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Brazzil - Year 12 - Number 177 - November 2000

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MUSIC: Augusto de Campos, the novelty merchant


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BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000


Times have changed a lot. Eleven years ago, president hopeful Luis Inacio Lula da Silva from the Workers' Party (PT) was beaten in the ballot by Fernando Collor de Mello. Among the rumors and scare tactics used at the time was the story that if Lula won the presidency everybody with ahome with more than three bedrooms would have to share it with the poor. Many people believed it. Similar tactics were again used during the recent national elections to choose city mayors, but without success. And the same PT that was unable to make the President in the last three presidential elections was the big winner this time. Among other choice spots, the leftist Workers' Party grabbed hold ofthe coveted post of mayor of Sao Paulo, South America's largest city. In sum, the main parties from the left (PC do B, PDT, PPS, PSB and PT) won in 27 cities with more than 200,000 residents. They will be governing over 19 million of the 35.7 million who live in these densely populated areas. In the interior, however, the parties allied to the government (PSDB, PFL, PMDB, PPB and PTB) continue very strong and were able to elect 80 percent of the mayors from the 4652 municipalities with less than 20,000 voters. These little cities represent 30 percent of the national electorate. The recent elections' results hadn't sunk in yet and politicians were already getting ready for 2002, year in which a new president will be elected. It seems that fora fourth time workers' leader Lula will dispute the presidency. He starts ahead of the pack with ample national name recognition and 30 percent ofthe votes. Other names taking position for the run are former President Itamar Franco and ex Finance Minister and former Ceara governor Ciro Gomes. But the government doesn't want to talk about succession before next year. RM

Send mail to: P.O. Box 50536 - Los Angeles, CA

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Cover The left doesn't scare anymore Cover by Salvino Campos

Contents 11

Sex Couples do it for the camera

17

Olympics Brazil does not convince

11

Memory Goodbye, Baden Powell!

11

Privacy Every telephone number revealed

21

Politics Minimum wage and demagoguery

22

Economy The privatization goes on

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First Person The exemplary life of Dona Flor

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Review A dated and vindictive guide

27

Sho Story Three by Julio Cesar Monteiro Martins

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Travel If it's Rio, it's Camaval

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Tourism 11 things I know about Rio

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

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Impressions Nothing moves. We're in Natal

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Adventure Hammock, Names, Faces

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Music Augusto de Campos invents music

Publisher and Editor: Rodney Mello Assistant Editor: Leda Bittencourt Art&Design Director: Marina Yoshie

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Books The adventure of publishing in Brazil

(marinayoshie@hotmail.com)

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Society Defending virginity in the early 1900s

Entertainment Editors: Sam & Harriet Robbins Book Review: Bondo Wyszpolski Music Editor: Bruce Gilman Brazil Bureau Chief: Marta Alvim

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E-mail: mltdalvim@yahoo.corn TIME TO RENEW? Sorry, we don't send reminders. Look at the label to know when your subscription ends.

08 Rapidinhas

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 mailed back. Brazzil assumes no responsibility for any claims made by its advertisers. The Library of Congress ISSN: 1524-4997 POST MASTER : Send address changes to BRAllIL P.O. Box 50536 - Los Angeles, CA - 90050-0536

18 Letters

BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000

49 Cultural Pulse 51 Classifieds 52 That's Brazilian

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Sex Ying and Yang Trying to add a little more spice to the already spicy Brazilian gossip media, Cravo e Canela has found a different way of showing celebrities. The Internet-based magazine—http://www.cravoecanela.net— mixes the explicitness of Playboy to the coziness of People and presents famous couples in their intimacy. In midOctober the featured couple was the hottest TV actress of the day Danielle Winits and her boyfriend Marco 1Viastronelli. The photo essay shows dozens of pictures of the pair in ardent kisses and teasing pictures, but nothing that gets close do hardcore. Winits told Ries daily 0 Dia that one reason to accept the challenge was obe with Marco since they live a very busy life: "I had another essay with Marco about one year ago for my store's catalogue. This way is much more fun. We rarely fmd time to be together. That's why we accepted the invitation." Danielle also knows that some people would like to see some more explicit scenes. "This is just a taste of real life," she explains. "It's not bashful, but it isn't vulgar either. They didn't go all the way. They did something sensual without being too graphic." Other sites have also appealed to celebrities. Morango (strawberry. "Internet's tastiest site")—http:// www.morango.com.br—for example, has been showing beautiful women in different degrees of undress. For Flavio Pedreira, the director of Cravo e Canela, the response from the public to the innovation has been very positive. Says he, "Our idea was to offer something new. For us a relationship is more important than someone by himself." The Cravo e Canela (Clove & Cinnamon) pictorial is pure image. There is no text introducing the couple or accompanying the pictures. The photo essay that started the series and that appeared just before the one with Daniella and Marco was a little more daring, showing another actress, Gabriela t Duarte with her beau, model Fabio GhirardeLi. Talking on TV to show hostess Marilia Gabriela, Fabio showed enthusiasm about the experience: "We > were at ease. We could be ourselves. We cidn't have to interpret any2 thing." Patricia Drummond, a producer, tries to explain the phenomenon. "What makes the biggest success on the Internet is voyeurism. To be interesting these essays have to be spicy. And since the people presented on Cravo e Canela are couples, they are allowed everything. For actress Jfilia Lemmertz, who had long and very explicit sex scenes with husband Alexandre Borges in last year's cult film Urn Copo de Co/era (A Glass of Wrath), the exposure of famous artists to the public was unavoidable. "We have to keep our distance from the characters. But today the public is curious about everything and the artists, well, they wish to expose themselves."

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BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000


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Only once before did Brazil win more medals than the 12 conquered during the recent Sydney Olympic Games. They were six silver medals and six bronze. Invariably, however, the Brazilian media considered the Sydney campaign a big failure. It happens that Brazilians were expecting several gold medals. Ten times the Brazilian athletes participated in a final, but not even once were they able to get the highest position on the podium. Since there is a slant in favor of gold medals, the country ended up classified in tkr 52nd place behind Indonesia, Colombia, Mozambique and Cameroon, among others. Without the gold criterion, the 12 medals Brazil won would place it as number 22 4— a a7.*; in the Olympic ranking.. ' 40' 0 In what was a supreme humiliation to the national pride, the Cameroon soccer team, although playing with only nine players against Brazil's 11, beat up Brazil sending the yellow-jersey soccer team, a favorite for a gold medal, back home in the quarter finals. Other sports in which Brazilians were expecting to win a gold medal: beach volley (male and female categories), equestrian and two different categories of yachting. Since 1976 when the Olympics happened in Montreal, Canada, Brazil had not failed to bring home at least a gold medal in every Olympic Game. - When you consider all the facts, though, Sydney wasn't such a disaster. Compared to the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, for example, Brazil could even boast of a better performance according to the size of its track and field delegation. There were 41 Brazilian athletes in Atlanta and they won a bronze medal besides being able to have two runners in the final 400 m with hurdles. This time around, the country sent only 18 athletes who were able to win a silver medal in the 4x100 m relay competition and another three of them made it to the finals. CBAt (Confederacao Brasileira de Atletismo—Brazilian Confederation of Track and Field) decided . , to lower the number of participants in an effort to improve the level of the athletes sent to the games.

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Water and Horseback

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After winning three medals for swimming in Atlanta and having received the label of "the best team Brazil has ever assembled", there were high expectations for the Brazilian swimming team. They had an auspicious start with a bronze medal in the men's 4x100 free style relay. In Atlanta, four years ago, there were three medals for swimming, including a silver one for Gustavo Borges in the 200 meters. The results can be considered even frustrating when, by the swimmers' own admission, they had all the backing they could expect during their training. In equestrian, Brazil again, as in Atlanta, was able to place three competitors in the finals. Rodrigo Pessoa, Brazil's brightest star in equestrian and a favorite do win a gold in Sydney was not helped by Baloubet du Rouet, his horse, who refused to jump three of the hurdles during the final competition. Still Brazil ended up winning a bronze medal for team show jumping. Before losing to Cameroon, the Brazilian male soccer team got close to the goal several times, but was unable to score against a team short by two men. The defeat precipitated the fall'of head coach Wanderley Luxemburg°, who, in addition to being a disasterheading the soccer team, is involved in a case oftax evasion in Brazil. As for the women's beach volleyball, Brazilians were winning by three points, but lost several chances to defeat the Australians. The same happened to their male counterparts who lost to the Americans after having an advantage of three points on the first set. Why all these defeats? The Brazilian media went to psychologists and other behavior experts to find an answer. "For some reason we notice an unexplainable block to conquer a gold medal," psychoanalyst Paulo Sternick told Jornal do Brasil adding: "This brings a good opportunity for society to reflect about what is happening in sport, as part of the Brazilian culture. There is the unmistakable impression that who wins the gold, independently from victories or defeats, are the sports bosses. The ethics of the Brazilian sport is highly dubious and this reflects in the morale of the players in action." For psychologist JoAo Ricardo Cozac, president of the Centro de Estudo e Pesquisa da Psicologia do Esporte (Center for the Study and Research of Sport Psychology), the two losses on the beach volley show a "clear fear of success" by the Brazilian teams. Cozac criticized the methods used to prepare the athletes. Among other practices, they had to walk on burning coal in order do acquire confidence. "To me, walking on embers only burns your foot," said Cozac. . The psychological preparation of the Brazilian Olympic athletes was made by Roberto Shinyashiki, the psychologist from the COB (Comite Olimpico Brasileiro—Brazilian Olympic Committee). Shinyashiki is a successful self-help book author. Two of his books, 0 Sucesso ESer Feltz (Success Is to Be Happy) and Sem Medo de Vencer (Without Fear of 'Losing) more than once have been in the bestsellers' list. Shinyashiki does not take any responsibility for the defeats and thinks there is much more to the losses than psycho, I, logical problems. Says he: "It would be completely irresponsible to justify wiftha sole factor the result of an Olympic final. The volleyball players are used to handle decisive games. There is a series o determining factors to explain the results." , As other critics have pointed, the real problem is that Brazil—with a few exceptions like men's soccer and swimming this year —does not invest in sports and does not have centers to form high performing athletes. The few medals it wins 1. are the result of individual talent who are able to excel in categories in which there is little competition. Not even Carlos Arthur Nuzman, COB' s president, is taking any blame for the defeats. "I don't want to beg for money or blame anyone, but we need to create centers of excellence for forming and training athletes in such sports as judo, box, cycling and track and field." Nothing new there. For at least 20 years now, after every Olympics, there are complaints, plans andpromises that things this time will change. You can bet we will be replaying this tune four years from now.

BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000

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The sounds he extracted from his guitar were magic and unique. Bossa nova owes a lot to him. His musical style at a time popular and erudite became a model for musicians a, I around the world. Now, his guitar is silent and the composer is not writing anymore. Baden Powell de Aquino died September 26 from pneumonia, in Rio, tilirat age 63, after a stay of more than a !tiJJmonth at Clinica Sorocaba. He was dia, > betic and had kidney problems. Mucn of his ailments originated in his youth wnen tithe started to drink heavily and smoke, two addictions that followed him throughout life. lJJ He presented his last show recently. .= JI It was on August 18 at Belo Horizonte's (capital of Minas Gerais's state) Minas Tenis Clube. His two sons, Phillipe, 20, and Louis-Marcel Baden Powell, 18, are .. • tz.,:..v..z...4,3 .tiuiboth musicians. Marcel, according to some accounts, inherited the fathe:-'s talent for the guitar. Ph illipe plays the piano. Baden was married for 23 years to Silvia, but he was living with Elizabeth C ta, do Carmo in the last three years. "Our -.ASIA project is to continue what he taught us," Atkpe, said Marcel. "And what he taught us was to like "Tico Tico no Fuba" as much as Bach." Before the end of the year, recording label Trama will release the last work of the guitarist in which he interprets compositions by Noel Rosa and Dorival Caymmi, among others. Lembrancas, produced by Fernando Faro was recorded in May and also contains Baden's compositions like "0 Astronauta" with Vinicius de Moraes and "Falei e Disse" with Paulo Cesar Pinheiro. Baden Powel was born on August 6, 1937, in Varre-Sai, a little town in the state of Rio de Janeiro, 220 miles from Rio city, close to the border of Espirito Santo. His father, Lino de Aquino, a shoemaker, boy scout leader and ' tuba player in his free time, named the son after a man he admired: Sir Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell (18571941), the British soldier who in 1908 founded de Boy Scouts. The future guitarist was still a three-month-old baby when he moved to Rio with his father, his mother Adelina and sister Vera. He lived in pcor neighborhoods like Vila Isabel and Sao Crist6vao, famous for their talented musicians. Mr. Aquino used to receive at home legendary figures such as Pixinguinha and Donga. He was eight, when the father, arranged for Jaime Florence—a renowned composer and guitarist—to teach Baden the guitar. The lessons went on for seven years, during which time Baden mastered his instrument and learned to love and play classical pieces. He would continue his studies later, studying harmony, composition and music theory at Rio's Escola Nacional de Mnsica (National Music School). At 10 he got his first public recognition when he won a guitar competition at Rio's Radio Nacional. He became a professional at 14 with a special permit from the Juvenile Court and started to play in ballrooms, nightclubs, radio and TV. The guitarist was 18 when he started to play ja77 in Rio's nightclubs. He would soon meet and become friends with such bossa nova icons as Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes. His first hit came in 1956 with "Samba Triste" a tune with lyrics by Billy Blanco. He would compose another500 tunes. With Vinicius as lyricist—he met the poetinha (little poet) in 1962—Baden composed masterpieces like "Deixa", "Samba em Prelfidio", ''Consolacao-, "Formosa' "Berimbau", and "Samba da Bencao". Already the Greatest He had other worthy partnerships. With Herminio Bello de Carvalho, he created "Samba da Partida" and with Paulo Cesar de Carvalho, composed among other songs, "Refem da Solidao". In 1963 he caused sensation at the Paris's Olympia Theater playing Ravel while the public was expecting Camaval tunes. In the early sixties, American musician Stan Getz once asked conductor Joh° Medaglia, "Why doesn't Baden Powell move to Europe orthe United States, where he wouldbecome the world's greatest guitarist?- To what Medaglia answered, "Because, may be, he's already the world's greatest guitarist." During the '70s he ended up leaving Brazil to live in France and Germany. He wouid only go back to Brazil in 1994 when he released the CD Baden Powell de Rio a Pans. Soon after coming from France in 1964, Baden Powell went to live for six months in Salvador, Bahia. Interested in absorbing as much black popular culture as he could, the composer became an assiduous frequenter of terreiros de candomble (Afro-Brazilian religion temples) and the sound oftheir instruments like tambcurs and berimbaus would deeply influence his work. After 1997 when he became an evangelical he reneged some of the tunes composed at this time. French writer Dominique Dreyfus, who wrote Baden Powell's biography, 0 Viola° Vadic de Baden Powell (Baden Powell's Idle Guitar), describes the guitarist as temperamental and timid, but also sensitive and compassionate. Modest, he never mentioned his international success. He also talked to her about his drinking problem. He would sometimes .:' disappear for days, going from one bar tc the other, until the family would call the police and the radio stations to find him. His religious conversion also made him stop drinking.

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Billy Blanco, partner in “Samba Triste": "The MPB (Musica Popular Brasileira—Brazilian Popular Music) lost • • its most important and perfect guitarist. About other talents, we can say that Turibio Santos, in erudite music, and SebastiAo Tapajos, a Baden disciple, • have also reached perfection. But Baden was absolute, he went well beyond • the acquired technique with interminable hours of study. Baden studied so • much that I used to say he was addicted do the guitar. He would wake up fingering the instrument. He wouldn't take a break to give relief to his hand in a warm water pot. They would become hardened. With Baden we cannot use that saying that no one is irreplaceable." Singer and composer Carlos Lyra: "Baden was at Vinicius home when he presented "Samba em Preludio" a tune he had just composed. Vinicius heard and liked it so much that he said that the composition was from Chopin. Baden denied but Vinicius insisted. At the end, Vinicius called one of his sisters who knew classical music very well, asked Baden to play and made de questions: "Isn't this Chopin?" She says no, Chopin had never written that music. But Vinicius still unconvinced said, "Chopin didn't make it because he forgot it. This song belongs to him." I first met Baden in a bar, in 1955. In 1959, I recorded my first LP and called him to play with me. We've never unglued from each other since that time. Baden at that time made enough only to pay the rent, he made a living playing here and there. But it was Vinicius who united us forever saying that Baden, Tom Jobim and I formed the Holy Trinity. Baden who was Garoto's heir leaves no heir." Mario Telles, singer and composer: "We lost a master. Baden was responsible for the creation of a style and this is not for any soldier of fortune. It was he who placed African roots in bossa nova.I hadn't seenhim for 20 years, but we were partners in drinking and making music. I would say that familiarity with Baden was the reason • • I never attempted to learn the guitar. Pele's friend cannot play soccer. Baden • was the Pelt of the Brazilian guitar." Julio Medaglia,conductor and director at Teatro Municipal de Silo ulo, who was Baden's producer during his Germany period, in the '70s: "In his generation, Baden was for sure the greatest guitarist in the world. • His big differential was his right hand agility, a quality that not even the best • musicians from the American ja 77 have. American jazz players are virtuosi but with the left hand with which they juggle. Baden united both things. At • the same time that he produced perfect harmonies with the left, he had a•. vibrant right, full of rhythmic modulations that made his guitar unique... Unfortunately, his drinking and his inconstancy harmed him a lot profes• sionally. American musicians are completely crazy but they get an astro• nomical efficiency when it's time to work. Baden conciliated both hands, • but he couldn't conciliate talent and professionalism. His career could have been much bigger than it was. Baden was a genius." • Music critic Tank de Souza wrote: • •• "The acoustic guitar was for bossa nova what the electric guitar was for rock. And the Jim i Hendrix of this revolution was called by the scout name • of Baden Powell de Aquino. He was a Garrincha [late famous soccer player} • of the strings and with disconcerting dribbles (and the same ethylic combustion) in genres and styles mesmerized the world by the combination of technique, speed, dynamism, and emotional allure. Despite having made a place for himself at bossa nova's army, in partnership with poet Vinicius de Moraes, Baden was never bossanovista.. . He became a star in the main showrooms in Europe (mainly France and Germany), running in the opposite direction ofh is colleagues in the movement (Joao Gilberto, Luis Boni& Sergio Mendes, Oscar Castro Neves, Eumir Deodato, Airto More ira), who preferred the American market.

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BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000

• Suite Afro-consolacao - 1998 _ en Powell a Paris - 1996 ; ,Bad kiX Jazz Festival - 22 Juillet * 1995/1996 • Baden Powell & Filhos - 1995 • De Rio a Paris - Decembre 94 - 1994 • he Frankfurt Opera Concert - 1975/1992 • Live in Switzerland - 1992 • Afro-samba.s - 1990 at the Rio Jazz Club -. 1990 ; Violao em Seresta - 1989 , Felicidade - 1983 * De Baden para Vinicius - 1981 • Nosso Baden -1980 • Maria D'Appatecida et Baden Powell 1977 • Baden Powell Canta Vinicius de Moraes e • Paulo Cesar Pinheiro - 1977 • Mdlancolie: Baden Powell et Cordes - 1976 Tristeza on Guitar - 1976 ; La Grande Rdunion - Baden Powell e • Stephane Grappelli - Vol. 2 - 1974 * La Grande Reunion - Baden Powell e • Stephane Grappelli - 1974 • Apaixonado - 1973 • ell-CTravado ao Vivo em Paris • 1973 • bile: Olympia 1972 - 1972 Samba Triste - 1972 Grandezza on Guitar - 1972 E de Lei - 1972 • e Coeur de Baden Powell -4971 • e Genie de Baden Powell 1971 • L'art de Baden Powell 1971 4, L'ame de Baden Powell - 1971 • Estudos - 1971 • Solitude on Guitar - 1971 Baden Powell: Carinhoso - 1971 ; As musicas de Baden Powell e Paulo Cesar * Pinheiro - Os Cantores da Lapinha - 1970 • Baden Powell Quartet - Vol. 3 - 1970 • Baden Powell Quartet 2 - 1970 • Baden Powell Quartet ;Vol. 1 - 1970 • Lotus - 1970 • Canto on Guitar - 1970 • c Monde Musical de Baden Powell - 1970 •• made Musical de Baden Powell -Vol. 2 - • 1969 • Aquarelles du Bresil - 1968 a, Batten Powell - Marcia - Os Originais - 1968 • Poema on Guitar - 1968 • Baden - 1966 • Os Afro-sambas de Bilden e Vinicius - 1966 • Tempo Feliz - 1966 • An Vivo no Teatro Santa Rosa - 1966 Billy Nencioli et Baden Powell - 1965 ; e Monde Musical de Baden Powell - Vol. 1 1964. Baden Powell a Vontade - 1963 • i 963Baden Powell Swings with Jimmy Pratt Um Violao na Madrugada - 1961 • Apresentando Baden Powell e Seu Violla9o59•

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For a mere 11 buckt, kidnappers; robbers,-411 Society kinds of misfits as well as you and I can acquire in loll lo-secret the streets- a CD-Rom , I containing close to 5 llion nntle who hay Miam atelephone in &to Paulo '' a ' ' lin addition.. to ones)thres tbeteelOhidtme number i; get (*eluding all the unliste ent address Ofthese people together wi to their CPF(dladastro de Pessoa Fisica—Physical Person Identification), a number thatlil#4*Oocial Security munber Howin har tey.S ideittifies* , .-- before the IRS , is MO getotte OfthesePriCious disks? Stree venders offer them all overtOVW.I‘Ilarcelo Rehder, a re _ ._ rter foritiO's daily 00Iobo, bou t pwn CD-RO to Write an article denouncing e pmc . The informa non on the disk comes from th to N. elefOnic the private company responsible for The telephone lin in the city of - fao Paulo.; Among those expose-4 by the D is presi ‘ dentF'ernanclolientique Card ' apartme ,awfts. ei. S... to • r tql, ... wig.•Moab OW& b. r. A .4 in the. neighborhood of. Ilff ' reveals that _ _ his apartment is at Rua — Apt 14 — 14d' , Floor, besides listing his teleponenwnber as well as MC1P The Regioi& Stipermtendent of the . Federal Revenue Se ce,F1ávDO1 Comuni , , as well as the ederal Police Paulo, Yokio Oslur . o, also have the same in . fomuttion revealed. Celel4q, the içh and t poor, everybody with a telephone line was exposed Telefbnica recognizes thatitwas the victim of sabotage,lnit1t still does not know whether any of its employees took part in the icheme. The company first learned that their data n stolen one year ago when newspapers ublIshing classifieds selling that information. The finding was * minced to the been indicted, , . police. Some people have already but none ofthe leaders ilmiledi found The mvestigations led to the findingnfanother CD-ROM containing the Federal°Rthi. f eVel ': e data for 3.9 million ,icompanies and 7.6 Million individuals. Information thatthe growing classofkiclnappers in Brazthvoul4kill to have fl*is infonnationisbeing sold for $2,000 to $3,500. Piracy in Brazil is a big-time business. Lacoste shirts, Rolex watches, Nike tem* shoes, Levi's jeans, Scotch whiskey, music tapes,,CDS4 CD-ROMs, nothing is sacred for counterfeiters. From the beginning ofthe year until amend of June, the Brazilian police liackalready seized 8.7 million counterfeit,cDs in the country; Brazil ranks in eighth place as a music market Odin second for piracy, losing only to Russia. In 099, the music industry T brought m$1 billirm seiling40million copies ofCDs • '- and this numberwould be muchhigher if it weren't for p irateci tapes and CDs, which today represent half of the music market in the country. In was responsible for only 5% of the CDs9 b9e piracy I7: tihecetu AaPiD s FIFono d. inogtestoolra (AssociacttoPr dosADire itdoin s trus t° 'Kos—Associat ion to ProtectPhoriographic p Inte • Rights), million in B 'I last S were sold Riyearts) ,;e3p0CD , ,. resenting alms of $73 million* fees not collected. It was also the APtat that rev ed that the majority of CDs are made in Asia and enter the country from Bolivia and Paraguay through the frontier in , the states of Parana and Mato Orosso. The record•i: it.:t- ing companies say that piracy is causing them a loss , of $300 million a year. ,

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BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000

A funny thing happened after the October first round of elections in razil on the way to the second round: the right and the left had o get off the fence where they were trying to hide their ideolo y. And they had to do this mostly to defend themselves from the opposition attack that tried to present them in the worst po sible light. Elections this time were a show not only of democra y but also of technology. For the first time in Brazil, every vi ter—close to 100 million of them—used computer 11


terminals to choose prefeitos (mayors) and vereadores (coun- where its candidate, Benedita da Silva, came in third, thus being cil members) in 5560 cities. excluded from the second round of elections. These were the elections in which the leftist PT (Partido dos Lula, however, couldn't contain his enthusiasm and, sudTrabalhadores—Workers' Party), after 20 years in existence, denly, he was going frenetically from town to town in defense has finally graduated to the majors. With 11.9 million votes in of his party's candidates. For a moment he seemed again the the first round, the PT had a 50 percent jump when compared inspired orator in another presidential campaign. After all, the to 1996, a year in which the party got 7.9 million votes. Among polls say that he has at least 30 percent of the votes anytime he the other big-league parties, the group that did the best was the decides once again to go for the presidency. Dirceu also had a rightwing PFL (Partido da Frente relapse and forgot about coaliLiberal—Liberal Front Party), which tions and alliances and started was able to get 30 percent more votes to say that the PT might elect the than in 1996, going from 10 million next president without any to 12.9 million in the first round. help. When the final results came in the After getting more than two PT had won more capital cities than million votes in the first round any other party including industrial of the mayoral election in Sao powerhouse Sao Paulo. While the PT Paulo, the most populous South made a total of six mayors in state American city, with 10 millions oasartqc leope I eillaWand:oceacift kW:m..1M pad ProlottadegtoPa,t loom P1,6*.,40.50.1010 orubotts 31 pmeN1.6.-andruir.a VotaCa capitals, the PSDB, PMDB and PSB residents, Marta Suplicy, a sex1.15 600.1.1.3$41,01antat.4....., ISA elected four mayors each. The PFL ologist who became popular in was able to make three mayors and the the '80s answering questions on PDT, two. The PPB, the PL and PTB sex on a TV program, has beall elected one mayor each. come the indisputable star of If you consider the growth of the the Workers' Party. voters' pool in the last four years and the fact that the electronic casting of A Change of Style ular vat 41.6Z.11.1••••••411• ballot eliminated much of the an- 4sato,...• nulled ballots, the growth of the Even in some places where President's party, the PSDB (Partido da Democracia Social the first round of elections were lukewarm, passions flared in Brasile ira—Party ofthe Brazilian Social Democracy) and ofthe the second phase. And some candidates, mostly those from the PMDB (Partido do Movimento Democratic° Brasileiro—Party left, started to act in a very unexpected way. In Fortaleza, capiof the Brazilian Democratic Movement) was negligible. While tal ofthe northeastern state of Ceara, for example, Ink io Arruda, the PMDB grew from 12.7 million votes to 13.2 million, the the mayoral candidate from the PC do B (Partido Comunista do PSDB went from 13 to 13.5 million, a less than 5 percent in- Brasil—Communist Party of Brazil) decided to end all his free crease, as shown by the first round numbers. TV electoral programs on his knees praying. All to prove that More attentive to the desire of the voters and tired of being despite being a communist he's not an atheist as his political just a noisy opposition, today's PT has lost its revolutionary opponent—mayor Juraci Magalhaes from the PMDB—has drive and expressions like proletariat's dictatorship and guer- spread in the area. Worried to see his numbers eroding—he lost rilla war have been excised from their political primer. Salut- six points in less than two weeks—in the polls, Arruda tried to ing the new PT, weekly opinionated magazine Veja dedicated win the backing of any religious leader who would support him. to the party a recent cover with the long explanatory title: "The Sixty-nine-year-old Magalhaes tried to hide the fact that the Pink PT. In changing the ideological discourse with one on PC do B candidate started his political career as an active member morality and efficiency, the party explodes in the ballot box." of catholic social movements and his campaign has even used Besides pink, the magazine says that the party has gained new the Fatima's prophecies in his favor saying that the second secret nicknames like "PT Chanel" and "PT bourgeois" of Fatima about the rise and fall of communism refers not to The reassuring results of the first round, at least initially, former Soviet Union, but to a possible victory of his PC do B didn't distract the PT leadership. Representative Jose Dirceu, opponent. In turn he also heard a lot of rumors about his own the party's president, as well as House representatives, ill health. deputados federais Jose Genoino and Aloisio Mercadante, the That's the same ploy Curitiba's (capital of the state of party's main leaders, were talking in unison in order to contain I,!arana)mayor, Cassio Taniguchi, is using against PT candidate the enthusiasm of the troops and not let the success go to their Angelo Vanhoni, who calls himself a "light"—in English— heads. They all stressed that it would not be smart to read in the petista. Taniguchi tried to connect the opponent to the MST future and to believe that the good results were any kind of (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra—Landless Workguarantee for the 2002 presidential elections, which they lost ers' Movement), a national group that after taking over unproconsistently for three times in a row. ductive land in farms has been using scare tactics to occupy More than that, they concluded that the time of working public buildings and even supermarkets in urban centers to show isolated has passed and that the PT needs to establish alliances the plight of the dispossessed. The trick worked. In a few days, if it wants to grow and make the next president. And Lula' s— the advantage of Vanhoni over Taniguchi fell from 20 to 8 Luiz Ink io Lula da Silva, PT's honorary president, who for three points. times was the defeated presidential candidate —phrase echoed Vanhoni is a good example of a defender of a light PT. The throughout the party: "The PT alone does not win election." Parana politician even changed the red star, symbol ofthe party, With all the media circus involving the victories it was a hard to a chubby yellow one with a smiling face. Vanhoni used to act to keep a poker face and not show enthusiasm. Soon after be on the extreme left, but today he doesn't hide his taste for the announced first round results, it seemed impossible to not rock and roll and fine wine. Neither does he think that his afwin Sao Paulo in a landslide. Sao Paulo's mayorship position fluence betrays his commitment to the social cause. is more coveted than any other mayoral post and even more than The PFL leadership felt happy with polls showing that their most state governorships in the country. Amid the celebration, alarmist techniques were working in Curitiba and Recife. In both the PT hid under the carpet the bitter defeat in Rio de Janeiro, places they expected their candidates to win the election in the

Mina! da tarde

Marta cai 3 pontos. Maluf sobe 3. Diferenca: 15

12

BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000


first round and were quite surprised when they were thrust into a runoff. In Rio, the rightwing PFL was confident that it would be able to reelect mayor Luis Paulo Conde, who led in the dispute against Cesar Maia from PTB (Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro—Brazilian Labor Party). Commenting on the scare tactics used by the right, Jose Luciano Dias, apolitical scientist from IBEP (Instituto Brasileiro de Estudos Politicos—Brazilian Institute ofPolitic Studies), told online publication no.com.br: "This is a tactic that certainly works. If the conservative candidate convinces the conservative voter that his opponent represents the communist danger, the anarchy, he will revert his vote in his favor." Using poll information about 31 municipalities in which second-round elections were going to be held, the II3EP coneluded that the PT was in the best position to make mayors. They might elect as many as 10 more mayors, they concluded in mid October. In Olinda, state of Pernambuco, polls were giving the upper hand to Luciana Santos from the PC do B (Communist Party of Brazil) in her bid to be mayor of that historical city of 300,000 inhabitants. Her opponent was the sitting mayor, Jacilda Urquisa, from the PMDB. As other leftist candidates she had to counter an aggressive campaign waged by the opposition and the candidate had to stress that she does not represent only communism, but a coalition of center-left parties. In her campaign on radio and TV, Urquisa talked about "executions promoted by communism in other countries" and accused Luciana ofbeing in favor of abortion and drugs. For Luciana, the mayor's tactics revealed her state of despair: "If she didn't talk about all of this nonsense, she would have to defend President Fernando Henrique. There's no way we can continue saying that we need to letthe cake grow before we share it. We are the 10th largest economy in the world, but hold the 76th place in human development." Luciana is a seasoned politician. Graduated in electrical engineering from Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, where she was president of the student body, she has been elected council member in Olinda and is now serving her second term as state representative. In Maceid, capital of the state of Alagoas, the PPS (Partido Popular Socialista—People's Socialist Party) candidate, Regis Cavalcante, who is running for the city hall leadership with sitting mayor Katia Born (PSB— Partido Socialista Brasileiro/Brazilian Socialist Party), has insinuated that his opponent is a lesbian, by saying: "She should go the beach in breeches." Once again, appealing to some sexual information, Recife's mayor Roberto Magalhaes (PFL) said that his PT's opponent, Joao Paulo, has a lover. Joao Paulo responded in the same low tone spreading that governor Jarbas Vasconcelos, a Magalhaes's ally tied his own father to a tree and spanked him. The exchange between the two candidates heated up co much that they were warned by the city's electoral judge that they could lose entire free TV programs if they didn't tone down the personal innuendos and accusations. In Rio, Mariangela, the wife of Cesar Maia, the PPB candidate to city hall praised her husband on these terms: "My husband is the only macho man in Brazil. He is homem (man) with capital H." Mariangela has also attacked PFL' s mayor Luiz BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000

Paulo Conde, M ia's opponent, as a "thief of projects."

