language of samba. Brazzi/—Describe the sambas of Coisa da Antiga. Di Lutgrades—"Coracio da Gente"—This song was recorded by Paulinho da Viola on his 1981 album Paulinho da Viola, a title shared by most of Paulinho's discs. The song talks of the high spirit and informality of rodas de samba [samba circles]; the musical instruments; people arriving and improvising; the day rising... We were fortunate to have the talent of Leandro Braga on piano in this track. His entrance is mesmerizing. Leo says that there should be a plaque in front of Leandro's house, saying, "Beware! Vicious Piano!" The sax quartet Saxofonia added sophistication to the composition (Felipe arranged). Percussion was played by Alisson, son of Trambique, excellent percussionist who played with Beth Carvalho and Ney Matogrosso. On bass, our old friend JoAo Mario. "Hora do Adeus"—A marvelous partnership between two great composers, both lyricists and melodists, in this previously unrecorded samba. Delcio Carvalho is the most frequent songwriting partner of Dona1vone Lara, with whom he composed such pearls as "Acreditar" and "Sonho Meu." Elton Medeiros is one of the most respected sambistas around, songwriting partner of Cartola ("0 Sol Nascera"), Ze Keti ("Mascarada"), and Paulinho da Viola ("Recomecar") and an outstanding matchbox player. "Hora do Adeus" talks of love and separation. Leandro Braga contributed brilliantly again. The arrangement is distinguished by the participation of the vocal group Arranco. "Cabrochinha"—Another new composition, a jocose samba in the style 46
Familia Roitman's Songs Falsa Euforia (Mauro Duarte/Walter Alfaiate) Onde esta toda aquela euforia Era falsa eu sabia Era tudo ilusao E costume em questao de amores No principio tudo ser flores Pra enganar o coracao Onde esta o amor que voce prometeu Colocar junto ao meu Morreu Sumiu Hoje estou sozinho Triste, sem carinho, ja viu
Where is all that euphoria It was false, I knew It was all illusion It's usual in love matters For everything at the start to be flowers To betray the heart Where is the love you have promised To put next to mine? It died Vanished Today I'm alone Sad, with no tenderness, as expected
Onde esta a felicidade Fiquei na saudade do prometido Como nao tenho que andar tristonho Se nao a vejo nem em sonho Pois ha muito eu nao tenho dormido
Where is happiness? I remained longing for the promised How can I not be sad If I don't see her even in dreams Because I've not been sleeping for a long time
Eu Vivia Isolado do Mundo (Alcides da Portela) Eu vivia isolado do mundo Quando eu era vagabundo Sem ter urn amor Hoje em dia eu me regenerei Sou urn chefe de familia Da mulher que eu amei Linda, linda, linda, linda Linda como urn querubim E formosa, cheirosa e vaidosa A rosa no meu jardim Se tu fores na Portela Gente humilde e gente pobre Que traz um samba na veia Urn samba de gente nobre Mas ela nao sabe Nao sabe, cumpadre o que perdeu Urn amor sincero e puro De urn escuro, igual ao meu Se ela soubesse que o peito Padece numa solidao Nao me negava seus beijos E me dava o seu perdao Habeas Corpus (Noel Rosa/Orestes Barbosa) No tribunal da minha consciencia 0 teu crime nao tern apelacao Debalde tu alegas inocdncia Mas nao terns minha absolvicao Os autos do processo da agonia Que me causaste em trocapao bem quefiz Correram la naquela pretotia Na qual o coracao foi o juiz
••
False Euphoria (Translation: Felipe Trotta)
I Used to Live Alone in the World (Translation: Felipe Trotta) I used to live alone in the world When I was a vagabond Without love These days I'm regenerated I'm head of the family Of the woman I loved Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful Beautiful as a cherub She is shapely, fragrant, and vain The rose of my garden If you went to Portela Humble people, poor people Who carry the samba in their veins Samba of noble people But she doesn't know Doesn't know, friend, what she lost The sincere and pure love Of a dark man, equal to mine If she knew that the heart Suffers in solitude She wouldn't deny me her kisses And would give me her forgiveness Habeas Corpus (Translation: Felipe Trotta) In the tribunal of my conscience Your crime has no appeal In vain you plead innocence But you won't have my acquittal The writs of the agony suit You've caused me in exchange for the good I've done you Have been presented at the court In which the heart was the judge
Tu tens as agravantes da surpresa E tambem as da premeditacao Mas na minh'alma tu nao ficas presa Por que o teu caso, d caso de expulsao
You perpetrate the aggravations of surprise As well as of premeditation But in my soul you won't be arrested For your case is one of expulsion
Tu vais ser deportada do meu peito Por que teu crime encheu-me de pavor Talvez o habeas corpus da saudade Consinta o teu regresso ao meu amor
You'll be deported from my heart For your crime filled me with fear Perhaps the habeas corpus of longing Will consent to have you return to my love BRAZZIL -JULY 1999
Mastruco e Catuaba (Claudio Cartieri/Aldir Blanc) Veio a comadre bater no porta° Id de casa Pra contar que meu compadre nem comecou, já acaba... Esse cara precisa de urn chd De mastruco e catuaba. Disse que faz uns seis meses Que o "fuque-fuque" anda ruco: Esse cara precisa de um cha De catuaba e mastruco.
My neighbor came and knocked on the door To say that her husband, no sooner begun, he is done This chap needs a tea of mastruco and catuaba She said it's been six months Since the hanky-panky's gone off This chap needs a tea of catuaba and mastruco
Veio a comadre...
My neighbor came and knocked on the door...
0 Miguel chegou da Espanha Pra abrir restaurante, boate e boteco. Era louco por vedete, Mas na hora H nao armava o boneco. Suava, perdia os sentidos Y voltaba a si sin saber donde estaba: Tai mais urn caso pro chd De mastruco e catuaba.
Miguel came from Spain to open a restaurant, club and bar He was crazy about showgirls but At the zero hour failed to erect his pile He sweated and lost his senses And came to not knowing where he was' There's another case for mastrugo and catuaba tea
Veio a comadre...
My neighbor came and knocked on the door...
Urn mop tao delicado Que longe de mim comentar que era paca. Voltou da lua-de-mel Babando a gravata esticado na maca. Disse que se constrangera Que a noiva era mais cabeluda que urn urso Esse nem corn muito cha. De catuaba e mastruco.
A guy so delicate, far from me to call him paca3 Returned from his honeymoon Drooling on his tie, laid on a stretcher He said he felt constrained 'Cause the bride was hairier than a bear This one, not even with gallons of catuaba and mastruco tea...
Veio a comadre...
Entrevistaram o cacique, Famoso guerreiro Tatutacuntara, Indio que alem de peitudo, Tambern possuia vergonha na cara. Tern bem mais de 30 filhos, E o tacape maior que se viu Ia na taba. Gracas a Tupa e ao chd • De mastruco e catuaba. Veio a comadre...
• • • • •
My neighbor came and knocked on the door... They interviewed a chief, the famous warrior Tatutacuntara An Indian not only brave but decent He has well over thirty children And the biggest club that's been seen in that village Thanks to Tupa'and the tea of mastruco and catuaba My neighbor came and knocked on the door...
Notes: 1. Medicinal plants with aphrodisiac properties. Mastruco (mastruz) is Wormseed Goosefoot, an annual herb of the species Lepidium sativum. Catuaba is made from the bark and roots of a small Amazonian tree (Anemopoegma mirandum). 2. The original line is in Spanish. 3. Paca: a rabbit-sized rodent; slang for gay. 4. Tupii: a Brazilian Indian God.
