Brazzil - Year 14 - Number 203 - March 2003

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Year 14 - No. 203 - March 2003

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Like the rest of the world Brazilians have been following transfixed the war in Iraq. The majority of the population seems opposed to the conflict, but there have been, however, few protest marches around the country When compared to such rallies assembled in Europe. Asia and the United States. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva talked several times with UN secretary general Korn Anan, in the days preceding the start of the war, tryina to avoid the fight.

Soon after the American-British attacks started. Lula made a public statement lamenting "the onset of armed action in Iraq and, in particular. the resort to force without express authorization by the United Nations Security Council.- The President also talked about the Brazilian cordial connection to the Middle East. "a region from which millions of Brazilians trace their descendance and to which we are united by close ties of friendship and cooperation.On the other side, Brazilians are more worried with their own internal Wars. The \var for security for example.

Rio, for one, has become a vast battleground where the narcomafia has shown frequently its power, burning buses, terrorizing neighborhoods and forcing schools. commerce and public offices to close their doors. And there is also the war against hunger. The Zero Hunger program and many other social initiatives have been pared down to fit reality's constraints. While Lula and his closest allies start to bicker about the slow pace of reforms, those who until recently were in the government seem to relish the spectacle with an impish smile of I-toldyou-so.

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11

Cover Brazilian blacks and their self-image Cover by &Moo Campos

Contents 08 117 08 OR 18 18 23 24 28 27 28 31 32 34 38 38 40 42 43 45 54

War Brazil wants peace with Washington Media Brazilian press and the US and domestic wars Behavior It's Carnaval time Language Girlfriend or concubine?

Ideas The risky business of being pro-American Lula Big problems for the "bigger plan" Economy The struggle for state control Politics Lula is good at talking Presidency The truce with Lula is over Economy Inflation might come back anytime Ideas Comte's ghost still haunts Brazil Humor My encounter with Veja's reporter Culture Eating is for socializing, not doing business In Portuguese "Domino" and "A Cole*" Press How Globo and Folha killed Gazeta Mercantil Crime Rio under siege Film Talking to City of Gods Katia Lund Film City of Gods director sounds off Fantasy Stop dreaming. Brazil is something else.

Music Independent and irreverent Pato Fu Children On the street, of the street, in the street

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5

Watching and Waiting Lula is not a hypocrite like France's Jacques Chirac. Brazil knows it makes no sense to irritate Washington unnecessarily over this war. The country has enough trade disputes with the US to get involved in a matter r which has little to do with Brazil's strategic interests.

JOHN FITZPATRICK Brazilians have leen watching the war in Iraq on the TV sets like the rest of the world but, for the moment, it is a war taking place far away with little relevance to this country.

According to local press reports, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has spoken three times this week to the UN secretary general Koffi Anan. The government has also set up various bodies to monitor the situation and is, of course, concerned at any effects which a drawn-our conflict could have on Brazil's still shaky economy. However, a waitand-see policy seems to be in place and fingers are crossed that the conflict will be over quickly.

Officially, the government is against the US action but, despite his talks with Anan, Lula has put forward no proposals to resolve the issue and is keeping out of the limelight. Lula was initially critical of the US for attacking Iraq without a UN Security Council resolution. The US did not have -the right to decide, on its own, what was good or bad for the world", he said. This was Lula talking from the hip but he could easily have been harsher and played to the anti-American gallery within the PT and the country as a whole but, wisely, did not. Despite these initially strong words he later toned down his comments and, overall, the government's reaction has been downbeat. In turn, the US embassy issued a statement in what it said it respected Brazil's right "to disagree on the best way to achieve the aim we both share: an Iraq which no longer represents a threat to other countries."

Thankfully, Lula is not a hypocrite like France's Jacques Chirac who regularly sends troops into former French colonies in Africa without a by-your-leave from anyone, yet made any Security Council resolution pointless by saying he would veto it. The Brazilian government knows that the situation could change completely if Iraq were to use chemical weapons, as it did in the first Gulf War against Iran and against its own Kurdish citizens in the 80s. It also knows that the Americans are almost certain to win and it makes no sense to irritate Washington unnecessarily. Brazil has enough trade disputes with the US to get involved in a matter which has little to do with Brazil's strategic interests.

The truth is that Brazilians are not really that interested in what happens outside their own vast country, especially a country as far away as Iraq. Although the Brazilian press has reflected the overwhelmingly anti-American popular feeling, it has also been fair enough to present the horrors of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. This means that there is virtually no support for the Iraqi regime. We have also seen none of the mass anti-war protest which have affected other countries, including in the US and UK. There have been a few scattered protests, attended mainly by students, at which political parties and trade union organizations have been noticeable by their absence.

The truth is that there are simply not enough reasons for Brazilians to become upset by the American action. By attacking Iraq, the US is not attacking Brazil. Iraq is not an ally. Iraq is not a friend. There are few Brazilians in Iraq or the region. This was not always the case. In the 70s and 80s there were many business ties in the oil, construction and arms sector. There were also allegations that Brazilian scientists had helped Iraq develop nuclear weapons, which embarrassed the Brazilian government.

Following the invasion of Kuwait in 1991 several hundred Brazilians working in Iraq were prevented from leaving and kept as effective hostages for two months before being let go. In fact the main Brazilian export to this region in recent years seems to have been football players and managers. The Brazilian foreign ministry has been working to allow these expatriates to leave Kuwait and Turkey.

It was interesting to note that Lula mentioned the millions cf Brazilians whose ancestors came from the Middle East. This is true but strikes few chords since once again Iraq has few cultural or family ties unlike Lebanon or Syria. Most Brazilians of Middle Eastern descent are of Lebanese and Syrian origin. They are also mainly Christian and, since their ancestors fled the tyranny of the Moslem Ottoman empire, there is no sense of religious solidarity with the mainly Moslem Iraqis.

Brazilians of Arab descent are well entrenched in politics and business but have distanced themselves publicly from the troubles in the Middle East. (This does not mean they have not provided help to their ancestral homelands any more than Brazil's Jewish community has not helped Israel but this has been done with discretion.) The focus on the Foz de Iguacu region, which has a large population of Arabs and people of Arab descent, as a center for terrorism is a relatively new phenomenon resulting from the influx of recent mainly Moslem immigrants.

John Fitzpatrick is a Scottish journalist who first visited Brazil in 1987 and has lived in So Paulo since 1995. He writes on politics and finance and runs his own company, Celtic Comunicacfiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; www.celt.com.br, which specializes in editorial and translation services for Brazilian and foreign clients. You can reach him at iMcelt.com.br

6

BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

Nothing newin the media front.

The question of Iraq was erroneously conveyed and There and Here reduced by the media (both domestic and international) to a Bush vs. Peace confrontation. The coverage of our own war against narcoterrorism was also characterized by a vision both fragmented and simplified.

Wars

ALBERTObINES

They are neither related norlinked. The war in Iraq and the ( imminent) war against narcoterrorism occur in diametrically opposite worlds.

Their dimensions are unequal. their phenomena disparate. No similarity in motivation, characters or armaments.

Notwithstanding all this discrepancy, they do intersect through the communications media. To the extent that both are facts needingtO be exposed. explained and understood, they are at the same level. Both make unprepared narrators gag, both simplify the narrative and both turn the daily work of chronicling life into an unending succession of trifles.

The question of Iraq was erroneously conveyed and reduced by the media (both domestic and international) to a Bush vs. Peace confrontation. This was again visible during all the marches last weekend in the four comers of the world. But people who favor Peace cannot militate in favor of either one of the opponents because, in this case, peace becomes a masked way of aligning oneself.

Peace is necessarily neutral, and an abdication of military resources. Peace means equidistance from the idea of confrontation—arty confrontation. That is the way it was in 19 14-1 918 and this is the way it should be now. If a person is able to visualize both contenders as representations of something he rejects, then he is indeed a convicted pacifist. Furthermore, pacifists are people who resist all persuasions, faithful only to their own conscience.

If one adversary is presented as absolute evil and the other as a lesser evil, the pacifist is no longer a pacifist—he has taken a side, he is already engaged, and he wants to pull a trigger.

Five centuries The media was unable to explain to pacifists what is pacifism. It has lost a rare chance to off' r something called meaning. It proved equally unable to offer readers and viewers a real alternative to war. This alternative would have to consider Saddam Hussein as a Ithal of Slobodati) Milosevic who needs to be controlled, neutralized and, eventually, judged by international bodies and tribunals.

If, from the beginning, the media had been able to show that opposing the war doesn't mean favoring Saddam, things could have been geared in another direction. Opposition to war involves opposition to all sorts of violence, including opposition to dictatorships. The Iraqi people need to be protected against any bombs, intelligent or not, but it also needs to be protected against the stupidity of the This has not been proclaimed as it should.

If the issue had been presented from the beginning as a conflict between Bush's unilateralism and the multilateralism of the integuatiegial community, Chirac's France would not have been able to pretend to be the good girl, like it's doing now, and would have been pressing in favor of peaceful action from the U.N. for a long time.

We can't talk about peace in Iraq without mentioning the Kurds. No use recalling how Saddam killed tens of thousands of Iraqi Kurds if the other Kurds—Iranians, Syrians and Turks—are forgotten and left in a limbo. An international mobilization in favor of Some type of autonomy for Kurdistan will serve as a warning to Turkey that their candidacy to the European Union is incompatible with their repression of the Kurdish minority.

Humanity has never been so well-informed and so ill-informed at the same time. And the simple reason is that the press media---the media that explains, surveys, relates and interprets is mimicking the electronic media, fascinated by its impact, synthesis, images and spectacle.

Long essays are generally extremely dull simply because journalists—with rare exceptions—don't feel safe in the land of references and prefer to transit in the sphere of evidence, while historians and "scientists" are generally incapable of working as effective narrators,.

The encounter last March 16th in the Azores gave us a measure of the lack of vision demonstrated by news programs. The Spain offase Maria Aznar dominated the world from the end of th e 16th century through the 17th century. The England of Tony Blair dominated the world in the 18th and 19th centuries (up to the very first part of the 20th). And Bush's U.S. has been dominating the world alongthe 20th through the 213' century. Portugal, the host, was a shadow of both Spain and England.

It was a sudden live lesson in history. Five centuries of h istory. a summit of past hegemonies, an exclusive club for ghosts and an olvect of desire from autonomous tyrants (Bonaparte. Hitler and Stalin). If the international news pages of the big press media are unable to unveil panoramas with these kinds of perspectives, we don't need to lose time with press media—a talk show would be more effective.

Optic Disturbance The coverage of our own war against narcoterrorism was also characterized by a vision both fragmented and simplified. Starting with a problem of identification—very few dared to identify the adversary (narcoterrorism) in the last few weeks. And the reason was political engagement—the fear of extending to Colombia's FARCs the ranking of "terrorist group".

Editors and editorial writers are treating the issue of violence in Rio from within a hall of big criminals. Only now—with the editorial on the cover page of 0 Globo on Saturday 3/15 serving as landmark—we notice in the Brazilian press a wider and broader view ofthe wave of violence. The issue transcends the thug called Luis Fernando da Costa, better known as Fernandinho Beira-Mar (Seaside Freddy). It transcends the incompetence and demagogy of the husband-wife team o f Governors ofRio de Janeiro State. It transcends Rio de „latte0ro itself Narcoterrorism can't be contained in the portfolio of the Justice Department or in the national prison system. It can't be fought with the symbology of the presence of the Armed Forces in the streets of Rio. It has to do with the defense of the country of Brazil and its institutions.

It implies in altering the Judiciary enough to deter the complicity ofjudges. It implies in exercising the federal inspection general officetand all the ethics committees of both House and Senate to put a stop to the collusion between crime and the Legislative Power The Brazilian people cannot be cheated with the impression that the interest rate is Enemy # I and MinisterGraziano, with his zemstioUtss in the Zero Hunger program, needs to be removed The elaborate edifice of fiscal credibility may tumble down in the exact moment when investors perceive that the government, while able to maintain the basic surplus, was unable to make up for the deficit of determinathin to confront narcoterrorism.

Our media suffers from a serious optic disorder: it can't see the significance of the very phenomena it covers. For the citizenry, deprived of participation in history, it's frustrating. For those who need the media to make decisions, it's tragic.

Alberto Dines, the author, is a journalist, founder and researcher at LABJOR—LaboratiSrio de Estados Avancadas em Jornalismo (Laboratory for Advanced Studies in Journalism) at UNICANIP (University of Campfires) and editor Odle Observatorio da Imprensa. He also writes a column on cultural issues for the Rio daily Jorrud do Brasil. You can reach Witty con.br email at obsim • .• Translated by Tereza Braga, email: This article was originally published March 19, 2003, in Observatario da Imprensa - www.observatoriodaimprensa,

BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

7

C

Over 40,000 members of the security forces are patrolling the streets of Rio this Carnaval to Carnaval Capers make sure that while the merrymaking goes with a bang, it is the right kind of bang. Compared with events in Rio, Salvador, and Recife the Sao Paulo Carnaval is a feeble affair.

JOHN FITZPATRICK

Behavior

No Dancing in the Street for Lula The Carnaval is almost on us once again and politicians are heading back to their home areas to dance in the streets and mingle with the people. President Luiz triad° Lula da Silva, however, will spend his first Carnaval as President in Brasilia although he has received many invitations to attend parades all across the country. This shows great devotion to duty, since, in this writer's view, any sane person would use any excuse to escape from the sterility of architect Oscar Niemeyer's monstrous blot on the Brazilian landscape. 14 Cheap Thrills in SAo Paulo Sao Paulo is not a Carnaval town. Despite the fact that millions ofNortheasterners live here, the Paul istano is still not really in tune with the Carnaval. There will be parades, of course, but ar 0 talc cam tie Ce a compared with events in Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Recife etc the SAo Paulo Carnaval is a feeble mbar loth. affair. The mayor's office will be distributing 100,000 free condoms in the city's sambadrome, , which might attract a few cheap thrill seekers, but no one would dream of going to SAo Paulo for the Carnaval. As usual, the attention of the world will be focused on Rio de Janeiro.

Tram Cariocaphobia I r:Zrrra lf you ever want to irritate someone from sao Paulo then start praising Rio. Within a minute espalhar o your listener will start telling you how dangerous Rio is. (At least three people were killed in terror • - ,4* the rehearsals for the Sao Paulo Carnaval last week but don't remind him of this.) Then he will tell you how lazy the Carioca is. The Carioca only wants to hang around the beach all day and do no work. He also speaks with a loud voice in a ridiculous accent.

The fact that Rio is the symbol of Brazil worldwide is another irritating point. The Paulistano will grudgingly admit that Rio is in a beautiful location, but will be quick to tell you about the good points of his native city. Once he starts praising ghastly buildings like the MASP 7 modern art gallery, boasts about the number of great restaurants or quotes statistics on how much of Brazil's wealth originates from Sao Paulo it's time to head off to one of the few places in Sao Paulo worth visiting—the—airport and catch a flight to Rio...

Mancha < Canoes Bang Bang Brazil urn du. visu Once you have arrived in Rio de Janeiro this year don't be surprised if you hear a few bombs exploding or the rattle of machine gun fire above the sound of the drums. For the second time 0.1 in six months, the gangs which control the drugs trade and terrorize the population of the faveIa shanty towns, have decided to show the country who is boss in the "marvelous city".

Over the last few days these gangs have forced businesses across much of the city to dose down, have set fire to buses and cars and threatened punishment to those who do not follow eir orders. They have also set off some bombs and machine-gunned buildings. A number aimunov of people have been killed in incidents linked to this unrest. Over 40,000 members of the security forces, including several thousand troops, will be patrolling the streets to make sure iv that while the Carnaval goes with a bang, it is the right kind of bang.

Cariocaphobia H TO irritate the Paulistanos even more, the alleged leader of the unrest in Rio, Luiz Rio tit ter tnanter Exetrilti nas ruas Fernando da Costa, has been flown from Rio to a prison in sao Paulo state. This gangster.

Peddo de paz na Sapucai known popularly as -Fernandinho Beira Mar" (Seaside Freddy), is approaching legendary proportions thanks to his activities as a cocaine dealer in Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay. `41.J All decent law-abiding folk will be glad that he is shut up in a maximum security jail and will be annoyed at having to feed and look after him, they can, at least.

Paulistas although the have the satisfaction of knowing that for a Carioca like Beira Mar, having to pass the Carnaval in Sao Paulo must be a fate worse than death.

Beer Cheer The Carnaval is big business and offers a perfect opportunity for companies to get great publicity at relatively low cost. For about three days there is virtually non-stop coverage of the event on television. Newspapers and magazines publish supplements and special issues. . '*" The beer and soft drinks companies, in particular, put enormous efforts into selling their Mule dermas products and publicizing their brand names. They pay out large sums to sponsor samba de moil •Oemondunew schools and Carnaval parades. Their brands and logos are everywhere.

Brahma beer hires a special spectator box at the Rio Carnal, al and packs it with celebrities". All the guests obligingly don tee shirts bearing the company's name and the edia obligingly takes pictures in the belief that a group of grinning faces is somehow newsworthy. I recall once seeing four pages of photographs of this particular company's party in a magazine. Every photo had the company name plastered across the front of the subject. The advertising director must have been the happiest man in Brazil to gain so much publicity at so little cost.

You can reach John Fitzpatrick at ifAcelt.com.hr

ZERO HORA

8

BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

A hit new TV show in Brazil compares women to mares.

Meanwhile the mainstream press has become suddenly bashful and has been using boyfriend and girlfriend when the appropriate term would be lover or concubine.

When lover Is a Four-letter Word

.-JANER CRISTALDO Except for the occasional newscast, don't watch Brazilian television. While reading the papers. I often find out what happens in the tale-world. One newspaper has just made me aware of a new fever, the so-called "egifinha pocot6" (littlepoeoto mare). If I understood well, there is some kind of new show on TV targeted to young audiences which compares women to mares. And we already have parents crying out for censorship, instead of taking the salutary measure of removing their children from the front of the small screen.

"I'm a father and I have to sit, conscious of my impotence before the television set, and watch my I2-year-old daughter having fun, singing and dancing the pocoto. Luckily she does not understand the horribly poor and vulgar lyrics appealing to sex and treating women Ls mares and bitches."

Well, if telev ision appeals to sex, treats women as mares and bitches and gains audiences by doing so, the problem is not the television, but the audience. Upset viewers seem not to have yet noticed that TV sets have buttons, which are for turning the machine on and of and for changing channels. Another option, which is not forbidden to anyone, is to throw the machine in the thrash. But nobody would think of that. Televiewers, in their dictatorial spirit, want a television suited to their ethical standards. Which evidently are not the same standards of the huge majority who finds delight in watching women compared to mares and bitches.

UTZf Words are a curious thing. Their meaning depends on who speaks them, and when they speak them. In the Song of Songs, Salomon says: "I liken you, my darling, to a mare harnessed to one of the chariots of the Pharaoh". The text has been around us for way over two thousand years and to this day! have never heard of anyone complaining about the equine comparison.

On the contrary, it is considered one of the moments of great poetry in the Book. It is the only occurrence of the word "mare" in the whole Bible. It only occurs when the wise king searches for an image to describe his beloved. That may be the reason why the dark girl, as lovely as the Kedar tents, decides to stay with her pastor instead of leaving to enjoy Salomon's pageantry. But this matters very little. In fact, I didn't want to talk about mares, but about another little word.

"She will chase after her lovers, but not catch them"—we read in Hosea—"she will looe for them but not find them; then she will say, 'I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now". If the word 'mare' only occurs one single time in the Bible, the word 'lover' appears much more frequently. It generally has a pejorative meaning, but not bad enough to embarrass hagiographers. Our press seems to be the one contaminated by modesty, since they try their best to avoid the little word.

Barbara Gancia, of Folha de S. Paulo, is astonished with the boldness of the media and those involved in the telephone tapping case in Bahia who referred to Ms. Adriana Barret° as an ex-girlfriend of ACM (Bahia's senator Antonio Carlos Magalhaes). "Wait a minute: isn't the Senator a married man? So what is this about "ex-girlfriend"? Until proved otherwise, Adriana has been, or will again be (if it's up to her parents) ACM's mistress".

Roberto Pompeu de Toledo, a columnist with Veja magazine, takes ironic advantage of the opportunity and says that it has become unseemly to talk about "amante" (mistress) these days. "The word invokes shady lewdness and bad-taste trickery. Only "amasia" (concubine) could be worse. The alternative, then, is -namorada" (girlfriend), or "ex-namorada", to qualify the woman who incurred the fury of the powerful Senator.

According to present-day standards of good taste, language would probably offer no better alternative, anyway. But now we have a problem. "Namorar" (to "date") has always been understood, and generally still is, to be something practiced by people who are free and unimpeded. Well, the character in question is a married man, a parent and a grandfather. Can we, then, with all normalcy, say that he has, or had, a "namorada"? If we can, then it's because we are in the Islamic world and didn't even know it. One more taboo has fallen and polygamy is now allowed.

At first sight, we have two upright professionals of the written word denouncing the hypocrisy with which words are used. But only at first sight. It so happens that the baiano Senator, notwithstanding his support to the novel president, is not a souche leftist. He is amen = of the right and a kind of symbol of evil. What he has, therefore, are mistresses. Just like any shabby Femandinho Beira-Mar. Who does not remember Zelia Cardoso de Mello. mistress of Bernardo Cabral? Or Suzana Alves, mistress of PC Farias? Sure, they are characters who belong in last century. But the last century is very recent. Zelia, for those who can no longer remember, was in Fernando Collor de Mello's cabinet. PC Farias was Collor's "caixa dois" (black cash). They didn't have boy-friends or girl-friends, but mistresses or lovers.

The PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores—Workers' Party) Mayor of Sao Paulo, madam Marta Suplicy, on the other hand, has a boy-friend.

In the big press, no writer dares to talk about the mayor's lover. Everyone mentions the mayor and her boy-friend, as ifmadam Marta wi,ren't a little too grown-up to have a boy-friend. Or they talk about the mayor and her companion. Or, still, the mayor and her partner. Or husband, although husband he is not.

For the daily Estado de S. Paulo, madam Marta is getting married. "Marta Suplicy (PT) has announced that she plans to make her relationship with Franco-Argentinian Luis Favre official as early as this year, as soon as the separation process between her and her ex, Senator Eduardo Suplicy, is concluded"—according to the story by Deborah Bresser. Folha de S. Paulo, on the otherhand, always hesitant between the politically correct and the desire to provide good information, or maybe because it deems the namoro exceedingly long, has

BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

upgraded the mayor's compadrito from Buenos Aires to the status of husband.

It is curious that Barbara Gancia, a coworker of Monica Bergamo, doesn't complain when the latter talks about Marta Suplicy and "her husband, Luis Favre".

In its desire to be elegant with the mayor, the newspaper ends up promoting donaMarta to bigamous. Officially, the mayor has not divorced from her ex yet. If Dona Flor and her two husbands belonged to the world of fiction, Folha offers its readers a slice of real life, Dona Marta and her two husbands. In order not to confuse the mayor with these vulgar lovers, typical of the reactionary right, it promoted her to wife.