A Little Panic Political scie tist Walder de GOes, in an interview with Brasilia's daily i orreio Braziliense, lamented the option so many candidates chose to win more votes: "The second round is undoing the g od political lesson that we were able to draw from the first rou d. In the first round we had an election marked by good politica debate, by the discussion of local problems and the solutions resented by each candidate to solve them. The voter was able t vote in a pragmatic way for the person who seemed better to him. In the second round all of this has ended. The debate is go g down to the bottom of the well, causing the rebirth of a poli ical primitivism that in some way we thought it was already b red." Despite vo s from all sides that this would be a clean campaign, at the end andidates couldn't resist throwing mud at their opponents. In S o Paulo, for example, the voters in the second round had only two choices: 1.A libert. e woman who smokes pot, teaches pornography to little kid and wishes to empty prisons and promote gay marriages. 2. A Nazi, ale chauvinist, compulsive liar with sexual deviations and se eral cases of corruption in his résumé. That's the ay these candidates were portrayed by their challenger. Paulo Mal f—he ended up getting the votes to dispute the runoff for may r of Sao Paulo—almost ignored Suplicy in the first round. H was much more interested in defeating Luiza Partido Socialista Brasileiro) and PSDB's Erundina (PS Geraldo Alc in, both running neck and neck with him to get to the second round for the dispute with Marta Suplicy who had guaranteed the first place with considerable advantage. A Datafolli a poll on October 21—eight days before the runoff—showed that the number of voters art stating that they would choose Marta 40PM 6`5090-78i,t. had fallen to 52 percent while Maluf TVA had increased his participation to 33 percent. These numbers left the Paulista (from Sao Paulo) PT candidate very unease since Suplicy, ten days before, had an advantage of 32 points, which had fallen now to 19. The erosion for the PT candidate started after a debate between the two candidates. At that time, Maluf began to attack Suplicy's stances, calling her a defender of abortion, drugs, criminals and marriage for gay couples. Another poll, this one prepared by the UP (Unidade de Pesquisa—Research Unity) Institute and released in the same day as Datafolha's, showed an even smaller margin favoring Marta. In this survey, the PT's candidate had 49.5 percent of the votes against 35.8 percent for Maluf, a mere 13.7 point difference and a fall of 19 points compared to the previ us assessment by the same institute on October 15. Accor g to Sidney Kuntz, UP's director, Suplicy's fall was due to lack of a "prompt and direct" response from the candidate t Maluf s accusations and insinuations. "This is not an ideologi al campaign," Kuntz said. "That's why the vote migration as been constant. The second round cannot be the same as the irst. If one side attacks, the other side has to react." Kuntz also riticized Marta for not using all the backing she got to the fulle t. "She acts like she didn't need any help. She acts 13


as if she were isolated, like Maluf is." Strange enough, the UP poll revealed that Marta had a harder time with women than with men. While she got 53 percent of the male voters against the 35 percent that favored Maluf, among women her advantage was narrower: 45.5 percent for her and 36.6 percent for her opponent. That despite some well known positions of Maluf towards women like his infamous appeal to sexual assailants and rapists: "It's OK. Do you have a sexual desire? Rape, but don't kill." In the last week of October, and just a few days before election day, despite the shrinkage in the size of her lead, Suplicy was worriless, at least publicly. "He who has 60 percent of the valid votes in this town, after a campaign as insidious as the one that was done, has no reason to be worried. Sixty percent vote for me, this is the good side of the city." She conceded though that changes in the tone of her campaign were done in response to Maluf. Instead oftalking only about the PT candidate's plans and accomplishments, the campaign started to criticize the political past of Sao Paulo's former mayor. Happy with his rise in the polls the PPB candidate said that he would catch up with her opponent few days before the election. He also relented on personal attacks and started to point her shortcomings and lack of experience in executive positions. "This coming Wednesday, Mrs. Marta will be in a tie with me and will find out that she made a mistake by insulting me," said Maluf as if he were the main offended party and added: "The PT went back to the old red PT. It started again to attack me. Administratively Mrs. Marta is disqualified to govern Sao Paulo."

A Mudslinging Primer Drawing from a vast arsenal of innuendos and rumors, Maluf warned that if Marta won as mayor of Sao Paulo there would be invasions from the MST in the city and once again accused the PT of inciting urban guerrillas. Using declarations of Suplicy to daily 0 Estado de S. Paulo that she smoked marijuana during the '70s, the PPB's candidate said, "Can a candidate who smokes pot say that she is going to fight drugs in school?" He also called the candidate a libertine, but to substantiate his claim he only had the fact that Marta presented a sexual education program on TV Mulher during the '80s. This TV station has since closed. Dividing the world into two slices, "the side over here and the side over there", Maluf likes to show what he sees as substantial contrasts between the two candidacies. The side over here, his own, is the side that wants more time for convicted felons in prison, a side that's led by an engineer and that is climbing in the polls. The side over there wants to free bandits too fast, is led by a sexologist and is falling in the surveys. In a rapid passage through the poor east zone of Sao Paulo, he asks a group of residents while the rap "Eu to desconfiado" (I am suspicious), made for his campaign, plays in the background: "Has the other candidate come here? No! She is a snob from the rich side of town who doesn't know what you need." He naturally does not mention the fact that he is much richer than his opponent and lives in the same area that she does, the Jardins (an upper class neighborhood of Sao Paulo). And in brief encounters with neighborhood leaders he declares, "While I was working as mayor of Sao Paulo, Mrs. Marta was in Brasilia defending abortion and the civil union between individuals of the same sex. She is anti-Christian. She already had a chance to do something to improve security, but preferred to deal only with sex." And he concludes with a smirk, "Sao Paulo needs a mayor not a sexologist." Among his accusatory pieces is the book ConversandoSobre Sexo (Talking About Sex) authored by Marta Suplicy. Maluf has been seen carrying this book in his briefcase all over town.

1 1. 1!OmmINPRImmimm_

gs in school.' billboards ayor not a sexologis Olicy's candidacy. IlArant to see him it in front of me." Maluf s attacks , discriminates the Church and Paulo Maiuf without any d PT senator Itt lized hound." t distributed in itt Jitraci . mayor . reappeered. ed. It's the

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According to him, the book bears witness against Marta: "I didn't have the opportunity to read everything because! spend my time reading good books and not bad literature," he explained. "But for someone who wants to be mayor of Sao Paulo the book is a condemnation." Several pages are marked with sheets of paper and some lines have been highlighted with fluorescent ink. Less than two weeks before the election, Maluf s campaign covered the city with billboards saying: "Mommy vote for someone who is against abortion" and "Mommy, vote for someone who never used drugs." The insistence in depicting Suplicy as a pothead had no basis in reality. The only "evidence" Maluf had was an interview given by Marta to 0 Estado de S. Paulo in which she admitted to experimenting with marijuana once in her life. But she goes on explaining—something the PPB candidate conveniently ignores—that the experience caused her to cough a lot and made her ill and that after that she never tried any other drug. Curiously, the same tactics used by Maluf were utilized by another Sao Paulo mayoral candidate to defeat a candidate that seemed unbeatable. This was in 1985. The candidate attacked was President Fernando Henrique Cardoso who was then a senator and his attacker was former President Jardo da Silva Quadros, who ended up winning the elections after having accused Fernando Henrique of being a "pot smoker" and an "atheist". Marta Suplicy, who is not known for modesty or humility, has answered Maluf in the same high pitch and started using the verb "malufar" (to maluf) as synonym for robbing and lying. As for Maluf constantly carrying her book on sex, she commented with sarcasm: "He should read my books to learn something." Pinocchio, crazy, mythomaniac, and male chauvinist were some ofthe epithets Marta used to designate her opponent.

Behind the Numbers In a survey carried out between October 21 and 23 by Ibope (Instituto Brasileiro de Opiniao Publica e Estatistica—Brazilian Institute for Public Opinion and Statistics), the most traditional and trusted polling service in Brazil, Suplicy appeared with a 15 point advantage over her opponent (49 points to 34). The same survey showed that 17 percent ofthe voters were intent on voiding their ballots. In a similar poll two weeks earlier, Marta had 55 percent of the votes while Maluf had 30 percent. According to the Ibope, the negative and personal campaign adopted by Maluf was working mostly among the male voter with basic schooling and who earn from five to ten minimum wages (from $400 to $800 a month). His message, however, was working the least among those between ages 16 and 24. (BraT zilians have the option to vote starting at age 16, but after 18 the vote is compulsory.) In a shrewd way of converting bad press to his advantage, Malufwent so far as to present the scandal-plagued current Sao Paulo mayor, Celso Pitta—he was a creation of Maluf and the candidate had even asked voters never to vote for him again if Pitta weren' t a good administrator—as an error no to be repeated. The PPB candidate talking on his radio program made an appeal saying: "Do not make the same mistake again by choosing an unqualified candidate." It took- a lot of beating and a big fall on the polls for the Suplicy's campaign to decide going on the attack. They seemed so confident of the victory and the advantage of Marta was so large that they thought they could just go on with life while Maluf, without any important backing, barked. To attack Maluf is an easy task. He is a politician from the old school that believed that as long as there is some accomplishment, corruption doesn't matter and that adopted as motto the phrase: "I steal but I perform." The former mayor of Sao Paulo is involved in 40 BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000

actions dealing w th corruption. He has already been convicted in first instance ten of them. Commentin on her fall in the polls, Marta said that she believed that the oints she lost were more a consequence ofthe fear tactics used • y Maluf than of personal attacks. The PPB candidate said, •r example, that the PT—Marta' s party—is going to encour e people to take over public places like main downtown thor ughfare Avenida Paulista or the Ibirapuera Park. There wer other rumors spread by the opposition who would make peo le believe that Marta would close evangelical churches or libe ate the use of drugs in schools. "We lost votes among voters w so earn more than 20 minimum wages ($1600 a month), a kin • of people who always feared the PT, but who were starting to knowledge our competence and honesty," said Suplicy. "With aluf s campaign, this electorate retreated." Said Suplic , "I would love to limit the discussions to my proposals, but his is impossible with Maluf: he uses nazi methods, discr minates against homosexuals, is against the Church and dis orts the facts. What can you do with someone who only think how to disqualify his adversary?" Marta told reporters that s i e had challenged the candidate to present proof of the rumors h spread. "But Maluf is super afraid: he backed away, cowered and said nothing. He left as a rat." Marta promised that the p litical trajectory of Maluf would be shown on TV and added: 'If showing his life means lowering the level of the debate, we are going to lower it."

Lawyers Winners On Octob r 25, a Wednesday, only four days before the elections, the 0-minute free electoral program on TV for both candidates wa a show of absolute silence. Through their lawyers, Suplicy d Maluf were able to knock each other off the air. The elect ral justice mentioned "the creation of artificial mental and e otional states" in the public opinion to forbid Maluf s pres ntation to go into the air. Marta' s show was embargoed as punishment for the previous day program, which contained "cl arly untruthful statements about the opponent." Suplicy's show had dealt with a 1999 municipal decree related toed ation. Maluf was punished for showing archive fobtage fro 1997, in which the Military Police confronted workers fro the Federal District's Administration. The intention was to il ustrate the disturbances the PT provoked. Viewers at home oughout the long dead silence were presented with this note on e screen: "Electoral publicity suspended by decision of the Capital's First Electoral Zone." It was a t aster coup for the lawyer teams of both sides and a portrait of hat the electoral campaign had become in Sao Paulo: a juri 'cal fight. In the second round alone, Suplicy's staff by October 5 had already filed 45 actions against Maluf before the ele oral justice. They won five of these cases. From the 40 actio s Maluf started, during the same period, only one was won. ith an incredible frequency the electoral justice abandoned ts passive role of quiet spectator to become the arbiter of w at could and could not be done by the candidates. On Oct er 24 alone, the four judges from the First Electoral Zone ad to respond to 26 complaints of the candidates, all dealing ith supposed infractions to the so-called electoral law, the la 9504 from 1997. In one of the decisions, Lojas Marisa, a c thing store, was forbidden to continue showing a TV spot to ell panties. In the ad two women talk. Says one of them: "In se elections there were a lot of politicians who went on offendin the women who were candidates. These cowards!" The Maluf amp felt offended and asked that the ad be scrapped. Lawye Ricardo Tosto led Maluf s juridical team that had to continu • usly work overtime during the week preceding the second ro nd election. When he decided, for example, that Suplicy's ould not continue showing Maluf uttering his infa15


3 mous phrase 'It's OK! Do you have a sexual desire? Rape, but don't kill." his team found a very odd way to make and fmally win their case. In a rebuffto Malufhimselfthey argued that the quote had become an incitation to people to commit rape. The PT spot had only a few hours window to be shown before it was knocked down by the electoral justice. On the PT's side, lawyer lielio Silveira backed by three lawyers' offices with a total of 15 attorneys, commanded the legal battle. Most ofthe time he has been trying to prevent Maluf from publicizing material that according to him instill panic in the population. Silveira was able, for example, to prevent Maluf from appearing on TV for 24 hours as a punishment for an ad that had a narrator , imitating the voice of Lula, the PT's honorary president, Even Marcelo Rossi, a famous catholic priest who brings hundreds of thousands of believers to his showmasses, appealed to the electoral justice to prevent Maluf from using statements he made against abortion. "No one can use my statements. Be it for one side or the other," Rossi said indignantly. He wouldn't say for whom he would vote, maintaining that he has no right to influence the Catholic faithful.

No losers The left had a very good showing in major cities. On the other side of the fence, the governing coalition saw its combined tally as strong evidence of its solid leadership position nationwide. ADHEMAR ALTIERI

As is so often the case with Brazil, anything national in scope usually carries with it impressive numbers, and Sunday's (October V) nationwide municipal elections were no exception. Close to 110 million voters were involved in choosing among some 383 thousand candidates for mayor and city council, in 5,559 cities and towns. The first-ever fully electronic election in Brazil was also billed as the largest such election of its kind in the world to date: paper ballots have been retired for good, and all votes were cast through specially designed voting machines. Army and police reinforcements were stationed at several, mainly remote voting locations as a security measure, but it was a mostly incident-free election. Minor, isolated glitches ranged from occasional technical problems with voting machines, to the exotic: a revolt against the mayor by natives in the jungle town of Sdo Felix do Xingu, in the northern state of Para. The uprising delayed the vote count, but was eventually sorted out by local authorities. In yet another display of Brazil's burgeoning love affair with the Internet, a special website created by the electoral court system offering online results didn't perform as expected, because of what officials described as an "overwhelming" number of visitors. This, in a country where supposedly just 5 percent ofthe popuFOL HA DE SgA111.0 lation have Internet access—ironically, it is also the country with one of the highm3sPdegemarti est percentages of income tax returns filed electronically anywhere in the world. jt ft FrItaVenblit WS MOWS From this massive nationwide voting exercise came results that were perhaps best described by the presidency's Secretary General, former congressman Aloysio Nunes Ferreira: "Everyone can say they won the election, and they won't be lying". Of course, this depends entirely on one's take on the final numbers, and on whether one considers the multitude of municipal contests as one big national race to the wire, as Brazilians tend to do with municipal votes. That said, indeed, as Ferreira puts it, there's a victory to suit every taste. A few examples: —In terms of total votes received, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's PSDB party came out on top, with 12.9 million, or 15.75 percent of all votes cast— enough to elect 964 mayors. —The PSDB and its main allies—the PFL, PMDB, and to a lesser degree the PPB, together elected an overpowering 4,182 mayors, while the main opposition ,• parties combined—PT, PDT, PSB and PPS—managed to win in 742 municipalities. —The left-wing PT (Workers Party) elected its first mayor in northeastern Brazil in 15 years—a first-round victory in the Sergipe state capital, Aracaju. The party is also in good shape to hang on to the important southern state capital of Porto Alegre, and a PT candidate is the second round odds-on favorite to win the crown jewel: Sao Paulo. Overall, the PT received a strong 11.7 millionvotes, or 14.22 percent of all votes cast, which translates into 170 elected mayors—a low total for such a high vote tally because most PT victories and top vote-getting performances happened in larger urban centers. —The PPS party of presidential hopeful and former Finance Minister Ciro Gomes chalked up an impressive jump, from 33 elected mayors in 1996 to 158 this time around, although Ciro Gomes himselftook it onthechin: the candidate he backed in his hometown ofFortaleza, his ex-wife Patricia Gomes, finished a distant third and out of the runoff. —Finally, the right-wing PFL party—the governing PSDB's top ally, checked in with a strong 12.5 million votes nationally, for 15.22 percent of the total and 1,007 Lula, the PT's honorary president elected mayors, up from 962 in 1996. Among their conquests is a leading position in the runoff vote in Rio de

16

BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000


probing to get her tO detail what it was like take m it Janeiro, with incumbent Luiz Paulo Conde. being mayor under what the media often describe as the PT's Historically, municipal elections in Brazil have been inter preted by analysts and voters as one big poll on federal govern- "Shiites". The other downside of a possible PT administration is that ment popularity. Althoughmany observers feel voters appeared, at last, to pay more attention to local issues, some parties—es- several party members haveindicated they will pursue a national pecially opposition parties at the federal level --kept to the old agenda, above allattempting to discredit the federal government's tradition and also attempted to reach "national" conclusions based economic policies. One way to do this will be to concentrate on on the results. Theleft, led by the PT, saw its positive performance the huge R$10 billion debt (abotalS$5.5 billion) amassed durin major cities, and fourth-best overall vote total among individual ing the previous (Maluf) and current (Pitta) administrations. parties, as positive indicators ofhow the party might do inthe 2002 Although there are endless charges of corruption and misuse of general elections. On the other side of the fence, the governing „funds by both, the PT is apparently choosing to concentrate on coalition saw its combined tally as strong evidence of its solid the effects of sky-high interest rates on the city's debt, again to build a case against the Cardoso government, it's "neo-liberal" eadership position nationwide. Finally, the election more than likely laid to rest an argument policies, submission to the IMF, and so on. In other words, the • over the introduction two elections ago of re-election for incum- people of Sao Paulo could end up as political guinea pigs once bent mayors, governors and president. The opposition often says again, as the PT try to use their high visibility while in charge of this was a self-serving move, brought in to benefit President the country's largest and most powerful city, to pump up a presiCardoso, but the latest results are more like an endorsement of dential campaign for 2002. Theunknown quantity in allthis is Marta Suplicy herself. She the idea. While 30 percent of incumbents did not seek re-election, many who did were unsuccessful, which defies accusations that has a strong personality, and political ambitions of her own, so it is not clear whether she would quietly submit to party tutelage those in power would have an easy time winning re-election. Incumbents who stayed away from the campaign generally as was so visibly the case with Luiza Erundina in the late eighties did so because they didn't perform well in office. An obvious and early nineties. If she does, she will certainly compromise example of this is sao Paulo's beleaguered mayor Celso Pitta. whatever future steps she hopes for in the political scene, while He's been at the center of numerous accusations of municipal becoming the "rock" to the left of voters in Sao Paulo. The ,‘-‘hard place" to the right, Paulo Maluf, needs no introcorruption since 1997, and was nearly impeached earl i er thisyear. On the other hand, incumbents who performed well and sought duction in these parts. There is probably no politician who has faced so many charges of corruption and misuse of public funds re-election, were for the most part successful in their bids. The most watched local race of all, in Brazil's largest city, Sao in Brazilian political history. He has certainly redefined "Teflon", since nothing seems to stick. Which makes him either a master Paulo, produced mixed results. More than 50 percent of the city's 55-seat council was re- at using Brazil's convoluted legal system to his own advantage, placed, with many councilors involved in the massive corruption or, as he is always quick to say, totally innocent on all charges. A former favorite of the generals who ran the country until scandals that have plagued the city over the past three years probably signing off from local politics for good. On the nega- 1985, he was an appointed mayor and governor before elections!' tive side, the renewal ofcouncil isn't as sweeping as it may appear. were reinstated. In this, his umpteenth campaign, he is calling o Several "new" councilors are notnew at all. Some are former voters to give him a chance to correct the "mistake" of supportcouncilors, others are well-known political warhorses from the ing Celso Pitta for mayor. It's also a way to counter a phrase he past. Unchecked, some "newcomers" are very likely to engage used in support of Pitta, which his opponents now use against in just the type of corrupt behavior that put Sao Paulo under a him—Maluf would say "vote for Pitta, and if he doesn't turn out to be an excellent mayor, don't ever vote for me again". As national microscope to begin with. The Sao Paulo mayoralty race left the city between a rock and Maluf s critics often point out, he is campaigning as if he, pera very hard place. One runoff contender was the PT's Marta sonally, had nothing to do with the city's current disastrous situSupl icy, a Stanford-educated psychologist best known for offer- • ation, when in fact, Pitta's administration was nothing more than ing sexual advice on television in the eighties, and for her out- a continuation of Maluf s own four years in office. This, in fact, spoken defense of gay rights and abortion as a member of Con- • is perhaps the only campaign promise that Pitta delivered on: that gress. In 1998, she finished a strong third in the race for governor as mayor, he would continue Maluf s "work"... In keeping with his usual campaign style, Malufi playing of Sao Paulo state, just missing the runoff. Facing Suplicy was the notorious conservative former mayor and former Sdo Paulo up one of his favorite themes, promising to fight urban violence, state governor Paulo Maluf. Possibly Brazil's most controver- This is a play on his days as governor in the early eighties, when stal politician, he stands accused in connection with numerous a particularly nasty division of the Sao Paulo state military pocharges of corruption involving the current mayor, Celso Pitta, lice, known as ROTA, was widely known for shooting first and asking questions later. Maluf pursues the anti-violence angle whom he launched into politics. in makingit to the runoff, Maluf put on a surprising display although police forces in Brazil answerto state governments and of political survivability—he was considered down and out fol- not municipalities—in other words, as mayor, he would nave no lowing the avalanche of charges involving his own administra- direct control over the police apparatus. Paulistanos, as tion, and thatofthecandidate he endorsed ,Pitta. With five strong • So with the rest of Brazil watching closely, ntenders among 16 candidates in the race for the mayor's chair the citizens of Sao Paulo are known, had to face a very clear-cut •in Sao Paulo, Maluf ended up squeaking into the second round •political choice, since the runoff candidates are at very opposite with just over 17 percent of the vote. This is about half his usual extremes and nowhere near the political center. And the city's vote total in the city, so he has definitely lost political ground. voters also had to withstand a great deal of mud slinging. DisButitwas enough to carry him to the big decision on October29. • crediting his opponent was the only way to cut down on Marta t the startf So there was this dilemma facing the voters of Brazil 'S larg- Suplicy's large early lead in second-round polling. est city, at a time when the city's need for municipal efficiency of the second round, the Suplicy camp promised to steer clear o is absolutely dire: electing Marta Suplicy could bring on a repeat personal attacks, and stick to issues. of what happened the last time Sao Paulo had a PT mayor (Luiza Relate sites: Erundina) from 1988 to 1992. The party's most extreme wing was in control, and far too busy delivering a political message to Marta uplicy campaign website (Portuguese only) accomplishing much of anything practical. A move widely re.martasuplicy.org.br hap:// membered: following Erundina's election, she ordered a tunnel Paulo aluf campaign website (Portuguese only) der a major river, which was nearly completed, filled in because .maluf.com.br http:// here were other priorities". Erundina has since left the PT, and BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000

17


process in Brazil, and I didn't exactly understand. All I got out of the conversation was that "every citizen must vote or one must face serious consequences". For instance you can't apply for a passport, etcetera. In order to reinforce what he had told me I began searching on-line for information about the elections. I searched everywhere including the Federal Governments web page. I found nothing. Until I came across a link for an "interactive magazine" Brazzil. I was appalled when I learned about how the government controls the media and how most voters are unknowledgeable about the candidate that they are voting for. My family came to America from Cuba in order to have such simple rights. What can I say? I have truly enjoyed reading the various editorials and articles. Very informative. Continue the good work, and thank you very much. Annette M. Estevill, 18 yrs Student of Psychology at RU Miami, Florida

You are invited to participate in thisdialogue Write to Letters to the Publisher P 0 Box 50536 Los Angeles, CA 90050.0536 or send E-mail to brazzil@brazzil.com

I have been a reader of your magazine for about nine months now... I became totally fascinated with Brazilian people and culture last January and your website has been very informative in the research process. I am an AfricanAmerican male living in Detroit, Michigan in America. I must admit that the reason I became so interested in Brazil is the fact that the black population in Brazil is two times, possibly three times bigger than that of America... I have read more than 25 books about Brazil in general and AfroBrazilians in particular. I have also printed up maybe 1,000 pages of info from Internet websites such as yours! I credit your magazine as well as many other sources for inspiring me to visit Brazil... I recently spent three weeks (September 1-September 22) in Salvador, Bahia and it was truly a beautiful experience! I made several new friends in addition to the friends who I met on the Internet... I consider Salvador to be my second home as I currently live in Michigan, but was born in Georgia...! will in the future visit other cities in Brazil. I look forward to visiting Vitoria, Belo Honzonte, Campinas, Recife and many other cities. See entire letter at http:liwww.brazzil.com Anthony Detroit, Michigan

Iii It

1111111.11111.11111 Starting to read with great interest Ricardo Amaral's article about his famous ancestor Jose Bonifacio de Andrada e Silva, I became disappointed about its low style. To say that some person was the most important statesman in the history of his country is always very subjective. In the case of Brazil, Amaral says it was Jose Bonifacio. Other people would say it was Getfilio Vargas or Juscelino Kubitchek (or even Fernando Henrique ... Imagine!). Declarations of this kind are even more subjective and exaggerated, if they are made about world history. If Jose Bonded° was one of the greatest statesman in world history. I asked by myself. why few people know his name and deeds after such a long time? Or is the fact of being his descendant the principal motive for that fulsome praise? In his tedious style of amateur historiography without narrative or analytical rigueur, Amaral repeats on every page that Jose Bonifacio was SO important for the existence of post-independence and modern Brazil, but never tells us how his great forebear managed this. Having a good formal education and exercising important political functions, taken by itself, doesn't explain the historical importance attributed to Jose Bonifacio by Ricardo Amaral, Peter Schroder Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil '

First of all, I hated your site. I'm Brazilian and Brazil is not all about sex and stuff, OK? I hated it because you are kind of trying to show that Brazil is about erotism only. Pathetic! The thing is that sex is not a taboo word for us, and so what? And, for your information, Brazil is written with only one z Anonymous camille@riedernapy

111=111111LULL1111111LIMIIIM

It's great that there is a magazine out about Brazil, written in English! I love everything about Brazil, especially the mulheres gostosas, the futebol, and of course the beautiful music! The only problem is, I don't speak Portu-

Xenophon Stamboulis Duxbury, Massachusetts

,

'I

Galata! I don't know what to say! Guys, this magazine

is not just great... it is superb! I just wrote to request your free sample. Now I am writing again just to let you know how pleased I am with your magazine! I have lived here in Humble, Texas, for two years already and like all Brazilians who are very far away from home for a long time, I'm starved of Brazil. Most of what I have seen here got reduced to Mexican culture. Guess the happiness I felt when I found your magazine on line. Gosh! I literally got stuck in front of my computer for hours and hours, reading EVERYTHING and sending the articles to all my American and Brazilian friends! It is amazing how you can write in English but feel it in Portuguese! Perfect! It is the Brazilian world described through a very intelligent American point of view. Congratulations! Superb job! Muito obrigada for this magazine, for you love and care for my homeland! We all certainly feel very happy and honored with it. Urn enorme abraco! Katie Sims Humble, Texas

I have loved Brazzil magazine for four years. Enclosed is my check to continue my subscription. As an Oklahoman interested in Brazil, I find the articles very informative. The articles in Portuguese help me with my study of the language. I especially enjoy the articles that are written in both Portuguese and English as they assist me even more in learning and understanding the language as the Brazilians use it. Keep up the good work! Clifford Smith - Big Chief Enterp. Bristow, Oklahoma

I read Philip Miszewski's column urging the U.S. and Brazil to bilaterally end the visa requirements for visitors. I couldn't agree more with his well-written piece. Bravo, and may it get as much exposure as possible. We should form a lobbying committee to scrap the visa regulations. We are a new company in the Miami area that will be promoting ecotourism and adventure tours in Brazil. Our site should be ready in about a week and a half. Drop in sometime! Tom Walls EcobraziLcom Miami, Florida

i

In reference to your opinion piece on visas between the United States and Brazil, I understand exactly what you are saying and I also believe that you should not need a visa to go to or from Brazil. Where is the freedom of the people? I feel really bad for the people in Brazil that work so hard and then, pay a fee to the US consulate for a visa and then they are denied. I believe that is unjustified and if you visa is denied why are you paying?