• • • • • 0 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
• •
Mastruco and Catuaba' (Translation: Felipe Trotta)
• • • •
• • • • • • • • •
of Geraldo Pereira. We tried to give this version a bossa nova language: voice, piano, acoustic guitar, acoustic bass, and drums. Joao Reboucas, a pianist who plays with Chico Buarque and with Gal Costa, honored us with his presence. We didn't even know him; we called and said that we were his fans and would like him to participate in the disc. He agreed on the spot—a great guy. The music is by the superb guitarist Mauricio Carrilho and the lyrics by Paulo Cesar Pinheiro. "Habeas Corpus"—Joao Maximo, the music critic and author ofNoel Rosa's biography, knew a former guitar student of Noel's who had several unrecorded songs by his illustrious teacher. One day Joao (who's our fan) said there was one song in that bunch that was just right for us and asked if we wanted to record it. You can guess our response. This song is a partnership between Noel and Orestes Barbosa, composer (with Silvio Caldas) of the masterpiece "Chao de Estrelas." "Habeas Corpus" describes romantic disillusion in legalistic terms. Felipe's arrangement for two guitars is a tribute to the instrument most intimately tied to the history of samba since the days of Noel. "A Cabeca"—This song was never recorded on disc, although it's on the soundtrack of a short film with Nelson Sargento. "A Cabeca" is very well known in the rodas de samba of Rio de Janeiro. Its composer, Paulinho de Castro, is a teacher of Portuguese and the author of several songs that are marvelous but little known. It's a surrealistic story in which the body argues with its own head and reaches the conclusion that the head has always been the bane of its existence. We begin with incidental music from Chico Buarque's "Pelas Tabelas," a song with similar lyrics, although we don't sing them here. Among the guest artists we have Jayme Vignoli of the choro group Agua de Moringa on cavaquinho and the vocal group Arranco. The percussionist A lisson plays (among other instruments) his best instrument, repique. Saxofonia plays Felipe's arrangement in the introduction. "Eu Vivia Isolado do Mundo"— This samba is a partido alto representing the Velhas Guardas of the Escolas de Samba. The composer is Alcides "Malandro Historico" da Portela, whose real name is Alcides Dias Lopes. The song was first recorded by Candeia and Manacea, then [under the title "Vivo Isolado do Mundol by Zeca Pagodinho in Deixa Clarear and by Vinicius Cantudria in Tucumel. Our version is graced by the bassoon ofJuliano Barbosa, whose father, Airton Barbosa (founding member of Quinteto Villa-Lobos), played it on Cartola's legendary 1976 recording of Candeia's "Preciso me Encontrar," introducing a new instrument to samba. History repeated itself with Familia Roitman. Here, too, we have Arranco's chorus, plus Carlos Pontual's bass and Alisson's percussion. "Falsa Euforia"---An unrecorded 47
pearl from the talented pair Walter Alfaiate and Mauro Duarte (the latter was Paulo Cesar Pinheiro's partner in innumerable classics made famous by Clara Nunes). The theme couldn't be anything but lost love—the hallmark of these two, who represent the traditional samba of Botafogo. The instrumental novelty here is my use of a moringa for the percussion, substituting it for a ganza in the high notes and for a surdo in the low notes. Joao Mario joins on acoustic bass. "Corrente"—This samba by Chico Buarque hides an ingenious surprise: during the first round the song has one meaning, and when it comes around the second time, the meaning is totally different, although the lyrics remain the same. In the first round, the person singing is submissive to the rules imposed on him, while in the second he's completely opposed to them. The first recording was made by Chico himself on the 1976 LP Meus Caros Amigos. Joining us in our version are Joao Reboucas on piano and Joao Mario on bass. "A Europa Curvou-se Ante o Brasil"—An atonal samba proves yet again that samba knows no borders. Its authors are avant-garde composer Arrigo Barnabe, Carlos Renn6, and Bozo Barretti, who played keyboards with the rock group Capital Inicial. Arrigo recorded the song with Paulinho da Viola's participation on his LP Tubaraes Voadores. Cristovao Bastos enhances our version with his unmistakable piano playing, and Joao Mario is on bass. "Caminho da Existencia"—During a celebration of Carlos Cachaca's 90th birthday, several of the master's poems were presented, including an autobiographical one that prompted Delcio Carvalho to say, "This marvel needs music, and I'll provide it." That's how this gem was born. First to record it was Delcio in his excellent CD Afinal. In our recording, Cristovao Bastos tailored the music in a way that makes him soloist as well as accompanist. The string quartet was created especially for this recording and consists of Mauricio Takeda of Jazz Sinfonica de Sao Paulo; Fabio Almeida, who was one of the members of David Chew's Cello Ensemble; and Rubia Mara Siqueira & Andre Cunha, both from UNI-RIO. Felipe Trotta arranged. "Mastruco e Catuaba"—This song is full of carioca irreverence and good humor. It's already been recorded in the CD Aldir Blanc 50 Anos by Aldir, Walter Alfaiate, Wilson Moreira & Nei Lopes. In our version the chorus is sung by Arranco, Jayme Vignoli plays cavaquinho, Alisson is on pandeiro, and I play tumbadora to give the flavor of a partido de terreiro [samba as it is performed in the morro]. "Coisa da Antiga"—The title song is one of the most elaborate partidos in Brazilian music. This is our tribute to Clara Nunes and Clementina de Jesus (both recorded it), who were and still are two queens and great influences. Again we have Saxofonia's and Arranco's expert participation. Here, too, I used tumbadoras, this time with agogo, augmenting the feel of samba de terreiro. The authors, Wilson Moreira and Nei Lopes, need no introduction, as they are the composers of so many great sambas recorded by a long list of artists. Brazzil—How do you maintain the resolve to continue on your path in the current market atmosphere, where most music of artistic value is considered 'difficult' and gets no radio play or media support? Felipe Trotta—Musical genres with small market share (or those that could potentially have a larger public but are not part of the music industry's scheme) are having a harder and harder time and paying less and less. Nevertheless, there is a public that doesn't identify itself with the mass genres. This public, which is not small, is eager for new and different music. It's clear that there's a new generation of high-quality artists looking for space in this restrictive media. In samba, we can cite ourselves, Arranco, Marcos Sacramento, Donna, Osvaldo Pereira, and many, many others who, little by little, will occupy their own spaces and conquer their own public. The problem is that this 'little by little' requires that artists have conditions for survival and the financial wherewithal to invest in their own work as long as they can't make a living from it. This is why Brazilian music is losing many good people along the way.
Familia Roitman's Discography Discs may be purchased online directly from the labels. 0 Samba nas Regras da Arte (CD; 1994/1995) Buda Musique, France 82915-2 http://www.budamusique.com/US/BRESIL/ famil.html
Dubas MUsica, Brazil M450999463-2
http://www.dubas.com.br/biscoitos/catalogo/ 'Efamilta.html
Tracks: 1. Voltei a Cantar (Lamartine Babo) 2. A Voz do Morro (Ze Keti) 3. 0 Que Sera de Mim (Ismael Silva/Nilton Bastos/ Francisco Alves) 4. Fui Louco (Noel Rosa/Bide) 5. Boogie-Woogie na Favela (Denis Brean) 6. Se a Orgia se Acabar (Roberto Roberti/Arlindo Marques Jr.) 7. Comprimido (Paulinho da Viola) 8. Clever Boy Samba (Caetano Veloso) 9. Recenseamento (Assis Valente) 10.Ai Quem Me Dera (Antonio Carlos Jobiin/Marino Pinto) 11. Moreninha da Praia (Joao de Barro /Alberto Ribeiro) 12. So Vo,u de Mulher (Luis Reis/Haroldo Barbosa) 13. Nem E Born Falar (Ismael Silva/Nilton Bastos) 14. Quem Da Mais (Noel Rosa) 15. Se Voce Jurar (Ismael Silva/Nilton Bastos/Francisco Alves) Leo Tomassini: voice Andre Weller: piano Felipe Trotta: guitar Felipe Decourt: drums, pandeiro Special participations: Paulinho da Viola; Wilson Moreira; Clara Sandroni; Bruno Migliari (contrabass); Jayme Vignoli (tenor guitar, cavaquinho); Rui Alvim (clarinet, bass clarinet); Daniela Spielmann (soprano sax); Alexandre Galdi (alto sax); Claudio Ptocha (alto sax). Produced & arranged by Familia Roitman. Coisa da Antiga (CD; 1998) Rob Digital RD 014 http://www.robfilmes.com.br/cd13.htm
Tracks: 1. Coracao da Gente (Paulinho da Viola) 2. Hora do Adeus (Elton Medeiros/Delcio Carvalho) 3. Cabrochinha (Mauricio Carrilho/Paulo Cesar Pinheiro) 4. Habeas Corpus (Noel Rosa/Orestes Barbosa) 5. A Cabesa (Paulinho de Castro) 6. Eu Vivia Isolado do Mundo (Alcides da Porte la) 7. Falsa Euforia (Mauro Duarte/Walter Alfaiate) 8. Corrente (Chico Buarque) 9. A Europa Curvou-se Ante o Brasil (Arrigo Barnabe/ Carlos RennO/Bozo Barretti) 10. Caminho da Existencia (Delcio Carvalho/Carlos Cachaca) 11.Mastruco e Catuaba (Claudio Cartier/Aldir Blanc) 12. Coisa da Antiga (Wilson Moreira/Nei Lopes) Leo Tomassini: voice Felipe Trotta: guitar Di Lutgardes: drums & percussion Special- participations: Arranco (Rita Peixoto, Eveline Hecker, Soraya Ravenle, Muri Costa & Paulo Malaguti); Saxofonia(jdriss Boudrioua& Renato Buscacio, alto sax; Daniel Garcia, tenor sax; Sueli, baritone sax). Leandro Braga (piano); Jofto Reboucas (piano). Lyme Vignoli (cavaquinho); Juliano Batbosa (bassoon). .Foao Mario Macedo (bas); Carlos.Pontual (bass):, Trambiquinho (percussion); String Quartet .(Mauricip Takeda & Andre Cunha violins; Rnbia Mara Siqueira, viola; Fabio Almeida, cello).
Daniella Thompson is a writer and preservationist living in northern California. She can be reached at danivips.net.
Produced & arranged by Familia Roitman. I.
48
BFtAZZIL - JULY 1999
Books
best-sellers RIO Opereta—O Homem Que Sabia Portugues (Operetta—The Man Who Knew Portuguese)—Comedy. Written by Tim Rescala, directed by Chico Pelficio, with Mauricio Tizumba, Regina SpOsio, and Marina Machado. A fortyish Portuguese teacher tries to find a wife though the newspaper personals. Teatro Villa Lobos Ensaio para Danton (Rehearsal for Danton)—Drama. Written by Georg BUchner, directed by Manic) Marciano and Sergio de Carvalho, with Companhia do Latdo. Adapted from The Death ofDanton, which occurs during the French Revolution. Teatro CCBB. Atedaquidmilanos (See You in One Thousand Years)—Tragicomedy. Written by Gustavo Rizzoti, directed by Gustavo Rizzoti, with Frederico Magella, Gustavo Rizzotti. For two months a young man locks himself in his apartment. Sea Meu Ponto G Falasse (If My G-Spot Could Talk)—Comedy. Written by Heloisa Migliavacca and Patsy Cecato, directed by Julio Conte, with Patsy Cecato and Heloisa Migliavacca. Two girl friends though her conversation give a glimpse on the different phases on vipmen's lives.
SAO PAULO A Filosofia na Akova—Peca Destinada a Educacdo de Mocinhas (The Philosophy in the Alcove—Play Intended for Educating Young Ladies)—Comedy. Based on Marquis de Sade, directed by Marcelo Marcus Fonseca, with Carolina Gonzalez, Daniel Gaggini, and Cibele Forjaz. A very experienced woman in the ways of sex decides to initiate a young lady into the world of licentiousness. Teatro Oficina. Acordes Celestinos (Celestino Harmonies)—Musical Comedy. Written by Jose Rubens Chachd, directed by Jose Rubens Chacha and Ary Franca, with Gerson de Abreu, Jose Rubens Chachd, and Angela Dip. Singer Vicente Celestino meets in heaven Carmem Miranda and Francisco Alves. The three of them want a chance to go back to earth, but this is only one opening. Teatro Arthur Azevedo A Desgraca Adora Companhia (Disgrace Loves Company)—Comedy. Written by Paulo Rogerio Lopes, directed by Luiz Damasceno, with Antonio Farias, Caco Mattos, Angella Simoneti and Marcos Ferraz. Locked in a mental hospital a former genius girl now turned into an alcoholic reminisces. Bailei na Curva (I Danced at the Curve)— Drama. Directed by Carmo Tavares, with Persona group. How peoples' lives are changed by history. Teatro Joao Caetano
BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
Just-released American movies: Wild Wild West (As Loucas Aventuras James West), Mr Klein (Cidad'do Klein) The Big Lebowski (0 Grande Lebowsk Rugrats (Os Anjinhos), The Spanish Pr oner (A Trapaca), Tarzan (Tarzan), T Rage of Carrie 2 (A Maldiciio de Cam Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barr Is (Jogos, Trapacas e Dois Canos Fum gantes), My Favorite Martian (M Marciano Favorito), The Corruptor(0 C ruptor), A Destiny of Her Own (Em Lu a Pelo Amor), Go (Vamos Nessa), Notti (go) Ate Que a Vida Nos Separe (Until Life Us Apart)—Brazil/l999—Adventure Directed by Jose Zaragoza, with Alexand e Borges and Julia Lemmertz. Five frien from Sao Paulo and their love exploits. 0 Viajante (The Traveler)—Brazil/1998 Drama—Directed by Paulo Cesar Sarace 1, with Marilia Pera, Jairo Mattos, Leand a Leal, and Miriam Persia. How the arrival of a salesman changes t e life of a Minas Gerais state little town. Notting Hill (Um Lugar Chamado Notting Hill)—England/1999—How a chance encounter between the most famous Holl wood star and a businessman changes th ir lives. Directed by Roger Michell, wi h Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. Ayeneh (0 Espelho)—Iran/1997 Drama—Girl decides to perambula e through the streets of Teheran when h r mother does not come on time to pick h r up at school. By Jafar Panahi, with Ymi a Mohammed-Khani. No Se Lo Digas a Nadie (Ndo Conte a Ninguem)—Peru/1998—Drama— Directed by Francisco J. Lombardi, wi h Christian Meier, Lucia Jimenez, a d Santiago Magill. Middle-class youngst r gets involved with drugs while trying o find his own identity. Le Temps Retrouve (0 Tempo Rede coberto)—France/1998—Drama—On s death bed Marcel Proust reminisces abo t his life. Directed by Raoul Ruiz, wi Emanuelle Bean, Catherine Deneuve, a d John Malkovich. . Requiem (Requiem: Um Encontro c Fernando Pessoa)—Switzerland, Fran , Portuga1/1 997—Drama—directed by Ala n Tanner, with Francis Frappat, And e Marcon, and Alexandre Zloto. Life st s changing when Paul meets in Lisbon wi h poet Fernando Pessoa's ghost. Outras Estorias (Other Stories)—Braz 1/ 1999—Drama—Directed by Pedro Bi 1, with Cacd Carvalho, Giulia Gam ,and Ju a de Oliveira. Based on Guimardes Rosa s short stories.