In Cesar Giobbi's column in the Estado de S. Paulo, we read that on the IP of last February. a roundtable of women who meet on a weekly basis at Kosushi received a surprise visit from the mayor. "One of the topics was the telephone tapping in Bahia and the accusations made by attorney Adriana Barret°. Marta was incensed because until then no one had mentioned the moral issue, since ACM is a married man". It looks like the madam mayor, . . , with the insistence by the press in talking about her husband Luis Favre, has convinced herselfthat she is a wife. She even forgot that, in order to get married again, she needs first to divorce her ex, which has not happened yet. May the mayor forgive me but, according to our legislation, if it has not happened yet, that means she is still married to Senator Suplicy.

According to dona Marta, "if the situation concerned herself or Governor Rosinha Matheus or Benerlita da Silva, for example, then they would, yes, make much noise about this issue".

Happy illusion, madam. You are an activist of the left and on your honor befalls all the benevolence of the press.

And hail the paullsta press and its extraordinary independence! Our brave columnists seem to be assaulted, when we least expect, by reflexes of the Cold War. Because of their craft, they have to live with me mayor and her trajectory almost on a daily basis, but they go out looking for lovers in the biography of... the baiano. Because lovers are attributes of evil, the big classical right.

The chaste left has husbands, instead.

Janer Cristaldo—he holds a PhD from University of Paris, Sorbonne--is an author, translator, lawyer, philosopher and journalist and suffers SAo Paulo. His e-mail address is cristal*baguete.com.br Translated by fereza Braga, email: tbragalingcs.com

10

The Foolishness o Being Pro-American in Brazil Any anti-American lie, in Brazil, even an absurd one, is immediate taken as pure truth. Any pro-American word I write is at once explained as the work of a professional liar "sponsored by Wall Street". Can't Americans say a single word in defense of themselves in the Brazilian press?

DLAVO DE CARVALHO

Brazilian anti-Americanism is turning into furious rage, and nobody in Washington seems to be conscious of it. I am tired of being the ONLY pro-American columnist in the main Brazilian media an Jsuffering attacks and death threats for it, while Americans themselves don't care in the least about what is happening here.

A message signed by Joao Pedro Stedle, the leader of the "landless" movement, spreads all over the internet the "news ' that Americans have been incessantly bombing Iraq with biological weapons for the last_ eight years—and nobody contradicts him.

Every big Brazilian newspaper says Americans am only fighting for oil, and nobody contradicts them.

Tons of pictures showing George W. Bush with a Hitler-style mustache rea every Brazilian mailbox, but no message against Saddarn Hussein is seen anywhei except in my own electronic newspaper www.midiasemmascara.org and a f other sites owned by my friends.

Any anti-Amorican lie, even an absurd one, is immediately taken for granted as pure truth. Any pro-American word I write is at once explained as the work of a professional 111111111E1111115=111111111111111 liar"sponsored by Wall Street". My personal situation is the best symbol of the Brazilian state of affairs.

Hundreds of powerful NGOs have milhors of dollars (even from the Ford Foundation) to spend on anti-American propaganda, Mvernern P but the only Brazilian journalist that fights aganst them, with his own personal resources, ,;(4001-,,,asitoarrts >me-cam se -K1, with no American or local support, is accused of being "sponsored" by Wall Street, the 171A or the Pentagon. My life is turning into a Franz Kafica novel. If I believed in reincarnation I would choose to be born again as a communist or a radical anti-Zionist. That's the best of lives for a Brazilian.

Is it really impossible for American conservatives to take into account what is happening here? Is the Latin American "Little Axis of Evil" so unimportant for you? bit real,y impossible for Americans to viy,e single word in defense of themselves in the Brazilian press? Don't you really have an Embassy here, or is it too busy pampering Lula to find t me to do something good for the USA? Are pro-American Brazilians such contemptible people, from both American and Brazilian points of view, that they should never be believed at all?

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Olavo de Carvalho is a philosopher and the author of several books, including imbecil Coletivo: Atualidades Incuharais Brasileiras (1996) and 0 Falun. do Pensamento Brasileiro - Estudos sobre o Sosso Lugar no Mundo (1997). He writes for three very influential dailies in Brazil: Folha de S. Paulo, 0 Globo (from Rio) and Zero Flora (from Porto Alegre, state of Rio Grande do Sul). His articles can be found at www.olavodecarvalho.orgfind www.midiasernmascara.org The author welcomes comments at lumela,openlink.com.br

BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

Where Did All the Blacks Go? When I asked in Bahia a group of Brazilian school kids what race they considered me to be, they all simultaneously yelled "MORENO!!"

I would say my own complexion is similar to that of actor Denzel Washington. What do these results tell me? For many Brazilians, a person cannot be attractive and black at the same time.

MARK WELLS

All the paintings are by Candido Portman

Since my first trip to Brazil in September of 2000, I have visited the country two more times, all three visits spent in the state of Bahia. My experiences of that first trip can be found in the June 2001 issue of Braz=i1 and is entitled "Playing the Race Game in Bahia". I am current1y pursuing a degree in Anthropology at he University of Michigan, thus the ide of race from the Brazilian perspectiv is very intriguing to me.

Though my last two experiences s pplied me with enough memories to fil up a book, the reason I decided to write his essay was because of a comment ii at another African-American recently m de when I mentioned my interest in Br zil.

This person was under the impres ion that there were no black people in Br zil, BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

11

but a "bunch of Mexican-looking people". This view of Brazil isn't rare as 1 am sure millions of people have the same perception of Brazil. including George W. Bush.

According to article from German Der Spiegel, published on May 19,2002, during a conversation between Bush and former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso in Washington, Bush uttered the question, "Do you have blacks in Brazil, too?" It was National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice that saved Bush from an embarrassing situation by telling him "Mr. President, Brazil probably has more blacks than the USA. Some say it's the country with the most blacks outside Africa."

The majority of my last two trips were spent in the city of I Iheus and it provided me with even more insight into the complex ways that Brazilians view the idea of race. After devoting much time and research into Brazilian racial issues, I felt it necessary to get opinions from actual Brazilians who are the focus of these studies. My discoveries supported but also contradicted many of the conclusions that many Brazilian scholars had theorized.

As most of us who have spent some time learning about Brazil know, the AfroBrazilian population is said to represent anywhere from 44-59 percent of all Brazilians, depending on what classifications constitute being black. Reports from the United Nations have gone as far as to say that Brazil is a 73 percent black country. Most of us also know that genie de cor (people of color) in Brazil use a plethora of euphemisms to describe their "race", or better yet, color.

The Tones of Black In the book "The Brazil Reader" there is a list of 134 different terms for how Brazilians responded when asked to state their "race" or color in the 1976 Brazilian Census.

Terms like "moreno" , and "mulato" were popular but people also used terms such as "jambo" (deep red fruit color), "corada"(ruddy), "corde-canela" (color of cinnamon), "quase negra" (almost black) and "marrom" (brown).

The IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) officially recognizes only five 12

racial categories: Branco (white), Preto (black), Pardo (mixed race), Amarelo (Asian) and Indio (Brazilian Indian). The confusion begins when one tries to decipher the difference between a "hrunco". "pardo" and a preto". Most -pardos" I have seen would be considered black by American standards.

As Brazilians are asked to self-identify in the census, a pardo could have the light complexion/light eye color of American singer/actress Vanessa Williams or the dark skin/dark eyes of a Michael Jordan. Generally, Brazilians tend to only use the term pardo in the census and not in everyday interaction When Brazilians speak of "pretos" they are usually referring to a person of African descent with very dark skin.

According to Marshall Eakin in his book Brazil-the Once and Future Country, "to be black in Brazil means to have no white ancestors". If this code of color were to be true in America. the majority of the black population would also not be counted as black.

A common practice in Brazil is for people with dark skin to refer to themselves in a lighter skin category, thus pretos can become pardos and pardos can become brancos. As many Brazilians of obvious African descent acquire better socio-economic positions, they tend to "whiten" their identity, or at least try. While many12 Brazilians adhere to the famous Brazilian saying "money whitens", in Charles Wagley's classic 1952 UNESCO publication Race and Class in Rural Bra:dl, a white Brazilian was quoted as saying, -A preto may be a doctor and have status, but he always remains a negro."

In my first article for Brazzil, I spoke of my friend -Danielle" who has a very dark brown complexion. On Danielle's

birth certificate she is listed as aparda. In Melissa Noble's book "Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics", ex-President Cardoso supported the idea of combining the preto and pardo categories, into one as representative of the Afro-Brazilian population.

According to Eakin in his book, in Brazil, "whites tend to view blacks and mulattos as a single group of Afro-Brazilians". Many studies have confirmed the fact that many Brazilians of African descent will try to deny their African heritage when possible, but again, what do the people themselves say?

What's Your Race?

During my first visit to the city of [Thetis, I was taken to a neighborhood school to visit the children and get an idea of how the Brazilian education system works. As my American eyes wandered from child to child, the much debated question of who in Brazil is black never became a problem, again as viewed through my AMERICAN eyes. My video camera was in constant motion as I tried my best to preserve my memories on film.

Kids are all the same when they know they are being recorded: they are ALL camera hogs!! I was taken to two classrooms that contained a total of about 60 kids, all aged 7-10. I thought it would be a good idea to find out how these kids viewed the idea of race. So in the first class of about 25 kids, I had each child step in front of the camera and state their name, age and race.

The results? Four kids either didn't know what raga (race) they were or didn't know what the word race meant, six said that they were negro/negra (black) and three said that they were white. What did the rest of the kids say?

The most popular answer of the day? Moreno. By American terms, only one of these kids might have passed for white.

Also interesting was the fact that two of the light-skinned kids claimed to be black, while one of the light brown skinned boys said he was white. More interesting still was the second classroom of35 kids, 5 of whom could have passed for white. When asked who was white in this class, about 80 percent ofthe students raised their hands. It is a wellknown fact that blackBRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

ness carries such negative connotations in Brazil thus it is understandable why many don't care to be categorized as such. 3 It is also highly likely that when many hear the terms negro or preto they think ofthe actual color black that can be found in a box of crayons. In many ways, the blatantly negative ideas of blackness in Brazil hark back to America, circa 1950s.

An issue that I thought of while talking to these youngsters that would take more research to discover was the question of which was more influential to their concepts of race: society or their parents?

Now that I have given a short summary of my experiences with some middle school-aged children, I feel it is important to analyze some of the more popular terms that apply to the concept of race.

Until the early 1900s in America, the term "mulatto" signified a person of mixed African/European descent. In Brazil, the term "mulata" seems to carry more of a sexual connotation than of a racial definition.

Afro-Brazilian women (who play such prominent roles in Brazilian Carnaval festivities) possessing medium dark brown skin (some semi-nude, others in extravagant costumes) and sensuous physiques have been a part of Brazilian popular culture for centuries and are defined as mulatas. Mulatas are said to have a skin color that is the "cor de pecado"(colorofsin), prominent bundas (derrieres) with hair that is somewhere between pixa im (kinky) and straight, with noses and lips that are not as blatantly (West) African as theirpreta counterparts. Again, by this definition, millions of African-American women would be considered mulatas.

Racial Democracy Lives During the slave era, the sexy mulata was the female with whom white Brazilian boys were expected to have their first sexual experiences. Famed writer/sociologist/anthropologist Gilberto Freyre wrote much about these sexual relationships during Brazil's slavery era in what was to become the blueprint of Brazilian race relations, Casa-Grande & Senzala (translated in English as The Mansions and the Shanties). With the publication of this book, as well as several articles, Freyre became one of the chief architects of the Brazilian"racial democracy" myth that many Brazilians continue to have faith in to this day.

It has also been the subject of much debate as to whether some of the sexual exploits in this book were actually autobiographical accounts of the author's inter-racial sexual exploits in post-slavery

Brazilian actress Camila Pitanga or American singer Mya. The other definition of morena is a white woman who has dark hair. Brazilians refer to blondes as loiras and brunettes as morenas. According to the Oxford Portuguese dictionary, a morena/moreno can be a "dark person", a "brunette" or "bronzeado" (tanned) brown.

The Moreno Dilemma In many books that speak of the issue of race in Brazil, Afro-Brazilians are divided into pretos and pardos while Brazilians of European descent are at times divided into brancos and morenos.

While pardo is recognized as a person of predominant African descent with any degree of racial admixture, moreno is at times used to signify Brazilians of predominant European descent with noticePernambuco. The mulata also gai ed able Native or African facial features or much notoriety from the legendary a- hair texture.

Over the course of generations, using hian author Jorge Amado, who is no doubt responsible for the thousands of the term dark to describe one's skin comEuropeans and Americans who floc to plexion has become even more ambiguBrazil every year in search of the sex al- ous. I had always been confused as a kid when I heard white women speak of the ly insatiable mulata.

The image of Amado's mulata c r- man of their dreams as being "tall, dark acter Gabriela (from the novel Gabri a- and handsome" in reference to the mythCravo e Cane/a) is celebrated through- ical Prince Charming character. The logout Ilheus. If one visited Ilheus it wo Id ic of my thinking was always, how could not be difficult to spot the image of he a white man be considered dark in combrown skinned, long-haired, curvace us parison to a black man?

Another question is, if black or white mulata on billboards, on the sides of buses, restaurants or even in the yell w women could both be considered a morepages as names of businesses. As a- na, how does one distinguish between ianos have told me, because of Am o, the two? According to Wagley's Race the idea of being thought of as the al ur- and Class, during that era, Brazilians ing, promiscuous, brown-skinned Ga ri- separated morena mulatas from morena ela has been permanently engraved in the brancas, which doesn't appear to be the minds of thousands of school-aged a- case today. The term moreno is the perfect vehicle with which to enter this perhian girls.

In comparison, the preta woma is plexing issue. Moreno is also a popular thought to be the less attractive, d rk- term throughout other Latin American skinned woman whose permanent p si- countries, but exactly where did the term tion in life is in the kitchen or tendin to originate? To answer this question we the white children for whose parents she must venture into the pages of the often will be employed for the majority o her misunderstood history of the African life. As the Brazilian saying goes, "b an- continent.

The word "moreno" is derived from cas (white women) for marriage, m latas for sex, pretas for work". Thus as the word Moor or Mauro. The Moors was thought during and after the slay era were black Northwest Africans that Roin America, the black woman's wort in man invaders encountered when they atBrazil was (and in many ways stil is) tempted to conquer this area that is present measured by her value as a worker, taby day Mauritania and Morocco. They referred to these black Africans as Maures, factory or sexual toy.

The moreno/morena term can als â&#x20AC;˘ be which, according to the Ivan Van Sertirather confusing. The morena has i een ma book Golden Age of the Moor, is the subject of countless Brazilian sings taken from the Greek term maure, which over the years and is recognized a the meant dark or black.

Mauritania and Morocco were also Brazilian symbol of beauty. On the one hand, it could refer to the black wo1nan derived from the term maure and refer to whose features are less African than that the land of the Moors. The term maure of the mulata or the preta. Exampl s of has since the 11th century come to signithe so-called (black) morena woul1 be fy the image of an African's head, the 13

BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

image of an African or anything associated with Africans. From the word Maure/ Moor comes a slew of words and names that we are all familiar with; Maurice, Morien, Morelli, Moreno, Maury, etc.

As history tells us, the Moors were responsible for bringing the light of civilization to the dark ages of Europe. Historians tend to label the Moors as Arabs because they spoke Arabic and adopted the religion of Islam, but according to Golden Age, the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) was invaded by an army of 6700 African Moors and 300 Arabs. The Rock of Gibraltar was named after the leader of this invasion, the Moor Tank ibn Zeyad.

The racial origins of the Moors has been a controversial issue among historians and anthropologists for many years but there is much evidence to support its black African roots. In Shakespeare's play Othello, Moors were described as being "black as pitch" with thick lips and wooly hair. Images of Moors can be found in several prominent European families' coats of arms and depict Moors with black profiles.

In some Latin American countries, a popular cuisine is called "Mauros eChristianos" (Black Beans and Rice). The Portuguese word for blackberry is amora 14

.As a matter of fact, before Europeans enslaved Africans and labeled them as negros, the terms African, Ethiopian and Moor all meant the same thing. The term negro is derived from the term necromancy, a form of worship in which believers can communicate with dead ancestors.

Thus the word negro is derived from necro, which means dead. Ironically, today Afro-Brazilian activists insist that African descent Brazilians refer to themselves as negros when Africans themselves did not refer to themselves in this way.

This is the reason why legendary AfricanAmerican activist Malcolm X always referred to blacks as the -.weaned negro" in his famous 1960s speeches. In Brazil (as well as in other Latin American countries), African descent people who want to 1,6 avoid the shame associated with calling themselves negros prefer to be called morenos.

Society has given them the impression that moreno is a term that signifies an intermediary position between black and white when in reality moreno actually means dark or black. Afro-Brazilian activists have also made a point of distinguishing between the terms preto and negro. While both terms mean black, preto refers to the actual color black that one could find in a box of crayons while the term negro signifies a racial category.

Negros, blacks and coloreds Self-definition among African-Americans has also gone through a myriad of changes. Since the slavery era in the U.S., people of African descent have been labeled negro, colored, black, Afro and now African-American. Along with these official terms are a multitude of color-coded terms that apply to the various skin tones within the African-American community. "High yellow", " blueblack" , "redbone" , caramel", and "chocolate" are but a few of these terms.

It seems that as generations pass, some racial terms become vogue while others are discarded. I remember on a 1970s album by comedian Richard Pryor, while

portraying a character from his past he exclaimed, "don't call me black I'M A NEGRO!!" Author Michelle Wallace wrote that it wasn't until the 1960s Civil Rights Movement that African-Americans proudly began referring to themselves as black. While African-Americans use different words to describe skin colors, the vast majority conceptualize all of these terms as belonging to the category of black or African-American.

Studies of the Afro-Brazilian population have led me to believe that Brazilians of African descent don't subscribe to such ideas. To the contrary, in all three of my trips to Bahia, as I interviewed several Brazilians who were black in my opinion, I found that many DO group ALL Brazilians of obvious or even less obvious African descent into one category. Many of them went as far as to tell me that terms such as moreno and mulatto don't exist and are only figments of imagination that less conscious Brazilians use to denounce their connections to negritude (blackness).

There were also those who preferred to remain in an intermediary category because they could count African, European and Indian within their ancestral lineage. One particular female affirmed herself as a negra but didn't agree with the term Afro-Brasileira because she knows that there were Portuguese and Native Brazilian ancestors in her family as well.

Another question that must be considered when pondering the issue of race in Brazil is if Brazilians separate blackness from Latin or Brazilian culture.

Again, there is no one answer for this question but there are several clues. During a recent lecture by Afro-Brazilian activist Diva Moreira, a question was asked as to whether Afro-Brazilians have a separate culture from European descent Brazilians as is the case in the U.S..

As Moreira explained, "black culture IS Brazilian culture" as it has been so thoroughly appropriated by the elite and Brazilians in general.

In periodically flipping through the pages of Latina magazine, or looking at the programming on the Telemundo Spanish language television channel, very rarely does one see a black face, though according to BET News and the book No Longer Invisible: Afro-Latin Americans Today, Latinos of African descent represent 1/3 the population of Latin America and 40 percent of the Latino population living in the US. But rarely have I met a person from Latin America of obvious African descent who described themselves as being black.

No Latino Land BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

In the view of Afro-Brazilian activist Abdias do Nascimento, it is a fallacy to refer to Brazil as a Latino country when African and Native influence is so strong within the country's culture. Though I disagree with the ways that Jorge Amado's novels stereotype Afro-Brazilians, his work does offer insight into the attitudes, beliefs and mores of Brazil. In Tenda dos Milagres (Tent of Miracles), one character says to another, "how dare you call our Latin culture mulatto! That is a subversive, monstrous statement."

Surfing on the Internet one finds several Brazilian online dating personal ads with photos included. Most of these sites ask people to denote their age, height, weight and race among other categories.

In one of the websites, in relation to race, Brazilians have the choice of choosing between black, white, Indian, various races or other races. The results were intriguing. In one of the websites, many people who chose black as their "race" would include terms like "mulata" or "morena clara" in parentheses next to their identification as black.

This would seem to confirm the idea that they consider themselves to be black while also describing their color and physical characteristics, similar to the way that African-Americans do. I also found people of more or less African features who listed themselves under the racial category of"various" or "other" with the terms "mulata" or "morena" signifying how they perceived themselves. These people seem to adhere to the belief that these terms make them separate from those listed as black.

In Robin Sheriff's book Dreaming Equality, many of the people that she interviewed in a Rio favela accepted the belief that in Brazil, if you're not white then you are black. While Brazil never legally adopted the infamous "one drop" of black blood rule as in the US, in the book"Negroes in Brazil", author Donald Pierson discovered a popular saying in Brazil that said "quem escapa de branco, negro ĂŠ" ("who can't be a white man is a negro"). In several websites and books, writers have claimed that in Brazil, a person's appearance is the way Brazilians classify themselves by race.

But in both the Wagley and Sheriff books, when asked the race of particular Brazilians who appeared to be white or near white, people would say they didn't know because they weren't familiar with their families. In another example from the Wagley book, a woman, when speaking of another woman with a light skin color, said that she could not be white because she knew for a fact that the woman in question had pretos in her

family. In interviewing several Bra IIians of obvious or somewhat African appearances, I met many that would se terms such as "morena" or"negra" int rchangeably in describing themselv s, which would appear to signify that t ey consider both terms to be derivative of the same.

Personal Touch Three personal stories will put th se beliefs into perspective. My frie d "Danielle", who has a complexion si lar to that of basketball star Mich el Jordan and refers to herself as a corrected a white Baiana who had cal ed her "morena" while the two traded ma eup ideas in a store. The white woman t Id her that she was "too pretty to be cal ed negra". In a 1998 issue of Veja magazi e, actress Camila Pitanga said that peo le frequently made these same comment to her also.

My friend Dione from Inlet's tell of describing herself on the telephone t a white Brazilian in Minas Gerais who as supposed to provide her with transpo ation. She waited and waited for the an to arrive when they finally met by a cident. He never thought that she was he person he was looking for even tho gh they were standing less than fifteen et apart. On the telephone, she hadsescribed her-self as a"negra". When t ey finally figured out who the other per on was, he remarked that he didn't kno it was her because she said she was a ne a.

Dione has a skin color that is sim lar to that of model Tyra Banks. Whe I asked the group of school kids what r ce they considered me to be, they all si ultaneously yelled "MORENO!!" I wo Id say my own complexion is similar tot at of actor Denzel Washington. What do these results tell me?

1) In the view of many Brazilians, a person cannot be attractive and black at the same time; and 2) for many people in Brazil of today, the term moreno seems to encompass the entire African descent population.

Land of contradictions Brazil is a country of contradictions in many ways. One of the more fascinating contradictions that you will find is the fact that many "white" Brazilians are quick to announce their partial African ancestry as long their outward appearance doesn't signify it thus maintaining the higher social status that whiteness in Brazil guarantees. By claiming that all Brazilians are of mixed race, this appears to be an attempt to "prove" the authenticity of the "racial democracy" myth.

Former President Cardoso once infuriated Afro-Brazilian activists when he stated that even he had a "foot in the kitchen", a derogatory manner of admitting partial African ancestry. On the other hand, some Brazilians of obvious African descent will try to deny their heritage when posed with the question of their ethnicity. This phenomenon can also be found in other Latin American countries with significant African-descent populations.