FOR MORE LETTERS AND ENTIRE LETTER SEE; litt13:ifwv/W,A)razdl.ttoitt

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Wow, your article about the Brazilian black middleclass and the racial dynamics in Brazil was really interesting. The amazing fact is that Brazil is the second largest black country in the world but yet there is so much racial disparity in everyday life in Brazil. Although people may think that Brazil is a racial haven, they should realize that its society will be operated along color lines for a long time unless some airing of "dirty laundry" occurs. Things in the island of Jamaica are much the same. The upper classes are mostly very light-skinned blacks or white Jamaicans. If you watch the TV, most of the people in the commercials are always very light skinned or mixed looking. Most of the Jamaican population is dark skinned and African features predominate.

guese. I'm a Greek in my biond, with Brazil in my soul!

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One Hundred Years of Inequity It is disheartening to witness Brazil once again discussing a minimum salary that belongs in a surrealist nightmare. Even at the equivalent of US$100 per month, the minimum wage in Brazil is completely inappropriate, as it would be most anywhere in the world. ADHEMAR ALTIERI Food for thought: given that Brazil's terribly inadequate official minimum wage is the object of vigorous political debate year after year... why does it make so little upward progress? And why are politicians of all stripes so eager to join the annual fray—to a point where next year's minimum wage review, which normally happens in the second quarter of each new year, is already under way? This is a direct consequence of what happened earlier this year, when minimum wage discussions for 2000 became a battle for media attention and political points with the underpaid masses, between government opponents and, yes, government allies. The government was left in a lose-lose situation, as it became the villain defending fiscal austerity while others fought to see who stood for the biggest minimum wage increase of all. The fact that nationwide municipal elections were on the horizon helped fuel the debate: fighting a good fight for the minimum wage could certainly be worth a few votes come October... Senate President Antonio Carlos Magalhaes, the PFL (Partido da Frente Liberal-Liberal Front Party) kingpin from Bahia state who swings between supporting and attacking the government according to political needs of the moment, cashed in above all. He managed to become known for defending an amount equivalent to US$100 per month for this year's minimum wage. In effect, he stole the limelight from the left-wing opposition, who normally start things off and make the biggest demands in the minimum wage debate. When the dust settled, this year's monthly minimum wage, which took effect in May, came in at R$151 (about US$86 at the time), a paltry R$15 increase. Now, here we are in October and next year's minimum salary possibilities are sharing headlines with oil prices and trouble in the Middle East. The salcirio minimo usually becomes a topic of discussion in Brazil about two months into the New Year— its annual review happens in the second quarter, and the new, higher amount, takes effect on Labor Day, May first. But the minimum wage is already front row center because the government, probably not wanting a repeat of what happened the last time around, decided to take the initiative and try to control the agenda. Brasilia jumped ahead of the crowd, announced its proposed minimum wage increase to be included in next year's budget, 20

and tagged it with this: the government would have no problem with a bigger increase than it is proposing, so long as whoever proposes the extra increase can show, precisely, where the money will come from. The good side here is that if things progress in this way, this is going to be an unusually positive exercise for the typically unruly Brazilian political establishment. Of course, the Budget Subcommittee is the right place to discuss a big jump in spending, such as an increase in the minimum wage would bring about. And the proper way for an elected official to proceed in order to change the budget is to introduce amendments. This is almost unheard of in previous years, so it'll be extremely healthy to see politicians, for once, following procedure to get things done, and also thinking of what cuts to make in order to pay for what they say must be done. The usual minimum wage routine is the total opposite of this: the debate tends to come well after the budget is approved, and whatever "solution" is arrived at must be implemented above and beyond what the budget calls for. And seldom does anyone in Congress stop to think of where to get the money... the main thing is to appear to be on the side of the people, regardless of what that costs the people. Finally, it's also positive to see the federal budget being treated with respect, which again is hardly ever the case. To corner the combatants even further, the government also calculated the cost of raising the minimum wage beyond the amount suggested in the budget. The proposed increase of 5.57 percent, which takes into account the past year's inflation, would carry the minimum from the current R$151 (now worth about US$81) to R$159 (about US$85) per month. To go beyond this measly US$4 increase, say, to the equivalent of US$100 per month as some are again calling for, it would cost an additional R$2.9 billion (about US$1.5 billion) per year. Or, as Finance Minister Pedro Malan explained at a Budget Subcommittee meeting, for every R$1 added to the monthly minimum wage, R$182 million (about US$97 million) would be added annually to the government's fixed operating costs. Whether it was planned or accidental, the fact is this series of pre-emptive government moves seems to have come at the right time. Not only has the annual verbal battle with little practical gain been neutralized for the time being, but government opponents and allies actually appear ready to play by rules they've hardly ever considered before. The main reason for this is that all agree that a better increase than 5.57 percent is an absolute must for the minimum salary. This unlikely consensus has everyone, regardless of political stripe, looking for the best answer for the government's question: what will you cut in order to offer a better minimum wage increase? Procedurally speaking, the current edition of the minimum wage debate represents a major improvement over BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000


the posturing and chest-thumping for television cameras that federal government officials—among them President Fernando Henri que Cardoso—have pointed out with a grin in the past few have characterized this annual bout over the years. Still, in spite of what appear to be gains of a bureaucratic, days, not a single state government took advantage ofthis change organizational nature, it is disheartening to witness Brazil once in the law. And that includes states governed by members of again discussing a minimum salary that belongs in a surrealist opposition parties, which constantly attack the federal governnightmare. Even at the equivalent of US$100 per month, the ment for not moving more quickly on the minimum wage... minimum wage in Brazil is completely inappropriate, as it would Adhemar Alfieri is a veteran with major news outlets be most anywhere in the world. And it's hard to figure how it in Brazil, Canada and the United States. He holds a belongs—and remains the object of heated debate that leads only Master's Degree in Journalism from Northwestern to negligible improvements, in one of the top ten economies in University in Evanston, Illinois, and spent ten years with the world. CBS News reporting from Canada and Brazil. Altieri is The fact that millions in this country must squeeze out a a member of the Virtual Intelligence Community, living of some sort from this level of income, still seems like formed by The Greenfield Consulting Group to identify a distant reality to the well fed and dressed folks in Brasilia. In future trends for Latin America. He is also the editor of various political camps, the US$100 minimum—which many InfoBrazil (http://www.infobrazil.com), an Englishfeel is gettable in 2001—is considered quite the accomplishlanguage weekly e-zine with analysis and opinions on ment. Incredible as this may sound, an extra US$19 per month Brazilian politics and economy. You can reach the would make a big difference to many in Brazil. But it's high time author at editors@infobrazil.com this entire debate shifted into high gear, and looked further into the future than the next set ofmedia headlines. Such small gains, which do little more than maintain the status quo, simply cannot be an acceptable long-term objective for Brazil's wages. Government and opposition in Brazil must make it a political priority to pump up the minimum wage, so that this annual debate doesn't end in practically meaning"Ship to Brazil with the company that really knows how." less pseudo-victories. The minimum salary must make faster BEST SERVICE + BEST RATES progress, and this would be possible AIR - IATA 01-1-9279-012 if the root causes were attacked OCEAN - FMC 3853 more decisively. These include concluding key changes like tax reform, to reduce the tax burden, bring billions in economic activity out of the underground economy, and make it TO ANY AIRPORT IN BRAZIL less costly for employers to hire more workers. Currently, for every R$100 paid out in wages, an employer must pay at least another R$100 in a variety of taxes, deductions, contributions and duties. This FULL CONTAINER & DIRECT CONSOLIDATIONS is a major contributing factor to the WITHOUT TRANSLOADING IN MIAMI growing legion of unregistered workers in Brazil, who have no benefits, generate no income tax revenue for the government, and pay into no social programs. They number in the millions, and they represent a formidable time bomb Brazil will have to deal with in future years if nothing changes in the short term. At best, this year's minimum may reach the US$100 mark, so the most visible progress is on the procedural front. The federal government certainly came prepared, to a point where it is cashing in on a detail of last year's minimum wage hike. At the time, the government 12833 SIMMS AVE - HAVVTHORNE, CA 90250 decided to allow state governments to set their own minimum salary levels—in other words, state adminFAX: (310) istrations which felt they had room in their budgets for increases above the national minimum, were free to implement such increases for the first time ever. And yet, as several

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Plivatization No More a Dirty Word In spite of the government's undiminished privatization drive, opposition to the sell-off of Stateowned enterprises is still strong and the government has avoided mentioning any plans that it may have for the privatization of two of its key companies: Banco do Brasil and oil giant Petrobras. MARTA ALVIM Privatization of state-owned companies is an irreversible global trend and a dominant force shaping societies and economies throughout the world. In Brazil, the perception that state ownership is bloated and inefficient is a view that has long caught on with Brazilians. Nevertheless the nation's privatization program has followed a tortuous path since its inception ten years ago. The evolution of Brazil's privatization process can be divided roughly into three stages, beginning in the '80s, under the Figueiredo administration and, later on, during Sarney' s incumbency. However, most of the sale transactions carried out during that period were all but a reprivatizing effort, as they involved small, formerly private-owned companies that had been taken over by the State due to financial difficulties. In terms of results, the redefinition of state ownership in the economy was insignificant, to say the least. The second stage, carried out in the first half of the '90s, had a much more aggressive approach. Under Collor's administration, the National Privatization Program (PND) was created and Brazil saw the privatization of entire industrial sectors, such as steel, petrochemical and fertilizers, among others. Eventually, with the election of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso in 1994, the privatization program entered its third and current phase, which has been enormously expanded both in scope and in size. A series of constitutional amendments and new laws were put in effect, leading to the end of long-standing State monopolies and to the creation of several regulating agencies to oversee the program's implementation. According to BNDES, the federal agency in charge of managing the PND, the proceeds from all privatizations, dating from 1991 through this year, have totaled $95,705 million—including some of the government debt that was transferred to the newlyprivatized companies. Foreign capital responded for 45.8 percent of the proceeds, with the United States leading the foreign investors with 17 percent of investments, followed by Spain, with 11.7 percent and Portugal, with 6.3 percent. Just recently, the government has announced the sale of Banespa—Brazil's sixth largest bank in assets—and electricity utility Cesp Parana. Various other units of the huge Eletrobras power holding await the green light, including Furnas generator, Eletronorte and Chesf. However, in spite of the government's undiminished privatization drive, opposition to the sell-off of State-owned enterprises is still strong, particularly among labor unions and certain political factions. Brazilians, for the most part, favor less government control over the economy, but they have also come to realize that privatization is not the cureall heralded by some. For this reason, perhaps, the government has avoided mentioning any plans that it may have for the privatization of two of its key companies: Banco do Brasil and oil giant 22

Slick Waters In spite of international recognition of Petrobras' state-of-the-art technology, especially for deep-water exploitation, something is fluidamentally amiss with the company's environmental technologies. This year alone the firm has been responsible for five major spills in Brazil, three times dumping oil into Guanabara Bay, in Rio de Janeiro; once into the Iguacu River, in the state of Parana, and once in Sao Francisco do Sul, in Santa Catarina state. The magnitude of Parana's spill was by far the most extensive among this year's environmental disasters; one million gallons of crude oil spewed into the Iguacu river by a burst pipe at Getulio Vargas Refinery. However, it was Rio's accident last January that captured the nation's attention and led the government to impose hefty fines to the giant oil company. Altogether, Petrobras has been linked to six oil spills into Guanabara Bay over the last three years. According to ecologists, the environmental damage is such that it will take at least 10 years for the area r to recover. Amid accusations and fingerpointing, Petrobras has attributed the January leak to human error, an allegation categorically denied by the United Oil Workers Federation (FUP), which represents 35,000 oil workers at the company. FUP maintains that the underwater oil pipe that caused the accident in January was equally responsible for spewing 200 thousand gallons of oil into the Bay's protected mangrove swamps in March of 1997. At the time, FUP's ), repeated appeals to government entities to look into the safety conditions of Duque de Caxias Refinery, where the accident occurred, went unheard. The Regional Counsel of Engineering, Architecture and Agronomy of Rio de Janeiro State (CREA-RJ) seems to agree with FUP. An investigation conducted by CREA-RJ has concluded that the 400 thousand-gallon oil leakage into Guanabara Bay was not caused by human error. Instead, the report points to lapses in fl Petrobras' operational procedures as well as to inadequate management and maintenance conditions. In addition, the report charges the environmental agency Ibama and the National 6 Oil Agency with omission and ineptitude for lack of satisfactory inspection procedures. According to Philippe Reichstul, Petrobras' CEO, the company is investing $150 million in environmental technologies and hopes to reach a level of excellence by 2003.

BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000


Petrobras. (See accompanying story) Although Petrobras' monopoly has been extincted, the government has vowed to keep control of the much-prized company. That remains to be seen. In August, the Brazilian government engaged in Latin America's biggest ever global stock offering of shares in the company. Some fear that the offering of shares to outside investors is just the beginning of what may eventually become the "privatization in bulk" of Petrobras. To be sure, the privatization program is not to be underrated. Just as new management was crucial for some of the government's run-down patrimony, the money raised by privatizations gave the country time to adjust to two major global crises: the Asian crisis in 1997, followed shortly afterwards by the collapse of the Russian market. What hasn't changed with the privatization program is Brazil's public and trade deficits, and the country's dependency on foreign capital. While few ever believed that the privatization revenues would do any good to reduce the huge public deficit, one hoped that it wouldn't skyrocket as it has. In July, the deficit reached $260 billion, an increase of over 800 percent from the $32 billion deficit registered in December of 1994. Other lingering questions about the program's implementation and accountability remain, as Brazilians are still adjusting to the new market forces. Take, for instance, the privatization of the Telebras system, which expanded and greatly improved the decrepit telecommunications sector. Two years after the dismantling of the State monopoly, the number of conventional lines in Brazil has jumped from 20.2 million to 33.4 million, an increase of over 65 percent. Even more impressive was the growth in cellular phone lines, which have soared from 5.6 million to 19.1 million, a 241 percent increase. Last year alone, the cellular phone market grew 110 percent, thus making the telecom sector one of the biggest job creators in Brazil today. Still, the number ofunhappy consumers keeps growing, and

several of the ne phone companies have been hit by lawsuits against abusive ractices. Topping the list of complaints are billing errors, q ality of services and lack of information. Criticism tow ar s Anatel, the regulating body in charge of overseeing the se tor, is on the rise, too. The agency boasts that, s concerned, the privatized companies have as far as quality nt of the established goal against 25 percent reached 75 perc . However, critics contend that Anatel mostly in August of 199 ion sent by the companies themselves, as the relies on inform astructure to inspect them in loco. agency lacks in• • rt sector, it's the privatization of state and In the transp that has come under scrutiny, raising nagging federal highway the concession rules. Faced with public outsuspicions abou e exorbitant fees charged on toll roads, six cry to states that had already privatized their highout objecting of the seven ways have susp nded previously granted concessions and are now drawing u new contracts. Since each s ate has established its own concession rules, and each road as specific characteristics, the discrepancy between fees oughout Brazil can be as much as 600 percent. Rio Grande do Sul' s roads are the least expensive to drive the 5.6-mile stretch linking the cities of through, whil Sao Paulo on the Castello Branco highway, Alphaville ranks as theand m St expensive one. The lack of alternatives to toll free roads, which is an option in France, uts an even heavier burden on those who make ighvvays. Nearly 85 percent of all Brazilian a living on the ansported by land, yet neither the National production is ansports nor any other interested parties were Federation of invited to disc s the future of the tariffs. For some truck drivers, those fees ay slash their incomes by up to 40 percent at times. Ma a Alvim is a Brazilian journalist, freelance trans ator and interpreter. You can reach her at mltdalvim@yahoo.com

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Dona Maria Flor's story as told to Kathleen Bond and Margarida MagaInes I was 12 when I discovered that my mother had married again and left us. I realized that my sister and I were alone. I never thought that my mother would have the nerve to leave us but I didn't cry. I didn't even worry about the rent that was due the next week. Dona Maria Flor is a short woman in her 50's with large brown expressive eyes who is a bundle of energy. We met her near a small hotel in Baia da Traicao, Paraiba, where she was selling doces, Brazilian sweets made out of local fruits such as mango and guava. She invited us to her nearby modest home to talk. Flor now lives among the Potyguara people who, during the 16th century, dominated the northeastern Brazilian coast from the state of Paraiba to the state of Maranhao. An estimated 200,000 of them lived in Paraiba alone. After five centuries of invasions, only approximately 5,000 Potyguara today remain in 18 villages on a constitutionally protected reservation in Paraiba and Rio Grande do Norte. The Potyguara people continue to be exploited today by sugar cane distilleries that invade their territory, pollute the rivers, and destroy natural ecosystems. The indigenous are mostly subsistence farmers but the quality of the land is poor. Lost hope and lack ofwork have contributed to internal disagreements, killings, alcoholism, begging and malnutrition. Women suffer greatly because much of the care of children and the sick 24

fall on their shoulders. For all the 18 villages there is only one health clinic. If a child falls ill, a mother has to walk over eight hours in order to get help. There are no buses during six months of the year because rains and mud make the road impossible to traverse. When we ask Flor what it is like being a woman, she replies: "I've never accepted that idea that some have that! am weaker because I am a woman. I've always viewed myself as strong, and a little crazy. Hard work is not something that! fear. Saying this! must admit that there are disadvantages of being a woman. I've always wanted to be able to travel to isolated places without worry for my well-being. Also, it would have been great to be able to cover my house, climb up on that big ladder, and do the work myself. I'm strong but I'm tiny. Anyway, I wouldn't trade being the woman I am for any of the men I know." Here is Flor's story in her own words: My grandmother says that! was born in Sete Cabecas, Pernambuco—a place that until this day no one has heard of. [Many people in the rural Northeast were not registered at birth because ofthe cost. This creates some confusion around age and exact place of birth.] When I came into the world, I [was told that I] cried for three days until my father hit me with a paddle. As I look back today, that was how my good life began. When! was two, my parents separated and I went to live with my aunt and my grandmother.... Until I was 10, I hopped back and forth between my mother's house and my grandmother's house [which] I preferred. During these years, I think that! was a nuisance to my mother. Not because I wanted to be, but because! responded to my grandmother when she inquired about my mother's romantic life. My mother was a worker and a fighter but she also liked to love a lot. When! was 10, my sister, Miriam, and! returned definitely to live with my mother. It wasn't because my mother wanted us back but because my aunt had married a widower that didn't BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2003


accept nieces. My recently wedded aunt and grandmother went to live in a place a long way away. Back with my mother, I had to start working as a [live-in] maid in order to earn money for food and clothes. Originally, I was hired to take care of a small infant. But when the infant napped, I also had to wash clothes, iron, sweep, and tidy the house. I was exploited. When I was fmally allowed to visit my mother who lived on a sugar cane plantation, I begged her to let me stay home in order to rest awhile. Initially my mother agreed but right away she began complaining about the lack of money and I had to start looking for another job. Even with all the exhaustion, I managed to study a bit while working as a maid in various homes. When I was 12, I moved with my mother to Abreu e Lima in greater Recife. My mother who always had worked in the sugar cane fields began to work as a maid. Quickly tiring of the drudgery, she started to sell clothes. But! stayed as a maid and this was when one boss started to show an interest in me. I quickly told his wife everything but the situation got complicated and I had to leave. I wasn't even a woman yet, just a little girl and I sure didn't want to be a whore. Unemployed, I returned to my mother's house. Upon explaining why I left the boss' house... My mother said that Seu Joao was a man ofrespect and responsibility and that she didn't believe me. One day while I was buying bread at the corner bakery, I caught sight of my mother all dressed up as she entered a bus. I didn't think [anything] of it. But when I found my sister crying as! arrived home, I discovered that my mother had married again and left us. 1 realized that we were alone. I never thought that my mother would have the nerve to leave us but I didn't cry. I didn't even worry about the rent that was due the next week. Knowing of our situation, a seamstress named Dona Prazeres who lived close by decided to adopt us. She simply arrived one day and said, "I have four daughters but I I'll take you in and from now on you will also be my daughters." Even with the welcome of Dona Prazeres, I passed through a very difficult moment in my life. Without knowing where my mother and grandmother lived, I felt alone in this world. Out of the blue, the adopted daughter of my aunt suggested entering into an orphanage run by Americans. The orphanage had the reputation of being very good but like a prison. One couldn't go out. Because of this, my sister didn't go but! went to the Orphanage Talita in Recife. I didn't see any other way out. When! arrived, I felt the weight of reality falling on my head. I cried and cried and cried so much in this world that no one or nothing could console me. The orphanage people tried everything. The fear I felt was of the papa figo [boogey man] that everyone talked of constantly. I also was amazed by the Americans, so great was my fear that I thought I would surely die, killed in that place. One day I overheard, without wanting [to], the director saying that I had no future, and that if! continued in my ways, I would surely go crazy. The director decided to take me to look for my mother, Alice. We left at 3 in the morning with the director herself driving the van. We drove around for hours, stopping and asking, backtracking, asking more people, until we found her. The director gave us 15 minutes to talk. Even though my mother had abandoned me, I was very happy to see her. And she was even happy to see me. We hugged, talked, and went our separate ways. From that day forward, the emptiness passed and! was able to get on with my life in the orphanage. When I was 15, I became a monitor responsible fortaking care ofthe other children. I also studied and taught by the way of Paulo Freire [Brazil's most famous writer of literacy issue]. With time, the board of the orphanage changed and there was a selection of young women that would go to live with the Americans [Baptist missionaries in Brazil] to help them learn Portuguese, and also do their chores.! was chosen by Dona Mae BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000

Minter, who! rec gnize as my true mothertoday and from whom I heard the very rst time, "I love you. You are my daughter." For my birth mo her, I always wrote but never received a response. I'll let d deal with that one... Finally, I en ered a calm period of my life. While at the orphanage, I ha the chance to see films about indigenous communities. From that day forward! resolved to go and work with these peop es. I began to prepare with bible and other courses. I also s ed trying to convince Dona Mae Minter and all the orphanag folks to let me go because no one wanted to lose me. Even ugh they protested, I was convinced that this was my calling. to go to the Amazon but! ended up in Baia My dream da Traicao (Rio Grande do Norte) with the Potyguaras where !was mission nurse [beginning ... in 1966. At first I thought that! was just g mg to evangelize but right away! saw it didn't work to just foc s on the spiritual side without looking at the social one beca se the misery was great. In the Poty aras' villages !spent 13 years as a missionary. I taught reading nd writing, worked as a nurse, and made many trips denouncin the horrific conditions of the village and raising money. I le the missionary life in order to marry an indio [local] named aldino. That was when my name changed to Maria Lima da Silva, not by my desire, but by the will of the local judge. I di 't spend many years married, only enough time to end up with s x children, four daughters and two sons: Natan, Natali, Nely e, Noalice, Nadja, and Georgeta. I ended up eparating from my husband for an apparently trivial reason. ne day! had to cut my Natali' s hair because she had an epidemi of lice. My husband got angry and ran after her. When he cau t her, he shaved her head completely clean and then went loo g for me. I didn't [get] a beating because my young Noalice latched onto Galdino's outstretched arms, preventing him fr m hitting me. Galdino still managed to pull my hair that no on had ever touched, not even in the orphanage. When I wa three-months pregnant, I separated definitely from my husb d and returned to Recife. With my five children and growing lly, we went to live near my youngest brother where I worke selling vegetables. We were poor but I affirm today that we ever were lacking food. I left Recife after three years because e violence during those days was great. Every day [someone died... Upon returning to Bala da Traicao, everyone doubt d whether I could make it on my own and care properly for y children. I went to the fields, worked hard, and today! can s that my children are rich. I have Christ in my life and many 'ends. Joao Pessoa [the capital city ofneighboring state Parai ] is full of my children. Those surfers [Flor lives near a famous surfmg beach and often lets visiting surfers sleep in her shed] at I took in generously ten years ago are now doctors, lawy rs, and businessmen. They are my friends such as Osmar tha makes labels in his computer for the homemade sweets of cas ew fruit that I sell and that also is trying to encourage the g vernment to help organize a theater group in the community. So today say I made it... About the authors: thleen Bond is a North American Maryknoll lay missione who for the past six years has written about and worked with women and human rights in JO° Pessoa, state of Paraib . She coauthored "Mulher: SaOde, Sexualidade e Direitos umanos"(Woman: Health, Sexuality, and Human Right. You can contact her at katiaflavio@uol.com.br. Margari a MagalhAes is a Professor of Geography in Joao Pess a. Dona Maria Flor's story will be included in the forthcomin book "Mulheres do Brasil: 500 Anos Abaixo dos Panos" Brazilian Women: 500 Years Hidden from View), published y Schuma Schumaher (schuma@redeh.org.br) of the B azilian Non-Governmental Organization REDEH. 25


Misguided Guide Brazil and the Brazilians, the book, gives an inaccurate and dated view of Brazil. It does read well when talking about entertainment and food, but in other affairs, it is incredibly biased, and vengeful. ERNEST BARTELDES Brazil and the Brazilians, by Ernesto Twegen, Vantage Press, New York, 2000 ISBN 0-533-13223-1 I received a book about Brazil from a relative. With the book, there was a message: "This guy is almost as good as you are." That relative has evidently been following my progress in the Greenwich Village Gazette, and maybe thought my reading of the book would somehow enlighten me. I started reading the book as soon as I received it. I was, in fact, about to start Agatha Christie's Curtain, but left that masterpiece for some other day. Soon I realized the true identity of Mr. Twegen. It happens to be the same relative who sent me the book in the first place. I sent him an e-mail but he denied even knowing the book, which sounds suspicious, for he was the one who sent me the book in the first place. Did he make a mistake? That question I cannot answer. I will not, however, disclose who he is, for if he chose to hide under a pseudonym (but why MY first name, may I ask?), he might as well have had his reasons to do it (his advertisement states that he will reveal his true identity when he settles his unfinished business in Brazil, whatever that is.). The book gives an inaccurate and also dated view of the country. It does, however, read well when it mentions bars, restaurants and gastronomic customs of Brazil. In other affairs, it reads incredibly biased, and to make matters worse, vengeful, considering that the author has three Brazilian-born children and three grandchildren born in the region, which he cites as "fetid, hot and disorderly as the black hole of Calcutta" The northeast of Brazil is no longer like that. In fact, if the author had visited the region in the last five years, he would notice that the region has changed much—and for the better. Brazilians are not half the monsters Mr. Twegen describes. Although he is right concerning the legal employment protections that most workers get in Brazil, which were created because employers basically bleed their workers and are just as crooked as the next person, he is completely wrong when it comes to peoples' characters. The only really good section of the book is the one on business. Of course, Mr. Twegen was a businessman in Brazil and he knows that aspect of the country well, so I have no intent of disputing his views on that area. However, some facts are incredibly outdated. For example, the author states that the telephone and electricity services are state-owned, and that petrol distribution is monopolized. That is no longer the situation. Petrol distribution monopoly was broken two years ago, and the state-owned telephone companies are all in the hands 26

of big companies like AT&T, Sprint and MCI. The same thing happened to the electrical services, which are no longer in the hands of the state. Strikes do not plague the country as they did when Mr. Twegen was here. Due to the new, globalized view of economy, you only hear of strikes when it comes to employees from the Federal government. Most categories now try to negotiate their salaries in a more civilized way, since jobs aren't as easy to find here as they were not long ago. In fact, jobs are harder and harder to find in this country nowadays. In the entertainment section, the author claims that all women in nightclubs are prostitutes. He is wrong. There are a number of such places in Fortaleza and other cities, which are by no means pick-up bars, except in industrial small towns. He briefly mentions the beaches. Understandably, in order to maintain his disguise, he simply obliterated the fact that Northeastern beaches are rich in gastronomy. Although there are a bunch of sleazy scum bags in Brazil, one should not trust Mr. Twegen's views. He is unhappy by the fact that his 27 years of residency in the country were so bad. However, if he was so unhappy, why didn't he just pick up and leave instead of investing in such a "terrible" country for such a long time? Brazil is not a paradise. I am myself on the verge of leaving the country, but that has nothing to do with the motives expressed by Mr. Twegen. My reasons are personal and professional. I am not "scared" of living here in any way. In fact, I love this country, and if it weren't for its current economic situation and if I could fulfill my plans here, I would stay, and happily. I believe Mr. Twegen is not a wicked man. He is probably the guy next door, who is willing to help those in his family. If my suspicions are true, he is even more than that. Had he disclosed (privately) his true identity, I would most likely not even be writing this review. He might even be a great guy to talk with. However, he seems bitter about this country, and has of course every right to express his opinion about it. He has no right, however, to claim that his book is the ultimate guide for anyone who wishes to know more about Brazil. Anyhow, I would like to invite "Mr. Twegen" for an interview. His anonymity will, of course, be preserved so that he can solve his "pending" matters in Brazil without being attacked not by a violent mugger, but by an outraged citizen. Ernest Barteldes, the author, was born in Michigan USA and has been a teacher of English in Brazil for over ten years. He is a graduate from Ceara State University and recently married a Brazilian. He wrote this article in Brazil just before moving to New York City. Barteldes has been a regular columnist for the Greenwich Village Gazette in New York City and has also collaborated to a number of magazines and newspapers in the US and in Brazil. He can be contacted at ebarteldes@yahoo.com BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000