FICTION IA casa dos budas ditosos, Luxtiria, Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro. Objetiva, R$ 19 2 Ramses, a batalha de Kadesh, Christian Jacq. Bertrand, R$ 30 15 3 0 Clube dos anjos, Gula, Luis Fernando Verissimo. Objetiva, R$ 16.80 4 Homem que matou Gettilio Vargas, Jo Soares. Companhia das Letras, R$ 25 5 0 fantasma, Danielle Steel. Record, R$ 22 6 A eminencia, Morris West. Record, R$ 28 7 0 Didrio de Bridget Jones, Helen Fielding. Record, R$ 24 8 Conte-me seus sonhos, Sidney Sheldon. Record, R$ 25 9 0 Advogado, John Grisham. Rocco, R$ 25 10 Ramses, o templo de mu/toes de anos, Christian Jacq. Bertrand, R$ 30
NONFICTION 1 Estagdo Carandiru, Drauzio Varella. Companhia das Letras, R$ 26 2 0 Essencial, Costanza Pascolato. Objetiva, R$ 39 3 A Viagem do descobrimento, Eduardo Bueno. Objetiva, R$ 18 4 Ndufragos, traficantes e degredados, Eduardo Bueno. Objetiva, R$ 19.50 5 A casa do Rio Vermelho, Zelia Gattai. Record, R$ 25 6 As Melhores piadas do planeta e da casseta tambem, vol.2, Casseta e Planeta. Objetiva, R$ 12 7 Nilo lava tempestade em copo d'eigua, Richard Carlson. Rocco, R$ 19.50 8 208 maneiras de deixar um homem louco de desejo, Margot Saint-Loup. Ediouro, R$ 9.90 9 A Wilma grande !kilo, Mitch Albom. Sextante, R$ 18 10 203 maneiras de enlouquecer um homem na cama, Olivia Saint Claire. Ediouro, R$ 10.90
BUSINESS 1 Marketing para o seculo 21, Philip Kotler. Futura, R$ 32.50 2 Voce pode negociar qualquer coisa, Herb Cohen e Siu Ching Han. Record, R$ 19 3 Marketing de Varejo, Alexandre Las Casas. Atlas, R$ 28 4 Marketing para dummies, Alexander Hiam. Campus, R$ 44 5A empresa navelocidade do pensamento, Bill Gates. Companhia das Letras, R$ 30 According to Jornal do Brasil, http://www.jb.com.br 49
TABLETS I AX/ St. m onica S 25-,00
MARTA'S BED & BREAKFAST HOTEL "RIO DE JANEIRO" Facilities include double and single bedrooms, private bathroom and toilet, telephone, TV, stereo, fax, e-mail, laundry, air-conditioning, large balconies and views, BBQ tacilines. Continental breakfast included. Highly competitive rates. Sensational Views 150 Meters to topoca bona and lisonemo beaches For reservations contact John & Marto Miller
Tel.: +55 (021)521-8568 E-mail: millerj@rio.nutecnet.com.br
ENINIIVI111411
ATTORNEY AT LAII/ABOGADO/ADVO ADO
MEMBER, STATE BAR OF CALIFORNIA
(818) 986-1295 e-maiEecilaw@earthlink.net
IMMIGRATION MATTERS VISAS DEPORTATION DEFENSE SAN FERNANDO VALLEY, CALIFORNIA
THII151FI1IDi15 BARBARA MAGLIO to g from
AXE zazitizuv
cgtfrsonido
We bring you infectious enerstr, a driving rhythm, and the most innovative Brazilian Instrumental music
CM
Fax: (561) 391-2174 E-mail: bjmaglio@compuserve.com
AlFt/OCEAN / HOUSEHOLD GOODS
BEST SERVICE + BEST RATES TEL: (310) 973-7112 FAX: 13101 973-7113 E-mail:Ifi@touchclownco.com FALAMOS PORTUGUES
Portug_uese
General & Computer
(561) 391-1057
(310) 839-3788
TOUCHDOWN FREIGHT INC BRAM CARGO SPECIALIST
Servieos de traducio ern LAX/ aeroporto Int. para quern n90 fala inglEs.
A
COOK Prepare and cook Brazilian dishes, dinners, appetizers, desserts. 39hrs/wk; Tues-Sun, 5pm-12:30am (w/ lhr mealbreak). 2 yrs exp req. Send ad w/ resume to: Harm Bahia 8711 Santa Monica Blvd W. Hollywood, CA 90069
Receptivo cm L.A. corn
L.A.
guias, passeios, tickets, vans, cairns c limousine. Transporte para diversas Areas.
0
TRASL.A.1)0
Carros Limos Vans Ilus
Inf.
trasladol@hotmarl.com www.tras1 ado. 8m. corn
PO 2166 9,H; (1048
BM E Brazilian Music Enterprises
Brazilian CDs, Songbooks & Historical Recordings and more! http://www.brazmus.com or call 1 800 621-4199 1 360 468-3616
LEARN POMO' TN BRAMAN WAY Revolutionary method customized to your needs INDIVIDUAL OR SMALL GROUPS TOTAL IMMERSION FUN AND EFFICIENT Call now:
(323) 257-5682
PORTUGUESE LANGUAGE SERVICES (415) 587-4990 CERTIFIED TRANSLATIONS (TRADUcA0 JURAMENTADA) Legal, Medical, Scientific, Business Documents and School Transcripts Certified by the California Judicial Council and filed with the Brazilian Consulate Since 1981
IMMIGRATION ATTORNEY
STEVEN R. LAN DAAL Meer es, ;amen Immiguition tuerms Ascoe doe • GREEN CARDS THROUGH MARRIAGE & FAMILY • EMPLOYMENT VISAS FREE INITIAL CONSULTATION MONTHLY PAYMENT PLAN AVAILABLE
I ALSO HANDLING AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENTS1 1316 3rd Street - Suite 311 Santa Monica, CA 90401
Tel: (310) 395-2828
WHEREVER YOU ARE IN THIS GALAXY WIZ NEEDS
VOLUNTEERS FOR PROOFREADING WRITING MAINTAINING MAILING LIST & EVERYTHING ELSE
213-255-8062 brazzil@brazzil.com
Li I WANT MORE INFORMATION ON ADVERTISING IN bmIll PLEASE SEND ME A MEDIA KIT. COVPANY: CONTACT: ADDRESS: CITY, ST, ZIP: PHONE, PRODUCT:
FAX:
RETURN THIS FORM TO: BRAZZIL - P.O. BOX 42536 LOS ANGELES, CA 90050
Call (213)255-8062 or E-mail: brazzil@brazzil.com
For Ad, call (323) 255-8062 or E-mail: brazzil@brazzil.com 50
BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
FEIRA LIVRE OPEN MARKET BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY
$ Money $ International Sales Marketing. NEVER has it been so easy to make thousands of dollars on a weekly or even daily basis. Free training, no selling, consumable products. Call me and I will share my "Fortune" quest secret. (800) 242-0363 [1751]. We speak Portuguese and English [163] CATERING
AtencAo, brasileiros: fazemos comida para congelar, salgadinhos, jantares, pequenos/grandes grupos. Call Joy (562) 438-3415 [165] CLASSES
English teacher (Aulas de Ingle's). Professor experiente (americano), todos os niveis, gramdtica, conversacao, ingles profissional, expressOes idiomaticas, girias e outrasnecessidades, classes individuais ou para grupos. Aprenda rapidamente. Chame por Ben (415) 759-6042 San Francisco [165] Portuguese Courses in Salvador da Bahia, Dialog°, http:// www.brazilstudy.com, E-mail: dialogo brazilstudy.com, fax: 01155 71 336-6329 [155] Portuguese Lessons, all levels, very affordable. Call Luciana (415) 421-3665 [165] FOR SALE
BRAZIL - Wildlife Refuge 130 acres Atlantic Forest, near Recife. Also tropical fruits. Excellent income from tourism. Price: $100,000. (310) 832-4367 [156]
ence. I have fluent English/computer skills. Marlene (310) 8362458 [158] MISCELLANEOUS
Babalawii Zezito D'Oxum, 45 anos no Rio. Rua do Carmo 15, Parque Amorim, Belford Roxo, Rio, Brazil Zip: 26185-340. Tel.: (021) 761-1682 [156] Beautiful CriseOpazio, $14.95 per stone. I sell only the best. Send check/MO to: GVB, Suite 471, 250 Mamaroneck Avenue, White Plains, NY, 10605 [160] Cavaquinho for Sale, hand made in the USA, all solid wood, under saddle, pick up is optional. (New) (310) 412-6071 Los Angeles [163] T-Shirt $12.00, caps $7.00 made in Brazil, good quality and beautiful (310) 390-0903 [156] Tickets para o Brasil - Cheap / Baratos - 1 (800)643-3910. Tudo legal. [157]
Music Brazilian Music in its totality. Samba, bossa nova, chorinho, baiao, axe, and more. Merchant Express (954) 785-5991 NEWSPAPERS & MAGAZINES
Jornais e revistas do Brasil. Recebemos jornais di arios etodas as principais revistas, incluindo masculinas e femininas. Tel. (954) 785-5991 PERSONAL WOMAN SEEKS MAN
Housekeeper needed to live in. In the San Diego Area, beautiful horse club. Private Estate. Call Dino (760) 749-4068 [160]
Americana loura, 29, filha de brasileira e alemao, gostaria de conhecer urn rapaz negro, 25-34, morando em Los Angeles, para amizade e talvez mais. Pode escrever/mandar retrato a 1111 Sartori Avenue, Torrance, CA 90501 [156]
Motorista part-time Santa Monica area. Buscar na escola menino de 10 anos. Segunda a sexta 5:30 ate 7:30 PM - 10 horas semanais - $300 mensais - Rita (310) 450-7501 [158]