Race in America has always been a stringent, bipolar ideology, but in the 2000 U.S. Census, 2 million people listed themselves under the category of black and another race, the majority of whom were under the age of 21. If we consider the fact that many bi-racial Americans considerthemselves to be African-Americans of mixed descent, we can understand that the official statistics could be grossly understated.

Race will forever be a factor within societies in which different "races" or ethnicities of people must co-exist. Has the history of racial classification taught us anything that we can apply to the complexities of the race issue today?

Though I am pursuing degrees within the field of Anthropology, this is not to say that I don't have major issues with this field of study. The field of Anthropology actually began as a means of white scientists to "prove" that certain "races" of people were naturally inferior to others, with European descent people and populations being at the top of the racial hierarchy.

Anthropologists of the second half of the 20th century at least realized the racist foundations of the field's beginnings and have since promoted the idea that the concept of "pure" races has no biological basis. Brazil is a perfect example of this idea. Some estimates claim 15

BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

that at least 90 percent of all Brazilians today can count some degree of nonwhite ancestry in their blood line.

To me, Brazilians of African descent were not as difficult to recognize as some studies have suggested. It is the Brazilian "white" population that at times baffles me. Many Brazilians with whom I have discussed the idea of race in Brazil consistently use the term "Brazilian white" to describe Brazilians who claim to be white but would never be considered as such by American standards.

Brazil and the States I once saw a photo of singer Caetano Veloso in which his dark brown skin color would have easily labeled him as mixed or Latino in America. In other photos, he appears much lighter yet still not quite white. The same holds true of Brazilians such as actress Sonia Braga, and model Viviane Araitjo. Many Brazilians express the idea that because of the rampant mixing of Africans, Europeans and Native Brazilians over the course of centuries, it is impossible to label Brazilians with the same rigid racial terminology of the U.S..

But as American scholar Thomas Skidmore has commented, Brazilians don't seem to realize the extensive level of racial mixing in the U.S. in the past 400 years. The family trees of the majority of African-American families also include branches of European and Native American ancestry as well as that of African. What is not frequently discussed is the fact that American whites may not be as white as they may think they are.

R. P. Stuckert writes about this in his article "African Ancestry of the White Population." Anthropologist JA Rogers spent his entire career tracing the history of the amalgamation of races throughout the world and printed astounding discoveries in his books. Consider this fact: In America's past, many people of mixed European/African heritage had light enough skin to "pass" as whites and many ofthem married whites and raised "white" families thus passing the blood of Africa into the white population.

Many European descent Americans also know of Native American heritage in their family trees. Considering these facts, should these people still be considered "white"? I often see "white" people who have naturally thick or curly hair or even "afros". If African people are said to be the original people with tightly coiled or curly hair, where do these "white" people get these traits?

I often observe "white" people who obtain deep, dark tans while others simply turn a bright lobster colored hue of 16

red. If I were to follow the Brazilian or Italian examples, I'd say these people had a certain degree of non-European blood. When considering American racial classification, why is it that one drop of black blood makes one black but a drop of Native blood does not disqualify one from whiteness?

In the Brazilian example, is it not inherently racist for African descent Brazilians with European or Indian admixture to be referred to as mixed when many European descent Brazilians also have this mixture but are still -white"? It is a fact that the majority of Brazilians are mixed to a certain degree, with some phenotypes showing more of an African.

Native or European influence.

be of Colombian and Lebanese descent.

Beyonce, like most African-Americans, can probably count some Native and European ancestors in her geneology.

Does this mean Shakira looks "black" or that Beyonce looks "white", "Latina" or Lebanese?

Consider this idea: a man of Michael Jordan's complexion produces a child with a woman of mixed European/African heritage but who physically looks like blonde actress Heather Locklear.

The baby takes on the identical physical attributes of its mother. The baby looks totally "white" even though it is actually 75 percent black. What color or "race" should this child be labeled? If viewed as a social construction, the child would most likely "pass" as white.

In the 1950s, the United Nations began a series of studies on Brazil in an attemptto learn how this country achieved its "racial democracy" when other societies were experiencing chaos and strife with race relations. As statistics among the white and black (pardo/preto) populations in Brazil proved, the racial democracy was a farce.

While I wholeheartedly wish that we could simply erase the category of "race" from all of our most important applications, forms and documents, the fact is, as Conte! West says, "race still matters". As long as the so-called "pretos" and "pardos" of Brazil continue to occupy the lowest rungs of Brazilian society, this issue must continue to be addressed.

Though I don't believe that I will live to see a true "racial democracy" in any society, as Robin Sheriff entitled her book in reference to the Afro-Brazilian state of mind, I am still dreaming equality.

Trying to Make Sense Thus, if the vast majority of Brazilians have mixed ancestry, then the mestic°, pardo, moreno and mulato classifications make no sense if they don't apply to the ENTIRE population. In the Melissallobles book, Cardoso was made aware that many of the -white" people in his cabinet were not really "white". Cardoso commented that he knew that, but that the people themselves didn't know it.

Anthropologists tell us that "race" is a social construction. I would have to agree. In my observations of people, I have seen "black" people who look East Indian, Native American, Asian, Arab and white. I have seen white people (especially brunettes) who would look black if they had a darker tan. I have also noted the similarities between Colombian singer Shakira and singer Beyonce of the group Destiny's Child. Shakira is said to

Sources of information for this article: Negroes in Brazil. Donald Pierson Golden Age of the Moor. Ivan van Sertima

Dreaming Equality: Color, Race and Racism in Urban Brazil, Robin E. Sheriff Tent of Miracles, Jorge Amado Brazil-the Once and Future Country, Marshall Eakin

No Longer Invisible: Afro-Latin Americans Today, Minority Rights Group Race and Class in Rural Brazil, Charles Wagley

The Brazil Reader, Robert M. Levine and John J. Crocitti

Shades ofCitizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics, Melissa Noble Mark Wells is an Anthropology major at the University of Michigan and has a deep interest in Brazil and the African Diaspora. He can be reached at: Quilombhoje72@yahoo.com BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

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visiting Rio. However, I am very well aware that crime in the African community does happen like in America. I would like to take pictures while I'm there to expose the Brazilian community to many African-Americans. If I could meet someone who lives in Brazil who speaks English to come with me while I'm taking pictures will help me a great deal. You see, I don't want pictures of women on the beach. I want to take pictures of true AfroBrazilan people.

women or between a man and a woman. However, two heterosexual men will not kiss each other the way women do all the time, unless they are father and son, brothers or have some similar exquisitely close relationship. The etiquette requires men who are not quite so sure about the appropriateness of that kiss to wait for the woman's first move. When in doubt, don't kiss. Cheers

Sergio Costa Via Internet

A. L. New York, New York

WORK ISSUES

You are invited to participate in th;sdialogue Write to Letters to the Publisher P.O Box 50536 Los Angeles, CA 90050-0536 or send E-mail to brazzil@brazzil.com ARE WE?

Re: "We Are Paying for This War" — www. brazzil. com/p 102 aprO3 htm, comrade Stedile should be institutionalized. He lost it, definitely! He is the guy who firmly believes the U.S. throws rats in parachute in Iraq! The man really lost it and it surprises me that Brazzil publishes anything this lunatic writes. I thought this was a serious magazine...

Mina Kette Ohio, USA I HAD LUNCH

Well fed people can write very interesting articles. See "Sweat of Your Brow? No, Government Coupons - www.brazzil.com/ p142feb03.htm. I agree thatpeople should work for their food, But should the poor and hungry have to go years waiting for jobs to be created for them and the economy to get better? In the United States we have created a class ofbeggars on welfare.

However, we have many more jobs to offer in most cities than in Brazil. When they get off of welfare, at least many of them can survive. I do not totally disagree with your article. However, it seems to suffer from the same simplistic thinking in which it attacks. I do know that I am hungry now and going to lunch. Nice to be able to eat, would not you agree?

I am a law student and along with a group of students, am currently researching the issue ofunregistered workers in Brazil (semregistro) and more generally, the Brazilian underground economy. We will be examining the effect of the informal economy on Brazil's formal economy, and whether Lula da Silva has proposed any solutions to deal with the problem.

We will be traveling to Brazil from March 16March 28. When we return to the United States, we will use the information gathered during our stay to prepare a project for a course at the University. While in Brazil, we will be staying in Rio de Janeiro, but will be able to travel.

We would like to set up several interviews/ meetings with either government officials, academics, reporters or other persons knowledgeable about the subject of the sem registro. If you are available to meet with us (whether in person or by telephone) or if you have any contacts here in Chicago or in Brazil that you could refer us to, we would greatly appreciate any help you might provide us.

Larris Hutton Northwestern University Chicago, Illinois ME TOO

Oh, my goodness! This is in response to your article "How Brazil Wooed Me" — www.bra77il.comip105feb03.htm. I am about to go to Rio for a year this summer on a foreign exchange program and have been studying Brazil for 4 months now and just now learning Portuguese. which! love. Everyone thinks I'm crazy for choosing to go...why not Europe? they all ask me.... Well. everything this article said is exactly, how I feel. You only live once and you should go where your heart takes you, you can always change your mind!

FORGET AND FORGIVE

I read your article on the Portuguese Language. Although it was interesting, it also upset me. Why is it that the Spanish speaking countries in Latin America don't show the same antipathy toward Spain, that the Brazilians do toward Portugal? The colonial policies and practices of the Spaniards were far more repressive and ruthless that those of the Portuguese.

The Portuguese were not perfect, but neither were any of the other European colonial powers. The Portuguese talk with tears in their eyes, when they speak of Brazil; they are always ready to support the Brazilian soccer team in the World Cup, and they talk highly about Brazilian music etc. In their hearts, Brazil is Number I. You may say that this is all great, from the perspective of a Portuguese colonialist mentality, but the fact of the matter is—at least in my experience here in Canada--that the Portuguese that I know always put Brazil on a pedestal. Unfortunately, some Brazilians don't have the same attitude about the Portuguese.

We cannot undo the mistakes of the past, but don't expect any Portuguese to apologize for the fact that Brazil was at onetime Portugal's most adored colony. Sure, the Portuguese took diamonds and gold to the motherland, but so did all of the other major European powers.

I must say however, that your attitude is by no means what I typically hear from other Brazilians. They say that far too much is made of the differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese.

George Pimentel Canada, Via Internet

Amanda Martin Via Internet REAL BLACK

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Via Internet RED LULA

Calling Mr. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva a communist is not "rhetoric". It's the plain expression of a simple fact. Mr. da Silva was the founder and president of the Foro de Sao Paulo (Sao Paulo Forum), the Latin American coordination of communist parties and revolutionary armed organizations, including Colombian narcoguerrilla. No word puzzle or intellectual game can change the significance of this fact.

Olavo de Carvalho Rio de Janeiro, Brazil THE ETIQUETTE KISS

Very interesting and a sensible advice in your article "When in Brazil..."— www.bra77il.com/p141mar03.htm. But I have one objection. You say that "Shaking hands is customary, but friends or closer acquaintances kiss once on each cheek."

Kissing once on each cheek is a very usual way to say hello or goodbye between two 18

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Keep Up the Dream, Mr. Lula Health and education, the PT's highest priorities, even Lula's prized "Hunger Zero" program, have had to bite the bullet so that 'global' finance may rest assured.

How to jump-start job creation with banks refusing to take even the slightest risk has become a mystery to all who still believe in the "bigger plan".

NORMAN MADARASZ

In the pre-election debates, the candidate aimed for clarity. Via spin-doctor genial, Duda Mendonca, Lula da Silva painstakingly briefed Brazilian voters on the restrictions and realities facing the country. The political and economic platform of the party he was leading, the Brazilian Workers Party (PT), would have to be considerably different from what any of its staff had upheld years earlier. As a whole the party cou d no longer live in the comfort of opposition politics and utopian daring. The only problem was that few voters believed any of it.

Conservatives an4 liberals, rekindling Lula da Silva's rabblerousing days as a po -Trotslcyst trade union leader, jittered at the thought of what the p rty would usher in upon taking office. Their economic wing, the Brazilian banking sector, made a fortune in 2002 by speculating on theii fears. While Brazil's economy grew by a weak 1.52 percent in 2002, dnd the non-financial sector (industry, trade and services) expanded by 5.6 percent, Brazilian banks on average leaped by a walloping 24.5 percent, according to Austin Asis consulting.

These results ma be "a demonstration of competence", as the president ofthe Brazil an Federation of Banks, Gabriel Jorge Ferreira, hastened to add. It is s ill remarkable for this historical record to have occurred in a fierce] speculative year, hedged as it was on the outcome of the fall el ction. Banks may have upped the ante for the PT, which did not e clude many from remaining unimpressed by Lula' s past. The pecu iarities of their profession had long ago taught bankers to expect a q ick about-face once Lula confronted economic reality. It's a kind of mpassive wisdom reserved for the powerful.

As for progressive voters, they listened uneasily at the alliances anticipated in the speeches of Lula and his chief economic advisor Guido Mantega, now Vlinister of Planning. It was logical enough that criticism launched at he economic policies of the previous government triggered their I attention. After all, neither former Finance Minister, Pedro Malan, nor President Fernando Henrique Cardoso himself had hidden their espousal of the Washington Consensus doctrine of neo-liberalism. Were there one variable left uncontrollably floating in that model, it was risk. And the perceived risk of Lula as president stirring around the WC theorems was enough to bring the country to the brink of disaster.

When Lula opted or conciliation, progressives often shrugged it off as a sundry meas re required to gain power. Radical perception had it that the gentle armonies of uniform understanding could not partake of policy wit out damaging the party's commitment to social reform. Yet for thos who most believe in salvationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Brazil's 130 million poorâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the h rsh realities of market risk and lines of credit may be yielding to a ever-receding horizon of hope.

Progressive Ten ions Brazil's new PreSident, Lula da Silva, is the embodiment of a radical's evolution into the high priestdom of peace-and-love Zen politics. To claim thdt most of Brazil's disenfranchised love him as their wonder-child is all but an overstatement. Born into the impoverished Northeast, Lula' s childhood now reads as a mythic continental American dream. Like countless others, his parents left the agrarian region in th 1940s, heading south to the more prosperous havens of industrial do Paulo. From his early adult years, Lula filled the assembly line ranks that drove the booming Brazilian automobile industry.

During the midde period of the military dictatorship that occupied Brazil from 196 to 1985, Lula turned to politics, and eventually co-founded the Workers Party. This was the time of Solidarinosc in Poland and a democratic surge within leftwing political movements worldwide. Lula' s popularity as a trade union leader reached such heights that, when the military finally stepped aside, he decided to run in the first democratic elections held in the country for over a generation. He has done so in every election since.

While campaigning, Lula spoke stoically and serenely of the risks the country faces. With its debt to GDP ratio at over 60 percent, his 19

BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

government would first have to concentrate on bolstering the country's economy. For an emerging market, this primarily means reassuring the market and its players. Despite slashing Brazil's risk rating as against American Treasury C-Bonds to its lowest level since late spring 2002 (at 1,211), electoral victory has only intensified Lula's concern.

As his economic staff moves ever closer to matching market challenges, Lula tries to stall a slow slide from wonder-child to orphan. Battling between the hopes and fears of his people, his aim is to humanize an emerging market. In less specious times, such an attitude faces a wall of suspicion. But Lula the progressive has thus far stood out by gaining international backing for his vision. At least he has so far. Managing this tension is also how Lula's Brazil has come to exemplify the wedge driven between 21St century progressivism and 20Âą century emerging market vulnerabilities. Whatever it is that Brazilians now want, these two variables have been set upon an unstable common journey.

So it was of the highest importance that the ministerial meeting held on Monday, February 10th, be touted as a defining moment for the government. Lula's change of course from the programs and policies of his predecessor, the social democrat Cardoso (1994-2002), would finally be set. For eight years, the distinguished sociologist stood over his triumph, a new currency, the "Real". In the early 1990s, inflation spiraled until ebbing at 50 percent per month, a crisis that would soon precipitate the subsequent lesson in corruption of the (Fernando) Collor Plan. Cardoso's economic decision brought that disaster to a smooth landing, and the country to a long sought stability.

The fixed exchange rate device of pegging the real to the American dollar considerably increased the purchasing power of a large segment of Brazilians. It also allowed industrialists to import expensive foreign technology to upgrade their own sectors. Although the strong currency chipped away at exports, imported technology would prompt an import substitution market. Despite the consumer confidence of those years, failing investor confidence abetted by the Asian economic crisis of 1997 began to take a toll on the currency and stock market even within Cardoso's first mandate.

When the Asian crisis gave way to Russia's defaulting on the ruble, "hot" short term capital steam-rushed out of the Brazilian economy. The real could 20

no longer be sustained at its pegged standard. The currency was made to float and began its grueling slide, wiping away the gains achieved in Cardoso's first term.

Advocates ofglobalization who had been claiming an increase in world prosperity suddenly were beating hollow well beyond the many contradictions of their capitalist utopia.

In the other corner, anti-globalization activists absurdly yearned for the complete collapse of the Brazilian economy, claiming it would spread to envelop the global market and thereby sound capitalism's death knell. Realistically, the human toll of such a collapse would be far greater than any constructive energy rising from the ashes. What such opinions did bring to bear, rationally speaking, was that here lay an economic belief systemâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;an ideology whose reality was ultimately to produce poverty. In countless campaign speeches, Lula's team and party gestured that they would have nothing of it.

Circulation and Repetition Weekend papers announced high expectations for the February 10th meeting.

From it came only silence, offset only by the embarrassment of a secret tape recording. Late that evening the major news source announced more belt-tightening, this time to the tune of R$14.1 billion (US$ 3.5 billion). This was a measure leading beyond appearances directly to austerity. Appearing on the evening news, the President morosely left the Planalto palace where the meeting had just been adjourned. He approached admirers outside, as he has every day since inauguration. "We have to make sure the situation is secure before undertaking the greater plan", he assured the faithful.

Politics can often be an art of selfdeception. Its communication channels divert honest messages into patterns of disenchantment forever projecting others as more privileged, as dominant. That the latter exist is trivial. But who their patrons are becomes the challenge to ferret out: is it the IMF, international speculators, investors, or Brazilian banks themselves?

Once a party virtually holding a mo-

nopoly on political honesty in Brazil, the PT now faces a daunting task. It seeks ever so slightly to separate itself from creditors, investors and speculators, i.e. the global finance networks determining the worth of currencies.

These networks are also the ones who've most ensured the perpetuation of mass disenchantment.

In the lead up to the election, Lula could not have taken the risk of disagreeing with the terms of an IMF bailout. State coffers stood dramatically low.

The real had come wildly under attack, losing 25 percent of its value in a matter of weeks. Had Lula opposed the terms and the Cardoso government led to default on its loan servicing on the eve of election time, the PT would surely have lost the presidential race, as well as its standing in the two houses of Congress.

In exchange of Lula's adherence, the IMF granted Brazil a SUS 30 billion bailout package, the largest the institution has ever offered.

In light of the financial turbulence, the two most awaited appointments Lula was to make were to the Finance Ministry and Central Bank. Last May, the Financial Times stepped in on behalf ofmarket players by penning an editorial in which it beckoned Lula to name his ministers then and there. Under the pretext of clear planning, the Times smoothly slid a knife under Lula's throat. Either you name personnel we agree with and our news will help keep your economy afloat, or you sink. That was the coded message.

When the day finally came, the market couldn't have been less disappointed.

At the helms of Finance is Antonio Palocci, an M.D., who headed the transition and was formerly mayor of an affluent So Paulo suburb. "For an ailing economy, I've named a physician", Lula declared in December. Yet the physician had deferred to the economist weeks earlier, when calling his soon-to-be predecessor Pedro Malan "without doubt, the most serious politician in Brazil." For all his seriousness and integrity, Malan was still Chicago's man in the tropics. Palocci seems bent on nothing else than carrying his flag.

At the Central Bank, Palocci is joined

by Henrique Meirelles. His appointment signals a shift from the speculation camp to the investors' ringâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;assuming that they differ at all. In George Soros's ex-partner, Arminio Fraga, speculators had their man presiding over the bank during the latter part of the Cardoso years. Lula had indicated while campaigning that Fraga would have to go. Few party cadres expected a shift to the ex-president of GloBRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

Apart from insider scuffling, the Febbal Banking/Financial Services at FleetBoston. To get a sense of Meirelles' ruary 10th meeting did deliver an unusual political weight, the size of the IMF bail- innovation. Lula has established a presiout, a surprise to everyone but deciders, dential research think tank, joining forces was given in proportion to the US$ 20 from a broad spectrum of Brazilian socibillion that the bank reportedly has in- ety and industry. The Council for Economic and Social Development will have vested in the country.

Meirelles' job is foremost to regain no legislative mandate, though it is in and keep investor confidence. To do so, charge of regularly formulating policy he has convinced Palocci of the need to guidelines for the executive.

Given its voluminous size of 82 memincrease the primary fiscal surplus probers, the PT rank and tile in the lower jection to 4.25 percent from 3.75 percent, unheard of even during the Cardoso house has grown suspicious as to its years. To test the waters, he personally intentions. After all, a non-elected body accompanied Lula to the World Eco- is always grounds for concern in a demonomic Forum in Davos. As for what the cratic system when close to the presistrategy regarding Brazil's currency is, dency. Given that it is largely made up of lobby and special interest groups, it may this remains unclear.

The pre-election position of Lula's in fact be a way for Lula to constantly chief economic advisor Mantega, was keep them in check, instead of allowing that the real should be trading at 2.5-2.75 them free sway to undermine his efforts to the dollar. This was also Fraga's posi- at keeping partisan control of the two tion. But after 2002's record trade sur- houses.

This possibility has not prevented plus, due largely to the weak or "more competitive" currency, economists have many PT members of the lower house been quiet about a real suspended at 3.6. from fumigating. To counter their vocal Were analysts of PT ardor, they would be criticism, president of the PT, Jose hedging their bets that export turnover Genoino, and PT Senate leader, Aloizio allowed by this rate will stimulate a re- Mercadante, have chosen the dubious route of quashing the dissents as the turn to 4 percent growth.

Still, the export surplus has not soft- mainstream press has eagerly been lapened what both Palocci and Meirelles ping up the PT style as a conflict between have been uttering and ushering. Apart radicals and realists. Whatever the fa rfrom boosting the primary fiscal surplus, ness ofGenoino's measures, radicals have they have agreed On the urgency of curb- seized the spotlight. Contrary to myopic ing a stubbornly rising inflation rate by mainstream misrepresentations, it could an ever-higher increase of the prime in- not have happened sooner.

Many are already beginning to wonterest rate to 26.5 percent in view of curbing debt-to-GDP ratio back to 55 der where the radical reformist dream percent and inflation back down below 1 has fled to so early in the running. Could percent. Palocci has furthermore empha- voters really have claimed to be sursized the need to reinforce the Fiscal prised when Palocci insisted on February Responsibility Law whereby govern- 5 that "we made a program to govern, and ments of all tiers are bound by law to not to win the election" or that "if tie keeping a budget surplus, as he has the benefits of respecting all of the previ- MOP, ous government's contracts and internal debt.