JULIO CESART117101WEIRO MARTINS

New World Heroes ten fatherland, soon you will swallow me ba k to your soil. 1 cannot prevent that my body be used as manure. But this will be the last thing yo will steal from me. I only ask that you erase fo ever my name from your memory. Eles se encontraram mais uma vez debaixo do viaduto da Praca da Bandeira. Anoitecia, e o vento trazia junto corn a iagem a fumaca negra das descargas dos on ibus. 0 profe sor de fi losofia conseguira alguns jornais e uma caixa de pa elao. Os tres homens rasgaram a caixa e protegeram corn os corpos a pequena fogueira. 0 escultor puxou por sobre as orelhas o gorro de pano e esfregou as•maos enregeladas, di endo: "Nao consegui encontrar madeira. Corn esses jo nais o fogo nao vai durar nem meia hora..." Os outros fi aram em silencio, sem ousarem encarar-se. 0 diretor de teatro trouxe para perto do fogo urn saco pl stico e distribuiu entre os amigos alguns tomates meio p dres que conseguira recol her entre os resto.s da feira I ivre. 0 professor de filosofia, o mais velho do trio, agradeceu, c bisbaixo, e fez um pedido ao amigo: "Amanha eu you re tar con segu ir urn lima°. Se voce achar um, tratp para mirn, p r favor. Am inha gengiva esta sangrando e os meus dentes e:tlio moles. Pode ser escorbuto...- 0 diretor de teatro a. sentiu corn a cabeca e pos-se a devorar urn tomate, BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000

enquanto o escu or amassava outra folha de jornal e colocava sobre o fogo. "Queria torn r urn banho", resmungou o diretor. Os outros o olharam corn impatia e urn deles sugeriu: "Tern o chafariz do Aterro. Voce • ode ir ate la cedinho de manha..." "Eu tenho vergonha", resp ii ndeu o diretor, "e alem disso eu nao quero ser preso de novo..." "Nos nao podemos mais ter vergonha de nada", comentou o pro essor, "vergonha ja virou um luxo". 0 fogo subia ebaixava pidamente a cada folha de jornal que o escultor atirava a foguer a. 0 professor estava preocupado corn o cerco do frio, e ponde • u que seria melhor guardar o resto dos jornais para se cobrire depois. "Ainda tern bastante jornal aqui", disse o escultor, "pod mos alimentar o fogo pormais uns dez minutos, e entao nos cob imos..." Do outro la o da ma, eles avistaram a figura franzina do poeta, esperan do uma brecha no transit° para atravessar. "Ele vai pensar que nos somos as feiticeiras do Macbeth", brincou o diretor de tea • o. "E qual sera o nosso vaticinio?", perguntou o escultor. "Na • é diffcil adivinhar...", respondeu o amigo, corn um meio sorris • . 0 poeta atra essou a avenida, correndo corn passos minclos, os bracos cruza os sobre o peito, e desabou ofegante junto aos demais. "Apro eite o foguinho, antes que acabe...", falou o escultor, cham ndo-o para perto de Si. 0 poeta continuou a resfolegar, e ao tentar responder, teve urn acesso de tosse, uma tosse seca, pro nda, que the deixava orosto em brasa e os olhos lacrimejantes. s amigos abaixaram as cabecas, compungidos, e realimentara o fogo. Minutos depois a tosse transformarase numa especi de gemido, e o poeta, exaurido pelo esforco de tossir, enrodilh u-se em seus andrajos como urn feto. 0 escultor tirou o seu go o e colocou-o na cabeca do amigo doente. 0 professor enrol • ualguns jornais em torno de seus pes descalcos, para tentar aq ece-los. A viatura • a policia passou lotada, e os policiais, embora tivessem perce • ido o grupo sob o viaduto, preferiram nao parar. Estavam em b ca de presas mais grandas. Os amigos relaxaram. 0 diretor ofer ceu ao doente o ultimo tomate, mas ele estava fraco demais sara corner qualquer coisa, e ainda sem poder articular pala ra, acenou para o amigo corn a mao tremula e retirou do bols da cam isa uma folha de urn bloco comercial corn urn texto man scrito. 0 diretor passou a folha para o professor, que colocou o 6culos de aros finos e pediu ao outro que avivasse o fogo. Antes sue o professor pudesse ler em voz alta o titulo, "Carta ao Bra ii", já o poeta se encolhia novamente, de olhos fechados e co as maos sob as axilas, e procurava corn a sua imobilidade e itar que a tosse doloridarecomecasse. Os outros dois aproxim am-se ainda mais do professor, para que o ruido dos 6nibus e a tomOveis nao abafasse a sua voz durante a leitura: Brasil, Saibas de de logo que o desprezo que tu tens por nos nao é major que vergonha que temos de ti. Terra bocal, antro indigno, coy 1 que se jacta da pr6pria sordidez. Sim, é aqui mesmo onde • as nulidadesprosperam, etodas se riem obscenas da desgraca, a miseria, da doer-tca e da morte daqueles raros que preserva qualidades humanas. Brasil, o •uraco negro da etica, a fossa do deboche. Que vergonhas in iziveis cometes a todo instante a luz do dia. Grande valhacouto d bandidos, onde os marginais de terno e gravata dao as cartas marcadas. Tuas instituicOes mais cultivadas sao a calania, o stolao, o jeitinho mediante suborn°, o jabacule, a extorsao, a umplicidade generalizada, a vantagem desonesta, o elogio da icao, a punhalada nas costas dos que tentaram te amar, ignor tes de que amavam urn monstro. 27


Brasil, assassin° dos virtuosos, patria da injustica, incuIta e barbara. Odeias o detentor de meritos, e a competencia ë para ti, Brasil, nada mais que uma ofensa pessoal. Elevas os nescios e os falastrOes aos mais altos postos, condecoras os bajuladores oficiais e todas as "raposas felpudas" de que tanto te orgulhas. Ostentas cinicamente na tua bandeira o lema "Ordem e Progresso" e cada vez mais promoves a desordem e a decadencia. Brasil, paraiso dos canalhas, por que punes todo verdadeiro carater corn a indigencia e todo verdadeiro talento corn o ostracismo? Por que tu es a podridao da America, pululando de vermes federais, a espera de que a boa vontade da HistOria jogue sobre ti a affirm pd de cal. Brasil, terra de ninguem, palco de horrores. Tu es ao mesmo tempo sadico e masoquista, pois nao te contentas corn uma s6 perversao, posto que em teu seio e onde toda perversao vicej a. Patria podre, ern breve me engoliras de volta para o teu solo. Nao posso impedir que o meu corpo te sirva de adubo. Mas a Ultima coisa que roubaras de mim. SO te peco que apagues para sempre meu nome de tua mem6ria. Nao quer° lapide sobre teus terrenos. Pois de ti, Brasil, apenas tive nojo e vergonha, e se algum dia surgir em ti algum imprevisto sinal de dignidade, saberds que, para nao me conspurcar, nao deves jamais ligar o teu desonroso nome ao meu. Brasil (e por que nao Covil?), terra de viloes e de escravos, para ti nunca é demais repetir o apelo: Andrada, arranca logo esse pendao dos ares! As Ultimas folhas de jornalhaviam sido consumidas durante a leitura, e corn a reducao do trafego o vento frio soprava corn mais intensidade sobre o grupo. 0 poeta ja mergulhara num sono febril, corn a cabeca sobre a coxa do escultor. Os amigos espalharam as cinzas corn os chinelos e se aconchegaram bem pr6ximos uns dos outros, para nao desperdicarem o calor dos corpos. Antes de tirar seus Oculos e oculta-los num vao do concreto para que nao quebrassem durante o sono, o professor de filosofia dobrou cuidadosamente a folha de papel e colocoua de volta no bolso do poeta adormecido. Esperou alguns minutos em silencio ate que os outros tambem adormecessem e retirou do bolso do paleto urn ovo cozido, que descascou pelo tato, lentamente, enquanto observava a vertigem dos fareis iluminando o gramado e o mastro no centro da praca. No alto do mastro uma bandeira tremulava as escuras, semi-oculta pelo labirinto de concreto e longe do alcance das luzes baixas. Niterni, 6 de maio de 1990

Courage I would face her. Now with joy. Despite my allies' silence, the traitors' disguise, the yellow truck, Magda's teeth, and Vania's blindfold. In spite of. Because of. It doesn't matter to kill or to die, either one strengthens me. 0 rapaz procurava acompanhar o ritmo dos meus passos e ao mesmo tempo sussurrar-me as suas justificativas, enquanto

eu me afastava rapidamente do predio da universidade por uma das ruas laterais que daria na estacao do metro. Ele havia se oferecido para carregar os meus livros e as minhas pastas enquanto me acompanhava, mas eu nao aceitei porque nao queria dar-lhe um pretexto a mais para seguir-me ate o meu destino final. Embora tivesse deixado transparecer sutilmente que era o lider entre os seus colegas, ele se apresentava agora de modo bastante modesto, quase submisso, e expunha seus argumentos numa voz soprada, constrangida e abafada pela postura cabisbaixa que as circunstancias Ihe impuseram: —0 senhor deve ter ficado chateado corn o nosso silencio. E eu nao tiro a sua razao. Mas e que a gente ainda tern muito medo dela... —Em primeiro lugar, voce sabe que nao gosto que me tratem por "senhor"— respondia tambem em voz baixa, tentando conter a minha irritacao.—Ern segundo lugar, voce vai voltar agora mesmo para a universidade e dizer aos seus colegas que eu you precisar de uma manifestacao explicita de apoio. Explicita, clara, em voz alta, e se possivelmuito alta, entendeu? Ou entao eu you largar mao dessa briga, que estaroubando toda a minha enegia e colocando o meu emprego em risco. Compreendeu bem, ou quer que eu repita? —Compreendi. Mas o diabo é o medo que o pessoal sente. Principalmente os mais novos... — Born, voce ja sabe, se voces continuarem acovardados eu no you poder fazer mais nada. E voces nunca mais vao encontrar alguem influente na instituicao disposto a enfrentala abertamente. Portant°, aproveitem a oportunidade. Pode ser a Ultima. Agora, se voce nao se importa, eu gostaria de seguir sozinho daqui para frente. Tenho outras coisas corn que me preocupar. — Ta legal... eu ja you indo entao... ate amanha, mestre... —Ate amanha as dez e meia em ponto. E tudo ou nada. Sera que eu posso contar com voces? —Vamos ver, professor... Vamos torcer... As oito e meia da manha eu despertei corn um telefonema da Magda, minha colega, a decana do Departamento. Custei um pouco a entender o que ela me dizia, corn sua voz rouca pela idade avancada e entrecortada pela respiracao ofegante que a tensao e a ansiedade provocavam. Por que a Magda estava tao nervosa? E o que ela queria de mim? Levantei-me da cama num salto corn o coracao disparando apos decifrar a razao da sua chamada: a Magda, tendo sido informada corn detalhes do que estava acontecendo na universidade, e tomada por uma indignacao e uma coragem que faltava aos seus colegas mais jovens, oferecia-se para acompanhar-me e protestar ao meu lado naquela manha decisiva. Corn a presenca respeitavel da professora Magda seria possivel que as coisas mudassem de figura. Pelo menos os seus alunos, que sabidamente a admiravam, sentir-se-iam mais encorajados. Aceitei, é claro, prontamente o seu apoio e ofereci-me para busca-la em casa. Ela preferiu encontrar-me uma hora depois na estacao de metro prOxima dauniversidade. Desliguei o telefone e entrei no banho, coin o animo renovado, confiante, beirando a euforia. Passava um pouco das nove e trinta quando eu avistei o vulto franzino de Magda, ornado por sua cabeleira branca como uma aureola, que lhe conferia um aspecto de sabia santidade. Mas logo ao aproximar-me pude perceber o estado agudo de tensao em que se encontrava naquela manha e que já havia transparecido no seu telefonema. Ela gaguejava cada vez que tentava iniciaruma fala, e suas maos tremiam tao intensamente que seria indtil tentar disfarcar esfregando-as uma contra a outra ou escondendo-as no bolso do paleto do seu tailleur de linho branco. Como costuma acontecer nesses casos, o fato de Magda

28 BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000


gaguejar por nervosismo deixava-a ainda mais nervosa, e para romper este ciclo comecei a reproduzir em detalhes a conversa que tivera corn o estudante natarde anterior. Magda entao calouse para ouvir-me e parecia reencontrar o seu eixo quando, ao cruzarmos a avenida que separa o parque do campus universitario, urn enorme caminhao amarelo atravessou o sinal fechado em alta velocidade e avancou desgovernado em nossa direcao. Magda ao ve-lo tentou correr em panico mas eu a puxei num golpe violento e atirei-a de volta sobre a calcada. 0 caminhao passou a menos de urn metro de nossos corpos estirados e Magda certamente teria morrido nAo fosse o vigor do meu reflexo. Ficamos os dois chocados, corn a respiracao suspensa, sentados na calcada, cercados por alguns curiosos que nos olhavam surpresos, entre eles alguns estudantes que nos reconheceram. 0 tailleur branco de Magda estava agora todo manchado, corn largas listas escuras de asfalto e esgoto, e rasgado na altura do cotovelo. Fiquei apavorado corn a possibilidade de seus ossos frageis terem se rompido e tentei coloca-la de pe, o que foi impossivel, aparentemente apenas por causa do seu estado-de-choque, e nao por algum caso de fratura. Mas antes que eu pudesse dizer qualquer coisa, ou pedir socorro, a senhora ja puxava a minha cabeca em direcao a sua, corn os dedos magros e fortes cravados em minha nuca, e olhando dentro dos meus olhos corn os olhos injetados de sangue e afogados no panico e na visao do inferno falou-me numa voz irreconhecivel, ao mesmo tempo esganicada e gutural: —Eu nao you la! Eu nao you la! Vai voce, meu filho. Me deixe aqui. Eu tenho muito medo dela... Eu jã estou velha... Ela vai acabar comigo de vez... Seu rosto livido e reduzido a um cinzento emaranhado de rugas era a mais pura encarnacao do horror que eu havia visto ate entao. De seus olhos escorriam lagrimas em profusao, e em sua boca murcha e crispada dancavam os pedacos da dentadura que havia se quebrado no acidente, o que tornava suas palavras ainda menos compreensiveis. Passei os dedos sobre sua cabeleira branca, agora transformada num tufo desgrenhado e sujo de uma cor indefinivel, procurando corn isso acalma-la e conforta-la em seu desespero. Mas meu esforco era it-16W. A velhinha havia como que incorporado o mais sofrido e maltratado dos espiritos, e tentava proteger-se da finica forma disponivel no momento: enroscando seu corpo numa posicao fetal sobre a calcada. Verifiquei entao o meu prOprio estado. Exceto urn ou outro arranhao, eu tido havia me ferido. Fiquei na diivida se deveria socorrer minha velha colega ou se deveria atender ao seu apelo e enfrentar a situacao critica que me aguardava do outro lado da avenida, no predio da universidade. Decidi pelo enfrentamento da situacao, ate porque nao havia mais muito o que fazer por Magda, que aquela altura já estava sendo acudida pelos academicos de Medicina. Recolhi assim os meus papeis espalhados pela rua, recompuz minha roupa como pude, embora nao conseguisse livrar-me de uma aparencia deteriorada, e cruzei a avenida, menos seguro entao de minhas possibilidades e incerto sobre a minha forca interior. Mas faria O necessario. Ha o medo e o nao-ser por toda parte. Como poderiamos nao percebe-los dentro de nos? 0 medo grita em nosso intimo, arrepia a nossa pele e muda a nossa temperatura corporal: Por vezes nos congela, por vezes nos abrasa. Como nega-lo, se nossas pemas nao obedecem as nossas ordens? Se nossas ordens sao as ordens de urn estranho, que ha apenas alguns minutos reconheciamos como n6s mesmos? 0 silencio unanime dos estudantes na primeira vez que eu a desafiei, urn silencio liquid° e pesado, encheu-me de medo. BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000

Senti que me en gavam a fera como algumas tribos sacrificam virgens atirando as na cratera do vulcao para tentar aplacar a ira de seus de ses. E por alguns instantes odiei-os por idolatrarem o d us errado. Mas nao. Eles nao estavam me abandonando o me usando como urn bode-expiatOrio. Eles estavam apenas apavorados, imobilizados diante dela. Cada vez q e eu ia ao banheiro, nao queria mais sair do conforto e da se uranca do seu isolamento. Aquilo era medo. E quando cami hava depressa pelas ruas, afastando-me do predio da unive sidade, ou puxava a coberta da cama sobre a cabeca, ou esfol va-me ao fazer a barba de manha, aquilo tudo tambem era me o. E o que eu senti ao ver as grades do caminhao amarelo, os olh • s rubros de Magda e a sua boca horrenda cheia de pedacos e b gulhos soltos foi urn terror que eu nao mais esquecerei, e qu voltara nos sonhos,nas campainhas, nos dentes e no amarelo. oltard sempre. Mas em ne urn momento eu demonstrei o meu medo, e nem mesmo quis t rnar-me demasiadamente consciente dele. Consegui mante-lo como um sentimento confidencial, como urn segredo de gutkra, e assim transmiti confianca aos que me cercavam, que acreditavam na minha forcae admiravam a minha coragem, a coragem que os fortalecia. Foi assim, ocultando bem O meu caroco de medo e deixando transparecer calma e seguranca em cada movimento, que eu atravessei aquela avenida, passei pelos portOes e subi as escadas do predio, As dez e meia daquela anha, em direcao ao salao repleto de estudantes onde ela estari exercendo o seu imperio incontestado. Mas antes e terminar de subir o primeiro lance de escadas, uma jovem qu vinha descendo apressadamente esbarrou em mim e, deixan o cair os seus livros e cadernos, confundiu-me por instantes. baixei-me para ajuda-la e percebi que era a Vania, a minh filha adolescente, a moca estabanada. Fiquei ainda mais co fuso: Vania morava sozinha corn a mae desde que eu sal de casa e a deixei corn tres anos de idade, e nos raramente nos viamos. A filtima vez foi ha cerca de seis meses. Alem disso, Vania nao estudava naquelauniversidade, nem em qualquer outrA. Ela s6 tinha quinze anos, e mal comecara o Segundo Grau. 0 que estaria ela fazendo au, naquele exato momento? —0i, papai. Atrapalhei o senhor, nao foi? —0 que voce esta fazendo aqui? —Meu nanorado estuda aqui. Alias, ele é seu aluno. Vim dar uma forcA pra ele. —Uma forca? —E. E eu preciso conversar corn o senhor sobre isso agora. Venha. Vamcs ate a cantina. Me pague uma coca-cola... —Vanial... Ela segurdu-me pelo braco corn sua mao livre e puxou-me escada abaixO em direcao A cantina do outro lado do patio. A aura em torn' do seu olhar, tao firme e tao parecido corn o meu prOprio, env lveu-me e tirou-me as forcas. Eu a seguia, enfraquecido e tonto como urn zumbi que retornara do alem e nao encontra a mais qualquer sinal do mundo dos vivos. Urn zumbi duas ezes logrado: pela morte e pela ressurreicao. Que pode tinha aquelamenina, a minha filha, a Vania? Um poder que m deixava inerte, apatetado, no momento mais crucial. Seri o poder do sangue prOximo? Ou o poder prOprio de todas as itimas de abandono? Apesar do sentimento de intensa urge cia, dos minutos escapando de mim, os meus musculos est yam relaxados. Pedimos duas cocas A mulher do bare Vania p ssou os dedos entre os meus cabelos, num inedito carinho de fi ha, enquanto fixava em mim o seu olhar adulto e anestesico. —Papai, eu vim aqui porque eu nao quero que o senhor brigue corn la. 0 meu namorado e o Valter, urn alto, que tern 29


um bigode louro. —Eu sei quem é. —0 Valter esta trabalhando pra ela. Se o senhor entrarnessa briga, vai atrapalhar a carreira do Valter, e por tabela a minha vida. Entdo, papaizinho, fica aqui comigo e deixa essa confusdo toda pra He opens the door and makes a face in disgust, as —Eu ndo posso, Vania. if someone else and not he was responsible for that —Claro que pode. malodorous apartment. He starts by the trash, by —No. E tarde demais. —Que tarde nada, papal! the dishes and only the next day in the afternoon he —Quem te mandou aqui? —Como? Ninguem me mandou aqui... Eu vim pra dar uma finds a plunger and cleans the sink... He doesn't forca pro Valter... even notice he is humming "Just One of Those —Da licenca...—desvencilhei-me de suas mdos de pluma Things". e sal andando em passos largos para a escada. —Papai! Para, papal !—e as plumas viraram garras fortes que Ele viu os seus amigos crescerem, terem filhos que ja puxavam meu corpo para tras. Concentrei-me e joguei o peso cresceram, que jativeram seus prOprios filhos, que hoje ja estdo do corpo para frente,livrando-me daquelas algemas de mnsculos e sangue, e corn, corni sem olhar para tras, ouvindo os gritos de crescidos... Mas para ele, os seus velhos amigos ainda estdo crescendo. E ele mesmo ainda nao havia crescido o suficiente. Vdnia acusando-me novamente de abandon°, corni suando, corn Ele pressiona as teclas do piano aleatoriamente. As notas os movimentos presos, enferrujados pelas minhas culpas, saem isoladas, sem nexo. Ele quer apenas ouvir o som do piemperrados pelo medo, e mais eu corria e subia os degraus, mais ano, qualquer som que venha dele, como quern precisa vez por sentia a coragem a voltar e a subir pelo corpo como urn arrepio outra ouvir a voz de um filho ausente. Mas ele ndo quer mirsica. quente, uma azia doce, urn bald° de gas. Nem faze-la, nem ouvi-la. A mirsica ainda o habitava, como 4)* A possibilidade (o desejo) de morrer heroicamente, de ser sempre, mas o desejo de comunicar-se corn o mundo e corn ele morto pelo mais forte e corn isso drenar-lhe a forca, de ser mesmo atraves da musica havia desaparecido em algum coberto pelo negro manto de uma noite infinita, de uma curva momento, submergido para regioes escuras e impenetraveis, perfeita, tudo isso é profundamente excitante. A Boa Morte para as trevas de urn mar de sargacos. Ele sabe que nao pode talvez seja a Ultima fonte de sentido num mundo onde o que nao mergulharnaquele labirinto liquid° para procurar composicaes quer mais ser solid° ndo encontra um ar decente onde naufragadas. Tudo o que deve fazer é m anter- se a tona, respirando urn ar cotidiano, desatando os nOs das horas. desmanchar-se. 0 pequeno apartamento esta um caos: copos sujos de vinho E eu iria enfrenta-la. Agora corn alegria. Apesar do silencio endurecido no fundo ha varios dias, filtros de café na lixeirinha dos meus aliados, dos disfarces dos traidores, do caminhao transbordante, fronhas suadas, pia entupida, roupas para lavar amarelo, dos dentes de Magda e da venda de Vania. Apesar. Por debaixo da cama. As janelas ddo para um outro predio, onde as causa. Abri a porta do said() corn os ombros erguidos e a cabeca empregadas penduram-se para limpar os vidros das janelas. Ele alta. Tanto faz matar ou morrer, qualquer urn dos dois me precisa sair. Nao, "sair" ndo e o termo. Ele precisa partir. Partin fortalece. para longe. Mas ele ndo tern dinheiro, nab tern para onde in e Mas ela ndo estava mais la. Eu deveria ter adivinhado. Ela no esta disposto a forjar desculpas para partir. E apenas urn havia fugido, sumido, evaporado no eter, apos tentar tudo para desejo difuso. Mas é o seu timico desejo. me deter inutilmente. E ao pressentir a aproximacdo da minha Ele calca os sapatos, veste urn casaco de couro e desce para coragem gritante, evitou covardemente o confronto. Ndo havia a garagem. Tira da vaga o velho fusca e toma a direcdo do mais qualquer sinal dela na universidade, e os estudantes me aeroporto. 0 radio do carro ndo funciona. Melhor. Ele estaciona aplaudiam de pe no auditorio sem que eu tivesse precisado dizer o carro, toma o elevador para o terceiro andar, onde ha urn bar uma so palavra. Eles sorriam todos, aliviados, alegres, confiantes corn uma grande vistapanordmica, de onde se pode ver os avioes e prontos para comemorar. Eles me cercavam por toda parte, decolando panatodass partes, mas nao se ouve ruido algum. umamultiddo de filhos prOdigos. Eu havia vencido em vida, ate Ele pede uma cerveja'xe fica em silencio, atento, fazendo algo impensavel, caricato, assistindo a avilies. E sente-se bem. porque no tive medo da fina linha divisoria que me poupou de A cada decolagem suite uma nova palavra, que ele pronuncia vencer na morte. E porque venceria de qualquer maneira, eu apenas movendo os labios: Finlandia, Madagascar, Tegucivenci. Porque nao ha outra forma de vencer. Porque tido se vence galpa, Ohio, Atacama, Tobruk. Onde flea mesmo Tobruk? corn uma chance, mesmo que remota, de fracasso. Porque o fracasso ocorrera, se por alguma fresta pude apresentar-se. Ele esta em Trieste ou em Nairobi, quando vem sentar-se Porque o fracasso nao teve por onde apresentar-se, eu venci. na mesa ao lado uma mulher de uma beleza estranha, cabelos 0 cam inhdo amarelo levou o que havia de belo em Magda. negros e curtos, pele clara, olhos negros, profundos. Ela finge Desconfio de que o bigode louro de Valter tenha levado o que observar a paisagem, mas observa corn curiosidade aquele havia de puro em Vania. Tudo por causa de urn poder difuso momento especial de sua vida. Ele se assusta corn aquela presenca inusitada e tdo pr6xima e maligno que eu ndo pude evitar, mas soube como combater, renovando em mim a bravura e preservando em meus alunos , e pbe-se a estuda-la. Deduz corretamente que a mulher esta muito mais familiarizada corn o interior dos avieles do que corn a fe. W4.45s rg in aquela ridicula paisagem. Deduz apressadamente, porem, que ela estd esperando por alguem n ague le bar. A incerteza o Niteroi, 6 a21 de julho de 1993 incomoda. Decide perguntar-lhe, corn naturalidade:N4ZW.