Brazilian lady, 59, gostaria de conhecer senhor educado e com situacao financeira estavel. Por favor, escreva para: PO Box 2673, Santa Clarita, CA 913862673 [153]
JOB WANTED
PERSONAL
JOB OFFERED
Looking for part/full time job. Housekeeper/baby-sitter experi-
brazzil-ADS (323) 255-8062 BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
MAN SEEKS WOMAN
African/American Male, 40, Engineer, handsome, affectionate, romantic, in Houston, desire to meet Brazilian lady 35-35, send letter with photo; Wilfred Edwards, PO Box 2525, Mis-
FEIRA LIVRE RATES: 500 a word. Phone is one word. DISCOUNTS: For 3 times deduct 5%, for 6 times deduct 10%, for 12 times deduct 15%. POLICY: All ads to be prepaid. Ads are accepted at our discretion. Your canceled check is your receipt. Please, include address and phone number, which will be kept confidential. DEADLINE: The 25th of the month. Late material will be held for the following month if appropriate. TO PLACE AD: Send ad with check, money order or your Credit Card number (plus your name and expiration date) to: BRAZZIL P.O. Box 50536 Los Angeles, CA 90050-0536. souri City, TX 77 59, USA Email: wilfred.edv, ards usa.net [158] Brasileiro-Americano, 36 anos, romantic° e atraent, procurando relacionamento con brasileiraou americana. (818)314-1881 [166] Seeking beautifu l, professional, English-speakin Carioca woman for best fn nd and marriage. Write to: I odaps, Box 1492, Morrobay California 93443-1492, USA [163] American°, 38, raente, romantic° e sine ro. Procura brasileira 18-45. E viar foto para 2440-16th St, No. 79, San Francisco, CA 94103 [ 58] Handsome Black Americano, 28, seeks kind, attr ctive, brownskinned Brazilian women 18+ for relationship or ore. Darren (415) 777-5679 [1 0] Seeking Bay Are single Brazilian women to me t nice, single, attractive Americ men in the Bay Area for fri ndship, romance, and marri ge. No fee. Send color photo nd profile to Love Connection 964 Howard St, San Francisc , CA 94103 Suite 20 [160] Seeking ladies 18 45 years old to correspond wi h American men for friendship and companionship. FREE fir all ladies. Write: TigerLilies 2709 Lookout Dr., Suite 520 Garland TX 75044 USA [160]
40's WM seeks sincere, VGL/ black/Brasil man. Truly love the music from Caetano to Nana to Gil and more! Maybe we can make music! I'm real thing! (323) 227-8935 [158] PSYCHOTHERAPY
Emotional & psychological help - Elizabete Almeida MFCC licensed psychotherapist. English/Portuguese. Reasonable rates. (310) 281-7536. [158]] RENTAL
The ideal apartment for vacation or business - Beautiful airconditioned studio apartment with all new appliances and parkay floors, in the heart of Copacabana, located on quiet tree-lined street, around the corner from shopping area and restaurants, just 2 blocks from the beach. Building is clean, well managed and has 24-hour security. Perfect for one or two people. $45 per day during low season and $55 during high season. Monthly rates also available. Tel. (718) 658-4987. E-mail: rio988@gateway.net [164] kio de Janeiro - Apartment for Rent - Great Area! - Beat Hotel Prices! (510) 236-3684 [161] TRANSLATION & INTERP.
Dialog° Translates from and to Brazilian Portuguese: http:// www.brazilstudy.com [155] TRAVEL
PERSONAL MAN SEEKS MAN
Brazilian bottom 33 y/o, 5'5", 123 lbs, white skin seeks black, young top man wh wanna move to Brazil and shar a whole life. Valdeck - Phone 11 5571 981 1990, valdecka@ otmail.com [163] Very handsome, rofessional,
Receba seu cartho de socio do Club Brasileiro enviando $2.00 por ano com seu nome e endereco para A TTT SERVICES - (909) 627-2171 - 12400 Cypress, 88, Chino, CA 91710 e tenha 10% de desconto na passagem para o Brasil. [164] , Touristic services in Salvador da Bahia: Didlogo, http:// www.brazilstudy.com [155] 51
Boston
Brazil-Cal. Chbr of Com.
(310) 657-3161 Brazilian Sociocult. C.
Books Livraria Plenitude
(310) 370-0929
(800) 532-5809
(323) 256-6548
Consulate Consulado do Brasil
MILA - Samba School
(617) 617-542-4000 Dentist Sylvio P. Lessa
(617) 924-1882 Food & Products Brasil Brasil
Centro Cultural Gaucho
(310) 202-8091 Mov. Social Humanists
(310) 281-6652 SambaLi -Esc. de Samba (562) 438-3996 Consulate Brazilian Consulate
(617) 561-6094
(213) 651-2664 Dentist
Jerry's Cachaca
Gilberto Henriques
(617) 666-5410 Instruction Approach Student Ctr
(617) 787-5401 Braz. & Amer. Lg. Inst.
(213) 464-0524 Events Promotion Brazilian Nites Prod.
Travel/Tours
Brazil Imports
(800) 471-6333
(305) 561-3788
ATW Travel
Discover Brazil Tours
(619) 234-3401 Money Remittance
(800) 529-2990
(800) 524-3666
Brazil Air
Euroamerica
(800) 441-8515
(305) 358-3003
Brazil Tours
International Tours
(818) 767-1200
(800) 822-1318
Cheviot Hills Travel
Luma Travel
(310) 202-6264
(305) 374-8635 Monark Travel (305) 374-5855
South Winds Tr & Tours
(800) 533-3423 TV Brazil TV & Production
(562) 437-6404
Miami S. Florida Airlines
(617) 787-7716
(323) 634-7811
Publications Brazzil
Sayegh Promotions
(800) 872-3153
(323) 255-8062
(562) 863-3463 Food & Products
(800) 468-2744
The Brazilian Monthly
Cachaca Pitu
(617) 566-3651 Bossa: Braz. Jazz Guide
(617) 262-9997 Restaurants Cafe Brazil
(617) 789-5980 Ipanema
(508) 460-6144 Tropicilia
(617) 567-4422 Pampas Churrascaria
(617) 661-6613
Chicago Consulate Consulado G. do Brasil
(312) 464-0244 Translations Portuguese Lang. Ctr.
(312) 276-6683
Dallas Restaurants Fogo de Chao
(972) 503-7300 Travel Agency Brazil Brasileiro
(714) 731-7788
Transbrasil Yang Vasp
(800) 732-8277 Attorney Joel Stewart
Hands of Care Mas. Ther.
(213) 937-3835
(954) 772-7600 Banks
Instruction Brasil Brasil Cult. Ctr
Banco do Brasil
(310) 397-3667 Modern Lang. Center
(310) 839-8427 Internet & Art Design ArtMedia
(310) 826-1443 Legal Services Meiojas & Ferraz
(305) 358-3586 Banco Nacional
(305) 372-0100 Banco Real
(305) 358-2433 Banespa
(305) 358-9167 Clubs & Associations ABFC -As. Bras. da Fier.
New Port Tours
(305) 372-5007 Br Online Travel
(888) 527-2745 Via Brasil Travel
(305) 866-7580
New York N. Jersey
(213) 483-3430 Psychother/Counsel. Elizabeth Almeida, M.A.
(972) 594-8894
(310) 281-7536
Los Angeles
(213) 207-2770
Dr. Jefferson Si Tania Haberkorn, M.A.
BBJ (Br. Bus. Junction)
(212) 768-1545 Food & Products Amazonia Coisa Nossa
(201) 578-2675 Merchant Express
(201) 589-5884 Publications (323) 255-8062 The Brasilians
(212) 382-1630 Brazilian Voice
(305) 262-8212 Food & Beverages
(201) 955-1137
All Braz. Imp. & Exp.
(516) 596-1853
(305) 523-8134
Portugal-Brasil News
OCA Magazine
Brazil by Mail
(212) 228-2958
(954) 472-7163
Samba Newsletter
Guarani Esteves
(305) 345-1540
(718) 937-0574 Restaurants
Vanya's Sweets
(800) GO VAR1G
(954) 785-0087
Brasilia
Brazzil
Vasp
Bakari Art Studio
(213) 731-3700 Folk Creations
(310) 693-2844 Culture Planet
(310) 441-9808
(323) 255-8062 Real Estate Cent. 21 Tinia Sayegh
(415) 863-3651 Ginga Brasil
(510) 428-0698 Escola Nova de Samba
(415) 661-4798 Samba do Coracio (415) 826-2588 Samba, Swing & Suor
• (415) 282-7378 Dental Care Roberto Sales, DDS
Brazilian Pavillion
(510) 451-8315 Events Promotion
Dr. Jorge Macedo
(212) 758-8129
Eyes For Talent
Bossa Nova
(305) 541-7819
(310) 837-8957
By Brazil Café Brasil Carmen Banana
(310) 837-4545 Ginga Brasil
(213) 688-2996
(714) 778-0266
Bikinis Vera() Brazil Bikinis
(323) 933-7254
Ipanema Grill Itana Bahia
(818) 887-1776 Catering
Rio Braz. Churrascaria
Joy's Catering
(714) 739-2000
52
Birds of Paradise
F. B. C. Events
Cosmo Auto Parts
(562) 438-3996 Clubs & Associations
Aquarela
(510) 548-1310
(212) 877-7730
(310) 657-6306 Zabumba
(310) 841-6525 Translation/Interp. Brazilian Int. Affairs
(310) 854-5881
Indigo Blues
(212) 221-0033
(305) 776-1412 Publications
S.O.B.