How the government intends to jump-start job creation with money costing as much to borrow, and banks refusing to take even the slightest risk with small and medium sized companies, has become a mystery to all Brazilians who still believe in the "bigger plan". Reality did strike a seeming note of understanding with the February 10" mega cut of R$ 14.1 billion as R$5.1 billion was carved straight from social spending. The stone of no ministry or secretary was left unturned. Health and education, the PT's highest priorities, even Lula's prized "Hunger Zero" program, have had to bite the bullet so that 'global' finance may rest assured.

radicals thought that Lula's campaign promises were meant only to win the elections, they were fooling themselves"?

As for the President, he has been downplaying the import and weight the austere fiscal measures will have on the PT's "unwavering" social commitment.

More than anyone else, he understands that the name of the game of today's economy is trust. And Lula needs the trust of the international financial community to raise Brazil to the pastures on which the Washington Consensus promised it would one day graze. Few doubt the difference in views as to what may grow on those fields.

Points of Social Attack Lula's term began with his dedication to the Hunger-Zero program. In any nation, there are many tiers to fighting poverty. Opting for reform instead of revolution dictates a case-by-case process of praxis. Lula's commitment is eventually to increase the minimum wage, though the boost depends on how much the economy grows. And job creation is held to be stimulated by a lower prime interest rate enabled by a reformed income tax system in addition to revenues from exports.

Lula's deepest engagement, however, has been to settle the pendant weighing most heavily on Brazil's underclass. The fifth-world conditions prevailing in many areas of the country has engulfed even the most affluent State of Sao Paulo. Just a measure of the problem: unemployment is so chronic it fails to be measured appropriately.

Liberation theologian and distinguished social critic, Frei Betto, is Lula's chiefphilosophical advisor and the brainchild of the Hunger-Zero program. Despite early organizational-level criticism, Lula's ambitions go much deeper. For in this program, he is tapping into the energy of a vast area of civil society for his party's goals at sustained reform.

With politicization come not only a sense and purpose, but also a commitment to secular education quite akin to Betto's philosophy.

Concerting and deliberating are part of a game to which Brazil's remarkably open media will be expected to seriously rally. This is the key ingredient to Lula's vision of education, one whose seeds are sown most thoroughly through a heightened sense of c itizenshipâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;perhaps the single most lacking factor in the national pride of Brazilians.

On the institutional level, the government has had to tackle the issue of social security. Brazil's public sector distributes a disproportionate bounty 21

BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

in pensions that cries out as a prime source of social inequality. Unlike a country such as France, Brazil's public sector is minute. Amounting to 11 percent of the country's pensioners, former public sector workers account for a deficit of $R 53 billion (US$ 14.8 billion) for the 2002 fiscal year.

This stands in contrast to the estimated 30 percent of pension receivers from the formal private sector whose expense led last year to a deficit of $R 17 billion (US$ 4.8 billion). Left unaccounted for is the majority of Brazilians who partake ofthe informal private sector: street vending, undeclared services and crime.

The lion's share ofthese pensions goes to the militaryâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and their offspringâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; as well as to retirees of the federal judiciary. Pensions especially for these former public sector cadres spectacularly exceed the private sector monthly limit of R$ 1,561 (US$ 438) .

Whether the PT, through their partisan alliances in the Assembly and Senate, is able to wrest these treasures from the hands of its guardians is its first great challenge. As the social security system explicit shifts collective money to a minority of the population, the government's success in curbing the pension deficit can only give more credibility to its fiscal policies, raise its social clout and establish political stability, if not in the short then at least in the long run.

Among the many ministers ofnote in Lula's large government is Marina da Silva at Environment. Originally from the Amazon region, Ms da Silva (no relation to the President) is a long time environmentalist. Under her jurisdiction, she will have a territory ranging over half the size of the continental USA. Its biodiversity and wealth is recognized the world over, which has at times led the USA, among others, to overlook it as sovereign Brazilian territory. The thirst of the Northern and Asian wealthy for precious wood, exotic animals and plant-derived curatives helps to maintain a criminal export trade industry, well ensconced in the massive jungle.

Famed Tropicalia singer-songwriter, Gilberto Gil, has the Culture portfolio.

His role as government spokesperson to the youth cannot be underestimated. Indeed. Gil makes up for his jazzy politi22

cal jibe in talking a language that all can understand. If education is a leading priority for this government, whose ministry is headed by Cristovam Buarque, this is because despite access to cable television, regular network programs approach those in the USA for debilitating intellectual content.

Gil and Buarque have enormous moral responsibilities to attempt to hoist the population's general culture level to a higher sphere.

Although its first window on the world has been economic, Brazil's foreign ministry at ltamaraty palace has gathered an all-star team of intellectual diplomats under Minister Celso Amorim. Moreover, it has found a place for controversial diplomat Samuel , Guimardes, whose Five Hundred Years of Periphery deserves an English translation. Jose Bustani, ousted from the UN agency for the prohibition of chemical weapons by the USA, also figures among its ranks. Lula's wish is to make Brazil a leader in South America. His interven-

tion on behalfof Chavez and democracy in Venezuela has already been noted. As has his government's unbending commitment to peace in the Persian Gulf.

Lula's government has been in power for a little over 40 days. His ascension has been feted as a historical event. It holds a potential for reverting Latin American history to completing the popular reforms begun over a generation ago and brutally stunted by military coups, torture and mass murder. The continent is once again rife with violent popular uprising in Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, Colombia and now Bolivia.

As the largest country in South America, Lula's Brazil is trying to prove that there is indeed another way. This is a way that can only be achieved by splitting from a capitalist system producing ever-increasing poverty and crime and onward to one leading to greater distribution of public wealth and democratic centralism.

Canadian philosopher, Norman Madarasz, holds a Ph.D. from the Universite de Paris and has extensively published think pieces and philosophical research. Currently living in Rio de Janeiro, he writes on international North-South relations and on the political economy and culture of Brazil for Brazzil, Counterpunch and other reviews. He welcomes comments at normanmadaraszValhotmail.com

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that's PThras for You Lula's party, the PT, cannot renationalize those areas and companies privatized during the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administrations, but it is determined to retain state control even if this means undermining them. The prime targets are the regulatory watchdogs set up to prevent abuse and formation of monopolies.

JOHN FITZPATRICK

When the idea of setting up Petrobras was put forward in 1951 (it was called then Petrobras, with an accent) the sl gan "0 petrOleo ĂŠ nosso" (the petrol is ours) was used by its proponents to pe suade the Brazilian people that the sta e should have a monopoly on the right o explore and exploit Brazil's oil reserves.

When the company was partially priv tized in 2000 and lost its monopoly, t e then director of the national petroleu agency (ANP) announced "o petroleo e vosso" (the petrol is yours).

This was a bit of an overstateme t since the government had no intention f giving up its majority stake in a co pany, which is not only the biggest n Latin America but of strategic impo tance to the country. There is virtually o prospect of Petrobras being privatized n the near future. "0 petroleo ĂŠ deles" (t e petrol is theirs) would have been mo e appropriate.

As events this week showed, the PT is still against privatization and sees Petrobras as an asset to be held onto at 11 costs. A row started after the AP (Agencia Nacional de PetrOleoâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;N tional Oil Agency) issued an announc ment on Tuesday March 11 stating th4t

huge deposits ofhigh quality oil, amounting to 1.9 billion barrels, had been discovered off the coast of Sergipe state.

This immediately triggered a run on Petrobras shares, with the common share jumping by almost 6.5 percent before falling back to end the day almost 4.5 percent higher. Although the PT radicals need no encouragement to see conspiracy behind any stock market activity they were secretly delighted when it subsequently emerged that, on the day before the announcement, there had been an unusually high amount of trading of Petrobras shares. According to the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper, US$22 million in business was done that day compared with a daily average of R$13 million in the previous three weeks. The Brazilian equivalent of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the CVM, announced an investigation.

To make things more complicated, Petrobras itself issued a statement claiming that the ANP's statement had been "incorrect, confusing and wrong". The company said the ANP had based its statement on insufficient data and had given what could prove to be an exaggerated estimate of the oil reserves.

The PT leader in the Lower House of Congress said any announcement on the Petrobras find should have been left to the company. However, experts quoted in the press said the ANP had behaved correctly and wondered why Petrobras had not issued the information on Friday March 7, the day it provided the ANP with the information.

What a gift all this has proved to be, not just to the PT radicals but to the whole government, including President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, which likes neither the way Petrobras has been run recently nor the ANP. The mines and energy minister, Dilma Roussef, cleared her diary and headed off to Brasilia for a meeting with Lula and his right-hand man, Jose Dirceu. We do not know what these three old comrades discussed, but we can be sure that their plans included ways of stripping the ANP's authority and further strengthening the government's hold on Petrobras.

Although the PT knows it cannot renationalize those areas and companies privatized during the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administrations, it is determined 23

BRA7_ZIL - MARCH 2003

to retain state control even if this means undermining them. The prime targets are the regulatory watchdogs, which were set up to ensure that the newly privatized companies did not abuse their power and that monopolies did not emerge.

Eight such agencies were set up to regulate areas such as oil, energy, telecommunications, electricity etc. These bodies have the power to set tariffs and, more importantly, their members have fixed mandates. This means that the directors cannot be routinely fired when a new administration takes over. The PT does not like these agencies because it believes they have assumed powers which should be in the hands of the politicians.

The government has other priorities at the moment than changing the laws covering the regulatory bodies, so minister Roussef will have to grit her teeth and wait until the mandates run out before acting. In the case ofthe ANP director his mandate lasts until 2005. However, Mrs. Roussef was an arms quartermaster for left-wing guerrillas in her younger days and hardly seems the type to wait that long.

Pressure will start being applied not only to the ANP but the other regulators.

ANATEL, the telecommunications watchdog has already been given notice by the communications minister, Miro Teixeira, that he and not it will assume responsibility for renewing concession contracts for fixed-line telephone services when the present contracts expire in 2006. The other agencies, such as ANEEL, which regulates the electrical energy sector, are also in the firing line.

As for Petrobras, one ofthe first moves

by Lula's government was to change its board of directors and appoint a former PT senator as its chairman. Dirceu himself was even appointed a board member but stood down after the move was poorly received on the market place. For oldstyle nationalist types of the Left or Right Petrobras is still a symbol of the country and not just another oil company. One recalls the fuss in December 2000 when the company announced that it would change its name to Petrobrax. The hostility to such a minor change was such that Cardoso himself had to intervene and the name was dropped instantly.

Maybe the name will be changed again—this time to PTbras.

24

Brazil Can't Wait, Mr. Lula President Lula has gone back to being a timid tortoise. Style and not substance is marking his government. His showpiece Zero Hunger campaign, for example, is losing its impetus. The President is showing that he is prepared to listen, but leadership demands action.

JOHN FITZPATRICK

Some years ago I was talking to a Sao Paulo-based Swiss banker about the glacierlike slow pace of institutional change. He quoted former President Fernando Collor de Mello as having said that "In Brazil, time takes time." I was struck by this phrase although it may be apocryphal because I have never encountered it and would be grateful to any reader who could confirm it.

However, the essence of the remark is certainly true. There are many reasons for this situation—the size of the country, the strong regional loyalties, the weak state of the political parties etc—and it is unlikely to change in thc near future.

One .of the reasons it will not change is that vested interests will not permit it.

Unfortunately, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is showing no sign of shaking the system up. The man who (thankfully) jettisoned a lifetime's convictions overnight and convinced the Brazilian people to put their trust in him has gone back to being a timid tortoise instead of using the momentum to streak ahead like a hare.

Style and not substance is marking his government. For example, the showpiece Fome Zero campaign against hunger is losing its impetus. An ambitious project like this would always be long term but the goodwill—the Portuguese expression boa vontade gives a better idea of the vibrancy and enthusiasm for this campaign—is already petering out. The minister in charge, Jose Graziano, has been an uninspiring leader.

In an unfortunate gaffe, he recently suggested that hungry Northeasterners were coming to sao Paulo to take up crime. By implication, he said, ending hunger would mean that the law-abiding citizens of Sao Paulo would no longer need to drive around in armored cars. I believe Graziano's remark was taken out ofcontext but by speaking as he did, he appeared to be slandering a large part ofthe Brazilian population, including his own boss, the President.

More worrying than this is the government's attitude towards pension and tax reform. Brazil's iniquitous pension scheme pampers public employees and throws private sector workers to the wolves, even though it is the private sector which raise the taxes to pay the public employees' salaries and pensions. Bridging the gap between what the government has to pay in pensions and what it raises in revenues is one of the reasons why the Brazilian economy is being held back. Lula said tackling pension would be a priority. This was excellent news since the PT has been against reform.

However, the minister responsible, Ricardo Berzoini, has vacillated over the kind BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

of reform. One of the main issues has been whether to have a single system for everyone, including serving civil servant and the armed forces, or separate systems. The minister said this week that he had practically abandoned the idea of having a single system yet, at the time of writing, the chief of staff, Jose Dirceu, has stated publicly that no decision had been made.

This is not the first public telling off ministers have been by Lula's two strong men—Dirceu and the finance minister, Antonio Palocci. Instead of overruling their subordinates and telling us that no decisions have been made it would be heartening if these men at the center of power told us what decisions have been made and what was going to happen.

It is about time Lula took the pension issue on and made it as much of a priority as the Fome Zero scheme. Lula is in a good position to get this reform really moving. First of all he is enjoying enormous approval ratings, much more than his predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, ever enjoyed. A poll at the beginning of February gave him a personal approval rating of 83.6 percent and his government an approval rating of 56.6 percent. On top of that, 65.6 percent believe Lula will succeed in reforming the pension system. To this observer, this figure is quite astonishing and shows that there is much wider support for this reform than would be expected.

However, instead of assuming responsibility and striking while the iron is hot, Lula has turned the matter over to a recently created body called the Economic and Social Development Council. This group of 82 worthies from all sectors, ranging from business leaders to trade unionists and landless peasant representatives was set up to advise the government on social and economic issues.

The observer could conclude that establishing this council when the country, which already has a Congress which is supposed to be tackling Brazil's problems, shows that the Congress is being sidelined. Perhaps the council will be dynamic and come forward with ideas, but it is unlikely that such a disparate range of opinions will agree on something as contentious as pension reform. It will certainly take time and even then the Congress will have the final word.

By spreading the net and bringing in more views Lula is showing that he is prepared to listen. But leadership demands action. Time is pressing. Instead of thinking of the legacy he could leave in four years time—or even eight years if he were to win a second election—Lula is being urged by some advisers to think of the negative effect contentious reforms could have on the congressional elections in two years time. He should reject this view and, while listening politely to the views of the council, push through the necessary measures using his popularity as a weapon.

As to tax reform I think we can almost forget it. At the inaugural meeting of the council, finance minister Palocci stated bluntly that there would be no reduction in the tax burden, as the government needed the resources. So those of us who pay taxes can look forward to surrendering around 36 percent of our income to the government. This is a higher rate than in some developed European states, which provide their citizens with security, health care and educational opportunities for their children. We pay First World taxes for Third World services and will continue to do so for along, longtime.

John Fitzpatrick is a Scottish journalist who first visited Brazil in 1987 and has lived in Sao Paulo since 1995. He writes on politics and finance and runs his own company, Celtic Comunicacoes— www.celt.com.br, which specializes in editorial and translation services for Brazilian and foreign clients.

You can reach him at if(&selt.com.br

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War? We Already Have Ours Federal troops have been called to maintain order in Rio. In Sao Paulo, car thieves stole an auto belonging to the Minister of Justice. The Landless movement has declared that the truce with Lula's government is over.

They occupied federal offices as well as several farms and ranches around the country.

RICHARD HAYES

26

4.

The inevitability of a US war with Iraq as well as its uncertain aftermath has placed new foreign investment in Brazil on hold. Projects already underway are being carried forward, however. The government, who would prefer a peaceful solution to the disarming of Saddam Hussein. has not irritated the Americans by attempting, to form a front of Latin American nations to oppose the invasion. This idea was scrapped when it became obvious that Brazil would have nothing to gain by such maneuvering, and in no way would influence Washington's decision to go ahead with a war with or without UN endorsement.

There have been no anti war demonstrations of consequence in Brazil. It is not a major topic of discussion as Brazilians are concerned with other closer to home problems. Law and order is a major issue with the Army in Rio de Janeiro to help cope with unfettered crime and violence. This is the first time in many years that federal troops have been called in on this scale to aid incompetent and corrupt state and municipal officials. In So Paulo, car thieves stole an auto belonging to the Minister of Justice, Marcio Thomaz Bastos, while his driver was waiting for Bastos's wife, who was visiting her doctor. Perhaps Minister Bastos will have better luck in reforming the judicial, police and penitentiary systems than did his nine predecessors that served as Ministers ofJustice under Fl-IC during his eight years as President.

The MST or landless people have stepped up their offensive to obtain land for those who have none. They occupied federal offices in the states of Goias and Mato Grosso as well as several farms and ranches around the country. So far no one has been killed by the efforts ofthe legitimate owners of land to regain their property by expelling these illegal invaders.

There will be more ofthis as the MST has declared that the truce with Lula's government is over. Land reform is a very complex issue that will soon attract the interest of the international media.

Many of the invaders are urban slum dwellers who have no clue about working land. Granting land to unprepared people has yielded little practical results in the past. Credit and technical advice as well as marketing mechanisms are not currently available in most cases. Many of the expropriated areas are very far from markets. Frequently those who receive land later sell it, which is against the spirit of this exercise in bettering the lot of those without land who wish to become farmers.

It seems as if some of the resources and food that is to be donated to the "Zero Hunger" program may be used to feed these people who are camped out illegally on private property. This may create more of an incentive for the unscrupulous leaders of the ignorant masses to violate the law. This entire rural issue will be a headache for Lula. As it happens agricultural exports are largely responsible for Brazil's recent trade surpluses.

So it behooves the government to not upset the rural sector any more than they have by not allowing genetically modified soybean seeds to be used. It is a big country and so far the invasions have not deterred farmers from expanding their productive areas.

Financial markets remain favorably disposed toward the new government.

This beginning of March, both Fitch and Merrill Lynch upgraded their opinions about Brazilian paper. Moodys and Standard & Poors will probably join the parade soon. The price of Brazilian C Bonds has risen to US$0.76 on the dollar bringing the Brazil Risk, as measured by JP Morgan's EMBI down to 1,139 points.

BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

This is a very thin market that fluctuates on an almost daily basis.

I suspect that the increase in the price of C-bonds is due to technical factors rather than an overwhelming display of faith in Lula's government manage its debt. It would not surprise me if Banco Central, who is quite liquid at the moment, is buying back some of its own debt to lower the Brazil risk index as they contemplate a sovereign risk issue. Also traders may be covering short positions, as Brazil is perceived as doing the right things fiscally and monetarily.

The inflation rate was less for February than it was for January. Interest rates may be moved up again when COPOM (Comite de Politica Monetaria— Monetary Policy Comm ittee) meets again this March. Horst Kohler, the head of the IMF, continues to express confidence in Lula. At a meeting of the Bank for International Settlements in Basle this week, Brazil came out as looking good. So barring any really bad news or gross errors on the part of the government, the market reaction should continue tranquil in spite of the world situation.

Changes in the management of Petrobras have raised some concern in certain quarters. After several years of sound, objective professional management under Philippe Reichstil and Francisco Gros, it is feared that this company, Brazil's largest, may be regressing. The Minister of Mines and Energy, Dilma Rousseff is not known for her entrepreneurial attributes. The appointments ofJose Eduardo Duarte, a defeated PT politician from Sergipe with little or no knowledge of petroleum along with a financial director with experience solely in the academic area, were not taken well by observers.

Several top jobs in the company and its subsidiaries are being reserved as rewards for PMDB members if their party supports Lula's legislative efforts.

Petrobras has insisted that offshore drilling rigs have 60 percent Brazilian content although there is doubt that Brazilian shipyards have the capacity to do the work.

Any delays in the delivery of these platforms would seriously endanger the profitability of the company as well as its goal to reach self-sufficiency in crude oil production in the near future. So far none of these potential pitfalls are evident. But the government must remember that although they control the voting shares of this company, its ADRs are traded in New York and many Petrobras shares are in the hands of the Brazilian public, some of which were purchased with retirement funds. Petrobras should not fall back into being a politically run organization.

On the positive side, a major discovery has been announced off the coast of Sergipe. Is this a coincidence or did Dutra time this right? This will eventually bring in royalties for his poor state. It will remain to be seen if Sergipe is allowed to borrow from the federal government in anticipation of receiving these royalties several years in the future.

For the following month, your commentator will be absent from Brazil. Perhaps when I return in mid April, there will have been material progress on the many reforms that Lula and his people claim to espouse.

Priority is to be given to changing the taxation and pensions systems. Lula has also reiterated his intention to push for Central Bank autonomy. I am not holding my breath.

BRAZZIL -MARCH 2003

What's Splitting the PT? It would be wise for Lula to try and push for the urgent reforms Brazil needs before his popularity erodes because of inflation. He is still riding a crest of popularity due to his homey style and the Zero ;Hunger program that helps a few people in the state of Piaui.

RICHARD HAYES

Most of the sc ools have resumed their classes and in spite of the heat and periodic flooding, life is returning to its normal pace. Congress mot briefly to confirm their salary and benefit increases and ele0 the presiding officers of both houses and committee chairmen. They are expected to reconvene February 17.

Lula and his Ministers have acted quite responsibly since a few minor mishai)s in early January. There exists a general feeling ofgood wi 1 toward his government even from segments of the society that a few months ago were aghast at the possibility of Lula's becoming president. A second cabinet meeting took pike and differently from the first this one resulted in no ga es on the part of ministers.

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27

The main complainers are the radical elements of Lula' s own Workers Party or PT. Since little else is happening locally, the press has given ample attention to these internal problems of the party. The radicals are themselves divided, but their main gripe is that on the economic front, Finance Minister Antonio Palocci seems to be following many of the sensible policies of his predecessor Pedro Malan.

The PT would like to maintain unity in order not to undermine their legislative base, which is quite fragile. As time goes on and Congress begins to function, I expect to see more sparks flying that will hinder progress in making changes that require legislation and/or constitutional amendments.

Inflation has been in excess of 2 percent per month for the last three months, but may be subsiding. It will quite difficult to keep it within the stated target of 8.5 percent for the year, in my opinion.

Most of the blame is placed on the weakening of the real in the months leading up to the presidential election. Fears that Lula would "turn over the table" caused investors and speculators to short the real and hedge causing a run up in the value of the dollar that now seems to be stabilized in the US$1=R$3.50-3.60 range.

However fuel prices have increased causing transportation costs also to rise.

The utilities will also be granted price increases adding to the burden of meeting bills especially among those who earn little, the vast majority of Brazilians. It would be wise for Lula to try and push for the urgent reforms before his popularity erodes because of inflation.

He is still riding a crest of popularity due to his homey style and the Zero Hunger program that helps a few people in the state of Piaui.

Financial markets have begun to open up for Brazil, displaying a certain degree of confidence in what the government intends to do. Citibank announced that it would be renewing loans maturing this month and may add as much as $200,000,000 in new credits to finance foreign trade. A few banks and blue chip corporations that export have successfully placed overseas bonds and promissory notes for tenors not exceeding a year at interest rates up to 7 percent.