Carmem

•

BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000


—Voce esta esperando por alguem? Para sua surpresa, ela responde corn igual naturalidade, como se já estivesse esperando a pergunta: —Nao, ninguem. Daqui a uma hora parte o meu v8o para o Mexico. Estou passando o tempo. Ape's alguns segundos de silencio, ele fala: —Eu a estou incomodando corn estas perguntas? —Nao. Se estivesse, eu nao responderia. Voce tambem vai viajar? —Nao... Talvez eu devesse dizer que estou esperando por alguem. Mas nao seria verdade, e eu estou sem animo para mentir. Eu vim aqui para ver os aviOes partirem. Nao e engracado? Ha sujeitos curiosos que observam passaros, ou conchas... Eu observo avioes. Sou Membro Honorario da Associacao Internacional dos Observadores de Avi'Oes. Uma solida innandade, sabe... Ela nal) sorri. Apenas fixa os olhos no rosto do estranho, tira calmamente da bolsa um mac° de cigarros e urn isqueiro de ouro, puxa urn longo trago, expele a fumaca para o alto e pergunta: —0 que é que voce faz, alem de observar aviOes? —Eu sou mils ico de jazz. Pianista. Compositor. Essas coisas. —Bonito...—olhou fixo em seus olhos novamente.—E voce é born nisso ou e sO mais um? Ele suportou o olhar com firmeza e respondeu serio: —Eu sou born nisso. Muito born. SO que eu perdi o desejo de compor, de uns tempos pra ca... Uma especie de anorexia artistica, entende? —Entendo. Mas isso passa... meu ex-marido é assim, corn os neg6cios. Eu sou assim com o sexo...—e sorriu pelaprimeira vez. —Seu ex-marido esta no Mexico? —Nao. Ele é alemao. NOs nos separamos e ha duas semanas ele voltou de vez para o pals dele. Eu you ao Mexico visitar o meu innao, que da aulas lá, conhecer o meu sobrinho mais novo, e de la eu you para Frankfurt, resolver corn o ex alguns assuntos que ficaram pendentes. E voce? Ainda é casado? —Nao. Acho que nunca fui. —Acha? —Essas coisas sao meio complicadas, voce sabe... — E, eu sei... Bem, eu preciso ir agora, checar a minha bagagem... —Quer que eu te acompanhe? —Nao, irk) é necessario. Me de o seu telefone. Eu volto ao Brasil dentro de tres semanas. Logo que chegar you lhe fazer uma visita, para ouvir as suas composicdes novas. —Tres semanas?... Eu me chamo Carmem. Ele rabisca o seu nome e telefone num guardanapo e lhe entrega, enquanto ela coloca uma nota sob o cinzeiro, por um suco de laranja que deixa intacto, e se levanta: —Espero que voce encontre algum aviao raro por aqui... —Se eu encontrar, you procurar registrar o seu canto melodioso e levar para os meus colegas da Associacao. —E que tal compor um tema de jazz corn ele? —Vai se chamar "0 Gorjeio das Turbinas". —Born nome. Ate a proxima. —Ate a proxima, Carmem. Por mais umahora ele fica a observar os aviOes, procurando adivinhar qual deles transporta a sua Carmem. Ele sente que hd urn movimento estranho ern seu interior, como se as suas visceras saissem da apatia habitual e se reunissem para conspirar. Uma conspiracao de pancreas, figado, vesicula, coracao... Sera possfvel? Ele fica inquieto. Paga a sua conta e decide voltar para o apartamento. Quer chegar logo, mas Ira() sabe por que. 0 que o espera lá, que provocatal urgencia? Carmem. Mas elanao esta BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000

voando sobre as nuvens agora? Ele nao tern dOvidas: Carmem o espera la. Ele abre a porta e faz uma careta de nojo, como se alguem, Ira° ele, tivesse deixado o apartamento naquela bagunca malcheirosa. Ele comeca pelo lixo, pelas loucas, e sO na tarde do dia seguinte ele onsegue urn desentupidor e coloca a pia em ordem. Na noite do segundo dia, ele retira todas as fotos e papeis amontoados corn tachinhas no painel de cortica ao lado do piano, escreve numa fOlha em branco corn letras enormes o nome "Carmem" e a prega no centro do painel. Toma entao urn longo banho quente, e corn os olhos fechados, enquanto enxagua o shampoo, nem se apercebe que esta cantarolando "Just One of Those Things". Tres seman s se passaram. Tres longas semanas, tardes febris. 0 negro mar de sargacos havia se transformado num recife de corais e muitas cores e formas, e ele mergulha naquele mar transparent com prazer, e se delicia com as estrelas-domar, os ouricos as cardumes, a grande arraia azul. Ele as traz tona pelas tecl s do piano, e elas enchem o apartamento, que parece ter crescr o, como urn cenario mOyel. Seus tesouros, seus amigos, foram or ele alegremente batizados de "Carmem", "Jumbo's The e", "Flying Away", "Passenger's Song", "Appetite", "Iron ird", "Golden Lighter", "Orange Juice" e "Tobruk". Ele nao resi te e telefona para o seu produtor, que promete dar uma passad pelo apartamento na noite seguinte, levar urn born vinho fran es e ouvir as novidades. Born sinal. Quern sabe o CD sai ainda e te ano? Quem eles convidarao para acompanhalo? E melhor ci nversar sobre isso durante o vinho... E preciso ouvir as sugestt3es do produtor... Ele se lembra daquela tarde no aeroporto, e ri. Quanto tempo faz? Tres semanas? Quatro? Que importa?... 0 apartamento esta uma bagunca novamente. Ele junta as roupas sujas e as esconde debaixo da cama. Recolhe as partituras e esvaziauma gavetada comoda especialmente para elas. Entre as entulhos, encontra as folhetos dos seus antigos shows: Buenos Aires, Montreux, Free Jazz, Newport, Pistoia, Barcelona... Arranca do painel de corticauma folha onde estava escrito um norm de mulher, e com os folhetos compOe urn mosaico de si mesmo. Afasta-se e olha-o com prazer e orgulho. Seu interior agora esta vazio de mirsica. Mas e dal? As partituras estao a salvo, na gaveta, e os temas estao frescos em sua mente. A pescaria jahavia terminado e agora ele puxa o barco por sobre a areia, para separar e contar as peixes... E alem do mais, o seu interior esta agora preenchido por uma outra entidade, nao mais pela musica submersa e embaracada, nao mais por urn fantasma de mulher, mas por urn compositor de genio, urn criador, um totem. In the original these short stories are called "Herbis do Novo Mundo", "Coragem", and "Carmem." Julio Cesar Monteiro Martins, the author, was born in Niteroi, in the Greater Rio, in 1955. He has published several short-story books: Torpalium, Sabe Quem Dancou?, A Oeste de Nada, As Forcas Desarmadas, and Muamba. Monteiro Martins is also the author of three novels: Arterias e Becos, Bdrbara, 0 Espaco Imagindrio and a volume of essays: 0 Livro das Diretas. He is one of the founders of the Brazilian Green Party and from 1992 to 1994 worked as a lawyer for the Brazilian Center in Defense of Children's Rights. He taught literary creation at the Goddard College in the US and is now a professor in Italy, teaching literary creation and Brazilian literature in colleges in Pisa, FloreOce, Lucca, and Pistoia. The writer is the founder of Sagaran School (http://www.sagarana.com). You can get in touch with him writing to jmontei@tin.it 31


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Language Courses operates. Some of the climbs are steep, so you need to be The Instituto Brasil-Estados Unidos (IBEU) (255-8332) reasonably fit. You can take a camera, but ask permission has a variety of Portuguese-language classes that start every before taking anybody's picture and don't take photos of month or two. The cost for a four-week course that meets three suspicious or armed characters. Avoid going after heavy rain, times a week is about $150. For information stop by Avenida because mudslides are common. Nossa Senhora de Copacabana 690, on the 5th floor. Villa Riso Colonial Tour Next door to IBEU is a Casa Matos store which sells the Villa Rise in Sao Conrado, next to the Gavea Golf Club, language books for the IBEU courses. It's a good place to pick recreates a colonial fazenda (farm), complete with employees up a book or dictionaries to study Portuguese on your own. wearing colonial gear. The house and gardens actually date Other places that offer courses include Britannia (511-0143), from the early 18th century. A three-hour tour includes a buffet with branches in Botafogo, Leblon and lunch (normally a feijoada or Barra; Berlitz (240-6606) in the Centro churrasco) and a medley of Brazilian and Ipanema; and Feedback (221-1863), theatrical music. You must make in the Centro, Copacabana, Ipanema, reservations (322-1444; fax 322Botafogo and Barra. 5196). The cost is $40 and this includes Organized Tours picking you up and returning you to City Tours your hotel. Most of the larger tour companies Bateau Mouche operate sightseeing tours of Rio. They On New Year's Eve 1988, 55 include Gray Line (294-1444; fax 259people out ofthe 59 on board drowned 5847), Expeditours (287-9697; fax 521when an overloaded Bateau Mouche 4388) and Kontik-Franstur (255-2442). bay cruiser capsized in Baia de Their brochures are sitting on the Guanabara. This private company still reception desks of many hotels. Tours runs cruises, and they're much more Every year wealthy a d cover the usual tourist destinations and careful with the number of passengers their prices are quite reasonable. A fourthey let on board. Their modern boats spaced-out foreigners desce d hour tour to Corcovado and Tijuca costs cruise the bay and go out into the around $25. Atlantic. They usually have a morning on Rio en masse, get drunk, et For a more personalized tour, Rio and afternoon cruise that costs from Custom Tours (274-3217), run by Maria high, bag some sunrays a d $25 to $35. The scene is too slickLucia Yolen, is recommended. Maria touristy for our taste but the voyage exchange exotic diseas s Lucia is an excellent guide who likes to out into the ocean is undeniably show that Rio is not all samba, beaches beautiful. Don't take their bay cruise, Everyone gets a bit unglued at and Corcovado. Some other tours include because for a 50th of the price you can the Sunday mass at Sao Bento, complete take a ferry or hydrofoil to Paqueta this time of year and the lea er with Gregorian chants, a trip to the Casa island and cover much of the same and meaner Cariocas can ge a do Pontal and its excellent folk-art ground while traveling with the locals. collection, and a tour through Santa Ferry to Niteroi little ugly with all the sex, bo e Teresa. She will pick you up and drop This is the poor person's Bateau you off at your hotel. Mouche. It costs about $0.30 and the and flash of money. Apartm nt Historic Rio Tour views are great, particularly returning rates and taxi fares triple a d Run by art historian Professor Carlos to Rio around sunset. Over at NiterOi Roquette (322-4872), who speaks you can walk around a bit to see Rio's quadruple and some thieves English and French as well as Portupoor relation or catch a local bus to guese, these tours bring old Rio to life. Niteroi's beaches. Leaving from Praca keep to the spirit of the seas • n Itineraries include a night at the Teatro 15 de Novembro (in Centro), the ferry Municipal, colonial Rio, baroque Rio, by robbing in costume. goes every 20 minutes and is always imperial Rio and a walking tour of the full of commuters. Buses to Praca 15 Centro. Professor Roquette really knows de Novembro include: from Flamengo, his Rio, and if you have an obscure question, I'm sure he would No. 119; from Copacabana, No 119, 413, 415, 154, 455 or 474; welcome it. and from Ipanema, No 474 or 154. Favela Tour Carnaval Ifyou want to visit afavela you'd be crazy Carnaval is a pagan holiday originating to do it on your own. Since large amounts of perhaps as Roman bacchanalia celebrating cocaine are trafficked through them each week, Saturn or in the ancient Egyptian festival there are lots of young, heavily-armed of Isis. Carnaval was a wild party during characters around. Don't get the idea though, the Middle Ages until tamed in Europe by that favelas are complete slums. The ones Christianity, but the sober Church of the I've seen reminded me more of some poor nquisition could not squelch Carnaval in country village. But unless you go with a the Portuguese colony, where it came to local, there will be a lot of suspicious eyes on acquire African rhythms and Indian you. The safest alternative is to take one of the costumes. favela tours that now operate in Rio. Marcelo People speculate that the word Armstrong (322-2727, mobile 989-0074) is Carnaval derives from came-vale, meaning the pioneer of favela tourism. He takes 'goodbye meat'. The reasoning goes individuals and small groups to visit Rocinha, something like this: for the 40 days of the largest favela in Rio, and Vila Canoas Lent, nominally Catholic Brazilians give near Sao Conrado. The tour takes in a school, up liver or flank steaks. To compensate for medical center and private houses, and you the big sacrifices ahead, they rack up sins come away with a good idea how a favela in a delirious carnal blow-out in honor of

Rio Is Carnaval

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33


ing Momo, the king of Carnaval. Carnaval is celebrated everywhere in Brazil and each region has a particular way of celebrating. In Bahia. Carnaval is celebrated in the streets under the blasting loudspeakers of the trio eletrico trucks; in Recife and Olinda merry-makers dance thefrevo. These are more authentic Carnavals than Rio's glitzy celebration, which has become the big draw for the tourism industry. More than anywhere else in Brazil, Carnaval in Rio is a spectator event, but it's a fantastic spectacle nonetheless. Every year wealthy and spaced-out foreigners descend on Rio en masse, get drunk, get high, bag some sunrays and exchange exotic diseases. Everyone gets a bit unglued at this time of year and there are lots of car accidents and murders. Some of the leaner and meaner Cariocas can get a little ugly with all the sex, booze and flash of money. Apartment rates and taxi fares triple and quadruple and some thieves keep to the spirit ofthe season by robbing in costume. The excitement of Carnaval builds all year and the preLenten revelry begins well before the official dates ofCarnaval. A month before Carnaval starts, rehearsals at the escolas de samba (samba clubs) are open to visitors on Saturday. The rehearsals are usually in the favelas. They're fun to watch, but, for your safety, go with a Carioca. Tourist Carnaval shows are held all year round at Scala, Plataforma I and up top at PAo de Acncar. The escolas de samba are actually predated by the bandas (nonprofessional equivalents of the escolas de samba), which are now returning to the Carnaval scene as part ofthe movement to return Rio's Carnaval to the streets. Last year there was a Banda de Ipanema, a Banda do Leblon, a Banda da Boca Maldita and a Banda Carmen Miranda, among others. The bandas are great fun, a good place to loosen up your hip joints for samba, and there are excellent photo opportunities; transvestites always keep the festivities entertaining. Riotur has information on the scheduled bandas, or you could just show up in Ipanema (most of them are in Ipanema), at Praca General 0s6rio or Praca Paz around 5 pm or so, a couple of weekends before official Carnaval. Other street festivities are held in Centro on Avenida Rio Branco. Riotur has all the information in a special Carnaval guide. Carnaval Balls Carnaval balls are surreal and erotic events. In one ball at Scala we saw a woman (transsexual?) bare her breasts and offer passers-by a suck while rickety old ladies were bopping away in skimpy lingerie. A young and geeky rich guy was dancing on tables with prostitutes past their prime, young models and lithe young nymphets, all in various stages of undress. Breasts were painted, stickered with adhesive tattoos, covered with fishnet brassieres or left bare. Bottoms were spandexed, G-stringed or mini-skirted. More action took place on the stages. One stage had a samba band, the other was crushed with young women. They didn't dance, but ground their hips and licked their lips to the incessant, hypnotic music and the epileptic flashing of the floor lights. Throngs of sweaty photographers and video crews mashed up to the stage. Everyone played up for the camera, vying for space and the attention of the photographers. The Vegas headdresses, the pasty-faced bouncers and the rich men in private boxes overlooking the dance floor lent a Mafioso feel to the place. Carnaval is the holiday of the poor. Not that you could tell from the price of the tickets to the balls. Some ofthem cost more than the minimum monthly wage. There are snooty affairs like the ones at the Copacabana Palace (255-7070, $80), Hotel InterContinental (322-2200, $150) or the new venue in Barra, the Metropolitan (385-0515, $90 plus a stiffcab fare). Raunchier

parties are held in Leblon at Scala (239-4448, $40), Canecao (295-3055, $40) in Botafogo and Help disco in Copacabana, ($20). Tickets go on sale about two weeks before Carnaval starts and the balls are held nightly for the week preceding Carnaval and through Carnaval. Buy a copy ofthe Veja magazine with the Veja Rio insert. It has details of all the balls and bandas. There are three rules of thumb: beautiful, flirtatious and apparently unescorted women are either escorted by huge, jealous cachacacrazed men wielding machetes, or else they are really men dressed up as women; everything costs several times more within the club than outside; and, finally, don't bring more money than you're willing to lose—the club bouncers are big, but not that effective. Street Carnaval What do Cartocas do ,in the afternoon and early evening during Carnaval? They dance in the streets behind bandas (marching bands with brass and percussion instruments), which pump out the banda theme song and other Carnaval marching favorites while they move along. To join in the fun, all you need to do is jump in when you see the banda pass. They are one of the most traditional aspects of Carnaval in Rio. There are many bandas and including Banda de Ipanema, one of our favorites. This is a traditional banda that parades two Saturdays before Carnaval from Praca General Osorio in Ipanema. It's full of drag queens and party animals. It starts around 5 pm and goes until around 9 pm. The banda also parades again on Carnaval Saturday. Banda Carmen Miranda, with its famous gay icon, is also lot of fun, not only for gays but everyone. It parades through Ipanema around 4 pm on the Sunday before Carnaval. There are lots of bandas in Copacabana before and during Carnaval too. The street parades in Avenida Rio Branco in the Centro and Boulevard 28 de Setembro in Vila Isabel, both on Carnaval Saturday, are really worth checking out, but you won't see many other tourists there. Just carry a few dollars in your pocket for beers and a snack, and you'll have nothing to worry about. The Sambodromo Parades In the Samb6dromo, a tiered street designed for samba parades, the Brazilians harness sweat, noise and confusion and turn it into art. The 16 top-level samba schools prepare all year for an hour of glory in the samb6dromo. The best escola is chosen by a hand-picked set of judges on the basis of many components including percussion, the samba enredo (theme song), harmony between percussion, song and dance, choreography, costume, storyline, floats and decorations and others. The championship is hotly contested; the winner becomes the pride of Rio and Brazil. The parades begin with moderate mayhem, then work themselves up to a higher plane of frenzy. The announcers introduce the escola, the group's colors and the number of wings. Far away the tone voice of the puxador starts the samba. Thousands more voices join him, and then the drummers kick in, 600 to 800 per school. The booming drums drive the parade. This samba enredo is the loudest music you're ever likely to hear in your life. The samba tapes flood the airwaves for weeks prior to the beginning of Carnaval. From afar the parade looks alive. It's a throbbing beast slowly coming closer—a pulsing, Liberace-glittered, Japanese-movie-monster slimemould threatening to engulf all of Rio in samba and vibrant, vibrating mu/alas. The parades begin with a special opening wing or abrealas, which always displays the name ofthe school and the theme of the escola. The whole shebang has some unifying message, some social commentary, economic criticism or political message, but it's usually lost in the glitter. The abrealas is then BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000


followed by the commisseio de frente, who greet the crowds. The escola thus honors its elderly men for work done over the years. Next follow the main wings of the escola, the big allegorical floats, the children's wing, the drummers, the celebrities and the bell-shaped Baianas twirling in their elegant hoop skirts. The Baianas honor the history of the parade itself, which was brought to Rio from Salvador da Bahia in 1877. The mestresala (dance master) and porta-bandeira (standard bearer) waltz and whirl. Celebrities, dancers and tambourine players strut their stuff. The costumes are fabulously lavish: 1.5-meter-tall feathered headdresses, flowing sequin capes and rhinestonestudded G-strings. The floats gush neo-baroque silver foil and gold tinsel. Sparkling models sway to the samba, dancing in their private Carnavals. All the while the puxador leads in song, repeating the samba enredo for the duration of the parade. Over an hour after it began, the escola makes it past the arch and the judges' stand. There is a few minutes' pause. Globo and Manchete TV cranes stop bobbing up and down over the Pepsi caps and bibs of the foreign-press corps. Now, garbage trucks parade down the runway clearing the way for the next escola. Sanitation workers in orange jump suits shimmy, dance and sweep, gracefully catching rubbish thrown from the stands and then taking their bows. It's their Carnaval too. The parade continues on through the night and into the morning, eight more samba schools parade the following day, and the week after, the top eight schools parade once more in the parade of champions. Getting tickets at the legitimate prices can be tough. Many tickets are sold 10 days in advance of the event; check with Riotur on where you can get them, as the outlet varies from year to year. People queue up for hours and travel agents and scalpers snap up the best seats. Riotur reserves seats in private boxes for tourists for $200. If you do happen to buy a ticket from a scalper (don't worry about finding them—they'll find you), make sure you get both the plastic ticket with the magnetic strip and the ticket showing the seat num'oer. Different days have different colored tickets, so check the date as well. Don't fret if you don't get a ticket. It's possible to see the show without paying an arm and a leg. The parades last eight to 10 hours each and no one can or wants to sit through them that long. Unless you're an aficionado of an escola that starts early, don't show up at the sambodromo until midnight, three or four hours into the show. Then you can get tickets at the grandstand for about $10. And if you can't make it during Carnaval, there's always the cheaper (but less exciting) parade of champions the following week. If you can avoid it, don't take the bus to or from the sambodromo; it's safer to take the metro, which is open 24 hours a day during Carnaval. It's also fun to check out the paraders in their costumes on the train. By the way, there's nothing to stop you taking part in the parade. Most samba schools are happy to have foreigners join one of the alas (wings). All you need is between $200 and $300 for your costume and you're in. It helps to arrive in Rio a week or two in advance to get this organized. Ask at the hotel how to go about it. It usually takes just a few phone calls. Places to Stay Rio has a star system. Hotels are ranked from one star for the cheapest to five for the most luxurious. Rio has 12 five-star hotels to choose from, 22 four-star hotels, 40 three-star hotels, I( P411

BRAZZ1L - NOVEMBER 2000

16 two-star hotels, three one-star hotels, 23 aparthotels, 3 motels and 47 hotels unclassified by Embratur (our specialty), but still regulated. So what do these stars mean? Well, a five-star hotel has a pool or two, at least two very good restaurants, a nightclub and bar, gym, sauna and a beauty salon. A four-star hotel has a good restaurant, a sauna and a bar. A three-star hotel may have everything a four-star hotel has, but' there's something that downgrades it; the furnishings may be a bit beat-up, cheaper, or a bit sparser. There's a big gap between three-stars and twostars. A two-star hotel is usually clean and comfortable, but that's about all. By the way, all hotels with a star rating have aircon in the rooms, though some of the older models sound like you're in a B-52 bomber! All rated hotels also have a small frigobar (refrigerator) in the rooms; sometimes empty or full of nibbles costing triple what they would in the nearby supermarket. Bathrooms have bidets, a sign of the continental influence. Below one and two-stars there are still plenty of decent places to stay if you're traveling on a tight .. budget and need a safe place to sleep. Aircon is usually optional (if available), but mostly the rooms have fans. Hotels which are not regulated by Embratur may try to slip in additional charges and other assorted petty crimes against the tourist. Threaten to call Sunab price regulation if this happens, discuss a price before accepting a room and also ask if a 10% service charge is included. Breakfast is usually included in the room rate. It ranges from sumptuous buffets at the top-end to coffee and a bread roll at the bottom. In between there should be fresh juice, good coffee, fresh rolls with a slice of ham and cheese and a couple of pieces of fruit. Reservations are a good idea in Rio, especially ifyou plan to stay in amid-range or top-end hotel. Aside from the fact that a reservation ensures you a room, you can save up to 30% on the room rate just by booking in advance. If you want to make sure you have an ocean view, request it when you make your reservation. It will cost around 20% more than other rooms. At Carnaval time hotel prices go up and everyone gives dire warnings of there being no places to stay. It's not a good time to arrive without a reservation, even the bottom-end places get full. Read the book for a list of hotels Places to Eat As in most of Brazil, restaurants in Rio are abundant and cheap. The plates at the many lanchonetes are big enough to feed two and the price is only $3 to $4. For something lighter, and probably healthier, you can eat at a suco bar. Most have sandwiches and fruit salads. Make a habit of asking for an embalagem (doggie bag) when you don't finish your food. Wrap it and hand it to a street person. For a list of restaurants read the book. Excerpts from Brazil - A Travel Survival Kit 3rd edition, by Andrew Draffen, Chris McAsey, Leonardo Pinheiro,and Robyn Jones. For more information call Lonely Planet: (800) 275-8555. Copyright 1996 Lonely Planet Publications. Used by permission.

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Pssst! Eleven Things About Rio You Wouldn't Know from Watching the Three Caballeros, Black Orpheus, and Central Station LARRY TRITTEN

SWEETS Just as the beaches and avenues of Rio display legions of beautiful women with skin the color of honey, leather, chocolate, tea, and coffee, so do the confectionaries entice the eye and palate with gorgeous parti-colored pastries and a panoply of vivid pastel ice creams and sorbets in tropical flavors whose names take the imagination to dance—pitanga, tamarindo, jabuticabalrutti di bosco, not to mention the blackberry with white chocolate. Among these the premier establishment is clearly the Confeitaria Colombo in downtown Rio. It was founded in 1894 and the style is neo-French with jacaranda wood. Downstairs it is a huge bakery and upstairs, beneath a vast stained glass ceiling of green, gold, and blue a sumptuous lunch and dinner buffet of Portuguese delicacies is served in the gallery. There must have been a place just like this in downtown Oz. But if a smaller, quieter, and more intimate sweet shop is what you're in the mood for, try the Coslcaffe (Paes, Doces, Panini & Ristorante) in Ipanema. GREEN COCONUTS One of the first things I noticed on the beach at Ipanema was that every concession stand was festooned with dozens of what looked to me like green gourds. These were green coconuts, a ubiquitous and hugely popular potable. Everywhere one looks there are people sipping their milk through long straws—on the beaches, at sidewalk cafés, at upscale buffets in expensive hotels. I always thought that coconuts are brown. In any cases, I passed on the ritual and as a result wonder now what I missed and have recurring dreams of green coconuts, the missed opportunity. ANTARCTICA GUARANA But I did try another popular Brazilian beverage, Antarctica guarand, a native soft drink. The Coca Cola people tried to buy the company but it would not sell and continues to hold its own against the monolithic presence of Coke and Pepsi. Its flavor is not unlike that of ginger ale but with an undertaste of what the samba might taste like if it were gustatory. NEWSSTANDS On my first day in Rio, I wondered if I would be able to easily find a newsstand. An aficionado of magazines, I anticipated a huge array of same, a colorful and exotic spectrum of pictures and logos. Wondering if I could find a newsstand would be, I soon discovered, like wondering if I would find cacti in Arizona. In downtown Rio it seemed as if there was a newsstand on every block, scores of them and I remember finding two on one block, seeing as many as four at a glance in one place, some of them cave-like kiosks exhibiting a variety of gaudy international magazine covers, others little walk-in 36

BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000


shops. And they also sell Brazilian lottery tickets and scratchers. Spend a couple of reais (one dollar) and try your luck with a Super Premiada or Dinheiro Já. You just might be the one to win enough reais to corner the green coconut market. In any case, the print culture is alive and well in the newsstands of Rio. THE PORTUGUESE READING ROOM

If the newsstands of Rio are a contemporary manifestation of the health of the print culture, its heritage is dramatically represented by the Real Academia de Leitura (the Portuguese Reading Room) located in the center ofthe city in a Portuguese style building. Stepping inside is like entering a cross between a huge antiquarian bookstore and Merlin's library. 350,000 tomes are shelved on successive tiers all around, many of them too large and heavy to be easily lifted, their gold-stamped spines alluring to the eye—books from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Directly inside the doorway on either side two computer screens glow brightly, seeming gauchely anachronistic in this solemn sanctum that dates back to 1837. Barnes & Noble.com, eat your heart out. CARMEN MIRANDA

Ever since Carmen Miranda left Brazil to become a major star on Broadway and in Hollywood movies, Brazilians have had mixed feelings about her, which must explain why the Carmen Miranda Museum is in an isolated location in a tiny concrete building reminiscent of the fuhrerbunker. In fact, I enjoyed this museum much more than the huge Museum of Modern Art with its stark paintings and cryptic abstract objects, which seemed to me too clinical to reflect the humor, vitality, and color of Rio. There are a couple of lackadaisical attendants and not many patrons, but the exhibits, which include some of Carmen' s costumes and jewelry, do reflect the spirit of the Rio of legend—the samba, Copacabana, tropical passion. And if you want to be knocked for a loop by Carmen at her gaudiest, rent The Gang's All Here and feast your eyes on the three-strip Technicolor extravagance of the musical numbers "The Woman in the Tutti Frutti Hat" and the "Banana Ballet." MONUMENTO AOS PRACINHAS

Another small, relatively obscure museum is Monumento aos Pracinhas, which is both museum and monument and a testimonial to a largely unknown part of Brazilian history, the country's role in World War II. Brazil is one of two Latin American countries (Mexico being the other) that sent forces to fight in the war. Brazil's 25,000-man expeditionary force saw combat in the Italian campaign, which is commemorated in the exhibits of weapons, medals, documents, photographs and uniforms. Two columns flank the tomb of the unknown soldier and on the first Sunday of each month Brazil's armed forces stage a colorful changing of the guard here. BUSES

My guidebook in China said that the most dangerous activity in China is crossing the street. But surely downtown Rio is a contender in the dangerous traffic category. Stand on a street in downtown Rio in the middle of the day and at any given moment there will be ten or fifteen buses passing by on the same block, all of them hurtling past as if they were on the track at the Indy. Apparently the reason for so many buses is that there are so few bicycles, which account for a large percentage of the traffic in China. BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000

PARROTS

My earliest inemory of something Brazilian is of Jose Carioca, the ant1ropomorphic boulevardier parrot in Disney's The Three Caba leros. To my young mind he was enchanting. But my attitude about parrots changed when I lived with a couple of them in the eighties and found them to be noisy prima donnas. I refer you to what John Huston says about the parrot in his autobiography. Huston loved animals of every kind but made an exception for the parrot. There are birds and animals on Brazilian curfency, a parrot on the 10 real note. There are, of course, parrots everywhere one looks in the gift shops. My advice: stick with the equally high-profile toucans. SPIDERS AND BUTTERFLIES

In the tropical Tijuca forest, a former coffee plantation in the heart of town, I saw spiders the size of baseball mitts. All right, this is hyperbole, but hyperbole is kosher when the subject is spiders. In Annie Hall when a terrified Annie calls Alvy over to her apartment to kill a spider, Woody Allen (A Ivy) goes into the bathroom to check it out, comes back, and says, "There's spider the size of a Buick in your bathroom." My guide told a story about being confronted by such a spider while driving hit car and bolting from the car to abandon it in heavy traffic. As for the butterflies, the forest seemed to be full of huge blue ones, their color virtually luminous. We encountered one of them, injured, on the paved road and our guide in the forest stopped the jeep to run to its assistance and stop traffic just as if it had been a bird or kitten. The lepidoptera is being well cared for in Rio. CACHACA

I first encountered the word cachaca in John Updike's novel Brazil. It sounds like a word that belongs in one of Carmen Miranda's songs. Cachaca (which means burning water) is a lethal liquor made liquids distilled from sugar cane. It has a 70-80 pe cent alcohol content and is very cheap, which is why it has a ways been popular among Brazil's poorer people, although lately it has been acquiring a vogue among upscale drinkers in North America. Cachaca is also the soul of the caipirinha, razil's national drink. If neither green coconuts or Guarana Antarctica are the potable of your choice, try one of these, pe haps as an addendum to your feijoada (the national dish). Cachaca-boom! The Places: 1