Brazzil
(212) 243-4940 Tapajis River
(415) 334-0106 Nativa Productions
(408) 287-9798 Food Evergreen Market
The Brazilian Sun
(201) 491-9196 Travel Agencies
(415) 641-4506
(305) 933-3633
Barb Tour Service
HGC Imp. Wholesale
Florida Review
(201) 313-0996
(305) 374-5235 Real Estate
(212) 826-3019
(323) 255-8062
Simone Bethencourt
(954) 704-1211 Restaurants Boteco
(954) 566-3190
Odyssea Travel Service
San Diego Auto Car Mania Auto Repair
(954) 781-1113
(619) 223-7748 Clubs & Associations
PorcAo
Clube Bras. San Diego
(305) 373-2777
(619) 295-0842
Brazilian Tropicana
Steak Masters
Sunday Night CI. Brazil
(305) 567-1718
(619) 233-5979
Brazzil
(323) 255-8062 Restaur.INight Clubs Bahia Cabana
(415) 861-4202 Cafe Mardi Gras
(415) 864-6788 Canto do Brasil
(415) 626-8727 Janete & Pedro Br. Food
(415) 821-4600 Muzzarela Di Bufala
(415) 346-2284 Nino's
(510) 845-9303 Porto Brasil
(510) 526-1500 Terra Brazilis
(415) 863-5177 Translation Port. Lang. Services
(415) 587-4990 Travel Agencies Brazil Express
(415) 863-2556
(305) 866-7718 Physicians
Dr. Neri Franzon •
Brazil Today
(510) 526-1115
(415) 981-8170 Dance Instruction
(650) 595-2274
Brazilian Tropical
M. C. Printing
(510) 268-8967 Publications
(415) 749-0524
Cabana Carioca
(310) 657-5070
Emiliano Benevides
(415) 648-2441 Physician
Brazilian Consulate
(212) 581-8088
(310) 787-7520
Samba Collection
Brazil 2000
Micronet
(415) 665-1994 Consulate
Dr. Mario Sanches
(714) 720-1522
(562) 438-3415 Clothes
(212) 869-9200
(510) 655-8207 Computer
(305) 271-7311
Zebi Designs
Banks Banco do Brasil
Mitts Auto Body
(562) 865-2992 Restaurants & Cafes
(310) 391-6530 Auto Repair (213) 259-9818
Via Brasil
Nelson Auto Body
B.A.S.O. (415) 661-2788 Bay Area Brasilian Club (415) 334-0106 Capoeira Institute
(310) 840-5380 Publications
(310) 364-0160 Arts & Crafts
Manoel Faris
(510) 537-3533 Auto
Brazilian Gen. Cons.
yang
Airlines
Laura Basaloco-Lapo
(415) 288-6727
(415) 681-5355 Clubs & Associations
Brazzil
Hedimo de Si
(800) 732-VASP Attorney
Brazilian Trade Bur.
(212) 757-3080 Consulting
(415) 752-9782 Voz do Brazil (415) 586-2276 Percussion
Dr. Guilherme Salgado
(212) 224-6280 Consulate
(212) 916-3200
Ricardo Peixoto
(415) 832-6219 Printing
Bibbo (415) 421-BIBO Carmen's International (415) 433-9441 Neyde's
Brazilian Corn. Bureau
Fogo na Roupa
(510) 464-5999
Vasp
Brazilian Ch. of Corn.
(212) 575-9030
Consulado do Brasil
Nilson A. Santos
yang
Celia Malheiros
(415) 738-2434
(650) 794-1998
(415) 565-3560 Beauty Salon
Fogo e Paixio
(305) 285-6200 Dentists
Airlines
(800) 727-LUSO Clubs & Associations
(310) 585-8911 Matchmaker (310) 450-4586 Physician
an Francisco
(415) 255-6717
(718) 204-1521
FinancePlus Mort. Corp.
Vigo-California
(800) 994-VIGO
Books Luso-Brazilian Books
(407) 354-5200 Cam. Corn. Brasil- EUA (305) 579-9030 ARARA - Amazon. As. (813) 842-3161 Consulate
(310) 360-0901 Loans
Import/Export
Brazilian Wave
(818) 566-1111 Samba & Saudade
Travel Agencies
Around the World Tn.
(408) 947-8511 Instruction Portuguese - A. Frame (510) 339-9289 Portuguese Lang. Serv.
(415) 587-4990 Money Remittance Brazil Express-Vigo
(415) 749-0524 West Brazil
(415) 695-9258 Music
Paulo's Travel Rio Roma
(415) 921-3353 Santini Tours
(510) 843-2363 Travel Americas
(415) 334-0404 Tropical Travel
(510) 655-9904 Tucanos Travel
(415) 454-9961
ashington DC Airlines Transbrasil
(202) 775-9180 Yang (202) 331-8913 Vasp
(202) 822-8277 Banks Banco do Brasil
(202) 857-0320 Banco do Est. de S. Paulo
(202) 682-1151 Clubs & Associations Braz. Am. Cult. Inst.
(202) 362-8334 Inst. of Brazil. Business
(202) 994-5205 Embassy Embaixada do Brasil
(202) 238-2700 Restaurants Amazonia Grill
(202) 537-0421 Travel Agencies Intern. Discount Travel (703) 750-0101
13FtAZZIL - JULY 1999
All Things Brazilian!!
4.4 Sambota Samba School JOlh OUT
For Business Opportunities Get the Right Connection
& Samba Collection
Samba School Dancers and Percussion!
Brazil - California
atalog on the Internet:
Monthl Classes & Shows at Ton s Restaurant www.sambacollection.com I-Shirts 701 Lon Beach Bd. 7th Street -. LB Aquarium - 5-8 pm volitS"- Cavaguinhos July 70 (Sal)- Sambala at the 11 July 77,24,37 (Sal) - 5-7.30pm at LB Ariudnum Brazilian Crafts August 7 (Sal) 99 Samba Enredo Costumes Revealed Brazilian Music Sept. 79 (Sun) - 4th Annual Brazilian Street Carnaval Worldcup Shirts
4
-
Let &whale do w ne WON? ofithnske it
Other Fun With SarribaLa:
• Samba, lambada, Pagode,Galiora • Samba, Timbalada _Samba Rawae • Come learn to dance and playikth us! We've been making custom clothes & costumes for mu & dance rou s for years!
.
I
Call Now
Tel/Fax: (310) 657-3161
For DETAILS CALL
8530 Wilshire Blvd #205 Beverly Hills, CA 90211
tel: (562) 438-3669
MERCHANT -Nomo- EXPRESS 900 E. ATLANTIC BLVD, #6 POMPANO BEACH, FL 33060
TEL: (954) 785-5991 LLL LLGILLLI Eli/LL 1.1,LLILLE 1/:;•:1. DELIVEPY P:,'I ILzELE
CflbARIII
M
EXPRESS 900 E. ATLANTIC BLVD, #6 POMPANO BEACH, FL 33060
TEL: (954) 785-5991 BRAZILIAN MUSIC IN ITS TOTALITY Samba, Bossa Nova, Jazz, Rock, Chorinho, Lambada, Baido, Frevo, Axe Music, World Music, and more.
CD'S AND TAPES MAIL DELIVERY AVAILABLE Daniela Mercury, Olodum, Banda Mel, Roca Negro, Alcione, Caetano, Djavan, Milton Nascimento, Clementina de Jesus, Beth Ca rvalho, Margareth Menezes, Rosa Maria, Leny Andrade, Elza Soares, Marina, Elba Ramalho, Tania Alves, Ivan Lins, Jodo Gilberto, Tom Jobim, Vinicius de Marais, Toquinho, Roberto Carlos, Nelson Ned, Legicio Urbana, Chico Buarque, Paralamas doSucesso, Bardo Vermelho, Elis Regina, Nara Ledo, Cartola, Maria Bethonia, Gal Costa, Noel Rosa, Carmen Miranda, Gilberto Gil, MPB-4, Adoniram Barbosa, Moreira da Silva, Wagner Tiso, Sergio Mendes, Martinho do Vila, Jair Rodrigues, Jorge Benjor, Zeca Pagodinho, Bezerra do Silva, Nand Vasconcelos, Luiz Gonzaga, Alceu Valenca,Cazuza, Leila Pinheiro, Nelson Cavaquinho, Villa Lobos, Waldir Azevedo, Dilermando Reis and many others... BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
Chamber of Commerce
Brazilian Drums Brazilian Videos Custom Clothing Worldcup Clothes & Souvenirs Carnaval Costumes for Sale/Rent we sell feathers!
The PREMEIR Samba School in the United States!
BrasileiroComoVoce BrasileiroComoVoce BrasiteiroCom
Bras ile iroComoVoce
Calendar
3 rubes que vao abrir o seu sorriso... Consulta gratis
1 Raio X gratis Ir. Prestacoes a partir de U$10.00
Dr. Gilberto Henriques (323)464-0524 Irryall“lentl.W4Am."
2
1777 N. Vine St.,#407 Hollywood, CA 90028
,DoAotooDoipitseig woDactallseas
FINANCE ANAGER We are a plastic container manufacturer that is seeking a bilingual (Portuguese and English) professional for finance and business manager position. Requirements include a minimum of 4-5 years experience in public or private accounting and a working knowledge or internal controls. Manufacturing knowledge a plus, computer skills and a Bachelor's degree required. Position involves international travel. We offer an attractive compensation and benefits package. For consideration, forward résumé with salary history to: Finance Manager Attn: JRR P.O. Box 6407 Plymouth, MI 48170-8407 E.O.E. 53
An excerpt The first wonder of the end of this century is the euphoric shock caused by the immense technical, scientific and economic advance achieved in merely one hundred years. None ofthe visionary optimists at the end of the last century ever imagined how much man would be able to accomplish, even before the year 2000, thanks to the power of the sciences and technology. This knowledge permitted man to dominate his surroundings and undertake an intensive transformation of nature into goods and services, setting up a dynamic economy, constructing a consumer society, and achieving a degree of well-being in health, education and culture that no one could have imagined at the beginning of the century. In 1898, noting the public's fascination with the dawning century, a cigarette manufacturer hired the French painter Jean-Marc Cote to create a series of engravings of life as it would be in the year 2000.' The drawings show that Jean-Marc Cote was well informed for his time. The smokers of that epoch probably were dazzled by the artist's boldness in creating flying machines, submarines navigating the ocean's depths, astrologers viewing the universe through telescopes. But for people living in the year 2000, his visionary dreams are no more than the ridiculous designs of a naive artist incapable of predicting the future. In the year 2000, Jean-Marc Cote believed, men would be capable of building machines which would permit them to fly, but these apparatuses were only wings fastened to the arms ofbrave adventurers—just as Leonardo da Vinci had imagined 400 years earlier. And this was, by the way, less than ten years after the American Wright brothers and the Brazilian Alberto Santos Dumont had already come up with the technique of human flight in machines that were completely different from those imagined by Cote, machines which served as the basis for all future airplanes. Twenty years later, it was already possible to cross the Atlantic by air; twenty more years and air travel was commonplace for the average person. In another ten years humanity would have at its disposal tens of thousands of airplanes capable of transporting hundreds of passengers to all the points of the planet. Jean-Marc would not believe what he could see today. He would not believe, for example, the sophistication of the Hubble Space Telescope. Nor, moreover, could he believe that it could be suspended in space, in orbit around the Earth, since, for him, the telescope in the year 2000 would be the same as Galileo's, only with greater dimensions.