This has contributed to the stability of the real. The final investors in these instruments are more probably Brazilians with money abroad, who can access the potential risk, rather than the dentist in Stuttgart, the lawyer in Bologna or the retired schoolteacher in Kansas. The near term future of Brazil is still uncertain in 28

no small way due to the specter of a war over Iraq.

The original proposal for the promised reforms of social security and pension benefits for government employees has already been watered down due to pressure from special interest groups. If and when Congress votes the changes, their positive effects will not be felt in the government budget for several years. This may displease the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and investors and creditors.

An I/' mission arrived in Brazil in February for a sojourn of two weeks or more. They will be examining statistics to see if Brazil lived up to its commitments last year. Except for inflation, a goal that was exceeded, things look acceptable. Palocci has announced voluntarily that a target for the primary surplus has been raised from the current 3.75 percent of GNP to 4.25 percent.

This will help in extending the easy relationship that has been established by the new government and the IMF. Brazil may ask that the expenditures for "investment" on the part of government owned companies such as Petrobras and Electrobras be excluded from the calculations. This would free up more funds for social programs. I doubt if the IMF will accept this mechanism.

Recent articles in the Brazilian press have pointed out that taxation here is among the highest in the world as a percentage of GNP. The income from four months' work goes to pay local, state and federal taxes. Only the Swedes and Germans pay more of their income to their governments. What Brazilian taxpayers receive in return are decrepit schools and hospitals, underpaid teachers, poor streets and highways, inadequate public transportation and a complete lack of personal security. Most of tax receipts go to pay active government employees and the absurdly generous pensions of retired judges, legislators and employees of all three branches of government.

Many of the states are in flagrant violation ofthe Fiscal Responsibility Law. One of the worse offenders is ltamar Franco, ex president and most recently governor of Minas Gerais. In keeping with old habits of impunity, in stead of being punished and publicly disgraced, hamar will be rewarded with the ambassadorship in Rome, one of the most coveted overseas posts. Franco's ability as a diplomat was tested when Fernando Henrique Cardoso made him ambassador to Portugal.

He amused and disturbed his neigh-

bors in Lisbon by raising chickens in the back yard of the posh embassy residence.

It seems that Lula and Cardoso have one thing in common and that is to have hamar as far away from Brazil as possible. Franco wanted to be named ambassador to Argentina but was refused by Lula since this is an important post in the scheme of things and is also close by.

Jose Sarney, another former president who seems unwilling to gracefully fade away, will be attracting attention since he was elected president of the senate. Sarney, whose clan has controlled the backward state of M aranhao for nearly forty years, is currently a senator from the thinly populated state of Amapa, where I doubt if he has ever spent more than a few days. His daughter, at the time governor of Maranhao who was expecting to run for president, was involved in a yet to be explained scandal involving heaps of cash that were discovered in a safe of a company belonging to her and her husband. Sarney was peeved about the slandering of Roseana and blamed this investigation on Jose Serra, who also wanted to be president.

This caused Jose Sarney to throw his support in the presidential election to Lula, who had been a very vocal adversary when he was in the opposition and Sarney as president. Lula coerced the PMDB to nominate Sarney for president of the senate. His daughter was elected as a senator from Maranhao by a wide margin and the senate will be presided by a man who is there through a process of political intrigue after having been elected to the senate in the first place by a handful of voters. Such is democracy in the tropics. Whether Sarney can unite the unruly senate to act on the desperately needed improvements in tax and social security legislation, remains to be seen.

The next weeks may witness some executive measures and legislative activity before things shut down again for a week or more for Carnaval. Ash Wednesday is March 5 so serious business will only begin the week of March 10 unless Lula, who himself is a hard worker, can inspire some discipline and a sense of responsibility in Brasilia.

Richard Edward Hayes first came to Brazil in 1964 as an employee of Chase Manhattan Bank. During the past thirtyeight years, Hayes has worked directly and as an advisor for a number of Brazilian and international banks and companies. Currently he is a free lance consultant and can be contacted at 192Iouvre(&,uol.com.br

BRAZZIL -MARCH 2003

"Ordem e Progresso"—Order and Progress—has been the motto on the Brazilian flag since the country became a republic in 1889. The words are taken directly from the writings of Auguste Comte. The ideas of Comte were adapted in the 19th century by the military and political elites in large parts of Latin America, and in Brazil in particular) Since then, the ghost of Auguste Comte has been haunting the subcontinent, and the practical consequences of this ideology have been disastrous.

Comte's positivism is best described as an ideology of social engineering. Auguste Comte (1798-1857) believed that after the theological and the metaphysical stage, mankind would enter the prime stage of"positivism," which to him meant that the society as a whole must be organized according to scientific knowledge.

Comte believed that all science must be modeled after the ideal of physics, and that anew science ofsocialphysics would emerge at the top of the intellectual hierarchy. This discipline would discover the social laws that then could be applied by an elite to reform society as a whole. Like medicine, which eradicates disease, social physics would have to be applied in order to remove the social evils.

Comte's ideal was a new "religion of humanity." In his view, people need to be tricked into feeling as authentic what will be instigated by the rulers and their helpers, who thereby serve the higher ideals of humanity.

Reviewing Auguste Comte's ideas, John Stuart Mill wrote that this political philosophy aims at establishing "...a despotism of society over the individual, surpassing anything contemplated in the political ideal of the most rigid disciplinarian among the ancient philosophers," 2 while Ludwig von Mises remarked: "Comte can be exculpated, as he was insane in the full sense which pathology attaches to this term.

But what about his followers?"'

The rationalist mysticism which befell Comte as a mentally ill person later in his life called for the creation of a "positivist church," in which, imitating the rituals of the Catholic Church, the "cult of humanity" could be practiced. Toward the end of the 19th century, "positivist societies" began to spread in Brazil, and a real church building was erected in Rio de Janeiro as the place where the adoration of the ideal of humanity could be practiced like a religion. 4 Up to the present days, Brazil's system of higher education still bears the marks of Comte's positivism, and stronger still is the influence of the BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

The Ghost That Haunts Brazil Auguste Comte's positivist ideas have shown their greatest impact in economic policy.

Economic policy in Brazil has been marked by an interventionist frenzy that affects all aspects of public life. The consequences of positivism in the country have been devastating.

ANTONY P. MUELLER

REPUBLIQUE FR

positivist political philosophy within the higher ranks of the military and among the technocrats. Positivism says that scientism is the trademark of modernity and that in order to accomplish progress, a special technocratic or military class of people is needed who are cognizant of the laws of society and who establish order and promote this progress.

The prevalent ideology of a large part of the ruling elite stands in sharp contrast to the traditions held by the common people. As in most parts of Latin America, Brazil's popular culture is deeply marked by the Catholicscholastic tradition, with its skepticism toward modernity and progress and its more spiritual-religious orientation, which rejects the linear concept of time as a progressive movement in favor of a circular eternal vision of life.

Comte's ideas have shown their greatest impact in economic policy. Given the facts that members of the military have played a central role in Brazil's political life and that positivism had become the leading philosophical paradigm at the military schools, economic policy in Brazil has been marked by an interventionist frenzy that affects all aspects of public life.

The spirit of planning for modernity has turned Brazil into a hotbed of economic interventionism, with each new government promising the great leap forward. Instead of doing away with the obstacles that confront emerging private enterprises and guarantee reliable property rights, governments presume that it is their task to develop the country by conceding privileges to a small group of established firms.

Since becoming a republic, there has been not one government in Brazil that did not come up with a new comprehensive plan or a conglomerate of plans aimed at desenvolvimento (development). Following the positivist agenda, conceiving plans of a seemingly scientific nature and applying them by the force of the state has become the trademark of Brazilian economic policy. Frequently first elaborated in one of the few university centers, these plans form the agenda of the new government, which usually brings in a team of young technocrats for its implementation.

Particularly grandiose when military governments were in charge— such as in the 1930s and 1940s and from 1964 to 1984—the invention and implementation of great plans has continued up to the present day.

Irrespective of which party coalition or power group is at the helm, the spirit of positivism has been shared by all of them up to the Fernando Henrique Cardoso government, which apparently is practicing a so-called "neo-liberal" economic policy.

Even by counting only the more important plans, the series that has been going on and on for almost a century is quite amazing: After fol29

ist -111 Ar r `E' lowing the model of industrialization through import substitution under the semi-fascist Estado Novo of the 1930s and 1940s, Brazil in the 1950s saw the Plano de Met as and, later on, the Plano Trienal of economic and social development. In the 1970s came the series of National Development Plans. The 1980s brought the Plano Cruzado, the Plano Bresser, and the Plano Vertio. In the early 1990s, the Plano Collor 1 was initiated, to be followed by the Plano Collor 2 and, later on, by the Plano de Accio Imediata and, in 1994, the Plano Real.

Measured by their declared goals, all of these plans failed.

During the past six decades, Brazil has had eight different currencies, each time with a new name and an inflation rate which implies that the current currency would have a rate of exchange of one trillion in terms of the Cruzeiro currency of 1942. 6 Under the cover of apparent modernity and science, the established clientelistic network of the "lords of power"' continues to rule the country. In due course, this class has achieved a level of privileges similar to those that were enjoyed by the nomenclature in the Soviet Union compared to the rest of the population, who have resorted to their peculiar ways—called jeitinho, a kind of chutzpah—as their own method of survival.

Within the positivist system, scientism and interventionism go hand in hand. The presumed rationality of interventionism rests on the premise of knowing the specific outcome of an economic policy measure in advance. Consequently, when things turn out other than expected—and they always do— more intervention and control is warranted. The result is governments that are overwhelmed by their pretense and humiliated by their failures.

Brazil, which is so blessed by nature and by an entrepreneurial population with one of the highest rates of self-employmerit in the world, has been kept down by a misleading ideology. Up to the present days, Brazil's governments have been absorbing the resources of the country in order to pursue

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chimaeras ofmodernity and progress as they have defined them and blocking the spontaneous creativity inherent to free markets.

The space for Brazil could be wide open if the ghost that has plagued this country were cast away in favor of an order in the true meaning of the word, i.e., a system of reliable rules based on the principles of property rights, accountability, and free markets. ' Leopoldo Zea, Pensamiento positivistalatinoamericano, Caracas, Venezuela 1980 (Biblioteca Ayacucho).

21 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, London 1869, p. 14 (Longman, Roberts & Green).

Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, Auburn, Ala. 1998, pp. 72 (The Ludwig von Mises Institute, Scholar's Edition).

Ivan Lins, Historia do positivismo no Brasil, SAo Paulo 1964, pp. 399 (Companhia Editora Nacional) The classic expression of this kind of thinking in Latin America is Jose Enrique Rod6: Ariel, Montevideo 1910 (Libreria Cervantes). In literature, this kind of thinking is prominent up to the present days in the writings of Brazil's most popular writer, Paulo Coelho.

6 Ruediger Zoller, Pradidenten - Diktatoren - Erloser, Table V, p. 307, in: Eine kleine Geschichte Brasiliens, Frankfurt 2000 (edition suhrkamp).

7 The classic description of the "lords of power" is Raymundo Faoro's Os Donos do Poder, 2 vols. (Editora Globo: Grandes Nomes do Pensamento Brasileiro) Sao Paulo 2000 Antony P. Mueller is a professor (extra-ordinarius) of economics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. From September 1999 until December 2002 he was a visiting professor at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina in Brazil. He welcomes your comments at antonvpmueller(&,aol.com

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Carioca by Accident Brazil's most respected weekly magazine says that I'm a Carioca. Let me be honest: I'm about as Carioca as a jar of Marmite. It's a testament to journalists' creativity, and the fact that they leave everything to the last minute, that I managed to slip in between those pages.

DAVID ALEXANDER ROBERT Well it's official: I'm a Carioca.lt must b true because Veja Rio says so. There I was,

a whole paragraph, with photo, saying how thi Englishman has become a genuine Carioca, as part of an article entitled 'Os Personagens Rio," (24 February 2003) commemorating the 438th birthday of the city. An important y ar, not to be overlooked.

I must confess, I felt quite honoured to be pon those glossy pages with the likes of the repairman of the Pao de Acucar cable car cab es; the operator of the brand, spanking new lift at the statue of Christ; and the pilot of the .erial advertisement plane that cuts through our cloudless, summer skies. An honour that I don't really feel worthy of.

Let me be honest with you lot, my fellow nglish speakers: I'm about as Carioca as a jar of Marmite. It's a testament to journali ts' creativity, and the fact that they leave everything to the last minute, that I managed o slip in between those pages.

The reason I got picked in the first place as one of those roundabout, Carioca stories of"! know someone who knows a guy who..." I'd been teaching a fashion journalist at The British Council, who was securing her place t the London School of Fashion, who heard from a friend that Fatima Sรก of Veja Rio was looking for gringo living in Rio who speaks Portuguese.

I'm normally one who keeps a low profile, and I'm awa e of the fact that many of my foreign friends lead far more interesting lives than I do, but I accepted. This was a chance to talk about my project.

Before I know it I'm brewing the tea and pulling y crotch-sniffing dog, Sol, (a fine English pointer) from the lap of Fatima, who isn't convincing t withwhen a pad she andclaims pencil.she's The fond first question especially Sol as he's about to get a clip round the sno nyone of dogs, blisters from her mouth as she scolds her lip on the tea -So what d'you like about Rio?" "Well..." I teeter between giving her what she wan s and telling the truth. Sorry luv, you just shouldn't have jumped on the first boat. "Well.... I'm a bit sick of big cities. I just live here 'cos of my work. I'd rather be living in the interior of Minas." appeals, thinking of her near-approaching "But there must be something you like about it," sh deadline. forest andhound the hills."

"Yep... there's... there's... The Tijuca Forest. I love gthe that beastly at bay. She decides to At last she finds a use for the pencil other than keepi run with the nature theme: "And the beach. Which beach do you go to?" r too crowded and polluted for my liking."

"I'm not really a beach person. F ed-down tea to wash down her disappointShe sips ever-so-slightly ment, but it'sthe only accentuated bycoo h fact that I didn't tip half the contents of the sugar bag into the teapot. She tries new tack: ght?"

"So where do you go out to at n chat the moment. I'm really busy working, "I'm notweekends. really going verytom ave money for a project I'm working on." even at the I'mout trying I dangle the bait in front of her, but she doesn't bite. She's got an interview to salvage. ?"

"Are you dating a carioca "Well I was for three years,woma but w split up over a year ago and I've been single . Busy with my projects, you see." since then.

I just don't havein the tim of aofcockfight, but she rules the roost: Our objectives are now the heght rhood Rio?"

`11 Cdusto &denier, so weds* o obonte ivorsatio

BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

"What's your favourite neighbo "I like the eastern zone," she sh kes her head, far too far away. I try again. sgust; it's another city you daft gringo. OK, iterni." screws up Teresa?" her face in d ingo. All gringos love Santa. The pencil third time She lucky.

"Santa finally gets into gear: "And where do you go out there ho's mum's Irish and dad's Baiano, we all "Well, when I visit the godson, go to Bar Mineiro." eyond the gringo profile now. She relaxes Oh, this is good stuff. I'm going et chatting. We have mutual friends, well anot bit, politely drinks her Carioca tea and we nds who are really just acquaintances or friends really, those fri s about my project. She's fascinated; she people met flips once.the Finally she say as "this is a story in itself." I was hoping she'd licks heryou finger, page and 31

see it that way, 'cos that's why I'm doing this blasted interview. I need publicity to get sponsorship.

Running with the Santa Teresa theme, I'm called to have my photo taken at Bar Mineiro. It's mid morning and coincidentally, on this very day, there's more staff cleaning the place than I have ever seen serving there, even on a packed Sunday afternoon.

We can hardly enter due to the tidal waves of thrown buckets of water beating against us. The shot is set up; looking over those colonial houses, orange juice in hand â&#x20AC;&#x201D;"but don't the English drink caipirinha or beer?" ...

"Couldn't you at least hold one?"

It takes far too long to squeeze the oranges and I'm all hot and my shirt has sweat stains. Could I please go and stand under the fan and dry off. No good, my internal heat conductor is tons more powerful. "Why don't we do it with my shirt off, like those TV Globo actors," I suggest excitedly, already stripping.

"Why don't you just leave your shirt to dry in the sun?" they conclude.

It ends well. Finally dry, with shirt back on, my photo is taken and on the way back to the centre I make a comment about renting my room out to gringos during carnival. She loves it. "You will mention my project?" I plead.

"I'll try, but it depends on the editor," she euphemises NO. So what is this unmentionable project that keeps me from becoming a true Carioca? Let me tell you. I plan to spend a year travelling around the whole of Brazil in a VW Kombi, converted to live in, with the aim of writing a book about my experiences. I will also be linking up young Brazilians with young people in Newcastle, where my brother is a teacher, on the email through a series of workshops on 'e-palling' in English. I'm still looking for a sponsor. So if there's anybody out there...

One last thing. Does anyone know anything about VW vans?

David can be contacted on davealexrob@yahoo.com 32

When in Brazil...

Doing business in Brazil requires an understanding of that country's differing work ethics. There are even regional differences. You should wear a suit and necktie in the south region of Sao Paulo at a business meeting, but not in the north. And don't forget: meals are for socializing not for doing business.

KIM HUGGETT

When it comes to international business, cultural awareness can be far more important than a company's wealth, power or prestige. It is a lesson in global business relations that American corporate executives learn first-hand as participants in the Transnational Executive MBA program, known as TEMBA, at California State University, Hayward.

For example: "You would never attend a business dinner here in Brazil before 8 p.m., and you shouldn't expect to discuss business unless the host brings it up," said Martin Desmaras, business professor and coordinator of international affairs at Centro Universitario de Jaragua do Sul. "Here, business dinners are basically social events, where you don't leave in a hurry and thank-you notes and flowers are often sent afterward."

Desmaras was one of several Brazilian professors who gave presentations on South American business culture to a group of 24 Cal State Hayward TEMBA participants in southern Brazil last December. The visit to the state of Santa Catarina was one of three overseas trips that TEMBA participants take. During these journeys they hear presentations in global business practices from international professors, economists and business leaders.

Then, they put their lessons into practice while working in teams on consulting projects for Brazilian companies.

"One ofthe great strengths of TEMBA is its ability to bring students into direct contact with these experts," said Desmaras, who has lived in five countries. "And the most important lesson we can pass along is the one we have learned from economists Edward and Mildred Hall: 'The greatest barrier to businesses success is the one erected by culture.' " Desmaras said Brazil is good example of how cultural differences can interfere with both social and business relationships. On the surface, America and Brazil have similarities: they are large multi-cultural democracies with about the same land mass. With a population of 170 million, Brazil is the world's fifth mostpopulous country and has the eighth largest economy, with a gross national product of $805 billion.

"When they think of Brazil, Americans might come up with images such as the Amazon, deforestation and soccer," Desmares told the TEMBA class in December. "Getting rid of stereotypes is a part of understanding each other's culture."

When Not to Wear a Tie Doing business in Brazil requires an understanding of that country's differing work ethics, the result of colonization and immigration. There are even regional differences.

"For example," Desmares said, "In the region south of So Paulo, which is much more affected by European immigration, business people can be more direct, even blunt, than those farther north. In the south, a suit and necktie is expected at a business meeting of executives, but in the north ties have been discarded."

Desmares had these other suggestions for Americans doing business with Brazilians: BIWZIL-MARCH2003

• Try to obtain a personal introduction from an intermediary and avoid self-introduction (an approach similar to that in Asia).

• Avoid doing business during the nationwide Carnaval celebration as well as the weeks before and after.

•The best times for a business appointment are from 10 a.m. to noon and from 3 to 5 p.m.

•Shaking hands is customary, but friends or closer acquaintances kiss once on each cheek.

• Keep eye contact.

• Exchange business cards.

• Remember that meals are a time for socialization. Talk about your countries' two cultures and your family.

"Brazilians value modesty, friendliness and reasonability," Desmares said. "Once that has been established, you aren't just doing business together, you have friendship and trust."

Students Witness Historic Moment The importance of learning from an international relations expert like Desmares is one of the reasons the two-year-old TEMBA program has become so popular with American executives, according to Shyam Kamath, a professor in the College of Business and Economics at Cal State Hayward and director of the transnational MBA program.

"TEMBA participants go beyond the theoretical to learn first-hand how to succeed in the world of global business," said Kamath, who has made 16 trips to Brazil. "The students in this latest cohort learned from a series of Brazilian presenters that some American-style approaches to business won't work there.

High-pressure tactics emphasizing point-by-point discussions where the main emphasis is on monetary gain just aren't accepted as the way to do business."

The Cal State Hayward TEMBA delegation made its trip to Brazil at a time of historic economic importance to the continent. The six member nations of the South American common market, known as Mercosur, approved a plan where they will allow their 250 million people to live and work in any other member country and be granted the same rights as the citizens of those nations.

Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay are full members of Mercosur, and Bolivia and Chile are associate members.

They have a combined gross product of more than $1 trillion, making it the world's third-largest trade group.

The agreement was formally ratified Dec. 6, while the TEMBA cohort was in Brazil. The students were able to learn

from Brazilian xperts how Mercosur countries hope to coordinate economi policies to be able to negotiate better trade deals with the U ited States. They also learned about preliminary discussion to adopt a common South American currency.

"This is the ind of world view that our students have come to expect from t e TEMBA program," Kamath said. "And the same cohort tha had this amazing South American experience in December w II hear about business approaches in Europe when they trave to Brussels in a few months.

"It's experie ces like these which make TEMBA a program like no other."

The 16 Commandments Doing Business in Brazil by Martin Desmares, Professor and Coordinator of International Affairs, Centro Universitario de Jaragua do Sul • Remember the importance of personal relations • Hire local legal assistance • Hide frustrations • Acknowledge titles • Approach Brazilians as equals • Emphasize compatibilities and friendliness • Check hierarchical orders and determine to whom you must direct the informaticn • Present materials and ideas in a patient but expressive -.1manner Don't • Treat Brazilians as Hispanics • Assume all senior negotiators will speak English • Move your hands too much • Monopolize a conversation • Say "no" bluntly • Complain about deadlines • Criticize Brazil, Brazilians or your competitors • Use "high-pressure" tactics Kim Huggett is director of public affairs for California State University, Hayward, and accompanied the TEMBA delegation on its recent trip to Santa Catarina. He is a former reporter for The Sacramento Union newspaper. He can be contacted at khuggettAcsuhayward.edu or by calling the university at (510) 885-2032.

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The girls gathered by Madam Neuza for the red light district made up a mosaic of races and types that befuddled the clients: blondes, redheads, brunettes, mulatas in all colors, sararas, blacks and deep blacks. They varied generously in the distribution of bones, meat and fat on the bodies for rental.

JULIO CESAR MONTE IRO MARTINS 0 velho Ariosto Albuquerque era o rico proprietario do 6nico Cart6rio de Oficios e Notas da pequena cidade de Pirai, ate meados de outubro de 1930, quando as tropas revolucionarias de Vargas subiram do Rio Grande e tomaram a Capital.

Ligados por todos os tacos a oligarquia agraria entao derrotada, Ariosto Albuquerque teve seu cart6rio confiscado e cedido a um comerciante de bebidas. 0 velho nao sobreviveu nem mesmo para acompanhar a sua prOpria miseria, e deixou como heranca para a filha imica Marieta, gravida de cinco meses, algumas dividas, papeis velhos c urn genro poeta e epi laic°, de sobrenome Castilho, que por sua vez a deixaria viuvaquatro anos rnais tarde, ainda desmamando urn garoto de nome Herbert.