Confeitaria Colombo - Rua Goncalves Dias, 32 Cosicaffe - Rua Garcia D'Avila, 134 Loja D The Portuguese Reading Room - Rua Luis de CamOes, 30 Carmen Miranda Museum. - Av. Rui Barbosa, 560, Flamengo Monumento aos Pracinhas - Parque Brigadeiro Eduardo Gomes, Flamengo Floresta da Tijuca - Estrada da Cascatinha, 850

Veteran scr4ptor horribilis (freelance writer) Larry Tritten has published so e 700 pieces in such publications as The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Travel & Leisure, Playboy, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Spy, merican Way, Harper's, National Lampoon, ad infin tum. You can reach him at Itritten@core.com 37


Pnitition Town Blues

We meet the Rio Grande do Norte's the guy in front of me gets off the woman's volleyball team at Fortaleza bus bus, I put his seat into the upright station. They are quite rude about my position, wiggle my legs to restore book and my bright yellow rucksack until the circulation and try to get some they realize that I speak Portuguese. Then sleep. The guy in the seat opposite they are full of questions about us—where me begins to eat potato chips with a are we going, where have we been, what loud sucking sound like a baby do we think of Brazil. We sit under the chewing on a teat. I find a bottle of harsh glare of the bus station lights, tired warm water and pour some over and a little drunk clutching a bag of cake. myself, it brings no release. We The volleyball team is all high spirits and arrive at Natal. The sky is pink with tans after winning some tournament. the first rays of the day. We have the back seat on the bus. It is I stagger into the early morning As we roll towards the coast it hot and claustrophobic. The guy in front light muttering profanities. The seems that Natal has been built of me pushes his seat right back pinning volleyball team, all tanned legs and me in my seat—I stick my knee in his back crease-free faces, are jabbering solely from the outskirts of other and he begins to snore soundly. I eat some away to Saskia about hotels and towns, it is the ultimate suburban cake and try to move my legs a little whilst restaurants. I hate them for their Saskia goes to sleep with the water bottle good looks and chirpiness—espenightmare.... The walk to the fort hidden somewhere on her person. The cially so early in the day. They put takes us through deserted streets volleyball team is sitting at the front of the us on a bus going downtown. People bus sipping cold cokes. are just going to work; slowly the devoid of all signs of life. We are I shove my knee harder into the seat in town is waking up. I close my eyes getting used to the isolation now. front of me and the guy begins to snore and wish that I were anywhere else. louder. I begin to sweat, it seems that there Saskia somehow navigates us to PHILIP BLAZDELL is no air conditioning. The sweat pours off our hotel, it is 7.30 am on a Friday me. I take my shirt off, the material of the morning. The sun, when I have my seat covers makes my skin itch. I feel eyes open, is clear and bright—I claustrophobic. hate that too. The streets are empty and there isn't even an Sometime before sunrise, when the sky is still inky black empty beer can to kick around. Nothing, except us moves on 38

BRAZIIL - NOVEMBER 2000


the street; even the busses seem to creep by. The owner of our hotel is all smiles and pleasantries. I dig deep inside myself and rummage around my subconscious for some Portuguese, surprisingly it comes. Saskia looks at me astonished. The owner, who is all pre-Raphaelite curls and smiles, tells us that, smile smile, our room, smile smile, is not ready yet, but, smile smile, if we are tired we can crash in another room for a few hours, smile smile. I want to kiss her but she insists we have breakfast first. Strong coffee, fruit juice, cake and some sweaty cheese on freshly baked bread—I begin to feel a little human again. I crawl to our room, and pour myself into the shower, which is a simple tap with some frightening looking wiring attached.! try to ignore the fact lam probably about to be electrocuted and scrub the dirt from my skin. I fall, quite literarily into bed. Two kids outside are singing loudly, it's a horrible racket—far too animated for 8 am on a Friday morning. By noon we are awake and heading back to the streets,! still have a stale taste in my mouth and a headache. The owner of the hotel, smile smile, gives us a new room, smile smile, and a list of things to do in Natal. She tells us that Praia do Forte is dangerous and we should avoid it. We thank her and head to Lojas Americanas to buy some film for the camera. It is several years out of date. It is the most modern thing in the shop. We take a bus and after a few minutes find ourselves at Praia do Forte. This always happens to us. The favelas slope down to the sea. Nothing moves except us. The wind blows the sand into drifts on the pavement, the bus driver stands next to his bus perspiring heavily, even the sea seems sedated as it makes a half-hearted attempt at some white horses. We walk with our faces in the sun, deserted beach to our left,favelas to our right. We walk. We stop to take some pictures, an old man sits in a tiled beach front bar nursing a beer. The bar is all cracked white tiles and greasy angular surfaces—it looks like it belongs in a Victorian hospital. The old man's eyes follow us as we stride along the beach front, not a soul apart from us is moving. After 4 km we are at Praia dos Artistas. The guidebook describes it as an interesting place. There is nothing there, everything is boarded up and faded. It is like a Bank Holiday in the UK. A mournful waiter tries to tempt us to some overpriced lobster, he doesn't sound very convincing and knows it. Once we stride past he turns his stare to the sea, which seems faultlessly welded to the sky. We walk more in the blazing sun. There is nothing moving on the coast road except us. The endless white sand deserted beaches begin to burn my eyes whilst the sun burns my face. We walk another 5 km, my thighs chap. They begin to bleed. The sky is liquid mercury and the blacktop of the highway stretches beyond the horizon. We could be on a road to anywhere. Tranquility lays like a blanket over us. We reach a gas station that sells cold drinks. We buy three bottles of fruit cocktail and the round-faced cashier follows us to the door. She stands blinking in the sunlight stretching her limbs like she has just woken from a long coma—I expect to see cobwebs in her hair—she looks as surprised as us to find herself in a gas station miles from anywhere. We walk, mile after mile of deserted beaches. We talk about how clean Natal is compared to Fortaleza. We discuss the lack of graffiti and how few churches there are in Natal. More kilometers pass. We decide that logically speaking it must therefore be the religious people of Fortaleza who are BFtAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000

responsible for a 1 the graffiti. This makes sense to us on the deserted road. I to sing some Evita—the notes hang dead in the air. We talk abo Bruce Chatwin, who once said that if man walks far enough he doesn't need a God. We wonder if this was a typo and what he actually said was that if man walks far enough he doesn t need a dog. This seems more logical as we bake under the a ernoon's sun. I start to fant size about a brewery. A few kilometers later one appears.! , at first, skeptical, I kick it, I prod it and walk round it examin ng every brick. I convince myself that it is indeed real. Typ cally, it's closed. We stand on the side of the road gently burning, a taxi cruises us three o four times. We pretend to be interested in the wire fence behin us. Another taxi pulls up, it's battered and dented and look like it might fall apart at any second. 'Were are yo going?' 'We don't ow.' 'Let me tak you there, only 2 reais (one dollar) per person.' How could e refuse such charm? Claudio is man of passion and integrity. He wants compulsory En lish lessons for all taxi drivers though he himself speaks ot a word, he wants all tourist taxis to be registered and th quality of service to be monitored; his car is held together by bits of string and chewing gum. He drops us t a bar in Porto Negre. It's a sad little beach town, no more t an a strip of sunshades on the beach, some places to eat and some pousadas. A 50-meter high sand dune, fenced off less yone should try to have some fun and climb it, looms over th far end of town. It feels like a border town. Claudio arrange to pick us up in ninety minutes, which is about the time e think we can have fun here. We sit in a bar, cold beer, crunchy prawn soup. The androgynous o ner holds court with an accordion in the far corner. Beer nev r tasted so good. Claudio arrives early for us, but tells us to ta e our time, like everyone we meet here he is good natured, fr endly and in no hurry. We arrive b ck at the brewery. It looks like the Lass In Manchester, all leaming copper pipes and stainless steel vats. At 5 pm on a iday night it's empty and we are the only customers. The taff fights to serve us, turns on some music and brings us a enu. They look happy to have something to do and bring us o special beers. After several hours a redfaced man with cellular phone glued to his ear wanders in. He sits and plays w 'th his beer. It is obvious that he hasn't got anywhere better to be. We hitch bask to the center of Natal. It is totally deserted, nothing is open. group of skate boarders rush out of the night and shoot dow a side alley. When they are gone the city breathes a sigh sfrelief. It reminds me of all the reasons I left small town Eng and behind and why I can never go back. Our hotel h s a restaurant, the room is dark with heavy stained wood, b dly hung prints of French scenes and some atrocious tapest 'es. In a side room is a noisy card school where a group of purp e-rinsed pensioners are sitting over a poker game and flick g ash over the green baize. The waiter, ho looks terribly ill, brings us over a menu. We order soup and salad, not because we are hungry, just because it is too early to sleep. There is no soup; there is not salad, the waiter thinks that perhaps he might be able to find us some bread left over from breakfast. We leave him to his illness 39


and return once more to the streets. The streets are as the grave and we return defeated to our room. The beds are hard and the sheets remind me of an institution. I am kept awake all night by a slow tapping sound. I wonder if the guy next door is indulging in a little late night self crucifixion to pass the time amongst the religious tapestries. The next day I wake up covered in mosquito bites, Saskia is looking radiant and ready to hit the streets again. She has memorized the guidebook and we are soon on the winding coast road to Porto Negre. This time we take a bus instead of inflicting further damage on our feet. As we roll towards the coast it seems that Natal has been built solely from the outskirts of other towns, it is the ultimate suburban nightmare. A fat woman falls onto my lap as we take a corner at speed, we pass some shopping centers, some dusty football pitches—urban sprawl under an unforgiving sky. The guidebooks tout Natal as one of the beach capitals of the Northeast. After an hour we arrive at a small square in the middle of nowhere. The bus terminates here. There is a long low white building, which may or may not be a church, and some crinkle faced toothless women are milling around purposefully. We ask the conductor how to get to Pirangi and he speaks in a low whisper. It is like he is imparting terrible religious truths to us or perhaps he is ashamed to admit that this scrub of land actually has a name. He organizes us a free ride (something which happened time and time again in Natal) for us with a passing bus, which twists and turns down narrow cobbled streets. I tell Saskia it reminds me of Sicily and she reminds me that I wasn't there with her. The bus drops us, mysteriously; at a furniture stall set out on the side of the road and within a few minutes a little white bus. The ride to Pirangi is sheer poetry. Off the main highway we bump along dusty roads, mud and red brick houses cuddle close to the road and we continually stop to let weary donkeys, loaded with sacks of corn, pass. In one town there is a market and as the bus arrives it blows up clouds of dust. The stallholders must spend hours each day wiping the dust from their fruit. Each stall has bananas, pineapples and some graviolas. Hung on hooks as they are they look like a sculpture in fruit of the Brazilian flag. When we arrive at Pirangi we walk around the world's

largest caju tree. It has a circumference of some 500 m and is still growing. I ask the bored looking guide, who has attached himself to us, if he thinks that the tree is just trying to go somewhere a little more lively. He is most definitely not impressed. Once our pilgrimage is over we sit in a bar and watch a tourist boat bob along the coast. The waiter tries to sell us a trip but when we ask him if it is a worthwhile trip he looks hesitant and tells us that the special of the day is lobster, and that is definitely very good. Later that night we are back in our hotel. I am enthusing about caju trees and the bus trip; Saskia is reading the guidebook. She is reading aloud about Praia dos Artistas and its 'vibrant nightlife'. She tells me that, according to the guidebook, it can get a little sleazy at night. She doesn't know this word and after I explain it she declares that we are going to go downtown and watch the action unfold. The strip is coming alive a little and a small market is beginning to set itself up, a few restaurants have waiters out on the street trying to entice customers in. They all look like they have just found out that their wife's have just left them and taken the fridge full of beer as well. One in particular looks like someone has just shot his dog. Business, they assure me, is not good, and they spend the night making lewd comments to any girls unfortunate to fall into their sphere of existence. The craft market is a little better and is a jumble of 70 stalls and shops selling touristy things—like hammocks, ceramic caju (of which I buy a significant number), roasted caju nuts and cheap T-shirts. Again business is not good and the owner of one cashew nut stall chases us around with a kilo bag of nuts pleading with us to try them. People seem both genuinely surprised and happy when we buy things. They don't, however, bargain. We stop at a juice stand whose sign proclaims 50 different juices. lam keen to try fig juice as Jam a new convert to the fruit and want now to experience it in all forms. Saskia orders some exotic fruit neither of us has heard of. Unfortunately, none of these are available and the owner looks surprised we even imagined they would be. What he does eventually serve us with are sublime and we sit happily on the seat front waiting for some sleaze to happen. Saskia is happy that she has learnt a new word. We walk back to the pizza restaurant and browse the menu. I order a beer, being English it is a cultural reflex and I can no more sit in a bar on the beach eating pizza without beer than I can fly, the waitress chews her lip and looks at me with dark eyes. I repeat my order thinking that she hasn't understood. I take one long swallow of beer and suddenly police surrounds us. Two police beach buggies skid to a halt and two fresh faced recruits come running over. They have their hands on their hip holsters. The waitress rushes over to intercept them before they reach our table and a frantic conversation takes places. The older officer is pointing a short stubby finger at us and the two young recruits look ready for trouble. Saskia leans across the table and asks me accusingly if I have been here before. She knows that I am no stranger to this kind of thing. After some tense moments the police leave, but not before throwing us a few more hard looks. The waitress rushes over and whips my beer from the table. She is all blushes and apologies. She tells us that BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000


like vintage champagne when it arrives. The pizza is also stunning. Back at the hotel, which is now closed and boarded up, we wake the owner up to claim our bags. She insists on us having a shower and unlocks one of the many empty rooms. Time seems to have stopped for her and the courtyard is littered with bt-eakfast trays, newspapers and children's toys. When we come to leave she seems sad and presses presents into out hands. 'Come back one day,' she tells us, 'come back when there are more people here and the place is more alive'. As we walk out onto the street we think perhaps we wi 1, but realistically we know that there are many more places we want to see more. A bus trails us along the dark empty streets. The driver offers us a free ride to the bus station and puts us down outside the concrete terminal. It is this last unsolicited act of kindness that may one day bring me back to Natal, the Northeast's beach capital. tomorrow the state elections will take place and that Brazil, from 6 pm onwards, must be dry. She looks at her watch, it is 6.01 pm. She is sorry but there is nothing she can do and so instead she serves us with a prince amongst pizzas. As we wander back to the hotel we see the bars full of men looking wistfully at coconuts and bottles of coke. They seem strangely lost without beer. We walked home whistling the prohibition town blues. The next day we walk to the Dutch fort. Saskia is insistent that no matter where we are in the world we track down her heritage. Even for a Sunday the beaches are deserted and hardly anyone moves. The walk to the fort takes us through deserted streets devoid of all signs of life. We are getting used to the isolation now. The fort, which juts impressively into the bay, is closed. I amuse myself climbing the walls whilst Saskia sits in the sun and looks on impassively. We decide to take a bus to the far end of the coast—just to see what's there. We take a bus to the edge of town and sit down by the side of the road to wait for the coastal bus. There is a small bar there, which is not serving beer. The owner watches the Olympics on a flickering TV and looks lost. We wait under a sky that is the color of cobalt. An old man, with rheumy eyes joins us. He sits calmly under the baking sky. Time passes.! swap places with Saskia to tan my other leg. The old man sighs. Nothing moves on the road. The bar owner makes himself a sandwich and squeezes thick yellow mustard over it. He returns to the shade to watch the sport. Time passes. The old man closes his eyes, I wonder in all honesty if he has come here to die. The sun has moved a few more degrees across the sky. My feet are beginning to look tanned. Time passes. The old man speaks to us in a slow resigned voice. He seems to have no destination and is in no hurry to get there. Like us he is content to sit under a scorching sky and chew the fat. We talk politics, sport and religion and still nothing moves on the road. The northeast beach capital is shyer then! imagined. Saskia scans the heat haze for any signs of sleaze occurring on this blistering election day. After we have been under the cruel sun for three hours we resign ourselves to the fact that the bus is never going to arrive and head off in search of a restaurant. At the beach all the restaurants are closed and at the only one open we wait a lifetime for some mineral water. It tastes BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000

The author is a regular contributor to numerous travel magazines. He has traveled widely in Brazil and can often be found trying to go from A to B in the most difficult manner imaginable whilst using someone else's money. His only regret is that the coach companies don't offer frequent flyer miles. Articles by the author ranging from Tibet to China to Africa can be found at www.bootsnall.com . He can be contacted at philip@dem.ufc.bri and promises, if he is not away falling of the edge of the map somewhere, to write back.

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I tried to find the little house I had lived in during my Peace Corps days. The rural road outside Penedo had changed so much during my twenty-five year absence that I hardly knew where I was. I had trouble recognizing my own house, because of the remodeling changes made by its current occupant. I became sure that I had found my old home only when I saw one constant in its furnishings, namely, the hammock on the varanda. The hammock is a fitting symbol of tropical lassitude. The first time I climbed into one, at that moment, I began going native. The hammock is indeed native. The aboriginal Indians of Brazil used to sleep in hammocks. The invading Europeans brought their beds with them, but, when they discovered that the organic stuffing of the mattresses was susceptible to infestation by local vermin, the Europeans imitated the Indians and took to sleeping in hammocks. The hammock is very space-efficient. For the poor of the Nordeste (the northeast region of Brazil), who live in one room, an immobile bed would take up too much of the interior living space. Lifting one end ofthe hammock from its hook and hanging it on the other hook on the back wall opens up the bedroom to use as parlor and dining room. Sleep may be put aside, making way for wakefulness. We commonly associate death with sleep, the coffin with the bed. In the Nordeste, a deceased whose family is too destitute to buy a wood coffin is carried to his grave in the hammock he had slept away his life in. So, the last use of the hammock; but there is a lifetime of good napping and sleeping to be enjoyed first. Lying comfortably in a hammock takes a little art, however. You have to lie on a diagonal, if you don't want to wake up from nap or sleep with a terrible back-ache. My Peace Corps colleague Mark used to sleep in his 42

hammock, but I myself could not get used to an entire night in one. I like to sleep on my stomach or on my side; the hammock was always bending me the wrong way. Before I took up residence in my house on my sitio (little country estate), I bought a bed. Aware of the problem of insect infestation, I had a piece of inert foam cut into mattress size; Helena, my sweetheart, sewed a cover for it. And so I slept away my nights according to European and American tradition. I was native Brazilian during the daytime. Every day after lunch, I used to take a book and resort to my hammock on the varanda of my house. The book proved an alien intrusion of the intellectual into the sensual. Under the drowsy spell of the midday heat and the shushing of the rustling palm-fronds, I would doze. My hand would go limp and the book fall to the floor of the varanda. What happened to the book once happened to me. I almost became a casualty of the hammock. One of the hooks, the one attached to the window-frame, must not have been properly tempered steel, for, little by little, it was straightening out, without my noticing it. One day, as I dozed, the end of the hammock slipped over the hook and, unsupported at one end, my body plunged to the concrete floor of the varanda. My bones were rattled, I was shaken from my slumber. After taking a long walk around the sitio to determine that my skeletal and nervous systems were intact, I returned to the varanda, figured out what had happened, hammered down the hook, and climbed back into the hammock. The worst injury done to me during my Peace Corps stay in Penedo was when, one night, a sneak-thief crept into my sitio and stole my hammock from the varanda. I immediately went out and bought another one, which I kept inside at night, next to my bed, where I could guard it. When I found myself taking to the hammock before lunch or even directly after breakfast, I had to admit to myself that I was succumbing to the inertia of the vida tropical (life-in-the-tropics). The Portuguese word for hammock is rede, which means net, like a fish-net. Some hammocks are a net-work of cordage, squares of open space being left between warp and woof. It would seem that such an open mesh would be cool, but I do not like or recommend that kind of hammock. The openings admit insects to the attack, and the cordage is rough on bare skin. Also, the transverse poles at each end turn the hammock into a tense pallet and prevent wrapping a comforting cocoon around the body. The hammocks of Brazil are not cordage. They are cotton, dyed in bright colors and patterns, sometimes decorated with tassels along their fringes. The best are made in the state of Ceara, in the Nordeste, where the hammock tradition is so deep in the regional culture. The motto sewn on one hammock I owned was Durma Bern, Viva Feliz, Sleep Well, Live Happy. You can live happy in a hammock without necessarily sleeping, for a hammock may be shared. Besides the single-width (called solteiro, which means bachelor), there is a double-wide (casal, couple). Sharing a hammock is a test of compatibility, as any Nordestino will tell you. I myself passed the test once, failed it once. There was a long and languid afternoon on the sitio, when I experienced intimate hammock compatibility. Helena and I, side-by-side but becoming one, pulled the edges of the hammock around us, wrapped ourselves in each other, and lapsed into bliss. BRAZ_ZIL - NOVEMBER 2000


On another occasion, in Recife, with someone else, every little move I made displaced her, every adjustment she made discomforted me. And so on, a whole sleepless night, every attempt at accommodation futile. But then she too was an American, the two of us awkward strangers in a native Brazilian casal hammock. So, not every sharing of a hammock is enjoyable. But alone, anyway, suspended, in peace, you return to the security of floating in the amnion of the womb. You might have been visualizing swinging in a hammock, but there should be very little motion, really. A hammock is not a playground swing or a trapeze. Twist your pelvis just slightly to set up a little motion, if you want that; or, if your hammock is near the floor (where it should be for safety, as I discovered to my hurt), push off from the floor with your hand. Some attach a cord to the wall, drape it over the hammock, and tug the cord gently if they want motion. But again, you want to be afloat, not tempest-tossed. When I returned to the United States from my Peace Corps service, I brought a new Ceara hammock with me. (It was a solteiro, not a casal. I must have anticipated a reversion to temperate-zone human relatedness.) I had some hooks too. Yet, I never unpacked the hammock and set it up. A hammock in Chicago? The Brazilian artifact was as out-of-place there as, after two years in the tropics, I was to fmd that I too had become.

Brazilian Names and Faces Whatever your prejudices or opinions regarding race, ethnicity, eugenics, and miscegenation, you don't know anything until you have experienced the population of Brazil. A half-millennium of immigration and uninhibited intercourse has produced a thoroughly miscegenated people. Brazil is a teeming nursery of a single human race. NORMAN WEEKS You might think that every Latin American is named either Jose or Maria. In fact, the Brazilians have an astounding variety of first names. When I first arrived in the country in 1968, I was surprised to be introduced to SOcrates! For a sample of Brazilian first names, we can browse in the telephone directory of Recife. Under Almeida, a very common surname, we find, in sequence starting at the beginning of A, MRAZZIL-NOVEMBER2000

the following variety of first names that yield the initials A. A.: Adriana, Adroald o, Affonso, Agaci, Agamenon (a kinsman of Socrates, I think, Agenor, Aguinaldo, Airton, Alaide, Alba, Albanita, Albelena, Alberto, Alcides, Alcimarl Alda, Aldeci, Aldemir, Alexandre, Aliete, Alipio, Aluisio, Alvaro, Alzira, Amara, Amaro... Moving ahead to C, we pick up at: Clea, Cleide, Cleonilda, Cleto, Cleildio, C ideno, Clodomir, Clovis, Conceicao, Corina, Cremilda, Crisan to, Cristenio... Under D: Dalva, Danniela, Dantas, Darcilene, Debora, Delmira, Denilson, Diana, Diedja, Digenal, Dilermando, Dinara, and even (Socrates' grandfather) Dibgenes. In Brazil, it seems that every euphonious combination of letters has been tried out as a personal name. The Brazilian version of my own name, Normand°, sounded strange-to me, but not to the Brazilians. I found another Normand° in the Recife phone hook. As with us, the Brazilians derive many of their names from the Old and New Testaments, but they also dip into GrecoRoman history, the latter part of our own education, but, for some reason, not a well-excavated mine for American first names. Well, I'd never name a daughter of mine Phryne! (Note to those who are nit classical scholars: Phryne was a notorious Greek prostitute, the model for all those statues of the naked Venus.) Reading the Recife phone book aloud is a musical entertainment. Besides the Bible and classical literature, I also find suggestions of the enchanting damsels of the Shakespeare comedies. Wouldn't you like to frolic in the forest green with Rosineide or Tatiane or Nicette or Olivia—(come to think of it, Will did have an Olivia)—or Evalise or Eulalia? Some strange derivative first names I found were: Wagner, Rossini, Dinamerico (sounds like the name of a bank), Djardiniere (named after a condiment?), Ebenezer (last name not Scrooge), Elesbdo (not a lesbian, I hope), Erasmo (do Recife, not of Rotterdam), Expedito (a stamp on an express package?), Fausto (ready to make a deal with the devil), Waldenio (a fan of Thoreau?), Walkiria (Wagnerian, again), and Zoroastro. Also: Aurora (our own Dawn), Franklin B[enjamin] and, the other way around, Benjamin F[ranklin]. How about naming your new baby girl Benvinda (Welcome!)? There is a Brazilian in Recife named Cheng Ping, an immigrant I would guess but not assume. Can you identify the classical personages who are the sources of the following Brazilian names: Antenor, Augusto, Cesar, Constantino, Creuza, De Ocrito, Deocleziano, Djanira, Efigenia, Epaminondas, Eu lides, the beautiful Euridice (popularized by the heroine of lack Orpheus, Fabio, Pitagoras (in Brazil not a bean-eater b t a beans-and-rice eater), Solon, and on and on to Ulisses. This is not to say that there aren't plenty of Joses and Marias. Those tw names are at the core of Christian religion, after all, and Braz 1 has been a Christian country. (You might even meet a aria Jose or a Jose Maria.) I have a record ng of an amusing Nordestino (northeastern regional) folkson , the title of which is "As Marias Que Eu Amei" (The Mari s I've Loved). Most Marias have a cornpound first name a middle name derived from the attributes 43


of the Blessed Virgin. The singer inventories all the Marias he has loved and complains, in puns on their Marian attributes, how each Maria proved the unsatisfactory opposite of the beneficent promise of her name. Maria of Help was no help at all, Maria of the Appearance disappeared, Maria of the Pleasures brought him pain, Maria of Victory defeated him, and so on. Shifting our attention from theology back to philosophy I wonder whether the Socrates I met earned the dignity of his namesake. And did he fmd a Brazilian Xanthippe to marry? What's in a name? In a Brazilian name, letter-music, history and culture, creativity, quirks and fancies. Why not a different name for every single person who is born, unique as is the human individual? Then, at last, we'll have heard the last of Jose and Maria, Johnny and Mary. *** As with Brazilian names, so with Brazilian faces. I wish I could get everyone's permission to photograph their faces. What a fascinating portrait gallery I could assemble! In Brazil, it is not only the country, but the people too who are the spectacle. Whatever your prejudices or opinions regarding race, ethnicity, eugenics, and miscegenation, you don't know anything until you have experienced the population of Brazil. A half-millennium of immigration and uninhibited intercourse has produced a thoroughly miscegenated people. Brazil is a teeming nursery of a single human race. In my own experience, I have found the Hawaiians, another interracial population, the most beautiful of all peoples. Perhaps Brazil has had too many ingredients in the mix, not all of them thoroughly stirred in yet, to satisfy aestheticism. Brazilian faces are not all beautiful, but they are all interesting. You might say that, when a single stock interbreeds exclusively, it gradually evolves into a caricature of itself. There is no perfect type, because the idea of type itself is defective. The master race, as we have found out, is a monster. Now, it's not accurate to say that the Brazilians are of no race, because, in fact, they are the long-term harvest of several races. Which races were the roots in any particular person is sometimes not easy to discern, even if you stare hard into the faces that pass before you. You see traits, but you cannot see genes. Accustomed to categorizing by traits, however, you speculate about each Brazilian you meet. That one there, slight in build, fine-boned, with Lusitanian features of face—the Portuguese rootstock. My taxi-driver in Manaus, built square, solid on his feet, heavy-boned, square bronze face—aboriginal Indian. In the Nordeste, where sugar-cane agriculture demanded slaves, you see the faces of Africa, a sometimes lightened Africa, however, all around you. If you travel in the South of Brazil, you'll see quasi-Germanic, Italianate, Japanian, and who-knows-what-all else. By the time of the extinction of the human, Brazil will have produced every possible type of face. The Brazilians like to describe themselves as the fifth race; they don't yet understand that they themselves have made race-thinking obsolete. The Brazilians are not adding another race; they are ending race, and, ultimately and eventually, racism. Miscegenation eliminates race. Brazilian miscegenation is linked with the myth of promiscuous sex. The famous Brazilian ethno-sociologist and historian Gilberto Freyre perpetrated the now-stereotype of blackies and whities having at each other all day and all night under the aphrodisiac spell of the tropics. Freyre was a scholarly Boccaccio; his books are the sexiest social studies texts you'll ever read. ... As if inter-racial sex were somehow sexier than same-race sex, and the weather arouses the hormones! Well, there might be something to the notion of climate as conducive to, or inimical of, sexual interest and activities. In most of Brazil, everybody is half-naked, and so more or less always on i.ktf 44

provocative display. And no one in Brazil wears himself out shoveling snow! I don't know whether frequency of intercourse is higher in Brazil—(or Polynesia or the Caribbean)—than in Toronto, Oslo, or Tibet. We need some vagabond Kinsey to run around with a multilinguistic questionnaire to determine that. Brazil is an erotically permissive society, certainly. Carnaval is, or has become, nothing less than participatory pornography. There are troubling aspects of Brazilian eroticism, but whether it is to the good or bad of individuals or the society has no glib answer. The eroticism of Brazil is familiar to me; it neither shocks nor mocks me. I title my book, Tropical Ecstasy out of experience. Against the Freyrian stereotype myth and the raw reality of Brazilian eroticism, I must counterpose the warm physical affection between Brazilians—kisses, abracos (a familial hug, not an erotic embrace), loving touches between friends, family members and especially toward children. I keep marveling that most of these faces I see every day on this trip did not exist when I lived here in Brazil twenty-five years ago. It's a new, different population. You can't step into the same river twice, said Heraclitus. With the population burgeoning, you can't visit the same Brazil twice. The face of Brazil is unrecognizable, because it is an everchanging face. Norman Weeks served as a United States Peace Corps Volunteer in Penedo, Alagoas, Brazil from 1968 to 1970. In 1995 he returned to Brazil and to Penedo to see how all had changed in twenty-five years. Tropical Ecstasy, his book on the trip, is being represented for publication by Debbie Fine, Southeast Literary Agency, P.O. Box 910, Sharpes, Florida 32959-0910. Norman Weeks may be reached at jmnf62577@aol.com The texts above were written for Tropical Ecstasy.