The Shock & the Dream This may be the century of the integration of the planet, but it is also, paradoxically, the century of the spread of inequality and of the creation of a degree of social disintegration never before seen.-The integration of peoples in all countries occurred almost simultaneously with a radical disintegration, within each country, of the state of man himself. CRISTOVAM BUARQUE
later a spaceship would send back photos ofthe Earth and the Moon together, suspended in sidereal space. It is difficult to decide which was the greater shock: the power to send a rocket into space, the capacity to navigate it, or the refinement necessary to take and transmit photos from such a distance. Since its beginnings, human society has covered the Earth with the products of its labor. But, until this century, the products were almost all designed for immediate consumption necessary for basic survival. Each generation consumed the same quantity of the same type of products as its ancestors. Beginning only in the nineteenth century, but especially in the twentieth, and in particular after the 1930s, economic production exploded in the quantity and variety of consumer goods. At the end of the twentieth century man looks around, both shocked and proud, at what he was capable of producing in only one hundred years, thanks to the power of the knowledge that he was able to conquer. He is overcome by pride when he compares what visionaries like Jules Verne and Jean-Marc Cote predicted for this century with what in fact was accomplished. The sentiment he feels is that, through his own will and inventiveness, he has become his own god. THE INTEGRATION OF THE WORLD
Cnstovam Buarque
Only a few years after it was illustrated, each of his ideas was surpassed by reality. Even in the next few decades, the real world exceeded the work of his imagination. On July 16, 1945, the sight and sound of the first atomic bomb's explosion in the Los Alamos desert astonished the entire world. Twenty-four years later man saw, for the first time, the image of the Earth photographed from space. A short time
A special outgrowth of technical achievements, world integration during this century is startling. The communication network that unites all peoples, making the events that occur in each place known simultaneously in every other place, is a surprising fact of life at the end of the twentieth century. The world was made round in the fifteenth century by the explorers. Five hundred years later, it was shrunk for all its inhabitants. The rounding-off was the result of an almost personal adventure of some crazy navigators in small caravels; the integration was a social adventure of almost all the inhabitants. Unlike 500 years ago, when Columbus, as A lejo Carpentier wrote, made round a world that was impatient to become round, this modern integration was a process in which everyone participated through the construction and use of new communication techniques. Johannes Gutenberg and Alexander Graham Bell were perhaps the major contributors, but their accomplishments pale beside what was done much later. At the dawn of the twentieth century, human society consisted of isolated islands. Seven centuries after Marco Polo's voyage, four centuries after the voyages of Columbus, Vasco
BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
da Gama and Ferdinand Magellan, the world was still the sum of its isolated parts—parts isolated by their culture, by their economy, and by the delay in information dissemination. In 1900, in spite ofthe existence ofthe British Empire and centuries of Iberian colonization, societies in different countries were markedly distinct one from the other and were unknown to each other. People who were poorly informed, the, adventurers and the curious, spent years, sometimes decades, discovering and divulging what they saw, and they did this with a sense of estrangement, a sense of describing inhabitants of different worlds. The invention of the telegraph diminished this isolation, creating the possibility of almost simultaneous transmission of news. But the telegraph united only a part of the world, and only by short, "telegraphic" notes. Until the 1950s, the Earth was still only a concept ofgeographers, geologists, and astronomers. For historians, sociologists, economists, political scientists, it was merely the place where different nations and peoples lived in segregation, strangers to one other. Each people was distinct, as differentiated one from the others as had been the Europeans and the indigenous peoples in the New World. Only a few decades ago, no one imagined how much the world would be unified before the year 2000 into a single and simultaneous communication system with generalized access to the same information and to the same consumer goods, the same activities and similar cultural standards. The news of the discovery of America took decades to reach the general population of the Old World; the moon landing was televised live. The entire world saw the landscapes of Venus and Mars, transmitted by spaceships that flew over or landed on these planets. In a period of less than 30 years in this century, human society became integrated. The symbols of products and trademarks spread around the entire world; their dissemination is more complete than that of the Christian cross in Europe in the Middle Ages. Scarcely a child exists in the world today who cannot recognize the symbols of Coca-Cola, Nike, CNN, McDonald's. Suddenly, people all over the world are united in a single information network, an immense global village of communications, products, tastes and ideas. With the advent of electronic mail, exchanging correspondence became simultaneous for a network of people who need not even know where their correspondents are located. The problems of each place became known immediately by people everywhere. No incident is limited to the small area where it occurs. By means of a global system of communications, the entire world becomes aware of what is going on simultaneously with its occurrence. The
BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
poorest people in the poorest countries on earth receive practically the same general information as the richest people in the richest countries. Until the last century, the names of the famous circulated only within a small group of the well informed. The painted portrait was restricted to closed rooms and only very rarely was its subject a living person. The face of Christ, perhaps the only internationalized portrait, was limited in circulation only to the West and the Christian East and represented a mythic face. It was a symbol, like the cross, not a real-life portrait.' The situation began to change with the introduction of photography but its reach was limited. The movies were the great instrument of worldwide fame. But the faces disseminated were only those of the artists and only moviegoers could recognize them. Television radically amplified the recognition factor. Only in the past few years, with satellite television transmission integrating the whole world, each home has become part of a vast universal communication network, and the faces of many are now universally recognizable. Ideas have also become universalized through publishing networks that produCe mutual translations of their authors, through electronic mail, fax, and teleyision, and through a university circuit that often proves to be many times more integrated and many times larger than that of the Catholic theologians in the Middle Ages. Economics has become a system of actions that affect man and nature across the entire planet, carrying the same products to all parts of the globe, striving to satisfy a homogenized demand, no matter where the consumer may be located. Consumer desires have become universalized to such as extent that a single consumer model has been created. All over the planet consumers eat similar food—be it due to the universal dissemination of diverse cuisines, be it due to the worldwide chain of restaurants, with the same architecture, offering the same dishes, with the same appearance and the same taste, no matter where they may be located. The worldwide financial system has become a single system, without frontiers. The crisis in one market has immediate repercussions on main streets everywhere. The planet Earth is no longer a theoretical concept; universality became a consciousness and a life style, no matter where someone may live. From a social point of view the planet Earth is an invention of twentieth-century man, an invention that surprises and frightens, inspiring self-admiration and self-respect. THE DISINTEGRATION OF MAN While this rapid integration of the world is a positive surprise for man, the division of human society within the new global village is frightening. This may be
the century ofthe integration of the planet, but it is also, paradoxically, the century of the spread of inequality and ofthe creation of a degree of social disintegration never before seen. The integration of peoples in all countries occurred almost simultaneously with a radical disintegration, within each country, of the state of man himself, causing the third shock at the end of the century: the construction of a
disintegratory integration. To everyone's amazement, the end of the twentieth century is a time in which men, as individuals, are integrating, and man, as a concept, is disintegrating. The Earth in the year 2000 will be a planet where everyone is in direct communication and part of a single culture that is, at the same time, divided into two societies, separated by brutal social apartheid' estranging those who have access to the new technology from those condemned to continue using the old, those who benefit from the power of the new knowledge from those who remain excluded. Through the television networks, the International First World of the rich portrays itself as perfectly integrated. At the same time, these networks show the entire world how this integrated world is disintegrating socially. On atypical day in February 1995, on a single CNN news program, seen all over the world, reporters of different nationalities and races spoke, in rapid succession, of the problem of excess weight for the inhabitants ofsome countries and the problem of hunger in others. It was as if the disintegration of the world were being reported to a world united by this very news service. When, after the Second World War, Europe began to rebuild its economy, the widespread belief existed that, thanks to the economic impulse, a society of mass consumption would spread throughout the entire planet. When, beginning in the 1950s, the utopian developmentalists initiated the means of inducing economic growth in the peripheral countries, it was believed that, before the end of the century, the populations of these countries would have the same standard of living and the same level of development as the so-called First World countries. These two predictions came true, but only for part ofeach country's population. The integrated world at the end of the twentieth century is a world that is truly disintegrated, a world where those enjoying abundance, wealth and luxury are separated from those immersed in the most alarming misery, hunger and filth imaginable. It was in the eighteenth century that the idea of equal rights for all became widespread. This was the end of the separation between the barbarians and the civilized, the Christians and the heretics, the aristocrats and the servants. It was a long process from the time of the Pharaohs, the god-men, the Sun Kings, the high priests
55
to this affirmation of the idea that human worsened by pollution. The life expectbeings all would have equal rights. Two ancy of the pharaohs, the medieval kings, hundred years later, humanity once again or a nineteenth-century wealthy person is brutally disintegrating. And in an even was no greater than that of any of their more fundamental manner. subjects or servants. Today, the life exIn earlier centuries, people were sepa- pectancy of a citizen of the International rated into isolated nations and, in each of First Worldofthe rich is almost twice that these, there were differences between aris- of a century ago, while the life expectancy tocrats and plebeians. Little difference of the poor is almost the same as before. existed, however, in access to the basic The few achievements of modern products of survival: food, health care, medicine which have equally benefited education. At the end of the twentieth the rich and the poor, such as the eradicacentury, with the technological advance, tion of smallpox and polio, dealt with the consumer society has increased the illnesses that struck both the rich and number of people who can feel like aristo- poor. In order to benefit the former, the crats, almost gods, enjoying privileges vaccine had to be made available to the that no pharaoh could ever imagine. But latter as well. the immense majority of the population Regardless of the wealth they may remains in conditions as precarious as have had, in the past the cultural level of those endured by slaves in Egypt 4000 all men was practically equal. The few years ago. intellectuals lived in a world of illiteracy. Until the last century an aristocrat had At the present time, those who are born access to doctors and clinical instruments into moneyed families spend their childnot so different from those available to the hood and youth with access to sophistipoorest of his subjects. The midwife who cated, efficient educational and cultural attended the queen had no better knowl- materials. They attend universities as a edge, instruments or hygiene than the one natural consequence of their privilegedwho ministered to a poor peasant woman. class birth. Meanwhile, apart of the popuDentists had no anesthesia for any of their lation suffers from the same level of illitpatients .Illiteracy was equally widespread eracy and lack of education as in centuries among the nobles and the commoners. past. While during famines food was scarce In the past the rich greatly distinfirst in the houses of the plebeians, in guished themselves from the poor by the times of abundance there was no hunger in size of their houses. Today, although the any house. homes of the rich may not always be The twentieth century changed all this. medieval palaces, they and the middle Looking about, one can perceive that class enjoy a level of hygiene and a numthe twentieth century has amplified in- ber of domestic appliances unimaginable equality. If, in the past, the medicine, to the richest of the ancient kings. But the transportation, and goods and services at poor continue to live in shantytowns withthe disposition of the aristocrats, the pha- out sanitation, in dwellings as precarious raohs, the rich were close to those of the as, or even more precarious than, those of epoch's poor, today the consumption level the past. of a middle-class person is radically reThe transportation systems in the past moved from that of a contemporary poor served everyone with practically the same person. Mere inequality level of inefficiency, the has been replaced by a same delays, and the chasm. same discomfort, no The planet is a In an emergency, the matter the income ofthe whirlwind of rich have airplanes and traveler. Today, it is not misery. The helicopters at their disposal necessary to be rich to utopian dream to transport them directly enjoy the use of comdied before the to hospitals where specialfortable, rapid cars and end of the ists perform miracles. On airplanes. But millions the other hand, the poor of century, as if still use the same primithe world, no matter what before its time, tive system of walking, their country, continue to and was or, even worse, owing live with poor sanitation incapable of to the great urban disand poor health, with meditances, are forced to accomplishing cal care not that much difsleep at their work sites what it had ferent from that in ancient because they cannot pay promised one times. the cost of public transhundred years Until the last century, portation. earlier. the infant mortality rate The last, but not the was the same for all social least, indication of the groups in all countries. In only a few mmense inequality between people in decades it was nearly possible to eliminate t his century is that many have won the infant mortality in wealthy and middle- right to leisure and the possibility of enclass families in the whole world, no mat- joying it in an immense variety of ways, ter what their country, while the infant in eluding traveling throughout the intemortality rate of the poor has remained grated planet. But billions are obliged to close to that of the past, sometimes even work hard until the last days of their short