Mais ou menos por esta ipoca, num bairro pobre e poeirento de Piraf, nascia urn bebe prematuro e feio, vitima de urn acidente obstetricio, misto de parto e aborto, da barriga de uma prostituta negra cujo nome ninguem mais se recorda.

Cre,sccu o crioulo gordinho, mas cresceu pouco, sem atingir metro e meio: um wilco debit mental, rolclore da cidade pelas suas risadas por tudo e por coisa alguma, risadas que varavam as noites, acordavam bebes e apavoravam os insones.

Chamavam-no Bolota, e como nao falava e nao portava documentos, era impossivel saber-lhe o verdadeiro nome.

Assim o negro ficou sendo Bolota e apenas isto, motivo de chacota e sacanagens de criancas e desocupados, a compor corn sua figura bisonha e idiota o bucOlico quadro interiorano.

Dona Marieta ganhava algum dinheiro auxiliando na confeccao de vestidos de noiv a. Havia de tres a cinco casamentos de classe media por mes em Pirai. A senhora custeou a duras penas a alfabetizacao de Herbert Albuquerque de Castilho, nao porque ganhasse assim to pouco, mas porque nesta fase de sua vida jĂĄ se tinha viciado nas 34

BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

rodadas de dominO da Pensao Roma, apostando nas pedrinhas sempre mais que o razoavel.

A vida de Bolota era bem mais simples. Nos intervalos em que nao estava respondendo corn gargalhadas a cascudos na testa, xingamentos ou eventuais pontapes na bunda, o quase anao I impava os vidros e a lataria dos taxis da Rua Direita, ao lado da estacao Rodoviaria, e em troca recebia gorj etas dos motoristas ou uma media de cafĂŠ corn leite, oferecida no botequim da rodoviaria e engolida em segundos, entre risadas vas, corn os olhos Omidos e gratos.

A vida de Herbert era urn pouco mais complicada. 0 jovem alto e herdeiro da biologia tisica do pal, nab passara mesmo da alfabetizacao. Tinha porem um temperamento histrionic°, e disto tirava metade de seus rendimentos, trabalhando de dez a meia-noite como palhaco no puteiro Vista Alegre, de propriedade da velha cafetina Dona Neuza, que atendia desde recrutas em folga a caixeiros-viajantes, passando pelos comerciarios, policiais, urn gerente de banco freqiientador assiduo, ate a historica visita de urn ex-prefeito da cidade de Vassouras.

As "meninas" recolhidas por Dona Neuza para a zona de meretricio compunham urn mosaico de ragas e tipos que estonteavam os "clientes": louras, ruivas, morenas, mulatas de todos os matizes, cafuzas, sarards, negras e nigerrimas. Variavam ricamente na distribuicao de ossos, carnes e gorduras nos corpos de aluguel, e tinham ern comum apenas o fato de todas terem sido expulsas do lar paterno por terem engravidado no principio da adolescencia de algum dos tantos garanhOes desdentados que as escondiam nos arredores.

Todas as noites, durante duas horas, o centro da grande sala do puteiro, rodeado de mesas rep letas de garrafas de cerveja, onde os "clientes" acomodavam nas coxas as putinhas avidas, transformava-se numa especie de circo pornografico, no qual o palhaco Simplicio era a major atracao. Alem dele, que fazia piruetas e dava cambalhotas corn os culhOes a mostra, contava anedotas sujas corn grande graca e final izava o rainier° puxando de dentro das calcas estufadas de cetim vermelho uma enorme cobra no lugar do sexo, oferecendo-a de mesa em mesa aos ofegantes senhores; havia a trepada do engolidor de fogo corn a mulher barbuda, que numa das flamejantes vomitadas do parceiro quase perde a preciosa barba; havia o engolidor de espadas que, proeza major que fazer BRAZZIL -MARCH 2003

passar pela garganta gladios e florets, acabava por engolir ate as bolas do saco o imenso orgao do anao Coleirinho, s b os aplausos e os brindes da plateia. 0 fundo musical do espetaculo era conduzido pelo "maestro" Borboleta, m velho remelento que babava sobre as teclas do piano, auxi I iado por um j ov m da Banda Marcial do Colegio Pirai, q e batia velocissimas baquetas no tarol, p ra aumentar as tensOes dos moment s cruciais, e por urn pistonista fanho e nome Washington.

A mistura de circo e lenocinio haNlia sido uma brilhante invencao de Dona Neuza, que promovia o relaxamento a euforia dos "cl ientes", em geral esgotad s pelo dia de trabalho, facilitando corn is o o espirito de sacanagem, o tes o irresponsavel, e incrementando urn pou o mais o consumo de cervejas, par e significativa dos lucros do cabare circen e Vista Alegre, orgulho e vexame de Pir ".

A outra metade dos rendimentos e Herbert vinha entre meia-noite e dez ia manha, enquanto trabalhava co o motorista de taxi, num velho Citron negro, no ponto da estacao rodoviari Os onibus sO comecavam a cheg r periodicamente a partir das sete da manh , mas Herbert era o unico motorista de plantao durante a madrugada em toda a cidade, e a ele aconlam no meio da noi e os casais clandestinos, alguns enferm s cronicos, parturientes e enfartados Ultima hora, pagando-lhe sempre e dobro todas as corridas.

Herbert, ou Simplicio, nao havia si educado pela velha Marieta para ding r taxis e muito menos para ser palhaco e zona. A mae lheensinara etiquetae insistra em depositar no finico rebento todas s esperancas de ver recuperada a fortuna que o ditador Vargas roubara dos Alb querque. Herbert nao correspondeu, que lhe custou urn medido desprezo d mae, que se recusava terminantemente tomar consciencia dos oficios do filho a sequer imaginar de onde vinharn diariamente as suadas notas que lhF garantiam a sobrevivencia e Ihp custeavam o nefando vicio do domin6.

Para si prOprio, Herbert nao tirava mai que um quinto do dinheiro que arrecadav no volante e no picadeiro.

Dona Marieta era velha, alienada, mais ou menos feliz. Herbert er engracado, frustrado e profundament infeliz. Seu contrato con a cafetina er severissimo, e nem mesmo o Citroen era seu, mas do avarento dono da Papelaria Auriverde, que lhe cobrava os olhos cara pelo aluguel do veiculo. A ambo ele odiava muito, aos outros odiava u pouco, a Vargas remotamente.

E a vitima fisica e moral dos odios do palhaco, seu saco de pancadas verbais e receptaculo exclusivo da sua ira generica contra o mundo, era o doido Bolota, o bunda-inchada que noite apOs noite de todas as luas do ano sofria toda sorte de castigos e improperios do branco Herbert, que lhe puxava as orelhas ate sangrar ou lhe repetia em alto e born som, por vezes rodeado de terceiros, que a marafona mae do negro maluco ficara afamada pela largura do buraco do seu cu, que o cu da genitora do retardado jorrava esperma para o alto como urn cano furado, e que sO pelo cu a negra poderia ter concebido tamanha monstruosrdade. Nestas horas, Bolota sO fazia rir, como se fosse nao dele, mas de seu pior inimigo, a orelha que ardia ou o timpano que vibrava corn as maledicencias de seu verdugo. E quando parava de rir, o baixote corria ao Citroen, com sua gasta e parda flanela, e lustrava cuidadosamente os para-lamas e o vidro traseiro do instrumento de trabalho de Herbert, como que agradecendo pela sadica atencao a ele dispensada.

No segundo domingo depois do carnaval, a cidade foi visitada por um bando de turistas arruaceiros do Rio de Janeiro, suburbanos de Inhaama, que viajaram a Pirai especialmente para conhecer o Vista Alegre. Nesta noite nao restou uma s6 mesa disponivel para os freqiientadores locais. DonaNeuza estava exultante. Mandou dobrar o preco das bebidas e triplicar os dos orgasmos.

Simplicio quis comecar o espetaculo mais cedo, pois havia combinado corn o subprefeito de leva-lo corn a amante, a ossuda Marivalda, a um motel da cidade vizinha a meia-noite em ponto, e trazelos de volta as cinco, por quantia polpuda.

Seus argumentos, porem, no convenceram a cafetina. Ele era a atracao principal, e devia apresentar-se por altimo, como de praxe, mormente em se tratando de noite tao especial. E que fizesse rir os turistas ate estourar-lhes as tripas, ordenou a megera. Nao restava a Simplicio senao obedecer.

Sentou-se defronte do espelho do camarim improvisado, o quarto da puta Amalia, e pos-se a maquiar-se, pintando de branco o rosto, o grande circulo vermelho em tomb da boca, as sobrancelhas altas e o azu I nas palpebras, a bolinha rosada na ponta do nariz.

Pensava estrangular um por urn os velhinhos que lhe extorquiam atraves do vicio da mae, nas rodadas de domino da Pensao Roma. lndiretamente viviam todos as suas custas, aproveitando-se de Dona Marieta, que quase sempre perdia por nao saber fazer contas direito e ser ma jogadora, mesmo apOs duas decadas 35

escolhendo pedrinhas negras e as colocando em fila. Nao sabia qual dos males, o pior. Sea ditadura de Vargas ou a merda do dominO. Completou os preparativos, encaixando a careca, colando a borracha na testa, e contomando os culheies corn a falsa e obscena serpente. A esta altura, já escutava os berms e uivos do povo a vibrar corn o 'Rimer° da contorcionista, que de tanto vergar a cabeca para tras das costas, enfiava a prOpria lingua por inteira na vagina.

Era chegada a sua hora. Simplicio derramou pelo esOfago meio copo de cachaca pura, prendeu a respiracao e entrou no salao, disposto a realizar o mais brilhante espetaculo de sua carreira de bobo de putaria.

Assim o quis, e assim o fez. ()public° carioca del irou de tal forma cont as suas palhacadas e invencionices, que Simplicio foi obrigado a interromper as anedotas por tres vezes para pedir que nao atirassem cascos vazios de cerveja para o alto, pois o Vista Alegre era uma casa para caralhos duros, e nao para cabecas quebradas.

Desesperado corn o horario, o palhaco teve aindaque bisar varias vezes o numero da cobra genital para que o deixassem por Ern abandonar as carreiras o puteiro, correndo pelas ruas desertas, meia-noite e meia, a procura de seu Citroen.

Compromisso corn o subprefeito era coisa seria, serissima... E la foi Simplicio, disparado atras do casalzinho, sem ter tido tempo sequer para desfazer a maquiagem.

Chegou ao lugar combinado, esperou, olhou em volta, esperou, buzinou, esperou, e nada. Talvez tenham tornado outro taxi... Mais provavelmente, desistiram da aventura. 0 melhor a fazer seria aguardar no ponto da rodovidria.

Quem sabe os dois aparecem camuflados por la...

Estacionou o carro e pensou em tirar aquela roupa ridicula de palhaco ali mesmo, mas ndo havia o que vestir, sua calca e camisa tinham ficado no Vista Alegre, e akin do mais, a luz era pouca, quase nenhuma. Na penumbra, Ode apenas divisar o vulto mirrado aproximando-se, e nele reconhecer pelas risadas o doido Bolota.

Mais que a tudo e a todos na Terra, Simplicio odiava as risadas, que ecoavam na suarazaocomo urn pesadelo repetitivo e cruel. Bolota gargalhava do jeito dos cariocas do cabare, ate mais forte, so que o expediente de Simplicio como palhaco já havia terminado. Ele agora era Herbert, o motorista. Olhou-se no espelho retrovisor. Ele agora nao sabiamais quern 36

era.

Saiu do carro e deu urn chute na carat de Bolota que o deitou no chao, e entao T cuspiu, escarrou varias vezes na cara do' negro. Bolota na. AgaiTou o negro pelos ombros e desferiu-lhe joelhadas no estomago, pisou-lhe os pes corn vontade, pulou sobre eles. 0 retardado na mais, na de dor e de loucura, na de tudo, ria , dele. 0 palhaco deusocos em seu pescoco,, seguidos, potentes, enquanto sussurrav Little by little Pedro started que o Em do negro seria acabar cotrib c losing interest in watching the tdo cheio de porra quanto o da mle dele 0 negro gargalhava alto. population through the magic eye.

Simplicio esgotou-se. Suas rtiao doiam e sua fantasia estava respingada The movements were almost de sangue. Encostou-se no carro e` debrucou-se sobre o capo. Bolota, mais always the same and was getting que depressa, procurou levantar-se, 1 more and more annoyed for puxando sua flanela ensebada, pos-se lustrar o Citroen. 0 palhaco sabia que spending his time in something seria perda de tempo pedir ao doido que as predictable as the people's box. parasse corn aqui lo. Bolota nao entendia nada, ndo compreendia... Apenas sorria, JULIO CESAR MONTEIRO ensangUentado, enquanto tentava fazer MARTINS de cada para-lama um espelho.

Simplicio entrou no carro e ficou a No principio, a simples ideia da observar o negro e a pensar na ink de colecao trazia a Pedro momentos de ambos. Melhor para o bobo nao ter dado intensa alegria. Eram apenas alguns a mae o desgosto de conhece-lo. Quanto poucos hornens guardados numa caixa a dele proprio, antes tivesse fodido corn de sapatos, no antigo quarto de visitas. A Vargas! primeira mulher de Pedro foi colocada A cabeca lhe doia. Estava tonto e dentro daquela mesma caixa, e foi confuso. Sentia a ressaca de sua propria somente quando a populacao já se violencia. 0 palhaco encostou a falsa acotovelava para corner e para fornicar, careca no volante, abracou-o e dormiu. emitindo ruidos incomodos durante toda Bolota lustrou os quatro para-lamas a noite, que Pedro resolveu encomendar enquanto Simplicio dormia. Entaotorceu a grande caixa de madeira. a tampa do tanque de gasolina, guardou0 prOprio Pedro havia desenhado a a no bolso, e do mesmo bolso retirou uma sua caixa, segundo as necessidades dos caixa de fosforos. diversos tipos que compunham a sua Enfiou a flanela no tanque e Os fogo crescente colecao. 0 espaco dividia-se na beiradinha do pano. Afastou-se, e em blocos e corredores internos, e tudo segundos depoisassistiu a maior explosao era coberto por urn grande tampo, em ja ocorrida na cidade. Uma enorme cujocentro havia um olho magic°, atraves carcaca negra em chamas, o Ciiioe do qual Pedro acompanhava os cuspindo fogo por todos os buracost movimentos dentro da caixa sem ser notado pela populacao.

Dentro dele, o motorista, o palhac Simplicio e o promissor Herbert AlbuTodas as tardes, Pedro chegava do trabalho, tirava a gravata e os sapatos e ia querque de Castilho.

Os turistas cariocas chegaram direto para a sua colecao, antes mesmo bebados a rodoviaria, trocando perna por de entrar no banho. Ja nao conseguia pema, e viram a fachada branca imaculada memorizar os nomes de todos aqueles da igrejinha iluminar-se de vermelho vivo. homens, mas reconhecia as expressOes e As seis horas da segunda-feira sairia o os gestos de cada urn, ou assim pensava, primeiro onibus Pirai-Rio. Era noite sem perceber que o individuo que ainda. Os cariocas olhavam o fogo meio identificava por este ou aquele traco era que fascinados, e de tao bebados varios individuos confundidos em sua acabaram cutucando-se uns aos outros e precaria observacao.

Alguns carregavam cestas de comida rindo, acompanhando as gargalhadas convulsivas de um crioulo baixote, corn de urn lado para outro da caixa, as vezes jeito de maluco, que debaixo da mar- em fila, as vezes em grupos. Outros quise do boteco parecia estar assistindo carregavam objetos para um canto ao melhor quadro da comedia do Vista qualquer, e entao os recolocavam em seus antigos lugares, ou em outros canAlegre.

The Collection

BRAZZIL - MARCH '2003

tos, num esforco aparentemente sem sentido algum. E outros ainda passavam todo o tempo andando de um lado para o outro, duramente empenhados em carregar a si proprios.

Havia urn canto onde os bebes nasciam das mulheres gordas, e urn outro onde homens e mulheres se sentavam para morrer. Surgiam mais elementos novos do que desapareciam, ea populacdo sO cabia ainda na caixa porque Pedro retirava todos os dias alguns homens e os colocava numa caixa menor, separada da outra, e os esquecia la. Alguns cram retirados porque ndo faziam nada, e outros porque faziam coisas demais. Eram colocados todos eles nas mesmas caixinhas, e ninguem poderia saber quem cram uns, quem cram outros.

Nos primeiros meses da colecdo havia despesas extras e aborrecimentos. Pedro perdia muitos de seus novos elementos, que ndo se adaptavam oueram destruidos, e entdo era forcado a comprar outros, e a investir sempre. Logo, porem, a colecao se estabilizou, e quando surgia o desejo de uma nova aquisicdo, bastava trocar o element° desejado por alguns de seus excedentes antigos, cada vez mais numerosos.

A colecao crescia mais do que ele mesmo teria esperado. Aplicando as tecnicas de al imentacdo e de higiene que aprendera em um manual estrangeiro, Pedro provocou urn verdadeiro boom dentro de sua caixa. Homens e mulheres de todos os tipos e raps corriarn de um lado para o outro o tempo todo, numa atividade tdo frenetica que quem ouvisse o zumbido que emanava de dentro da caixa sem olhar no olho magic° julgaria que Pedro criara uma colmeia e ficaria rico produzindo mel.

Mas a caixa de homens era u a anticolmeia, que ao inves de mel, ape as produzia mais homens. E tantos cram os homens, que seu valor fora decain o vertiginosamente no mercado se colecionadores, todos corn o mes o problema de excedentes, e corn a alta o prep da racdo, cram obrigados a jo los no lixo aos punhados. ColecO s inteiras foram desativadas, e apenas ss elementos mais especiais ainda detinh m algurn valor de troca.

Aos poucos, Pedro foi perdendo o interesse em acompanhar a populac o pelo seu olho magico. Os moviment s cram quase sempre os mesmos, e ca a vez aborrecia-lhe mais gastar o seu tern so em algo tao previsivel quanto a sua cai a de homens. Por fim, Pedro f i abandonando a sua colecdo, esquecia- e dela por dias. Entrava direto no banho o chegar do trabalho, e ao sair do banho estava mergulhado em outros assunto A caixa, aos poucos, foi parando se zumbir, ate ficar completamen e silenciosa. Pedro pensava que a populacdo, tendo tido a sua cota de rac o drasticamente reduzida, preferia dorm r a fazer o que quer que produzisse aque e zumbido constante. Mas a populacdo n dormia.

Certa tarde, enquanto esquentava a agua do chuveiro, Pedro foi ao quarto $ e visitas e resolveu espiar pelo olho magic Ndo conseguiu enxergar nada, tamanha escuriddo dentro da caixa. Abriu entdo tampo de madeira e recebeu em plen rosto o cheiro acre da colecdo extint Espalhados pelo fundo da caixa, populacdo inerte aos pouco desapareci incluindo aqueles elementos mai especiais, os mais caros da sua coleca Eles forrnavam como que um tapete

cobrir o fundo dos blocos e dos corredores.

Pedro, estranhamente, rid° contara corn aquela possibilidade. Perdera em tdo poucos dias de esquecimento a co lecdo que formara durante tantos anos de esforco. E uma colecdo, uma vez perdida, é como se nuncativesse existido.

Pedro fechou o tampo da caixa corn um estrondo, e sem ao menos desligar o chuveiro, saiu a rua como estava.

Acompanhando o cair da tarde, Pedro caira em escura depressdo. A caixa de homens ja ndo Ihe importava mais. Ele ndo sabia ao certo que vaga e sutil iddia emergira de seus abismos e the provocara aquela angustia indeterminada, aquele desejo de andar, andar, andar sem direcdo.

Caminhou durante horas pela cidade, sentindo o coracao aferroado cada vez que trazia a mem6ria a imagem do tapete amorfo. Caminhou ate que se esgotasse, e alp& atravessartantas avenidas e blocos de apartamentos, encontrou urn canto solitario onde agachou-se, recostado a um imenso muro de tijolos, e pOs-se a descarregar o choro incontido, a expressar-se livre para a noite, para a grande lua no ceu, o circulo branco e Iuminoso, pairando sobre a sua cabeca como urn olho magico de algum gigante, atraves do qual Pedro estaria sendo eternamente observado.

The original titles of these short stories are respectively "DominO" and "A Colecao." "Domino" was originally published in A Othe de Nada (Editora Civilizacao Brasileira, R.J., 1981) and "A Colecao" appeared in Muamba (Editora Anima, R.J., 1986).

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, Barbara, 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 the University of Pisa. He also teaches Literary Creation in Narration in Florence, Lucca, and Pistoia. Martins is the founder of Sagarana School (http:// 14 w.sagarana.net). You can get in touch with him writing to imonteitin.it BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

37

Requiem bra Bubble Globo Group and the Folha Group, two giants of the media, who had wrangled for some years, reconciled and announced a public feast which piece de resistance would be the tasty economic daily Gazeta Mercantil.

They came up with the luminous idea of joining forces—divide the cake, i.e., the Brazilian market.

ALBERTO DINES

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Set kstats bem elver no Pankow:Selo tle istampti 2=16

The latest comes from unsuspected daily 0 Estado de S. Paulo (Saturday, 3/8, page B 4). Negotiations are in the final stage for an "association" between Gazeta Mercantil, the octogenarian economics journal, and Maritima Engenharia e Petroleo, led by entrepreneur German Efromovich. Whatever route the negotiations take, what we have here is the most dramatic episode of the most serious economic crisis to fall on the Brazilian press since the beginning of the 20th century.

The crumbling down of Gazeta did not happen overnight and was not the result of the fluctuation in the exchange rate, the global scenario or the rise in the interest rate. Gazeta did not topple because it signed unfortunate contracts or because it made disastrous decisions on the editorial sphere. Such things have happened in other cases, but not in this one. Albeit a family enterprise, it abstained from interventions in its editprial line and has always maintained unusually high quality and a rare coherettee. Shareholders reserved the administrative and financial sphere for themselves.

What is disgraceful is the following: professionalization and editorial qualification are worth nothing, if the same standards of competence are not followed in the business operation.

Thus the first act of the tragedy foil: the character imposed his will and chose his destiny. Now he will have to pay for it. In the second act (always in accordance with the Greek theater paradigm), enter the will and designs of the others, the external forces. The conflict begins. On stage are three invisible and diabolical beings: the delirium of hegemony, the dynamics of concentration and the compulsion to mimic.

In October of 1999, the Globo Group and the Folha Group, two giants who had wrangled for some years already, silently reconciled and, to celebrate, announced a public feast which piece de resistance would be the tasty Gazeta Mercantil, a unique and refined dish that only developed economies are able to create.

Neither seemed preoccupied and operated at full speed ahead, with a green light in all its operations. Both had obtained phenomenal circulation in their respective dailies, using the magic of gifts. Everything turned out well, nothing could go wrong.

Effective giants, conscious of their power. Invincible.

Inspired by the little devils of ambition, they concluded that their dispute was useless and came up with the luminous idea ofjoining forces—divide the cake, i.e., the Brazilian market. Each one would have its slice and screw the other table guests.