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Mitsica de Invenccio [hereafter Invention Music] is a collection of articles written by Augusto de Campos and published in 1998 by Perspectiva, SAD Paulo. They originally appeared between 1957 and 1997 in Suplemento Literario de Minas Gerais, Enciclopeclia Abril, the magazine SomTres, and the newspapers Folha de Sao Paulo, Jornal da Tarde, and Jornal do Brasil. The book is divided into an introduction, three chapters, one post-chapter, two appendixes, and an index of illustrations. Chapter I, "Word and Music", contains articles on Occitan music, Pound's Le testament, the music of Pound/Antheil and Stein/Thompson, and Schoenberg's and Giraud/Hartleben's Pierrot lunaires; it includes Campos' recreation of Hartleben's translation of Giraud's Pierrot lunaire and Campos' translation of Schoenberg's preface to the piece. Chapter II, "Radicals of Music", contains articles on Satie, Joplin, Smetak, Webem, and Varese; it includes translations of excerpts from Satie. Chapter III, "Musichaos", contains articles on Cage; it includes Campos' interview to J. J. de Moraes and pastiches of Cage. "Post-music", the Postchapter, contains articles on Scelsi, Nancarrow, Antheil, Nono, Ustvolskaia, Cowell, and post-music. Appendix!, "Notes on Notes", contains articles on timbre melody, microtonalism, and Stravinsky. Appendix II, "Polemics", contains Campos' 1957 defense of Boulez and his translation of Boulez's "Homage a Webem". On the back cover, Tragtenberg sets the tone. The book is for those who enjoy music "with love & rigor". Campos has been "the first to tackle composers such as Webern, Varese, Cage, Boulez, and Nono, the first to champion true 'underground sonic earthquakes' such as Antheil, Cowell, Nancarrow, Scelsi, and Ustvolskaia". He is BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000

MOSICA DE INVEKAO AUGUSTO OE CAMPOS

The ease h which the amateur collects and iu°us.0 de Campos w distributes novelties from abroad s the ease witnwhichthe retired intellect . at it Cardosoc°Il ectsanddstributeswts cAR0spALom d. fr°nthenternati°nati°netarvFu The musicoiogistcamp°swille renderedreduhdantbythevoridwde Web. !NJ

"the poet of post-everything" now introducing readers to "the post-music of silences, sounds, and noises." Invention Music is "the most important book on the subject" ever published in the "land of `deafmusicians"", a.k.a. Brazil. As Campos explains in the Introduction, the articles serve no systematic purpose. What links them is the fact that all deal with what he terms, after Pound, inventor musicians. Having fought for the Tropicalist composers of the sixties (Gilberto Gil, Tom Ze, and Caetano Veloso) and seeing them enthroned in the media, Campos now turns against "the aural desensitization to contemporary music". It is utterly unacceptable that "the marvelous adventure of [...] high music" be thwarted by "aural laziness" and the "mercantile eagerness of the media". We must all rise from "the sound cushions of palatable music" and listen to "the thoughtmusic of the great masters and inventors", "the saints and martyrs of the new language". Campos will tackle "questions to which contemporary inventionmusic has given admirable answers". Between the lines, he will recount "a bit of the history of artistic guerilla." According to Campos' introduction to Pound's ABC of Reading, there are six categories of writers: (1) inventors, those who may be held responsible for the discovery of a new process; (2) masters, those who explore some such processes; (3) diluters, the less successful followers of the former two; (4) good writers without qualities, who produce reasonable work in period style; (5) belles lettres types, who cultivate particular fields; and (6)faddists, fashionable but forgettable. The best critics, Pound says, are those who effectively contribute to improve the art they criticize; then come those who focus attention on the best writing; the worst are those who divert attention from the best to second rate works or to themselves. One recognizes a bad 45


critic when he or she starts going on about the author and not about the work. The preliminary and simplest test is to check the words that do not work. As Perloff suggests in "The Music of Verbal Space" (in Sound States, 1997) and Hollander notes in Vision and Resonance (1975), the concrete poets of the Brazilian Noigandres group (Augusto de Campos, Haroldo de Campos, and Decio Pignatari) are not particularly remarkable for their aural explorations. Invention Music is prodigal with assonances, consonances, alliterations, epithets, commonplaces, adjectives, and metaphors, not always in the best possible taste: the music of Provence is "a prowess"; "the era of Erik" is "the era of rag"; music is "the most abstract of artistic genres"; Ustvoslkaia is "the musical Sphinx from Russia"; Reich's music is "the provocation of molecular tautology". Cage is "the prophet and guerilla fighter of interdisciplinary art"; Cowell's pieces "adumbrate the polyrhythmic pranks of Colon Nancarrow's unbridled pianolas"; Eisler is "that mediocre disciple of Schoenberg, whom the bad conscience has sought in vain to raise to the rank of first rate". Outbursts of reactive rhetoric are legion. Apparently, artistic guerilla started when Willy Correa de Oliveira vetoed Universidade de Sao Paulo Press supportto one of Campos' publishing projects. Invention Music wears the appearance of a bibliapauperum of the concrete poet's musical cult. Upon a page of Quattro pezzi per orchestra, Campos superimposes Scelsi' s signature and symbol. Upon a photograph of Webern in the Alps, Campos superimposes a page ofPianovariations op. 22. Upon a close-up of Schoenberg' s eye, Campos superimposes Schoenberg's dodecaphonic scheme. Upon a close-up of young Varese, Campos superimposes a page of Ionisation. Upon a close-up of elderly Varese, Campos superimposes a page of Hyperprism. Upon a photograph of an interstellar phenomenon, Campos superimposes middle aged Nono' s balding head: "Big Bang Nono" (!). Upon the photograph of another such phenomenon, Campos superimposes elderly Nono' s balding head: "Quasar Nono" (!!). Upon a photograph of Cage and himself, Campos superimposes the score of 4 '33 ". Campos himself is everywhere to be seen: with Olga Rudge in Castel Fontana in 1991; with members of his household chez Cage in 1978; cleaning lipstick from Cage's face in 1985; molesting Cage with concrete poetry in 1985. Invention music abides by the rules of neither etiquette nor scholarship. So why should Campos? And why should we? How does Campos fare when Invention Music is set against Pound's agenda as expounded by Campos himself? Neither a belles lettres type nor a faddist, he stands in between. Specializing in record review, Campos sets forth the ins and outs of his modernist creed while inexorably marching towards the concluding instance of record company vituperation. In this kind of upper highbrow Hello! there is little room for whatever theoretical apparatus the subject may require. Those who share in Campos' tastes will find that he fulfills the task of the second rate critic. But he cannot help diverting attention to himself. Campos talks about authors and himself. As to the works, he has precious little of interest to say: "Long Life Webern!", "Long Life Varese!", mind the similarities between these names! The reader is made witness to a competition where it matters to ascertain: (1) who has discovered the last composer first; (2) who has written about his first work first; (3) who has bought his first record first. Having made the 46

wrong choices, Mario de Andrade (Nationalism) and Willy Correa de Oliveira (Bolshevism) have lost their ways and lose the game. Seconded by Nestrovski, Campos wins. In his Pequena Historia da Miisica [Short History of Music] (1942), Mario de Andrade states that "also in trios, quartets, and quintets, there has been a most interesting blossom, employing the most unusual and curious soloist ensembles (Kurt Weill, Falla, Ezra Pound, Anton Webern)". This leads Campos to conclude that Andrade was a musicological travesty. And yet one reads in Invention Music that "from him [Nestrovski] I have received two tapes with musical novelties: Wishart, Ferneyhough, Smalley, Philip Glass etc. Everything very interesting." Now, the founding father of Brazilian ethnomusicology was a modernist in the early twenties, when being a modernist was de rigueur for a bright youth of progressive Sao Paulo intelligentsia. The modernist Campos is a latecomer, the postmodernist Campos is unconvincing; he strictly fits into the high-art-plus-best-of-pop-culture pattern that Born identifies at IRCAM (Rationalizing Culture, 1995). So far as it presents an essentially visual poet in the role of avant-garde music beacon, Invention music indeed is, as Tragtenberg wishes, "a unique document on the Brazilian musical and cultural life of the last decades", from Maestro X to Maestro Y. Campos is to be held responsible for the fact that facile punning has come to be viewed as an honorable form of mental activity, and hence for the fact that pop singers have come to be viewed as intellectuals. In this manner, thinking has been debased. The ease with which the amateur Campos collects and distributes novelties from abroad is the ease with which the retired intellectual Cardoso collects and distributes writs from the International Monetary Fund. The musicologist Campos will be rendered redundant by the World Wide Web. In the meantime, Brazilian poets are post-everything, Brazilian composers are the greatest of the Americas, Brazilian transvestites are the most sought after of Europe, Brazilian intellectuals are the most Marxist in the world. Abroad, they come from the land of coffee, Carnaval, and football. At home, their houses are barbed-iron fenced and their teeth are missing. They have been raped by a feudal elite, of modernist zeal. The country of the future went wrong. "Yes, nos temos Augusto de Campos!" Anyone interested? Carlos Palombini currently lives in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, and holds a PhD in Music from the University of Durham, UK. His articles and reviews appear in scholarly journals as the Computer Music Journal (Cambridge: MIT Press), Music and Letters (Oxford: Oxford University Press), Organised Sound (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), the Electronic Musicological Review (Curitiba: Universidade Federal do Parana) and the Leonardo group of publications (Cambridge: MIT Press). He has written contributions to Mtisica y nuevas

tecnologias: pespectivas para el siglo XXI The Twentieth Century Music Avant-Garde: a Biocritical Sourcebook (New York: (Barcelona: L'Angelot, 1999) and

Greenwood, forthcoming). You can contact him at palombinigusa.net This article was originally published in

Leonardo Digital Reviews BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER ZOO


DINO bestseller at 10 I can still remember a time when books were easy to acquire and prices were low. Publishing was bareboned and pocket books were still available. Today poorly translated foreign best sellers and books written about esoterics are given priority. IOSIF LANDAU

BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000

A recent stu • y reported by Rio's daily Jornal do Brasil about the Bram an publishing industry reveals unhealthy trends due to th fact that there are more publishers than librarians. Accor ling to UNESCO, for a country of 170 million people the is eal number of bookstores should be 17,000. Brazil has an est ated 1,200 bookstores nationwide. Rio de Janeiro, for ex ple, has only 154 bookstores for 5.5 million people and most .f those are in inaccessible areas ofthe city for the majority oft e population. Studies avail ble through BNDES (Banco Nacional de Desenvolviment s Economic° e Social—National Bank for Economic and S s cial Development), a state bank which provides financial s pport to various industries in Brazil, show that of books sold per capita to Italian, Spanish and Portuguese readers, Brazil se Is the least per capita. Consequences of these trends are poor istribution of books, a limited number of bookstores, high prices and control of the industry by the publishers. The four main bookstore chains: Siciliano, Saraiva, Sodiler and Nobel are aga St increasing availability of books in places other than their ores. The threat of these chains acquiring fewer books kee is books out of supermarkets, drugstores, many of the avail ble newsstands and over the internet. Especially when inte et bookstores can offer discounts up to 30% off. Instead of cre ting a reader-friendly environment of less expensive books o increase readers buying power, bookstore owners prefer to p omote government protectionary measures, which prohibit • ernet stores from offering discounts. This common practice in Brazil is also used by powerful corporations in efforts to fix selling prices. For obvious r asons, readers are against fixed prices and are in favor of co petitive pricing for all merchandise. It is a fact that low pri es increase sales. However, selling price varies from ten • ollars to thirty dollars, with a majority of books in hard coy r because publishing companies know that the Brazilian co umer prefers hard cover over paperback copies of the late t novels. In Brazil, publishers are editors, unlike in the U.S. market, which can make it difficult for new Brazilian authors to become popular mce many publishers accept few writing styles. Esoteric d foreign best sellers are top sellers and therefore widely accepted. One of Brazil's most powerful publishers, Paulo Rocco, became successful by publishing books by famous uthors such as Paulo Coelho and translated works by Richard arlson, Stephen Hawking and John Grisham all of which incre sed Rocco's revenues substantially. Rocco has als been involved in republishing works by such Brazilian wr ers such as Lygia Fagundes Telles, Autran Dourado and Clar ce Lispector for educational purposes. Well known authors lik Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, J6 Soares and local editorial or biographical novels have a better chance of being success 1 as so few publishers are willing to take a chance on an u own author. The media is grossly responsible for the diffic lties that non-mainstream authors have in creating a name r themselves. Since big name publishers support the variou veins of national communication, reviews in print are also ci ntrolled. Books are not luxury, they are for ware. The war between physical bookstor sand virtual ones further stresses this point. Bookstores are be inning to look more like a ma/son de haute couture, selling CID s and coffee, which inhibit people from entering. Appear g more often in areas in Southern and Southeastern Braz 1 where people spend money rather than in neighborhoods w ere people live, bookstores are increasingly 47


inaccessible. Such is the trend that there are very few bookstores in northern parts of Brazil. Interestingly, the article in Jornal do Brasil reports that throughout history Brazilians have generally been poor readers. To further emphasize that point, the author of A Formacao da Leitura no Brasil (The Formation of Reading in Brazil), Regina Zilberman, simply states that "Brazil was one of the last countries to have a press; we grew without the custom of reading. The present situation will only change when reading becomes a national trend, like soccer, Carnaval and soap operas." Although I do not believe this to be true as my experience as a reader began early in childhood and later I became a writer. I was born in 1924 and published my first book in 1995. When I was a child, television and computers did not exist. Our only pastimes were reading and sports. It is quite impossible to become a writer without having

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16. This Statement of Ownership will be printed in the November 2000 issue of this publication. 17. 1 certify that all information furnished on this form is true and complete. I understand that anyone who furnishes false or misleading information on this form or who omits material or information requested on the form may be subject to criminal sanctions (including fines and imprisonment) and/or civil sanctions (including multiple damages and civil penalties). (Signed) Rodney Mello, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief 48

been a diligent reader. We read novels, magazines, newspapers and comics allowing our imaginations to take us beyond our reality. Pretending to be kings and knights was our entertainment. I still remember with joy the stories of Jules Verne, Karl May and Alexandre Dumas. Later, as a pre-pubescent teen, we turned to Pitigrilli, DH Lawrence and Henry Miller whose works completed our sexual fantasies. Detective stories also became increasingly popular and I met Agatha Christie, Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, Stanley Gardner, Rex Stout, Sax Rhomer and of course Conan Doyle and Edgar Wallace. Although, I discovered that Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett were the greatest, the authors I cherished most were Hemingway, Camus, Machado de Assis, Ruben Fonseca, Dalton Trevisan and Erico Verissimo. I never stopped reading. I can still remember a time when books were easy to acquire and prices were low. Publishing was bareboned and pocket books were still available. The publishing industry grew with its focus on elegant and expensive books rather than on low prices and poorly translated foreign best sellers and books written about esoterics were given priority. Detective stories written by Brazilian writers disappeared as detective novels were looked upon as bad literature until documentaries about Dame Agatha, Chandler and Hammett appeared on screen. It became obvious at that time that books were published only for those who had money to spend. I started writing in 1990 after I retired. By 1995, I had written three novels and many short stories. Copies were mailed to more than 15 publishers from Rio de Janeiro to So Paulo to Porto Alegre. After at least two months all copies were rejected by over-worked publishers although eventually a friend introduced me to another publisher that read my book and liked it. To get my book published, I agreed to assume the publishing costs and they took care of marketing and distribution. My total expense was $3,000 for 1,000 books. The publisher took 60% of the gross sale and the remaining profits were mine. They did a good job marketing and promoting my book and I made appearances on television and in newspapers. I managed to sell 700 books, which is a good start for an author in Brazil considering that authors who sell 1,000 copies are considered a success. Although the publicity was done well and I was recognized for my work in newspapers throughout Brazil, distribution was lacking. The 700 copies that were sold were a result of distribution mainly in Rio de Janeiro. In hopes of a better return on my investment, I decided that I would choose a less famous publisher for my second novel. The second publisher assumed all expenses and I received 10% of the selling price per book. Their marketing tactics were not very effective, however, and I only sold 400 books. Frustrated by the fact that publishers demanded payment upfront, I decided that my third novel would be published through an on-line publisher. I also did not want to spend the $6,000 that it would have cost at today's rates to publish a third book. The internet publisher lacked the knowledge required to successfully sell a book over the internet. I later learned that Brazilian readers fear using their credit cards to purchase products that way in the first place. Overall, my experience as a published author was a success. In many ways even famous, award-winning authors sell a maximum of 2,000 copies of their work. losif Landau, 76, was born in Bucharest, Romania, in 1924. He moved to Brazil in 1941 and four years later became a Brazilian citizen. Landau is married and has three children and eight grandchildren. Graduated in engineering in 1949 he has worked throughout the country building roads, railroads and hydroelectrics. He is now settled in Rio. After retiring in 1992 he started to write, publishing several novels and poetry. He loves movies, jazz and violin concerts. You can contact him at iosif@pobox.com BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000


Ventriloquist—An amusing and critica take on modern society and the difficul of being original. Internet, futurology, fash ion, and drugs are some of the target o writer and director Gerald Thomas. Movi director Cud Diegues participates with hi voice in off. Teatro sao Pedro. Mais Perto (Closer)—Comedy. Fou people getting together, falling in love, having sex, and betraying each other. Written by Patrick Marber, directed by Hector Babenco, with Renata Sorrah, Jose Mayer, Marco Ricca and Guta Stresser.

Dov e s Just-released American movies:

RIO Veldrio a Brasileira (Wake Brazilian Style)—Comedy—After winning the big prize in the lottery three friends decide do enjoy their lives. Written by Aziz Bajur, directed by Golb Carvalho, with the Grupo Teatral Batrdquios Imperiais. Deu a Louca em Cinderela - Um Conto ao Avesso (Cinderella Went Crazy — A Short Story in the Wrong Side)—Comedy—An erotic satire to the famous fairy tale. Written by Zoraya Andrade, directed by Jorge Paes, with Luciana Sena and Diego Caputto. Amigo Oculto (Secret Triend)—Comedy. A family gathering to celebrate Christmas becomes a big mess. Written by Augusto Boal, directed by Marilia Pera, with Fafy Siqueira and Francoise Forton. Teatro do Sesi. Louca Turbutencia (Crazy Turbulence)— After being fired from the radio station she worked for, a radio hostess decides to air some dirty linen about the people she worked with. Teatro Dulcina

S110 PAULO

Um Padre a Italiana (A Priest, Italian Style)—Comedy—An ambitious young priest whose goal is to become pope gets involved in strange and threatening happenings while waiting for the bishop's visit. Written by Pedro Mario Herrero, directed by Camila Raffanti, with Guilherme Uzeda and Camila Raffanti, Tanto Faz (It Doesn't Matter)—Drama— Adapted from Reinaldo Moraes's book of same name. Ricardo gets a scholarship to study in Paris, but instead of studying he dedicates himself to drugs, women and loafing. Socorro, Mamde Foi Embora! (Help, Mom's Gone Away!)—Comedy. Typical Jewish mother abandons the house for one week and comes back announcing she wants to become an actress. Written by Benedito Ruy Barbosa, directed by Jose Wilker, with John Herbert, Marilene Barbosa, and Dalton Mello. Teatro Imprensa. MaZIL-NOVEMBER2000

The Art Of War (A Cilada), Nurse Betty (A Enfermeira Betty),High Fidelity (Alta Fidelidade), Celebrity (Celebridades), Space Cowboys (Cowboys Do Espaco), Dinossaur (Dinossauro), The Kid (Duas Vidas), Fantasia 2000 (Fantasia 2000), Wonder Boys (Garotos Incriveis), Hollow Man (0 Homem sem Sombra), Passion of Mind (Paix5es Paralelas), Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (Professor Aloprado 2: A Familia Klump), Woman on Top (Sabor da Paixiio), Center Stage (Sob a Luz da Fama), Supernova (Supernova), Scary Movie (Todo Mundo em Poinico) Quase Nada (Almost Nothing)—Brazil/ 2000—Drama. The stories of three country men who 'despite living without the amenities of modern life have to deal with similar existential problems as those faced by people who live in big cities. Directed by Sergio Rezende, with Jose Augusto Pompeu, Camilo Bevilacqua, Jurandir de Oliveira, Genezio de Barros. Amelia—Brazil/2000—Drama. Inspired by French actress Sarah Bernhardt's passage through Brazil in 1905. Directed by Ana Carolina, with Marilia Pdra, Beatrice Agenin and Miriam Muniz. 0 Auto da Compadecida (The Compassionate Lady Play)—Brazil/1999—Comedy. Two men from the Brazilian Northeast, Joao Grillo and Chico have a hard to survive and to through some hilarious situations. Directed by Guel Arraes, with Matheus Nachtergaele, Selton Mello, Marco Nanini, Fernanda Montenegro, Mauricio Goncalves and Lima Duarte. Eu, Tu, Eles (I, You, They)--Brazil/ 2000—Drama. Based on the real story of Darlene, a northeastern woman who lives in the same house with her husband and two lovers. Directed by Andrucha Waddington, with Regina Case, Lima Duarte and Stenio Garcia. Estorvo (Hurdle)—Brazi1/1999—Drama. Running away to nowhere a man meets threatening characters in an unknown world. Adapted from the book by Chico Buarque de Holanda. Directed by Ruy Guerra, with Jorge Perugorria, Bianca Byington, Leonor Arocha, Tonico Oliveira, Xando Graca and Susana Ribeiro. Cronicamente Invidvel (Chronically Unfeasible)—In a Sao Paulo restaurant five characters bare their own souls, clash and reconcile. By Sergio Bianchi, with Cecil Third, Betty Gofman, Daniel Dantas, Dan Stulbach, Dira Paes, and Umberto Magnani.

ooks best sellers FICTION 1 0 demonio e a srta. Prym, Paulo Coelho. Objetiva, R$ 19,90 2 0 ceu esti caindo, Sidney Sheldon Record, R$ 28 3 A festa do bode, Mario Vargas Llosa Mandarim, R$ 33,30 4 Os cem melhores contos do seculo, Org. lo ita Moriconi. Objetiva. R$ 49 5 Harry Potter e a camara secreta, J.K. Rowling. Rocco, R$ 22 6 Harry Potter e a pedra filosofal, J.K. Rowling. Rocco, R$ 22 7 As memorias de Cleopatra vol. 1, a filha de Isis, George Margaret. Geracao Editorial, R$ 29,50 8 Cesar, Allan Massie. Ediouro, R$ 26,90 9 Inferno, Patricia Melo. Companhia das Letras, R$ 29 10 0 visitante inesperado, Agatha Christie. Record, R$ 20

NONFICTION 1 Morcegos negros, Lucas Figueiredo. Record, R$ 28 2 A arte da felicidade, Dalai Lama. Martins Fontes, R$ 32,50 3 Uma etica para o novo milenio, Dalai Lama. Sextante, R$ 24 4 As 48 leis do poder, Greene/Elffers. Rocco, R$ 48 5 Pai rico, pai pobre, Robert Kiyosaki. Campus, R$ 24 60 livro de ouro da mitologia, Thomaz Bulfinch. Fdiouro, R$ 29 7 0 sobrevivente, Aleksander Henryk Laks e Tova Sender. Record, R$ 20 8 Enquanto o amor nao vem, Iyanla Vanzant. Sextante, R$ 24 9 Mar sem fim, Amyr Klink. Companhia das Letras, R$ 26,50 10 Mantenha seu cerebro vivo, Rubem Katz. Sextante, R$ 18,90

ESOTERICISM 0 SELF-HELP 1 Nao faca tern pestade em copo d'agua no trabalho, Richard Carlson. Rocco, R$ 21,50 2 0 livro da so rte, F. Ramon. Trevo, R$ 7 3 Vivendo melhor atraves da numerologia, Aparecida Liberato. Best-Seller, R$ 28 4 Se a vida é um jogo, estas sao as regras, Cherie Carter-Scott. Rocco, R$ 16 5 A verdade de cada um, Zibia Gasparetto. Espaco Vida & Consciencia, R$ 21 6 0 sucesso é ser feliz, Roberto Shiniashiki. Gente, R$ 22 7 Os astros e os relacionamentos, Linda Goodman. Nova Era, R$ 35 80 livro da lua ano 2000, Marcia Mattos. Campus, R$ 23 9 Como lidar corn pessoas dificeis, Cristian Godefroy. Madras, R$ 16 10 A fonte da juventude, Peter Kelder. est-Seller, R$ 14 According to Jornal do Brasil, http://www.jb.com.br

49


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BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000


FEIRA LIVRE PEN MARKET ISC8 MOOS Looking for partner to buy or build pousada lb Northeast Brazil. See the Northeast with our 4x4 tour, Natal to Jericoacoara on the most beautiful beaches. E-mail: zo@planetguides.com Phone: (941) 774-7458 [178] Spiritual Psychic Readings by Barbara. Help and guidance on all Life issues, such as Love, Marriage, Money, Career, Health, Family, and Friends. Call now for complimentary reading by phone. (310) 745-1186 - psychicvisions@ email.com [171]

brazzil-ADS (323) 255-8062 ;00 S CANDANGO BOOKS: On-Line Sebo http:// www.candangobooks.com [184]

; USIDESS ppor 11111 y $ 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]

asses Conversational Brazilian Portuguese Method - "I tried several methods to learn BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE, but when I started lessons with NILSON, I knew immediately that I'd found the best one. And in just a few months, I was able to communicate on a one-on-one basis." Individual, Total Immersion, Corporate Group and SemiPrivate, Phone (310) 379-0738 [178] Portuguese Courses in Salvador da Bahia, Dialog°, http://www.brazilstudy.com, E-mail: dialogo@brazilstudy.com, fax: 0115571336-6329 [155]

Or 8 8 BRAZIL - Wildlife Refuge - 130 acres Atlantic Forest, near Recife. Also tropical fruits. Excellent income from tourism. $100,000. (310) 832-4367 [156]

Oil ere I Wanted: garment maker to sew clothing for individual. Possible "start-up" business. Part-time/ flexible hours. Must have own sewing machine. Some Portuguese preferred. Gail (310) 849-5922 [177]

mg "Need a Brazilian Magazine Editor/Coordinator In Houston TX?" Degreed, experienced, computer literate, multilingual, relocatable. For résumé e-mail laize06(@,hotmail.com [180] BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000

Cavaquinho for Sale, hand made in the USA, all solid wood, under saddle, pick up is optional.1 (New) (310) 412-6071 Los Angeles [163] '11SIC Brazilian Music in its totality. Samba, bossa nova, chorinho, balk, axe, and more. Merchant Express (954) 785-2131

'ewspapers agazmes Jornais e revistas do Brasil. Recebemos jornais diarios e todas as principals revistas, incluindo masculinas e femininas. Tel. (954) 785-2131

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'roman see s man Brasileira, atraente, procura americano 40-50. Foto para Luana, 140 Del Paso Ct, Fairfield, CA 94533 Tel.: (707) 429-0878 [178] Brazilian mulata lady—a knockout at 35—seeks young nice looking young boy 18+. Preference to dark skin. For good times. Letter and pict to: Cida, PO Box 894, Wildomar, CA 92595 [165]

'Mona an ee s "oman Americano, jovem 49 anos, branco, olhos azuis, sem/nao querfilhos, cavalheiro, honesto, procura brasileira magra, jovem para casamento. Outramente procuro qualquer brasileira por amizade, ensinar Ingles, ou participar de musica folcrorica/rock. Escrevo portuguas. John PO Box 10401, Glendale, CA 91209 [177] Frances-Americano,45, delgado, atraente, olhos azuis, professor, falo frances, inglas, espanhol, um pouco de portuguas, procuro brasileira delgada, 18-38 morando em Los Angeles. William (310) 305-2090 [177] African/American Male, 40, Engineer, handsome, affectionate, romantic, in Houston, desire to meet Brazilian lady 25-35, send letter with photo; Wilfred Edwards, PO Box 2025, Missouri City, TX 77459, USA E-mail: wilfred.edwards@ usa.net [166] Brasileiro-Americano, 36 anos, romantic° e atraente, procurando relacionamento corn brasileira ou americana. (818) 344-1881 [166]

Handsome US Citizen, 5'8" tall, 159 lbs, seeks Brazilian or Latino girl, age 30+, friendship first. (510) 223-5548. E-mail: petenaji@aol.com [177] Seeking beautiful, professional, English-speaking Carioca woman for best friend and marriage. Write to: Jodaps, Box 1492, Morrobay, California 93443-1492, USA [163] Swedish gentleman, widower, 58, well educated, speaks Port., seeks independent, warmhearted, educated lady with humor, and good professional status in Brazil, USA or anywhere. Write Bjorn Gunnarson PO Box 17242, Stockholm, 10462 Sweden - E-mail:bjorn_s@dataphone.se [164]

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Very handsome, professional, 40's WM seeks sincere, VGUblack/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]

'en 8 Copacabana. Apartment for rent. Furnished, security, two blocks from beach, one bedroom, cozy. $65 per day. Call owner Maria (323) 6624667 [180] Vital, Reveillon, Carnaval - Vit6ria ES. Alugo casa, pr6ximo Praia da Costa. Ligar (027) 340 1777 Brasil ou email terezavieira@aol.com [177]

rans a ion n erp. Dialog° Translates from and to Brazilian Portuguese: http://www.brazilstudy.com [155]

rave Touristic services in Salvadorda Bahia: Dialog°, http://www.brazilstudy.com [155] • FEIRA LIVRE RATES: 5014 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: BRA ZZIL P.O. Box 50536 Los Angeles, CA 90050-0536. 51


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ArtMedia (310) 826-1443

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*frits1 Asesells Intern. Discount Travel (703) 750-0101 BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000


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In Praise of Hymen For Sales, Peixoto, and others writing in the 1920s and 1930s, excessive legal concern with physiological virginity was retrograde-evidence of Brazil's backwardness. The jurists who had shaped Brazilian law at the outset of the First Republic, however, had cited this same concern with sexual honor and virginity as evidence of Brazil's progress. SUEANN CAULFIELD Sexual Honor and Republican Law At the end of the nineteenth century and through the first three decades of the twentieth, Brazilian legal-medical specialists produced a substantial literature on the study of the hymen, counting themselves increasingly among the world's foremost authorities on its morphology. Renowned practitioners such as Nina Rodrigues, Nascimento Silva, Agostinho J. de Souza Lima, Miguel Sales, Flaminio Favero, Oscar Freire, and later J. P. Porto-Carrero and Afranio Peixoto published extensive studies aimed at correcting the "factual errors in the scientific notions" of not only Brazilian professionals, but also European masters. European science had not ignored the membrane. Brazilian legal-medical literature is replete with citations of nineteenthcentury studies by French, Italian, and German pioneers who recorded and compared hymens observed in various categories of female bodies: prostitutes and virgins, married women and small children, fetuses and corpses, and an assortment of animal species. Nonetheless, as late as 1934, when Peixoto published Sexologia forense, misconceptions about the relationship between virginity and hymen morphology persisted, resulting in tragic misdiagnoses. Peixoto rested his authority on the matter on his experience as the founder and first director of the MedicalLegal Service (renamed Institute of Legal Medicine in 1922) in Rio de Janeiro, where, he explained, the demand for "deflowering examinations" was extremely high. His findings were far more conclusive than previous European studies because his sample was vastly greater in size. While he had personally observed 2,701 hymens from 1907 to 1915, European masters "could count fewer than 300, at the end of their lives, after thirty years as medical-investigators." At issue was the precision of medical proof of female virginity, or, more frequently, its absence, in legal disputes over lost honor. In Brazil and many European nations, this evidence was provided by state legal-medical specialists in obligatory examinations of female victims of sexual crimes, even when the victim's prior virginity was supposedly not a legal issue, as was the case in most European nations. In Brazil, prior virginity almost always was at issue, since deflowering cases such as the one involving Manoel Souza and Maria Pereira were overwhelmingly the most common "offense of honor" brought to trial. Providing deflowering examinations, as Miguel Sales pointed out in 1928, was one of the most important functions of legal-medical work in Rio de Janeiro.