56
lives and others vegetate in unemployment, never knowing any security of survival. In the countries-with-a-rich-majority, a society of abundance has been created, at the same time that a portion of the population, especially the youth, were thrown into marginality by unemployment and the lack of any future prospects. In the countries-with-a-poor-majority, the situation is much worse because, alongside the wealth of a minority elite, which often exceeds the rich of the countries-with-a-rich-majority in ostentation, one can observe an even more drastic impoverishment of the general population, which did not utilize industrial goods before and now cannot even eat. The segregated-internationalization of consumption troubles our conscience with the realization that technology is not only beginning to construct inequality, but it is also beginning to divide the human species into two different biological types: those who are not ill and those who are always ill; the strong and intelligent and the weak and deficient; those who live longer and those who live shorter lives. Man is frightened when he perceives that, thanks to the use of the marvelous possibilities of biotechnology, he can destroy the central unity of the species. Just as the Greeks saw the barbarians as different, the civilized moderns are causing a part of humanity to be composed of inferior barbarians. The difference now is that it is a technically constructed inferiority, the frontiers are no longer between nations, and the civilized no longer need slaves since machines have replaced the barbarians. Humanity at the end of the century is frightened by the disintegration of man. The world, which appeared to be on the road to creating an international consumer society, has proven to be divided between an International First World of the rich and an immense International Social Gulag of the poor. THE FAILURE OF UTOPIA Instead of integrating into a utopian planet where everyone would be rich, as was the idea some years ago, at the end of the century the Earth appears to have become a Third-World Worlddivided between rich inhabitants—united across the borders of all the countries of the world into an International First World of the rich, independent of their country of residence—and an immense International Social Gulag—where the poor are spread over all countries, abandoned to their own fate, almost as if they belong to a different species than that of the rich. Even in those countries-with-a-rich-majority, some live in the Social Gulag; while in the countries-with-a-poor-majority, the rich have links with the privileged part ofthe planet.' This growing inequality causes a tragic shock: the perception that the technical
BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
advance did not serve to build a utopian society. Until this century utopias were localized geographically. Although the word means "nowhere" in Greek, literary utopias were situated in recognizable places— with rare exceptions like The Year 2440 by Louis-Sebastien Mercier, written in 1770. The ideal society was imagined to exist somewhere in the world, as if time were not the builder of utopia. At the end of the last century this changed. Utopia was located in the future, as something both inevitable and desired. And the future was the year 2000. In 1887, the North American Edward Bellamy published his novel Looking Backward: 2000-1887,5 in which he described the idyllic world that his narrator saw on a visit to the year 2000. The world of which Bellamy writes is technically advanced and utopian. According to the book, the year 2000 would be a paradise of abundance, liberty, peace, tranquillity and security, thanks to the availability of marvelous technical tools. For those of us in the present epoch, Bellamy's technical marvels are ridiculous and his utopian society is an illusion. He made a double error: the actual technical advances were much more surprising than what he expected, and society fell far short of achieving the utopia that he imagined. In many ways society has regressed. Technology advanced much more, and , utopia, much less than he supposed. Bellamy imagined a society where money was unnecessary, thanks to a sort of passbook in which unlimited purchases were recorded for each person, satiated by the abundance. But he did not foresee credit cards or informatics, or that credit cards would only serve the few while the majority would continue imprisoned by the scarcity of merchandise and the exclusionary violence of traditional money. He imagined a world where people would hear music without leaving their houses by means of telephones transmitting live music from some points in each city. But he did not foresee the record, the radio, television. Nor did he imagine that billions would continue to be excluded from basic education. All men of letters at the end of the nineteenth century imagined that, thanks to the power of technology, this would be the century that utopia would be constructed. The technical advance would create a utopia in which men would be freed from their necessities, would eliminate violence, and would live in abundance, equality and solidarity. Public confidence in the power of technology was equaled only by the parallel certainty that a utopian civilization would be created. No one imagined anything like the international television networks showing the world the eyes of starving children in Somalia, the sad eyes of injured children in Sarajevo, the unemployment lines in the countries-with-a-rich-majority.
BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
Unlike what was imagined, techno brutality of the Latin American dictatorogy did not eliminate hunger, ignoranc ships, the ethnic war in the ex-Yugoslaor violence. In some aspects, the picture via, the famine in Somalia, the generalsociety at the end of this century is mo ized urban violence, the one hundred miltragic than that one hunlion unemployed, the youth dred years ago. From the in the rich countries with point of view of the march no prospects for the future, towards utopia, in many the and disappointment with ways humanity has reco ntriesthe socialist utopian which gressed: hunger stopped has been transformed into wit -a-richbeing temporary; violence the menace of a czarist Nama ority, a stopped being sporadic. zism with a nuclear arsenal. so iety of When they imagined The planet is a whirlabu dance the year 2000, visionaries wind of misery. The utoha been failed doubly: they did not pian dream died before the cre ted, at foresee the reach ofthe techend of the century, as if the s me time nical advance; and they prebefore its time, and was inthat portion dicted that humanity's capable of accomplishing the dreams of utopia would what it had promised one pop lation, come true. hundred years earlier. Hillel espe ially the In 1993, the entire Schwartz confirmed that, world was shocked by the you h, were "Were it not for the granphotograph taken by Kevin thr wn into deur of the year 2000, this Carter, disseminated by the ma inality fin de siècle must seem media, which showed a • about as hollow as that of little girl in Sudan, dying une the 1390s or 1690s." loyment on the ground beside a vulAt its beginning, the and he lack ture awaiting the moment twentieth century was of a y future that it could take possescalled by, among others, pro pects. sion of the body. A man at Paul Valery, the "century the beginning of the cenof centuries."6 Such was the tury would be amazed by general sense of optimism Kevin Carter's photographic equipme about the end of the century. The only and, even more, by the fact that the pho doubt concerned when the utopia would appeared simultaneously and instant begin, in 2000 or 2001. neously all over the world. Instead of the utopia expected, the end But the subject matter of the phot of the twentieth century brought the shock graph would be an even greater source of social catastrophe. amazement to him. One hundred years ago, no one cou THE REVELATION imagine that humanity, with such mode OF THE BLAME equipment at its disposal, would still subject to such hunger and degradatio Like Prometheus, man at the end of The photographer was also shocked. Wi this century is being destroyed by the the photo he won prizes and fame. A sh inventions he created. Shamefaced, he time later, he killed himself, making it surveys his surroundings, frightened by clear that one of the causes was his de the failure and the horror of the human depression brought on by the reality th society he constructed. The possible exhe had been photographing. Here is planation for these errors of judgment is example of a man shocked by the end even more frightening: technology itself the twentieth century. may be at fault for the disaster. The revelaThe world today is much differe tion that the technical success itself is to from the scientific and technical drea blame for the failure of utopia is shockof the past and just as far, or even farth r, ing. from utopia as at any other time in histo The geniuses of the past based their Practically no part of the utopian dre predictions and dreams upon an earlier for the year 2000—the end of necessiti type of technical advance, which had a the reduction of inequality, the existen different aim than that of twentieth-cenof peace and tranquillity—has comet tury technology. Although almost banished in some cou One hundred years ago, humanity's tries, misery became even more profou technical creativity was focused upon the for a part of the population; wars could process ofproduction. Men invented faster, fought with even more catastrophic a cheaper, easier methods of producing the violence is widespread. In the countri same products that earlier generations had which have advanced socially, violen been using for centuries: clothing, food, existential emptiness, the need for dru housing, musical instruments. Productivand general indifference to the tragedy ity grew but the necessities remained other human beings have all increased stable. Production technology advanced As if in contraposition to the utopi and productivity increased without changpoint of view, when one thinks of t ing either the types of products or the twentieth century, it is with memories standards of consumption. Hiroshima, the Holocaust, Nazism, t In the past century there was already
57
an enormous difference between a modern plow and one made one hundred years earlier; but cereal production continued to have nearly the same importance in society's overall production level, and daily personal cereal consumption remained approximately the same as in the past. Between the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the loom was radically modified, considerably increasing textile production, but cloth continued to be one of the economy's few products. And the raw material for textile production had remained basically the same for many centuries. At the beginning of the century a Rio de Janeiro magazine caricatured the marvels of modern times with the drawing of a machine which made hats from entire rabbits. The authors of this idea imagined that products would remain the same and only the manner of making them would change. They had no idea that hats would go out of style and that knowledge would be used to invent new products instead of new ways of automatically continuing to produce the same goods. The optimistic nineteenth-century predictions for the end of the twentieth century are an obvious outgrowth of this type of thinking about the technical advance. The economy was producing goods that would, in a short time, be available to everyone; society, therefore, would naturally break the aristocrats' monopoly on the privilege of consuming. Nineteenthcentury thinkers concluded that machines would produce more and more ofthe same products, inevitably generating their abundance. No one imagined that instead of finding new and more efficient ways of producing the same things, twentieth-century man would reorient his creativity to invent new products. In its twentieth-century manifestation, the technical advance deferred abundance, instead of achieving it. The physical limitations to growth made abundance impossible. The egalitarian utopia died. The visionaries at the end of the nineteenth century, who were optimistic about the power of technology, erred in their prognostications when they considered technology as a mere element in the increase of production, and not as an instrument to increase necessities. ETHICAL MODERNITY
What has happened to humanity in these last few centuries can be explained by necessity and also by chance: the necessity of the species to survive in its struggle with the rest of nature; and the chance association of the Enlightenment with the Industrial Revolution, of the dreams of liberty and equality with the
58
material power of technology. What happens in the next centuries can continue to be a product of chance, or free will can also enter into the historical process. If we continue to be guided by necessity and chance, this will either lead to the material degradation of all human beings in the struggle for survival, or to ethical degradation through the partition of the species, a species which has the mind of gods and a heart of stone, the logic of superior beings, and the instinct of inferior species. The industrial civilization that emerged from the marriage ofthe libertarian and egalitarian values of the Enlightenment and the technical power of the Industrial Revolution will in the future be replaced by a new civilization that will be either: • based upon ethical modernity, maintaining the humanistic values of equal rights and liberty for all, while subordinating desires and technical power to the ethical values of humanism, of equality and of liberty, or • based upon the continuation of technical modernity, but with a new social apartheid ethic, with a humanism restricted to the few, and with unlimited technical power, but only a part of humanity would have the right to unlimited desires and to the values of equality and liberty. The rest would be excluded from this concept of humanity. Humanity is at an ethical crossroads with two possible choices: its partition or its reunification. The shocks at the end of the century make a dream possible for all of us: We can be the instruments of a modernity based upon ethical values and social desires, instead of a modernity based merely upon technical advance and economic growth. We can formulate the idea of an ethic that reclaims the Enlightenment values, the desire for equality and the belief in the power of technology as elements of liberation. When we wake up to ethics, perhaps we will discover anew road for the twentyfirst century: a road where, thanks to ethics, technology will return to its original utopian promise—the creation of a civilization where social desires will be subordinated to the ethical values of universal humanism.