If the order of the day abroad was "merger", "concentration" and "diversification", no use reinventing the wheel here—the recipe should be the same.

The only difference would be the substitution of "fusion" with "partnership".

Instead of linking what already existed—a slow, dangerous and ostensive process— they joined together to produce something that never existed before. Their excuse was good: a 50 million dollar injection, a few hundred new job posts and a competitor to liquidate (Gazeta Mercantil). Albeita market leader, Gazeta was skating on the I edge of insolvency.

The daily Valor Economico started circulating on Tuesday, May 2, 2000, published by a company whose shareholders (in equal parts) were the Globo and Folha groups. Tragicomic note: on the front page of the first issue, the headline was "FHC and Lula give out the recipes for the country to grow more".

Mistaken recipes. Not only from the columnists invited to foresee the future of Brazil, but also from the owner group, soon nicknamed Grupo Bolha [fusion of BO and LHA, meaning "Bubble"].

The executioner of Gazeta has had, From the beginning, a high editorial standard.

It is the newspaper of the people who make decisions and form public opinion—a success. On the other hand, the owner company, symbol of the new economy, walks a dangerous impasse. The giants [glo]Bo & [fo]Lha started fighting again, the business did not prosper as they fantasized and, exhausted by further unhappy mirages, they now have no cash to invest or to buy the opposite part.

The third act has started already. Like in many tragedies (classical, Elizabethan or modern), it runs the risk of never ending—from an absolute lack of characters.

Those who started it have collapsed on stage, bloodless, delivered into the hands of Destiny.

Alberto Dines, the author, is a journalist, founder and researcher at LABJOR—Laboratorio de Estudos Avancados em Jornalismo (Laboratory for Advanced Studies in Journalism) at UNICAMP (University of Campinas) and editor of the ObservatOrio da Imprensa.

He also writes a column on cultural issues for the Rio daily Jornal do Brasil. You can reach him by email at obsimpAi2.com.br

Translated by Tereza Braga, email: tbragalinggcs.com 38

BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

The Brazil Risk and Brazil at Risk

The problem is not Luis Fernando da Costa, alias "Beira-Mar" (Seaside). T e officers are mistaken in their contentment with the fact that the most dangero s criminal in our history is now behind bars and under maximum isolation. The seco biggest city in Brazil, Rio, is under siege, but this is not the work of one thug, or ev one hundred thugs. This is not only a law enforcement issue, or a detention issue. It is not only a court issue, either, or limited to one state within the country.

We are facing a threat to the nation of Brazil as a whole—a politically organized and sovereign country, represented by a legitimately-elected government and inte nationally recognized as such. "Beira-Mar" and his broad network of accornplic constitute a political problem. What Om have is an institutional issue. Crime h become a political party that runs not for elections, but for power.

As opposed to the FARC, in Colombia, our narcoterrorists do not aspire t regional autonomy. They want the entire country and they chose Rio de Janeiro, the r megaphone city, to flaunt their power in the exact moment when the city is at thcenter of the world's attention. And if our experienced diplomats, with their capabl advisors, refuse to admit that the Colombian tragedy is a fruit of politicized terro they may soon be called to serve as mediators between Sao Paulo's PCC (Primeir Comando da Capital—Capital's First Command) and Rio's Comando Vermelh (Red Command).

If the newspapers sneak this catastrophe, which is prostrating the country, into th local news pages or in the "cities" section, it will mean that our media has lost th ability to assess reality and prioritize the subjects it covers. Two months after th In Brazil, crime has become a Executive Power's swearing-in celebrations and two weeks since the Legislativ Power took office, the Republic is being challenged and intimidated in its essence an political party that runs not for in its core, which is its integrity. elections, but for power. As What is in danger is not the parade at Sambodromo. It is not Carnaval that i suffering indelible harm. There is no use in positioning a machine gun besides eac opposed to the FARC, in samba dancer or elite snipers next to each Luma de Oliveira. Federal presence in Ri should not be restricted to the King Momo trio or to the persuasive participation o Colombia, our narcoterrorists do the Armed Forces.

Governability itself has been shaken, and not because the opposition has ob not aspire to regional autonomy. structed reforms or because the Judiciary has put brakes on all attempts for change Actually, all this is happening as responsible and firm action on the part of the centra They want the entire country and government, through their new finance team, succeeds in promoting a rise in investo they chose Rio to flaunt their trust. Our C-Bond has increased in value at almost 7 percent a month and the Brazi risk is falling to the levels of June 2002, when markets and merchants starte power when the city is at the speculating on the future of the electoral campaign.

The fundamentals of our economy have not changed. The record surplus w center of the world's attention. expected and there were no spectacular jumps in exports or dizzy falls in unemploy mentor inflation figures. Investors changed because they felt solidity and perceive ALBERTO DINES investments in a cohesive, organized decision system, able to resist all demagogica temptations, as a worthwhile strategy.

The same rigor and the same trust must irradiate to the adjoining spheres, so a to form a broad panel of competence, rigor, alertness and public spirit. If th government were to pact with the craftiness and shady style of Senate president Jos Sarney, the case involving his friend ACM would be rendered empty by the Carnaval recess. PT was fast and efficient: it summoned the Ethics Council AM EM 10 DE MAR^O • PAGINA 27 ofthe Higher House and activated a reviewing machine which will be hard to emasculate with collusions and favoritism.

The "Bahia of all Grampos" [telephone tapping] has nothing to do with the "Rio of all Drugs". Throughout his reign, ACM became guilty of much illicit activity, infractions, prevarication, misdemeanors and truculence, tc: Att. but his relationship with organized crime is improbable. The scandal ""%a involving the current Rio de Janeiro State government and its partly !t— es.. it.. predecessor administration cannot be seen as an isolated phenomenon. A corrupt controller and a corrupt police officer are exactly the same thing. Se Neither color nor absence of collars can distinguish between them. apIAat Aline/ cam bombes, bawl incvntrados. time • toridos yllImpunity obeys the textbook principle of communicating vesgels. A little complacency here, another concession there, and what we get is a corrupt and corrupting dynamic that legitimizes all transgressions, consecrates improbity and exalts confusion and disorder. There is a real interactivity between the telephone interceptions in Bahia and the successive cell phone deposits in the maximum security prison in Bangu. Both are the result of an elementary fragmentation which puts under suspicion those who should be above suspicion.

Investors are attracted by the bottom lines in public accounts. All bookkeeping activity aims at balance. Specially in moral accounts A society can command respect with measurable figures; much more telling, though, are the immeasurnble figures. The rigor of a justice system and the credibility of a security apparatus are not measured by econometrics.

The risk of any country topples when the country commits to face every risk. Including the risk of leniency with gangsterism.

0 GLOBO '

nda-feira sem lei

NI0, 0+

Translated by Tereza Braga, email: tbragaling@cs.com BRAZZIL -MARCH 2003

39

Sorry, That's War Katia Lund, co-director of City of God, sounds out: "Damn, I am talking about my country, about what I want to talk about! We speak as if there were two societies but it is just one body! What good is it if your head is good but your leg is sick?"

CLARISSA BERETZ

40

Katia Lund is one of those people who makes you feel like sitting, having a beer and spending hours chatting. Director of fiction movies, documentaries and video clips, she has stood out for tackling the violence and the social marginal ization in many of her projects. She directed the clips 0 que sobrou do ceu (What has left from the sky) and Minha alma (My soul) from the band 0 Rappa.

Her latest work, the full length Cidade de Deus (City of God), which was codirected by Fernando Meirelles, has been watched by more than 3 million people in Brazil alone, having provoked polemic and national enchantment. The story, based on the book by the same name from Paulo Lins, tells, from a boy's point of view, how violence and the drugs trade dominated the favelas (slums) of Rio, in a hardcore plot that is still vividly poetic. It has been praised in Brazil and around the world for many reasons, among others, for revealing acting talents from the favelas and showing this reality with sincerity, something never before seen so clearly.

Recently, the movie has been nominated to represent Brazil in the Oscars.

Last October, this 36-year-old Sao Paulo-born daughter of Americans, who studied Cinema almost by chance, was in London for the showing ofher documentary Noticias deumaGuerra Particular (News from a Private War) at the Brazilian Film Festival. She spoke to Jungle Drums about citizenship, press and her feelings about Brazil.

How was your first contact with the favelas?

When I lived in Sao Paulo, I used to spend some weekends at the home of the woman who worked as a maid in my house, but then I simply saw the favela as a poor area, I did not have the notion of thefavela as a community. When I moved to Rio in '96 1 worked on Michael Jackson's They Don't Care About Us video clip in Santa Marta hill. I did the production and had to organize everything for the crew. It was then that I started realizing how things really worked there.

And why did you decide to make a movie with this thematic?

It was the first time that I saw the police acting in a way that they never would in my street, with five machineguns in my face, humiliating a person that was just working. That was a trigger for me. I realized that I was 29 years old and had no real notion of the country I was born in. I've seen things from the opposite side, from the oppressed side, and it is amazing how huge the abuse of power is! There was a knot in my head and I knew I had to do something, to show this to the world.

Talking to Walter Sallesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;I was directing assistant of Central do Brasil (Central Station)â&#x20AC;&#x201D;he suggested that I make a documentary about this. I had never directed but we started researching and began the News from a Private War (coBRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

directed by her and Joao Moreira Salles, Walter Salles' brother).

What most impressed you in this process?

How much we are cheated by the press. It is incredible how the media sometimes does not inform the people. A lot of what is published is exactly the opposite of what has happened. A headline can be "Enemy number I", and the enemy can be a 12 year old boy who didn't know what he was doing. They create labels and judgments that instead of clarifying the causes, reprimand the symptoms. This only makes things worse.

Few people in the favelas have had the opportunity to tell their stories with realism and poetry.

Was this your expectation when you, filmed News from a Private War and City of God? I wanted to show what is happening, in a clear way and without labels. People come to know things through the media with all these problems that I have mentioned: with each edition and headline designed to sell newspapers. And the press is so objective that it doesn't bring

you any real emotions, you watch it and keep on drinking your coffee, and afterwards you forget. I think there must be a personal impact to feel this revolt and actually act. Like I did, with the machineguns pointed to me.

What has been the repercussion in Brazil?

It is madness. The coolest thing is that it is being watched by people from all different classes. People who have never been to the movies beforeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;perhaps they did not set themselves or did not identify themselves in a movieâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;are going to watch it. And everybody is talking about it! One day I was at the hairdresser and it was wicked, I saw the manicures, the girls who serve coffee and the madams all discussing the scenes and the whole social problematic. I have been noticing that the movie has helped democratize discussion.

What are the biggest difficulties when raising this theme?

Many people ask me: "Why 'don't WWZIL-MARCH2003

you talk about your social class?" Damn I am talking about my country, abou what I want to talk about! There are a lo of these people in Brazil who say yo have to look after you and your famil and if you tackle the social space it i never well understood. Some friends o mine even said "I don't want to see this, it is not my reality". I reckon this is blockage that we have. We speak as there were two societies but it is just one body! What good is it ifyour head is good but your leg is sick?

You have experienced both worlds.

What do you think must be changed?

Society has put the police as a frontier. Every citizen who comes down the favela, or someone that wants to go up, has to go through the police, is examined, and needs to show documents. Soon it will be necessary to show your passport to get into the favela; it is becoming a foreign country! For me, the first step is to change the concept. We need to remove this barrier and start entering, opening interchange channels, and creating partnerships. Understanding that over there is not just a place of bandits and useless people. We need to permit the citizens from the favelas to take part in our society.

Have you got any religion?

No (laughs). What I do has nothing to do with religion, just democracy, civic duty and citizenship. It is the obligation of each person to respect the other. It is your brother that is there, we are all Brazilians!

And if you had been born in a favela?

I don't want to be accomplice in a society of casts.

And the trafficking iisue? How do you analyze the legislation?

The drug criminalization only helps to make the traffic heavier. No one quits smoking or sniffing just because it is forbidden. And this money goes to the organized crime, buys guns and makes people get into this because it creates loads of money. It is anti productive. I reckon there are some drugs that should be sold at the pharmacy, in a controlled way, with registration and the charging of taxes. We should also invest in the treatment of the drug effects. It is much more dangerous the presence of the guns and the crime, the fact of having to go up to the favela, than sniffing itself. But I guess it is hard to change this system, as it is so rooted already in Brazil...

What are your plans for the future? Are you going to carry on in this path of social indicment?

No, City of God closed a cycle that I have been tracing since 1996. Now! am letting the boat flow and just receiving feedback from people. I want to tackle other subjects, lam finishing a documentary about rap in Brazil, Cuba and the U.S., and am going to make the next clip from Racionais and start a script of a feature. I will also keep on working with the boys from the cast, in the group that we formed, N6s do Cinema (We/Knots from the Cinemaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;we and knots are the same word in Portuguese). They are already making their own movies, journalism in the favelas, scripts... It is very gratifying.

Was this your great merit?

I don't know whether I have got any great merit in all this.. .1 have already said what I wanted. My looking and my message are in the movie. I can say that after this I feel less lonely.

You lived in the U.S.. How was this experience?

I went to study literature and stayed there for four years. My parents are American, I speak English, I thought I was American. However, when I arrived there I saw how different it was, I wanted to come back, I missed Brazil. I worked as a cleaner, waitress, anything we do far away is cool and it is always an experience.

How did the cinema get into your life?

My degree in literature was like living in a bubble, in a small village, I felt claustrophobic. I stayed there two years but I wanted to see the world, travel, I was 20 years old. One day I saw an ad: "Study of Cinema and Social Transformation, traveling around 8 countries." It was the excuse I gave my father to go on the road. I went with a friend and we thought: "Do you think we'll have to watch films all day long?" (laughs) I didn't have a clue, but later I began to discover certain theories and freak out in how cinema reaches people, in how collective the work is. I fell in love.

This interview was originally published by Jungle Drums magazine, www.iungledrums.ore.uk

Clarissa Beretz is journalist and reporter of Jungle Drums magazine, in London. In Brazil she worked as a reporter for Ana Maria magazine, Silo Paulo daily newspaper Nadas Populates, and webzine Usina do Som. 41

Fernando Meirelles has become a much-feted name of late thanks to the film Cidade de Deus. However, the director has had a long career. By the beginning of the '80's, he had already set up his first company, a video production firm called Electronic Eye. A decade later, he entered headfirst into the world of advertising with 02 Films, today the main producer of cinematographic works in Brazil. These twin trajectories can, to a certain degree, both be found imbedded within Meirelles' latest offering; a propensity for strong, well thought-out images, and the PR campaign necessary to bring Cidade de Deus to the masses â&#x20AC;&#x201D; even if it takes a bit of sly marketing, as Meirelles tells us in the following interview.

Were you always passionate about cinema?

I started making some short films on Super 8 when I was 13. I liked making films more than watching them. At university I studied Architecture, and ended up joining the Film Society, and started watching everything that came my way.! never stopped, but I still prefer making cinema to watching it.

Did you study publicity and marketing, or did you learn everything on the job?

I don't understand anything about advertising, marketing or anything like that. I just know how to film and tell stories with images. I learned a lot just by working, always experimenting and by making stupid mistakes at my clients' expense.

What led you to base a film on Paulo Lins' novel?

The novel had a real impact on me.

There were some excellent characters and it shows a side of Brazil that ! didn't know existed. This is why I decided to make the film.

In both Cidade de Deus and Domesticas (Maids), you show people who have to face poverty in Brazil.

What is it that most fascinates and infuriates you about this socio-economic reality?

Social exclusion and injustice are fundamental questions that led me to make both films. As long as the same level of socio-economic inequality continues to exist within Brazil, we will never be taken seriously as a country. The time to tackle the problem is now. It looks as ifth is is going to be the priority of Lu la's government, as well.

In your opinion, how should the question of marijuana and cocaine use be dealt with in Brazil?

I'm not a specialist, but! have the impression that legalisation could be a 42

Shooting Is All I Know Talking to City of God's Director Social exclusion and injustice are fundamental questions that led me to make City of God. As long as the same level of socioeconomic inequality continues to exist within Brazil, we will never be taken seriously as a country.

The time to tackle the problem is now.

TUTU LOMBARDI

way of solving the problem of drug trafficking and organized crime. The negative consequences of this decision probably don't compare to those that the illegal use of drugs creates. The drugs trade finances an enormous network of corruption and crime.

How did you feel seeing the drug dealer Pequeno being arrested at the film's launch party?

In reality, we didn't see anything.

The Rio police force was very efficient and worked discretely and intelligently.

They simply came and whispered in his ear, advising him that he was surrounded and asked him to leave by the other staircase. They only handcuffed him once he was in the car park. The first thing I knew about it was the next day when I saw it in the paper.

What are the difficulties of filming in the ghetto?

We were very well received by the communities in which we filmed. Lots of people were hired as walk-on actors, hairdressers, construction workers, etc. and there was total support. Our work was made very easy by the enthusiasm that we encountered.

In England, the posters for the film talk of 'Guns, drugs and fashion...'.

The film is being sold as the new Pulp Fiction. Doesn't this compromise the work?

The idea for England and the US was to create an image that would attract the average Joe to go and see the film. If the image was more severe, people simply wouldn't go. Who knows, perhaps we'd only reach fans of Art House cinema. No, thank you very much. Films are made to be seen. I'm all for the little gimmick that the guys came up with. I'm sure that thousands of people who never would have seen the film have been tricked into going and have been surprised by what they saw.

Even after all the praise you've received, do you still continue to believe that the film isn't Oscar material?

I'm not the one that thinks it, it's Miramax, and they know about awards. I think it's good to be clear on this beforehand, so that I don't get tense, since I already know that I'm not in line to win.

Tutu Lombardi is journalist and reporter of Jungle Drums magazine, a London publication. He can be reached at editorialAjungledrums.org.uk This interview was originally published by Jungle Drums magazine, www.jun2ledrums.org.uk

BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

Dream On. This Is Not Brazil!

For dreamers, fantasists, fanatics or just bores, Brazil has become a blank page on which they can scribble and doodle as they wish. I cannot think of any other country which has this for fascination foreigners. It is as though Brazil were a drug. For your information, Brazilian women should come with the kind of health warning found on cigarette packets.

JOHN FITZPATRICK

BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

For a number of foreigners Brazil is a state of mind rather than a physical state— more like the legendary Hy-Brazil, an Atlantis-like island believed to be located to the west of Ireland, than the country in South America'. These people are mental imperialists who sack Brazil for what they can get out of it and make it their own.

Some of them do this without even setting foot in the place.

A look at the discussion thread of the Brazzi I Forum shows this. While many of the contributors know the country it is obvious that some have no idea about Brazil.

For them and many others—dreamers, fantasists, fanatics or just bores—Brazil has become a blank page on which they can scribble and doodle as they wish. I cannot think of any other country which has this fascination for foreigners. It is as though Brazil were a drug.

Sometimes the dream idea of Brazil is based on the actual country but selectively, so that only those aspects of the country, which prop up the dream, are used. I can think of two artistic examples Terry Gilliam's film Brazil made in 1985 and John Updike's novel Brazil published in 1994.1s it not interesting that two Americans who have a vast country of their own to plunder for artistic purposes should choose the Brazil of their imaginations?

Gilliam's film, set in the future, is the weird account of a nobody who fantasizes about disappearing into the clouds to escape from the repressive society in which he lives. The advertising poster showed a crazed looking guy whose head is literally exploding, along with the title "Brazil. It's Only a State of Mind." That film could easily have been set in a city like Sao Paulo yet it never entered the director's mind to set it in the country after it was named.

Magpie Meets Magnet In an interview Gilliam said his characters were "all trapped in a world of their own making". It would be good to detect some irony here but I do not. He added: "I work in this strange sort of magpie approach. I just start collecting things, and having an idea, a central idea, works like a magnet. Things just start sticking to it. I might end up with basically all these ideas that I start shuffling around like a jigsaw puzzle, trying to make a story or some sense out of the thing."

The magpie and the magnet. This odd combination of scattered ideas and thoughts 43

being drawn to the Brazilian magnet is fascinating. However, why is the magnet Brazil and not Bulgaria or Belgium or Burkina Faso or Basutoland? Maybe these places would have resulted in "a story or some sense- since the film had little. I could find no reference to the origin of the name of the film, showing how the idea of Brazil as a place of fantasy is taken for granted. Unfortunately for the director, the moneymen who backed him were appalled with the result, re-edited the film and showed it without his approval. Maybe we should be grateful to them because God knows what other nonsense we would have had to endure in the name of Brazil.

New Englander Updike Goes Native At least Updike's eponymous novel is actually set in Brazil with Brazilian characters. However, these characters bear as much resemblance to real Brazilians as a Jorge Amado character would bear to one of the Updike's more common New Englanders. Updike takes an extremely white well-off girl from Rio de Janeiro and pairs her off with—guess what—a poor black boy from a favela.

The boy, called Tristdo—no, the girl is not called Isolde but you get the point— gives her a ring he has stolen, they fall in love and set off on a trip around Brazil.

What follows is a trip around Updike's mind—a middle-aged man's version of Easy Rider set in the tropics.

During the years of their wanderings, the couple have all sorts of adventures during which she becomes a prostitute and, at one point, they even switch colors, thanks to the injection of the magic realism which makes reading so much of Latin American literature a chore.

I accept that all writers have the right to wander around in their imagination but Updike uses Brazil in a way he could not have used any other country. Brazil gives him all the contrasting material he needs—wealth and poverty, black and white, tropical rain forests and the drought-ridden send°. Like a tourist who behaves differently abroad than he would at home, Updike goes overboard in a way which would have led to him being burned with the witches at Salem had he written this book in the 17th century.

Foreigners have been writing about Brazil for 500 years and have often got it wrong. Since the country was actually "discovered" when Cabral was going in the opposite direction from his destination, India, perhaps this jinx has remained.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica says that 44

in the quarter of a century after the first Portuguese. landings Brazil was virtually neglected and other Europeans, particu-larly the French, started arriving to cut down brazilwood. "Brazil became a sort of no man's land over which the Portuguese crown wielded only a shadowy control."' Five hundred years later we can still say the country is' a mental tie man's land beyond any control.

Sex Appeal One of the reasons why Brazil appeals to the foreigneris the sexual element. For most foreigners Brazil is associated with the carnival and football.

Every year people all over the world see pictures of thousands of half-naked girls of all colors dancing in the streets. Unlike the po-faced, waif-like superstar models who strut around on catwalks, these Brazilian girls look happy and sexy. There is no political correctness about them or their society.

Brazil may be the largest Roman Catholic country in the world but the church obviously rules with a light hand.

Compare the Brazilian carnival with the Fassnacht celebrated in Germany and Switzerland. Compare the noise and heat of Rio de Janeiro, where people are dancing to vibrancy of the drums in temperatures of 30 degree Celsius, to a carnival in Basle where brass bands wheeze out oompah music and everyone is wrapped up to keep out the cold.

I have attended both kinds of carnival and can assure you the Brazilian version comes out well ahead in every way. Knowing this, thousands of European and American men head for Brazil at carnival time in the hope of finding some sex and adventure and good luck to them. Brazil's main sex magazine is called simply"Brazil". Presumably the English word is to make local buyers feel sophisticated and attract foreign buyers through its very name which promises sexual delight.