Peixoto believed that both demography and culture explained his advantage over the European experts. "In Brazil, principally in Rio de Janeiro," he posited, "the scarcity of women makes them so precious, that upon loss of virginity, they promptly demand due repair by marriage." Furthermore, while Northern Europeans were indifferent toward the hymen, "Latins have a hymen fetishism: those ofthe Americas kill and die for it. For this reason, any loss of the jewel provokes a prompt complaint... up to 500 per year, in Rio alone." Sales, reminding his readers that "we all know that the sexual preoccupation predominates in inferior types, in whom it constitutes a fixed idea," explained that the preoccupation with the hymen among the "Latin nations" was due to multiple factors "such as race, climate, upbringing, environment, ignorance and superstition of a great number of illiterates or individuals of a very rudimentary moral and mental culture." Neither Peixoto nor Sales offered convincing evidence for their explanations of why so many lower-class Brazilian women brought cases of lost virginity to the attention of the institute of Legal Medicine. While the ratio of females to males increased to near equal proportions in Rio de Janeiro by 1940, there was no corresponding decline in reports of sexual crime. Furthermore, in her analysis of eighty-eight turn-of-the-century deflowering cases, Martha de Abreu Esteves found a variety of complex motivations and conflicts that cannot be attributed simply to "Latin" culture or ignorance. In the chapters that follow, I argue this was true for the interwar decades as well. On one hand, the persistent valorization of female virginity and male sexual aggressiveness, coupled with a longstanding tradition of premarital sexual relations, gave men an enormous advantage over their female sexual partners before marriage. Some men, like Manoel Souza, preferred to maintain this advantage by putting off marriage indefinitely. Given the power inequality of such a hierarchical relationship, it is not surprising that women, or their families, frequently recruited allies from outside the relationship in cases of conflict. Whereas middle or upper-class families might appeal to their male kin and private social networks in these kinds of conflicts, working-class daughters, particularly those whose fathers were absent, often turned to the local police. On the other hand, we shall see that the actual conflicts that led

BRAZZIL- NOVEMBER 2000


to legal action did not follow any set pattern. Young women mobilized resources, including their honor, their virginity, and the criminal justice system, in diverse ways to negotiate within a variety of hierarchical relationships. These included their relationships with parents and employers as well as with male sexual partners. Although Sales's and Peixoto's observations do not explain why so many working-class women brought deflowering cases to the police, they do provide fascinating commentary on Brazilian law. Legal-medical specialists' studies of the hymen, which culminated in Peixoto's campaign against "hymenolatry," demonstrate a remarkable preoccupation among legal authorities with sexual honor and female virginity throughout the fifty-year reign of the 1890 penal code. Although Sales's comments about "inferior types" were aimed at Rio's uneducated and racially mixed masses, it seems that "the sexual preoccupation" was particularly prominent among the self-defined elite group of jurists and legal-medical specialists who were his peers. For Sales, Peixoto, and others writing in the 1920s and 1930s, excessive legal concern with physiological virginity (as opposed to "moral virginity") and defense of sexual honor was retrograde-evidence of Brazil's backwardness. The "anachronistic crime of deflowering," Peixoto argued, "is dying and will die here, as it has already in more civilized lands." Peixoto's work to speed its demise was part of a broader movement to redefine sexual honor in the 1920s and 1930s. The jurists who had shaped Brazilian law at the outset of the First Republic, however, had cited this same concern with sexual honor and virginity as evidence of Brazil's progress. Judge and law professor Francisco Viveiros de Castro expressed the sentiment of his turn-of-the-century peers when he proclaimed that "respect for the honor of women is not a sentiment innate in man, but rather a conquest of civilization, the victory of moral ideas over the brutality ofthe instincts." According to Esteves, Viveiros de Castro's generation believed that although Brazilian legal codes had progressively "conquered civilization" since the colonial period by defending women's honor with increasing precision, the social and demographic transformations brought by the abolition of slavery made it necessary to reinvigorate the civilizing campaign. Esteves concludes that jurists' attempts to impose "civilized" gender norms and contain popular sexuality within "hygienic" families were part of a wider project of social control under the First Republic. State and professional authorities, jurists among them, saw the family, as the basis of their new nation, a social space that would produce an honest, disciplined, and self-sacrificing labor force. Despite a broad consensus on the importance of "civilized" family values, however, jurists and legislators of the early Republic disagreed about just what these values were and how the state should promote them. Their conflicting views on virginity and sexual honor reflected broader struggles over the power to shape the nation's political and cultural future. We shall see in chapter 3 that legal debates over how to define sexual honor and why it mattered demonstrate that both nationalist discourses and the power relations they supported were furiously contested in the decades between the two world wars. In the 1920s, a new generation oflegal experts joined diverse groups of critics to challenge older definitions of sexual honor and family values as well as the moral authority of the Republic itself. Before turning to post-World War I debates over honor and challenges to the political and juridical order of the First Republic, it will be useful to examine the struggle of turn-of-thecentury jurists to consolidate that order. These men's attempts to define sexual honor and justify their role in defending it highlight many of the political and social tensions that accompanied the legitimization of state power after the fall of the Empire in 1889. Controversies over the rights and responsibilities of individual citizens and legal subjects, the state's power to regulate public and private life, and the role ofjurists and other public officials in republican society were all played out in debates over sexual honor.

BRAZZIL - NOVEMBER 2000

Jurists under e First Republic no longer dominated national politics to the sam degree as their predecessors, who had run the imperial bureaucri cy. Their authority rested increasingly on their claim to pro ssional expertise, and this claim did not go uncontested. Vivei os de Castro's cohort encountered resistance not only among th ir colleagues in the courts, law schools, and legislature, but als $ among the population they sought to perfect, which had develop d diverse moral values and sexual norms that did not match the i eals of professional elites. Reform-minded jurists also had to *ustify their intervention into the realm of private morality a ainst the claims of family and religious authorities. In the $ rocess, they found new ways to combine notions of family honor that formed the basis of Catholic, patriarchal social o ganization with concepts of personal honor that were more co patible with the values of a secular bourgeoisie. In this reg d, they built on the work of generations of liberal jurists who receded them and paved the way for more radical thinkers in e decades ahead. The transformat on of the legal concept of honor was not a linear movement fr urn traditional to modern values, although many jurists saw it at way. Nor did Brazilians mimic foreign models, although th y read the latest debates in European legal scholarship and ad pted them to their own local concerns. Instead, jurists resp $ nded to difficult questions of culture and tradition that accom i anied the construction of the new Brazilian Republic. Although ationalists of left and right agreed in theory that law should refle it the historical moral values of a republic's people, they disagre d about whether Brazil's racially mixed, illiterate population constituted a "people," and about which shared cultural traits ir moral values deserved to be preserved in law. How could juri ts attend to both "the customs, traditions, and juridical principl s that are the legacy of our past" and the "demands of our pro t ess and social evolution"? Should jurists try to replace Brazirans' "propensity toward sensuality and love" with "modern' hygienic norms imported from Europe? Should they appropri te the control mechanisms of the "traditional Brazilian famil ," or strengthen private control over these mechanisms? Turn-of-the-centu jurists defined their positions in these conflicts by evaluati g and applying theoretical principles to their analyses of Br ilian society and to their judgments in individual criminal c es. In the process, they developed their own body of legal th ory, which borrowed eclectically from diverse local and inte ational sources. In the 1920s and 1930s, a subsequent generati n would draw on their corpus to redefine the state's defense of onor and expand its intervention in the family while attacking hat they saw as the oligarchical basis of state power and the p triarchal values associated with it. The I earlier generation, in ntrast, worked to reinforce key patriarchal traditions in ways that allowed them to sustain both liberal democratic ideals and e eugenic and disciplinary goals of the republican state. Brazilian Legal raditions: Liberalism, Classical Law, and the I erial Penal Code of 1830 Like many of their European counterparts, reform-minded jurists of Brazil's early ' epublic worked to change a set of legal principles that had bee passed down from the liberal heyday of the early nineteenth cen ry. For the self-declared "new generation" of reform-minde $ jurists at the turn of the century, the influence of "classical 1 w," as they termed Enlightenment legal principles such as indiv dual equality before the law, free will, moral responsibility, d proportional punishment, had represented an early phase n their nation's moral progress from backward colony to m dem nation. This progress had begun with the liberal wave th t swept through the Brazilian Empire a decade after its indepen â&#x20AC;˘ ence in 1822, leaving in its wake a new criminal justice system. Imperial criminal la was grounded in the criminal code of 1830. The code, a bold ex ression ofliberal legal philosophy that


Europe's most progressive jurists were still struggling to implement in their nations, passed swiftly through the Brazilian legislature, replacing the criminal section (book 5) of the Portuguese Philippine Ordinances of 1603. As contemporary jurists and politicians complained, corruption and problems of judicial procedure made it difficult to guarantee that criminal law would be applied effectively. The new code was significant nonetheless, both for the principles it laid out and as a symbol of Brazil's new status as a modern nation. Later jurists, still eager to display Brazil's progress, frequently remarked that the 1830 code was one of the most advanced compendiums of its time and had earned Brazil the admiration of prominent European legal scholars. As Latin America's first autonomous penal code, it also influenced penal law continent-wide, enhancing Brazil's leadership efforts in the region. The principles that grounded the 1830 criminal code revealed its authors' inspiration in the classical theory that was then taking hold in Europe. Equally important was the influence of the French Revolution and the desire of early imperial jurists to eliminate what they saw as remnants of the absolutist colonial regime: excessive power over the individual by the state, based in the king's claim to represent divine will; vindictive and arbitrary punishment, decided "at the king's mercy"; differentiation among classes of legal subjects that was the basis of aristocratic privilege; and the fusion of law and morality. Although a series of royal decrees in the late eighteenth century had already ameliorated some of the penal excesses of church and state that liberals associated with Portugal's "dark ages," much of the legislation was unclear or even contradictory, and it lacked a coherent set of principles that justified and limited state authority. Codification of penal law in 1830 aimed to resolve these problems. On the premise that the law should sacrifice individual freedom only to the degree necessary for greater social welfare, the new code specified the "common social good" served by repression of each "criminal act," defined minimal, fixed punishments for each crime, and established equal "criminal responsibility" regardless of the identity of the offender, with a few crucial exceptions. In practice, jurists could not establish objective distinctions between crime and immorality or uphold the equality of legal subjects in criminal law when social norms and civil legislation differentiated the rights of individuals by gender and status through the institutions of the family and slavery. Moreover, defining these legal categories and institutions was so difficult that legislators found it impossible to codify civil law, despite the efforts of successive juridical commissions. In the absence of a civil code until 1916, books 1-4 of the Philippine Ordinances reigned by default, modified by scattered imperial decrees and by the Lei da Boa Raziio of 1769, which allowed magistrates to use their "good sense" to adapt Roman and canon law to contemporary customs, especially in situations not specifically regulated by existing laws. It is not surprising, then, that the criminal code of 1830 did not completely erase the vestiges of medieval morality from criminal law. There were fundamental changes: the code eliminated punishment of sins such as sodomy and other "carnal conjunctions" between consenting unmarried adults, and it rescinded husbands' right to kill adulterous wives and their lovers, which the Philippine Ordinances had permitted unless the lover was "of higher quality" than the husband. Yet although nineteenth-century liberals attacked the Philippine Ordinances for authorizing private vengeance and patriarchal privileges, they failed to purge the new code of the concepts of honor and morality that had provided the logical foundation for such privileges. Like most other southern European legal systems, the Philippine Ordinances had recognized a variety of offenses to honor alongside different kinds of physical injury or material loss; laws punishing these offenses were thus interspersed throughout the civil and criminal sections. Some of these offenses were related explicitly to political authority and public order: slandering the

king or his likeness was a capital offense, for instance, and insulting public officials was equivalent to resisting arrest. The Crown regulated the markers and rituals of honor (titles, clothing, dueling, and, as we have seen, wife-killing), and punished gossip and insults under various circumstances. Offenses to women's sexual honor were more complex: they might offend the moral authority of church and state, the inviolability and public reputation of a household, private paternal authority, individual integrity, or family patrimony. Under the 1830 code, honor was to become an expression of personal virtue rather than social precedence or religious morality. Ignoring rituals of absolute power and ascribed status, lawmakers created a chapter on crimes against individual honor, including slander, libel, and sexual offenses. Yet contrary to two of the code's fundamental principlesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;individual equality and the separation of crimes against the individual from crimes against the stateâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the laws ranked the seriousness of slander in descending order according to whether the victim was a member of the emperor's family, a public official or institution, or a private individual. The laws thus continued to invest honor/ authority first in the monarch, then his representatives; secondarily, they protected the authority that rested on an individual's public reputation. The survival of older concepts of honor and morality was most evident, however, in the new code's definition of female legal subjects. As the code reduced the variety of moral offenses and the severity ofpunishments, it maintained the previous law's underlying principle of gender difference. Thus, murderous husbands could still cite their wives' adultery as an attenuating circumstance that could free them from punishment, and cuckolded husbands who chose not to murder could have their wives imprisoned. The Philippine Ordinances had condemned adulterous wives to death, banishing to Africa only husbands who "kept and supported" a concubine. The 1830 code made the same distinction, changing the punishment to one to three years. imprisonment for both adulteresses and husbands who kept concubines. Punishments for sexual crimes had already been reduced by royal decrees in 1775 and 1784; they were lowered further in 1830. Rapists received the death penalty under the Ordinances; three to twelve years' imprisonment under the new code (one month to two years if the victim were a prostitute). The Ordinances had ordered any man who "slept with a willing virgin or honest widow" to marry the victim or provide for her dowry; lacking the means to do either, he received banishment to Africa and, if he was a plebeian, public lashings. The 1830 code retained the dowry payment for these crimes (now "defloration" and "seduction of an honest woman" younger than seventeen), along with a blander exile of one to three years outside the offended woman's town. Marriage to the victim freed men of punishment for all sexual offenses after 1830; the Ordinances had granted this pardon only in cases of consensual sex, not rape. Clearly, sexual crimes represented both a different kind of affront and a different kind of honor than insults. The criminal acts were not verbal, but physical; the harm done was often not just moral, but material. Victims were exclusively female, and their honor was associated with sexual virtue and loyalty to husbands, not individual autonomy and public authority. This complexity was reflected in the code's vague and inconsistent definitions of sexual crime victims. Promiscuous women might logically be excluded, yet there was a penalty for rape of prostitutes. Seduction and rape laws requiring that the victim be "honest" did not stipulate whether the criteria were the same in each case; the deflowering law mentioned only the woman's prior virginity. Thus, although the victim's status was crucial to the definition of the criminal act, the law did not provide guidelines for evaluating this status. In practice, moral virtue and other markers of honor such as color and class combined in ways that made it impossible to establish consistent and objective criteria for defending female honor. Could a master be convicted of raping his slave? Could a

BRAZZIL- NOVEMBER 2000


minor who was immodest or who worked and socialized in public complain of deflowering? Sixty years later, jurists would complain that the conceptualization of family, honor, and sexuality was confusing, the respective crimes illogically organized, and punishment poorly justified in the 1830 code. Attempts to correct these errors would provoke contentious legal debates that outlived both the Empire and the Republic. The incompatibility of slavery and the universal fight to freedom provoked even greater legal conflicts. Faced with regional and popular insurrections during the liberal 1830s, most legislators came to the conclusion that classical legal principles such as equality were incompatible with the "cultural level" and "social evolution" of Brazil's population. Brazil's population, they argued (and many who considered themselves liberals agreed), not yet a "people," was unprepared for a social contract and would revert to barbarism if not tightly disciplined. Already in 1830, Conservatives used arguments of this sort to guarantee slaveholders' rights to apply private justice through corporal punishment and to maintain the death penalty for what they considered the most heinous crimes, including slave insurrection. Over the decades that followed, complaining that the law's "excessive liberalismled to regional revolts, slave insubordination, and general social unrest, state and imperial legislators passed a number ofdecrees that modified the original code, differentiating among types of criminals and victims, imposing harsher punishments, and strengthening centralized state authority. At the same time, the contradiction between the Empire's slavebased economy and the principle of individual liberty that underlay its liberal legal codes resulted in what Keila Grinberg describes as "the law of ambiguity" regarding slaves' civil status. Even as the law continued to uphold the property rights of slaveholders over slaves, lawyers and magistrates could successfully evoke the liberal concept of universal rights to freedom in favor of slaves. This contradiction was apparent to late nineteenth-century liberals and abolitionists, who called for the revision of imperial law to eliminate the distinctions between slave and free persons and to respond to the new needs of a society of "free men." Defining the Brazilian Family in Republican Civil Law With the abolition of slavery in 1888 and the overthrow of the Empire the following year, the need to define citizens, legal subjects, and the relationship between state and society gained new urgency. In a climate of vigorous political militancy centered in Rio de Janeiro, arguments for citizenship rights for women and men of all classes were widely disseminated and debated, appearing in the press, in political rallies, and in the favored forum for popular political debates, Carnaval parades. Several radical members of the Republican Party, most of whom were urban professionals, supported women's suffrage, and it was debated in the 1891 Constituent Convention. The Constitution of 1891 proclaimed a republic of free and equal citizens. As was the case in nineteenth-century legislation, however, the Constitution failed to define equality and citizenship clearly. The Constitution itself did not mention gender, but referred to the Brazilian people with masculine collective pronouns ("all" [todos] were equal under the law; "citizens" [cidadcios] could vote). Although, as in all Romance languages, the masculine plural in Portuguese can include women and men, republican officials interpreted this wording to exclude women. By limiting "active" citizenship, which included the rights to vote and hold public office, to literate males twenty-one or older, legislators guaranteed continued rule by a privileged minority.

BRAZZIL- NOVEMBER 2000

Along with childr n, the insane, beggars, illiterates, and Indians protected by the s • e, women became "inactive" citizens, subject to republican aws but denied rights to civic participation. Proponents of women's rights also lost important battles over republican ci il law. The young jurist Clovis Bevilaqua, commissioned in 1 99 by then justice Minister Epitacio Pessoa to write the republi • an civil code, produced a document that most observers consider d a compromise between reformists such as himself and those o fought to preserve "Brazilian traditions." The legislature no etheless passed Bevilaqua's proposal into law only after rem ving what Bevilaqua considered its firmest "liberal disposition "—thOse that enhanced the rights of women and illegitimate chil • ren in the family. While this demonstrated divisions among pu lic authorities over the type of family to be defended, it also rei forced the continuing,political importance of the institution. N • one, and certainly not Bevilaqua, doubted that the family wo ld remain Brazil's most important civil institution under th new Republic, nor that its "harmony" required maintainin distinctions between the rights of women and men. Although Bevilaqua and other young reformists agreed with more conservative lawmakers that preserving the family justified the suppression of women's individual liberties, the two sides disagreed on the extent of this suppression. Bevilaqua was eager to adapt civil law to what he considered the modern family—a family held together by love and mutual respect rather than the "egotistical authority" of archaic patriarchs. He believed that nature determined that men and women should play fundamentally different but "equally noble" roles in the family and in society. Since men were the na ral heads of families, it was necessary to grant them certain auth rity over their wives, but this should not override the principle f legal equality. Following this prin iple, Bevilaqua wrote in an early draft of the civil code that equal rights and responsibilities applied to "all human beings." A con ressional review commission changed the phrase to "all men." evilaqua explained that this change was merely philological and eflected a Roman juridical tradition that inferred inclusion of w men in universal references to "man." Yet the review commiss 'on also rejected—without so much as a discussion—Bevilaqua s proposal to concede married women the right to represent th mselves legally. Over his protests, the civil code reproduced e gender distinctions that had distinguished between "capab e" and "incapable" legal subjects in the Philippine Ordinances. usbands were legally capable, which meant they could repr ent themselves and their wives and children in court and be ore other public institutions. As "head of the couple" and holde s ofpatrio poder (paternal authority), husbands also enjoyed th power to determine where their wives and children would live, hether and when they would work, and how their property woul be administered. Married women's "inactive" status in cons itutional law was paralleled by their "incapacity" in civil law- gain, a status they shared with minors, the insane, and state-prot cted Indians. Bevilaqua continued o defend his opus despite these modifications, explaining that 'the need to harmonize conjugal relations" justified the "sacri ce ofjustice" for women. He insisted, moreover, that women's s bordination to men was "very slight, almost merely formal" in the new code, since husbands were required to allow their w yes to administer the household expenses and women had e power to control their husbands' financial transactions. Although none of th se justifications satisfied Brazilian feminists, who mobilize • to improve women's legal status almost as soon as the cod was passed, it must be noted that


married women's property and custodial rights in the Iberian legal traditions that Brazil inherited were far superior to those of most contemporary European nations. In Brazil, husbands and Nives had always been equal partners in ownership of com.nunal marital property and wives retained ownership of their dowries. Under the Philippine Ordinances, husbands had administered common property, but needed their wives' permission for important transactions. Upon the death of either spouse, the survivor maintained half of the common property; almost all of the other half was divided equally among children or other heirs. These provisions, which were maintained in the 1916 civil code, contrasted starkly with patrilineal traditions such as those of Anglo-American common law, which granted husbands full testamentary freedom and unbridled power over common property. As Muriel Nazzari demonstrates, however, with the gradual decline of the extended family over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, making way for nuclear families headed by Independent men, elite women lost their position of economic equality vis-à-vis their husbands, and this was reflected in civil Law. Unlike earlier legislation, under the 1916 code women automatically took their husbands' surname and husbands were required to support their wives and children. Commenting on these laws, Bevil aqua suggested that they demonstrated Brazil's progress, since in "modern society," it was a man's duty and honor to support his Wife. In any case, since relatively few professional options were open to women, the social and economic advantages of marriage remained considerable, and may even have increased, for elite women. The 1916 code did not modernize the legal distinction between "honest" and "dishonest" women, nor the laws that guaranteed the benefits of family membership only for the former. As was true under Philippine law, husbands could annul their marriages if they discovered their bride's defloration or other evidence of prior dishonesty, now considered an "essential error" about her identity. Under another law derived from the Philippine Ordinances, dishonest, or sexually immodest, daughters were subject to disinheritance; this condition did not apply to sons. Women's dishonesty was a serious offense: the only other behavior that resulted in the loss of filial rights was a criminal assault on a parent's honor or patricide. Following canon law traditions, imperial and republican legislators maintained the principle of free will in marriage partnerships. A few radical legislators and jurists, joined by a small number of pioneering female professionals such as newspaper publisher and author Josefina Alvares de Azevedo and lawyer Mirtes de Campos, favored extending free will beyond marriage vows by allowing no-fault divorce. Yet while debates over divorce were among the major causes of the delay in the passage of the civil code, opposition to it was overwhelming, and it was not legalized until 1977. Civil law did allow legal separation, prohibiting remarriage. If the wife were poor and innocent of offenses to her husband's honor, she had the right to receive alimony and child support from her husband. Records of marital separation litigation reveal that the separated woman's subsequent dishonest behavior, or sexual relations with other men, could strip her of these rights. The rights of children born out of wedlock provoked even greater controversy than divorce. Iberian legal traditions were remarkably forgiving of illegitimate birth. Under the Philippine Ordinances, "natural" children, or those born to marriageable parents, possessed the same inheritance rights as legitimate children, as long as their parents were plebeians. Plebeian fathers could voluntarily recognize their natural offspring; if they did not, these children could prove paternity using various kinds of evidence. The law denied inheritance rights to "spurious" children, or those born of incestuous or adulterous unions, but the Crown could grant exceptions to this law along with a -certificate of legitimization." Likewise, nobles, who were not permitted to recognize illegitimate children (whether natural or spurious), could sometimes get around these restrictions by "legitimizing" their children.

In a gesture hailed by some as enlightened, the imperial legislature eliminated distinctions between natural and spurious children and between nobles and plebeians in an 1847 decree. The same decree limited fathers' rights to voluntarily recognize illegitimate children and rescinded illegitimate children's right to sue for paternity all together. Against protests that this law was backward and cruel, punishing innocent children for their parents' sins, prominent nineteenth-century jurists and legislators defended it as necessary protection of "family peace, property, order and public morality" from the scandal and extortion of paternity suits. Some of these same men helped design the laws regarding illegitimacy in the 1916 civil code. Bevilaqua's original draft reinstated the traditional rights of illegitimate children—now including both natural and spurious—to paternal support and inheritance. To his immense frustration, however, the "reactionary influence" of his opponents resulted in restrictions that made the code "less liberal than the Philippine legislation." Legislators reinstituted the Philippine distinction between spurious and natural children, now prohibiting recognition of the former unless the parents married (possible only if former spouses died). Fathers could voluntarily recognize natural children, giving them the same rights as legitimate children. Natural children could also sue for paternal recognition, but they usually had to prove that they were conceived while the father was "living in concubinage" with the mother, a task that was particularly difficult, since this condition was left undefined. Over the first half of the twentieth century, judges came to distinguish between "honest" and "dishonest" concubines, granting paternal recognition and other only to the offspring of the former. While jurists, legislators, and the public engaged in fevered debates over the morality of paternity suits, the law that prohibited illegitimate children from suing married women for recognition went almost unnoticed, probably because lawsuits for maternal recognition were extremely rare. Surprisingly, given Bevilaqua's diatribe against the restrictions on paternity suits, the law restricting maternity suits was his own innovation. The law was unprecedented in Brazilian and Portuguese legal traditions, in which maternity was assumed to be obvious, and maternal recognition thus unnecessary. The measure recalls, however, the social practice of concealing illegitimate children in order to protect the honor of women and their families, a practice that was probably common throughout Brazil's history. As Bevilaqua explained, the reason for the new law was to maintain "family peace" by defending the dignity and reputation of married women—an argument he rejected as "reactionary" and "hypocritical" when made in favor of married men. Implicitly, he assumed that it was more damaging to attribute sexual impropriety to wives than to husbands, so much so that justice to the illegitimate children in question should be sacrificed to protect the honor of legitimate families. At the same time, while he held men responsible for their sexual conquests, he argued that family women who had born illegitimate children before their marriage might have been victims of seduction, and thus deserved protection. Judging from its author's observations, then, the law reflected both traditional cultural values that condemned women's illicit sexual behavior, but not men's, as well as the traditional paternalism that diluted liberal principles of equality and responsibility. Like the laws that defined the rights of legitimate wives and daughters, illegitimacy laws thus reinforced the principle of gender differentiation that emerged from the contentious and lengthy process of codification of civil law. Women did not share all of the rights of men, nor were they equal among themselves. Rather, they were capable or incapable; honest or dishonest, depending on their position in or outside a family. The above text was excerpted from In Defense of Honor Sexual Morality, Modernity and Nation in Early-TwentiethCentury Brazil by Sueann Caulfield, Duke University Press, 2000, 312 pp

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