' Cote's engravings were lost for many years. Isaac Asimov published them after they fell into his hands. See the wonderful edition: Futuredays: A Nineteenth-Century Vision of the Year 2000. Illustrations by Jean-Marc Cote. Commentary by Isaac Asimov (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1986). The much-criticized statement by
one of the Beatles that they were more popular than Jesus was, understandably, a shock to world public opinion in the 1960s. But they meant that, because of their constant exposure on television, including in non-Christian countries, theirs became the most recognizable photographs in the world. 3 The term "apartaceio, or "social apartheid," was used for the first time in this sense by the author in his book 0 que e apartactio: 0 apartheid social no Brasil [Social apartheid in Brazil] (Sao Paulo: Brasiliense, 1993). The idea is to create a term to describe the development of contemporary societies, separated by class, and not by race, as in the term "racial apartheid."
One of the shocks of the end of the century is evident in the language crisis: Words are losing their earlier meanings; new concepts are arising and their definitions are still not universally accepted. Social apartheid is one of these new concepts with a definition that is still vague. A number of new words are appearing in connection with this term. Many of them, like Third-World World, International First World, International Social Gulag, country-with-a-rich-majority, countrywith-a-poor-majority, are discussed in the author's book Apartaceio: um dicionario [Social apartheid: a dictionary], initially published by INESC (Brasilia, May 1994), and latter, as a special section in the newspaper 0 Povo (Fortaleza, May 1995). 'Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward: 2000-1887 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1887). Hillel Schwartz, Century's End: A Cultural History of the Fin de Sieclefrom the 990s through the 1990s (New York: Doubleday, 1990), p. 200 (translator's note). Apud Hillel Schwartz, op. cit., p. 190. Excerpted from A Cortina de Ouro— Os Sustos do Final do Seculo e urn Sonho para o Proximo (Sao Paulo: Paz e Terra, 1995). Cristovam Buarque (cbuarque*brnet.com.br) is the Brazilian author of fifteen books of essays and fiction. He is a professor at the University of Brasilia, where he was the Rector from 1985 to 1989. From 1995 to 1999 he was the Governor of the Federal District of Brasilia. Translated by Linda Jerome (LinJerome(&ss.com). Translation 0 Linda Jerome.
BRAZZIL - JULY 1999
Speak Brazilian Portuguese like a Diplomat!
What sort of people need to learn a foreign language as quickly and effectively as possible? Foreign Service personnel, that's who. Members of the United States diplomatic corps are assigned to embassies abroad, where they must be able to converse fluently in every situation. Now you can learn to speak Brazilian Portuguese, just as these diplomatic personnel do—with the Foreign Service Institute's Programmatic Portuguese Course. Tens of thousands of dollars were spent by the United States government in developing this course. Its by far the most effective way to learn Portuguese at your own convenience and at your own pace. The Programmatic Portuguese Course consists of a series of tape cassettes and an accompanying textbook. You simply follow the spoken and written instructions, listening and repeating during the pauses on the tape. By the end of the course, you'll find yourself learning and speaking entirely in Portuguese! This course turns your cassette player into a "teaching machine." With its unique "programmatic" learning method, you set your own pace— testing yourself, correcting errors, reinforcing accurate responses. This Programmatic Course comes in two volumes, each shipped in a handsome library binder. Order either or save 10% by ordering both:
O Fast-Track European Portuguese. 6 cassettes (6 hr.), 346-p. text, $155. O From Spanish to Portuguese. 2 cassettes (2 hr.), 91-p. text, $45.
Latin American Spanish (FS!): O Basic Spanish Vol. 1. 12 cassettes (17 hr.), 464 text, $185. O Workbook for Spanish Vol. 1. 128-p., $7.95 O Intermediate Spanish Vol. 2. 8 cassettes (12 hr.), 614-p. text, and manual, $165. O Workbook for Spanish Vol. 2. 201-p., $14.95 O Spanish Advanced Level Part A, 12 cassettes (13 hr.), 614-p. text, $185. O Spanish Advanced Level Part B, 12 cassettes (13 hr.), 4-72-p. text, $185.
To order by phone, please call
,f•9
Brazilian Portuguese (FS!) O Basic Portuguese Vol. 1.
Also available:
16 cassettes
(19 hr.), 783-p. text, $225.
O Intermediate Portuguese Vol. 2. 18 cassettes (16 hr.), 618-page text, $225. The Foreign Service Institute's language courses are unconditionally guaranteed. Try it for three weeks. If you're not convinced it's the fastest, easiest, most painless way to learn a language, return it and well refund every penny you paid. Order today!
toll-free 1-800-243-1234
Credit-card orders call toll-free 1-800-243-1234, fax toll-free 1-888-453-4329, e-mail: info@ audioforum.com, or mail check or money order. Call or write for our free 52-page Whole World Language Catalog offering courses in 101 languages. Our 28th year.
auDiaFaRum® THE LANGUAGE SOURCE Suite P931, 96 Broad St., Guilford, CT 06437
SPANISH 30 Cassettes -I- Triple Bonus $295.00
FRENCH 30 Cassettes Tripte Bonus $295,00
GERMAN 30 Cassettes Triple Bonus $295.00
ITALIAN 30 Cassettes * Triple Bonus $:l85.00
N. 111 111
JAPANESE 30 Cassettes 4- Triple Bonus $295.00
MANOARIN CHINESE 30 Cassettes Tnpte Bonus 9295.00
RUSSIAN 30 Cassettes Triple Bonus $295.00
SRA4i PORTUG 30 Cass Triple BO $295.00
I
Learn Foreign Languages... Incredibly Fas Conversing in a foreign language is a major social and business asset... and brings new life to the worlds of travel, entertainment and relationships. The technique of accelerated learning, as conveyed by these proven foreign language courses, allows anyone to comfortably converse in a new language within 30 days.
Now Over 30 New Courses! Hard-to-find language prograniuOre no longer hard to find! We now publish all U.S. Foreign Service Institute language Courses. A • • •
typical Course includes: Cassette Album (12-18 hours) 250+ page Text Language Dictionary
Just $225.00 per
O O O O
Amharic Arabic, Saudi Bulgarian Cantonese El Czech O French Level II O French Level III
course 0 Greek 0 Hebrew 0 Hungarian El Persian CI Thai 0 Ukrainian 0 Vietnamese
ecelerated learning, developed by famed learning expert Dr. Giorgi Lozanov, is based on the premise of involving both hemispheres of the brain in the education process. The analytical or logical left side of the brain, when properly activated with the musical or artistic right side of the brain, both increases the speed and heighters the retention of learning. Utili,ing these untapped mental capacities of your learning ability is the basis of this unique, highly effectiv:! course. You will leurn the language stresslessly, as a child does, by hearing new vocabulary and phrases in alternately loid, whispered and emphatic intonations, all accompanied by slow rhythmic music in digital stereo. This perfect combination of music and words allows the two halves ot the brain to work together to dramatically facilitate your assimilation of the new language. The first 15 memory) tapes of this 30-tape package help Activate the Icorning capicities of the brain. The second _ 15 (study) tapes are the eery same tried and proven tapes used by the Fareign Seiv ice Institute to train career diplomats. This marriage of two concepts literally gives YOU two courses in one, providing the best of both worlds in language instruction. _ Best Value With a hr al of 32 cassettes plus study materials, this program represents the best value available ioday in language instriution. Compared to other programs, The Accelerated Learning Series outperforms them with ,wice the aud.o and 20 tines the study material. To correctli converse in a foreign language, you must I anderstand tfe_P meaning, and intent of the native speaker. If, after 30 days of listening to the study and memory tapes, you are not comfortably understanding and conversing in your new language, return them for afiill retionl.
Charge the full price of any course — $295.00 — or make 5 interest-free payments of just $59.00. Please add $14 S&H. CA. residents add t: 25% sales tax.
Triple Bonus!! You will also receive: • Two 90-minute Vocabulary Tapes • The I 00-page How to Learn A Foreign Language • The Lonely Planet Dictionary
CALL FOR ADDITIONAL LANGUAGE COURSES.
& Phrasebook
To preview products or order online, visit the world's largest language bookstore! • Arabic to Zulu...over 120 language choices Translation Software • ESL Courses • Best Price Pimsleur Courses • Children's Language Courses • New BBC Video Courses
1.0800•85•AUDIO