There is nothing new about this sexual attraction. The first Portuguese sailors were astonished at the nudity and beauty of the Indian women they met. The Indian men did not seem to object to the visitors pawing their women, since the Indians themselves stole or traded women from other tribes. As for the women they seem to have gone along. As Joseph Page puts it in The Brazilians: "The sight of naked painted bodies in the midst of lush vegetation had a hypnotic effect on men who had just survived the rigors of a transatlantic crossing. The willingness with which Indian women gave them-

selves to the white strangers no doubt contributed heavily to the enthusiastic response of the Europeans to the native people." In time these Indian women were joined by African women and, since there were not enough Portuguese women around, the men were encouraged to have Indian or black wives and mistresses to people this new land.

Look Out—Brazilian Women on the Loose This openness and freedom which Brazilian women show compared with European or American women is one of the reasons why foreign men are drawn to them. Just read some of the posts in the Brazzil Forum by (usually) American contributors to see the effects a meeting with a Brazilian girl has had on some of them. They read like the kind of idiotic letters you find in magazines for adolescent girls. As someone who has had some experience of Brazilian women I would warn any ofthese naïve foreigners to take care. The jungle may appear to be an attractive place but it is full of dangers.

Brazilian women should come with the kind ofhealth warning found on cigarette packets.

It would be better if these foreigners remained in the Brazil of their dreams where they have total freedom to think as they please. Since the Brazilians do not seem to mind having their country used as a mental escape zone the dreamers should keep on dreaming. Otherwise, grim reality might enter, as happened with the English bank robber, Ronald Biggs, who spent over 20 years in Brazil living a life which would have made most middle-aged failures envious. However, about a year ago Biggs, by then a sick old man, opted to go back home to drizzly old England where he is now a guest in one of Her Majesty's prisons. ' This island was shown on maritime charts as late as the 19th century. Hy-Brasil - the Irish Atlantis by Fiona Broome 2 Volume 4, 1962 edition John Fitzpatrick is a Scottish journalist who first visited Brazil in 1987 and has lived in Sao Paulo since 1995. He writes on politics and finance and runs his own company, Celtic Comunicacaes-www.celt.com.br, which specializes in editorial and translation services for Brazilian and foreign clients.

You can reach him at jf(&,celt.com.br BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

Few ensembles can drench a tune with the ambrosial spice that Pato Fu brings to the table.

Adding electroacoustic ingredients in equally precise measurements, they cut into grooves with an acute awareness of rock tradition and beat them into submission, engaging listeners in audacious colorful blurs that are a synthesis of imagination and technology. Pulsating with vitality, Pato Fu's first recording outside the studio, MTV Ao Vivo Pato Fu no Museu de Arte da Pampulha, confirms that the band's discriminating good taste and powerful ability to spin out ear-catching ideas are as compelling as they are frighteningly brilliant.

Voracious devourers of diverse influences—punk, heavy metal, brega, caipira music—cradled in an orgy of languages and digital information, Pato Fu has been critiqued as too underground, too pop, too comical, even too hard rock.

They have been referred to as the nineties version of Os Mutantes (one of the most dynamic and radical bands ofthe psychedelic era), but their stylistic inspiration comes more from artists like The Clash, Devo, Bjork, Nara Ledo, and Elvis.

Interestingly, in ten years of vacillating popularity, of avoiding the abyss of pop-oriented sales pressures, and of committing only to their fans, Pato Fu has maintained both a diversity and a healthy following. After their sixth album—a noteworthy achievement for any group, but an especially gratifying one for an independent group devoted to the kind of musical probing that mainstream pop/ rock avoids—Time magazine cited Pato Fu as one of the 10 best bands on planet Earth.

The group was formed in 1992, the vision of John (Joao Daniel Ulhoa), a guitar player, songwriter, and sound engineer with skate-punk-rock credentials.

John had been the guitar player for $exo Explicito, one of the most influential cult bands from Minas Gerais in the eighties, but embarked on a parallel project with two other idealistic practitioners of the arts to explore "unconventional" music by combining heavy guitars, ballads, elecBRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

Cracking MTV's Cliche Never cowering to commerce, Pato Fu stuffs a live recording with subversive seasoning, lyrical sentiment, and monumental scenography.

They can take something familiar and do something unprecedented. They are independent, uncensored, unfettered, irreverent, and beholden to no special interests.

BRUCE GILMAN

tronic sequencers, humor, and traditional forms of Brazilian music.

Liberated from any hopes of ever earning a livelihood, the trio was essentially a well organized leisuretime diversion.

With a name suggesting martial arts combat—betwixt ducks, an electronic drummer, and a remarkable spontaneity laced with experimentation, Pato Fu achieved popular appeal and, in turn, longevity.

Their debut album, Rotomusic Liquidificapum, was released by the independent label Cogumelo in 1993, to a lukewarm sales reception. "The album had great reviews at the time," says John, "and many of our fans still think it's our best. But it was released by an indie' label and wasn't sufficiently promoted like our others."

The following year, however, Pato Fu signed with BMG/Ariola and recorded Gol de Quem? Released with the band's first hits, "Sobre o Tempo" and "Qualquer Bobagem," receiving massive airplay, the album brought Pato Fu Brazil's first MTV Video Award and a Multishow Brazilian Music Award, both in the Best New Artist category.

In 1996, Xande Tamietti, an inspired drummer with meteoric energy and a strong jazz background, auditioned for the band. He, along with other hopefuls, was subjected to a labyrinth of sophisticated electronically programmed tunes with different feels and multiple tempo changes; Xande was the only drummer to float through all of them with expressive color. Delivering cross rhythms and irregular accents, he remained in his comfort zone while the others struggled just to keep up.

As a quartet, Pato Fu performed at the Hollywood Rock Festivals in Sao Paulo and Rio. "It was strange to play on the main stage," says Fernanda Takai. "Just a few years earlier, I had been just another part of the crowd, so I was really nervous about playing on the same stage as The Cure. I've always been one of their biggest fans. And, meeting the people from Supergrass and watching the backstage preparations for Smashing Pumpkins was a real eye-opener."

45

That same year, Pato Fu released Tern Mas Acabou, a CD produced by Karnak's leader, Andre Abujamra, and the video clip for "Pinga" was nominated in five categories at the MTV Video Music Brasil Awards. Additionally, director Jose Eduardo Belmonte, who produced the clip for "0 Peso das Coisas" included an original soundtrack by Pato Fu for his 5 Filmes Estrangeiros, which was screened at the XXX Festival de Brasilia de Cinema Brasileiro and won the festival's prize for Best Short Film.

Televisdo de Cachorro came out in 1998 and brought the hits "Antes Que Seja Tarde," "Cancao Pra Voce Viver Mais," and a cover version of Renato Russo's (Legido Urbana) "Eu Sei." The three tunes were continuously aired on nearly all major radio stations in Brazil.

And the album, projecting Fernanda as the definitive voice of Pato Fu, became their most popular and carved out a permanent place for them as one of the imposing names of Brazilian pop/rock.

Their position was further bolstered with the 1999 release of lsopor, an angular, ear-twisting exploration of eclectic tunes like "Made in Japan," "Depois," "Imperfeito," "Perdendo Dentes," and "Quase" that went gold in less than two months.

Pato Fu's performance at the January 2001 Rock in Rio Festival, won critical acclaim for Ruido Rosa (an album recorded in their home studio and cited as the year's best Brazilian pop/rock album), a tour that presented video projections synchronized to live music and images generated in real time by band members' instruments, as well as the video clip "Eu" receiving the MTV award for Best Video in the pop category (Video Music Brazil 2001) completed their millennium gift to fans with just the right kind of wrapper.

When MTV Brasil proposed recording Pato Fu live and gave them artistic license to pick the location, the band chose a site, not for its readily available technical support, but for its lyrical sensibility. Erected in 1942 on a scenic 46

promontory overlooking the tranquil water and curving contours of a man-made lake in the suburb of Pampulha, Oscar Niemeyer designed an entire leisure and entertainment complex with a casino as its structurally dynamic centerpiece. Hedonistic and theatrical, Pampulha was a new direction for modern architecture, an artificial utopia, created as a suburban center of pleasure and diversion. In 1957. the socalled "Crystal Palace,- with its fluid interior space and changing views of the outside landscape, was converted into an art museum and in turn to a national historical monument.

Routinely, MTV (and for that matter all) live recordings have been summaries of artists' work, attempts to tap the market place without providing any new material, or delays while new artistic directions are decided or contracts reexamined. Where some groups, in a gamble for monetary reward and media attention, have plugged their material into a format that makes it more manufactured than memorable, Pato Fu approached the same format intent on altering the medium. Not simply one more volume in a series where artists align their biggest hits with acoustic versions that are virtually identical with the originals, nor a recording from an ongoing tour, which would only give fans the same material they already have. MTV Ao Vivo Pato Fu no Museu de Arte da Pampulha is an intimate visual documentary within the structural dynamism and monumental scenography of the Pampulha Museum of Art . ' There are many ways to approach a live recording. The best, if you can, is to record everything during a tour. Pick the best tracks afterward, or if you have access to a modern studio, and if the recorded sound is the same, cut and paste tunes together using the best parts of each song's recorded version, regardless of show times and dates. One prominent Bahian artist habitually records all shows, only to subsequently release a "live" version, recycling his most recent material with the words Ao Vivo (Live) added to the disc's title. Artists and record companies view these recordings as financial crapshoots, so amid the deluge of MTV live recordings, it seems incredible that there are still artists who can offer something different within so well-established a format.

Pato Fu combines fifteen selected works from six previous albums, sim-

mering them in completely new arrangementsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;more acoustic or more electronic than the original recordings. Peppering that mixture with four savory new tunes, the repertoire for this CD refines Pato Fu's familiar power-pop-rock sound into a more intimate cabaret sound, showing an exceptional flair for varying moods and colors.

Moreover, they invited Lulu Camargo (former keyboard player with Karnak) and two musicians with whom they first worked on Tern Mas Acabou, Nico Nicolaiewsky (accordion, voice, and piano) and Hique Gomez (violin, voice, and serrote)who participate in almost all the arrangements, often in decisive ways, as is the case of the serrote (saw) that substitutes for the original Theremin on "Eu." Originally, power rock with lots of guitar on Ruido Rosa, the tune, with violin and accordion added, has been transformed into a tango.

Set side by side with the studio version on Televisdo de Cachorro, there is an arresting contrast in "Cancao Pra Voce Viver Mais." The first had a heavy drum loop, acoustic guitars, and lots of delays; here the arrangement is gossamer, radically austere, and minimalistic. It has become a hushed masterpiece, stripped of excess and adornment, so that the tune's architecture stands clear.

The lyrics, offset by a rich harmonic world that is given extra coloring by Femanda's vocals, acquire even deeper tinges of melancholia. The performance is like an intimate whisper, thrilling. Also from Televistio de Cachorro the metaphoric "Vivo Num Morro," a tune about life in places that are beautiful only from a safe distance, which was "jazzy" and full of brass, has become infectiously funky.

"Capefao 66.6 FM" is a song from Tern Mas A cabou that makes fun ofthrashmetal (a fusion of heavy-metal and punkrock), which was huge in Belo Horizonte in the late eighties. The live version is heavier with Fernanda's voice electronically manipulated and sounding as ominous as a dangerous stranger in a child's playground. Capeao literally means "Big Devil" and even though it refers to a pet dog in the song, the band still receives religious hate mail because of it. "Quase" from the lsopor CD is a humorously ironic acoustic waltz sung by John and cleverly accompanied with a wonderful sway and sense of spontaneity by Gomez and Nicolaiewslcy whose sumptuous lines will have you quaking.

Among the new tunes, "Me Explica" is unremitting rock 'n' roll of staggering intensity with lyrics inspired by Herbert BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

Vianna (Paralamas do Sucesso) and the flying disaster he suffered two years ago in which his ultra-light aircraft crashed into the ocean, killing his wife and resulting in his own broken vertebra and neurological disorders. The lyrics, purged of sentimentality and raised to expressive heights, and the insistent groove, played with authority and conviction, are triumphs of spirit and artistry that offer deeper insights into the human condition than many of Pato Fu's earlier recordings.

Unfolding flower-like, the evocative "No Mais" is created by layered keyboard and guitar lines interlocking with Xande's sensitive brush work. A shimmering array of subtle timbres gives the impression of someone suspended in time.

Fenian& phrases darkly-hued lyrics as a textural extension of this somber soundworld while the violin adds dynamic shading to the song's unexpected range of feeling.

Another pop ballad, "Por Perto," with an unrelenting rhythmic pulse is about love and music. Swelling and receding like the ebb and flow of the tide, Xande builds layers of cross-accents and shifting textures in overlapping pools of sound.

Typical of his playing style, he is buoyantly complex, an ecstatic spirit with a surging stream of ideas and a judicious use—never an overuse—of his emphatic chops. The overall effect is stunning.

Inasmuch as the best of Pato Fu's music has verve, humor, and charm— therefore a resemblance to the aforementioned Mutantes who wrote music in diverse tongues—the tongue-in-cheek "Made In Japan," sung in Japanese, but receiving a grafting onto bluegrass, epitomizes the crisp inventiveness of the Pato Fu wit. The lyrics tell of a Japanese retaliation after Hiroshima coming in the form of small, silent, and attractive technology that assumes control of the internal components in electronic products, which theoretically are, made American.

A muscular track with a steely, combative quality, "Porque te Vas" from the soundtrack of Cria Cuervos (Raising Ravens) by Spanish director Carlos Saura—a name synonymous with cinematic intelligence and passion, and an

BRAZZIL -MARCH 2003

artist whose entire oeuvre deserves mor attention—brings impassioned Spanish lyrics and an unceasing ska pulse. The penetrating sound and simple, but urgent variations performed on bass by Ricardo Koctus are an overwhelming influence on this track.

And finally, everything ends where it started, with "Rotomusic de Liquidificapum," a track dominated by screaming guitars and constantly changing grooves and tempos. Filled with antagonistic harmonies and sung in English, this track is sheer sonic aggression.

And Xande has the arduous mission of substituting live for the 8 track, 16 channel Roland MC-50 sequencer that meticulously executed the mercurial rhythmic patterns on the first album. Playing is riveting, with an effortlessness and authority that seems almost conversational.

Pato Fu spent two months working in their Belo Horizonte studio examining ways to play, in a live situation, material that was created, primarily 13/ John on a computer sequencer. "We started playing over the sequenced parts," says Lulu Camargo, "over and over, sorting out what worked and what didn't. All rehearsals were fully recorded in multitrack, so we could listen and listen again and change the parts we didn't like. That way, when we went on stage to record, we knew exactly what we wanted our parts to sound like. It was much more like bringing an audience into the studio to watch the final takes of a recording session."

The operative word, when discussing Pato Fu is versatility. But nothing prepares us for the intricacies ofthe DVD. It is a quantum leap above the norm in the MTV series; clearly the bar has been raised. Viewers can navigate seven different routes in exploring the disc, each with its own distinct subdivisions. There are interviews, a photo gallery, the Pato Fu discography, and retrospectives for fans, like the projections that accompanied the Ruido Rosa tour. ' Present are three tracks, not included on the CD, and subtitles can be selected for all tunes in Portuguese, Spanish, or English. Even sequential guitar chords can be screened. Animated projections, varied according to the rhythm of the music, and the futuristic stage setting, set in motion by the electronic programming, fill the eyes. And it is hard to resist being dazzled by the multiple angles by which the viewer can accompany the course of his favorite band member.

Above all else, Pato Fu is an ensemble with the talent and rapport that

has allowed them to grow past the egotistical limitations that typically encumber other bands. Playing together for over ten years has inarguably given John (voice, guitar, cavaquinho, and programming), Fernanda Takai (voice and guitar), Ricardo Koctus (voice, bass, and pandeiro), and Xande Tamietti (drums) a familiarity both with their material and each other. As can be seen and heard with MTV Ao Vivo Pato Fu no Museu de Arte da Pampulha, they can take something familiar and do something with it that has had no precedent.

They are independent, uncensored, unfettered, irreverent, and beholden to no special interests. Making few concessions to the marketplace, Pato Fu has maintained an alternative posture consistently throughout their career. Somehow John, who is one of the best contemporary Brazilian songwriters and the natural leader of the band, has been able to find a middle ground between his creative freedom and the issues and demands of the pop-music industry. Standing as a testament to optimism and commitment to artistic freedom, MTV Ao Vivo Pato Fu no Museu de Arte da Pampulha is more than a mere souvenir for avid collectors. It is a celebratory banquet commemorating more than a decade of rule breaking and experimentation. Bon appetit.

Web sites: Pato Fu , http://www.patofu.com.br/oldsite/ http://www.pAtofu.com.br/ frameset.html Pampulha Art Museum http://www.map.art.br/maine.htm "Guests were invited from fan clubs all over the country; their attendance was on a first come, first-served confirmation basis, as there were only 150 spaces.

2.

On this recording, Lulu Camargo uses lots of Hammond and Fender-Rhodes sounds, as well as some Mellotron and analog synth, all emulated by virtual software synths, running on a personal computer, which gave him the opportunity to stretch out, more like a traditional rock keyboard player and unlike the dub and sampler-oriented work he used with Karnak.

Bruce Gilman, music editor for Brazzll magazine, received his Masters degree in music from California Institute of the Arts.

He is the recipient of three government grants that have allowed him to research traditional music in China, India, and Brazil.

His articles on Brazilian music have been translated and published in Dutch, German, Portuguese, Serbian, and Spanish. You can reach him through his e-mail: cuicaAinterworld.net 47

Me Explica

1E01

Explain to Me

UI

Vivo num Morro 1 Live on a Hill (F.Takai/John) (John) Me explica Havia voce e o ceu Havia voce e o mar E ja nao ha Me explica Me diz onde vim parar Pois quern sempre esteve aqui Jana° esta Querem saber Como é estar aqui Lembrar e esquecer Como sobrevivi Querem saber Se já me sinto bem Eu digo: melhor Pra sempre tao so Mal posso imaginar Que nao ha mais ninguem Que vá ficar Em seu lugar Me diz qual a razal-a Pra eu nao ir tambem Me diga ja Onde etc esti

Explain to me There was you and the sky There was you and the sea And there is no longer Explain to me Tell me where I have come Since who had always been here Is no longer here They want to know What it is to be here To remember and to forget How I have survived They want to know If I feel well yet I say: better Forever so alone I can hardly imagine That there is no longer anyoneci That will stay In your place Tell me why I did not go too Tell me now Where is he

Vivo, vivo num morro Que quanto mais de longe Mais bonito d de sever No ha quem resista an meu morro , Dentro da luz azul Que sai da tv

I live, I live on a hill The farther away you see it The nicer it is to see There is no one who resists my hill In the blue light That comes from the TV

Morro que e assim Cheio de nao sei o que De tantas almas em dor Pra sentir teu cheiro teu sabor Morrendo pm sobreviver Penando pelas qualm dimensOes

The hill that is so Full of nonsense Of so many souls in pain To feel your scent and your taste Dying to survive Suffering through four dimensions

Pm la e pra ca, é dificil chegar Pm ca e pra la, como you comecar E o tempo pasa quando quer passar E morro sempre no mesmo lugar

Back and forth, it's hard to arrive Back and forth, how will I start?

And time goes on when it wants to And I die always in the same place

Morro, vivo num morro Hill, I live on a hill Que quanto mais de perto The nearer you are Mais dificil é de se entender The harder it is to understand Cancao Pra Voce Viver Mais

(John) Nunca pensei urn dia chegar E te ouvir dizer Nao é por ma] Mas you te fazer chorar Hoje you te fazer chorar Nao tenho muito tempo Tenho medo de ser um so Tenho medo de ser so urn Alguern pm se lembrar Faz um tempo eu quis Fazer tuna cancao Pm voce viver mais Deixei que tudo desaparecesse E perto do fim NA° pude mais encontrar E o amor ainda estava IA

Quase

A Song For You To Live Longer

I never thought the day would come I would hear you say: Don't misunderstand But I will make you cry Today I will make you cry I don't have much time I'm afraid to be only one I'm afraid to be one only Someone to be remembered Some time ago I wanted To make a song For you to live longer I let everything disappear And near the end I could no longer perceive And love was still there

Almost

(John) Eta é quase tudo o que sonhei E eu sou quase aquilo que sempre evitei E falhei, sirn, falhei...

Quase um amor Quase um caminho Que me deixou Quase sozinho E quase que fiquei contente E fui feliz pra sempre No dia em que eu Quase conquistei seu coracao Quase urn amor Quase urn caminho Que me deixou Quase sozinho E apesar de ter ficado Quase urn ano Quase mono de paixao Hoje ja estou, Realmente ja estou, Hoje ja estou Quase bao 48

She is almost everything I dreamed of And I am almost who I've always avoided And I failed, yes, I failed...

Almost a love Almost a path That left me Almost alone And I almost felt happy And I was happy forever On the day when I Almost won your heart Almost a love Almost a path That left me Almost alone And in spite of having stayed Almost a year Almost dead from passion Today lam already, Really, I am already, Today lam already Almost well

Artist(s) Title

MTV Ao Vivo no Museu de Arte da Pampulha (Various) Houve Uma Vez Dot's Vera-es (Various) Superfcmaistko - Quart& Eu Era Pequeno Pato Fu Ratio Pato Fu

Herbert Vi 0S anna Rita Lee 3001 Pato Fu Isopor Pato Fu 0 Essencial de Pato Fu Pato Fu Karnak (Various) Pato Fu Pato Fu Pato Fu

(Compilation) Televistio de Cachorr Universo Umbigo Tricingulo sem Bermudas Tern Mas Acabou Gol de Quern?

Rotomusie de Liquid!ficapion

2002 .•igi Stun Livre BMG

. 2002 !' 2001'

EMI Universal Plug/BMG

.. 2000

BMG Plug/8141G: Velas Natasha Plug/B1(1 1995 BMG/Ariola Cogutlado Records1: 1990 BRAZZIL -MARCH 2003

Auto da Paixão e da Alegria (Passion an

!URAL PULSE

Joy Morality Play)—Four saltimbancos (ac robats) tells about Jesus passage throughou the Northeastern sertcio (backlands). Writte

by Luis Alberto de Abreu and directed b Ednaldo Freire. Four actors - Aima Hammoud, Edgar Campos, Mirtes Nogueir. and Luti Angelelli play 20 characters.

Interior (1nterior)—Thirteen actors fro Grupo Tusp tell their intimate secrets: one i gay, another one is a single mother's daugh ter. Everything's supposed to be real. Th confessions are interspersed with songs b Rita Lee, Secos & Molhados, Ze Rodrix an Walter Franco. Written and directed by Abili Tavares.

Intimidade Indecente (Indecent Intimacy A couple reveal on stage with humor and drama their marriage crisis. The text written

by Leilah Assumpcao gave the author the 2001 prize for best play from the AssociacAo Paulista de Criticos. Directed by Regina Galdino, with Irene Ravache and Marcos Caruso.

Fagundes, Palotna Duarte, Wagner Moura, Bruce Gomlevsky, Stepan Nercessian, Castrinho, Hugo Carvana.

Separacoes (Separations)—Brazi1/2001—A married couple decides to take a break in their stormy relationship, but the 'woman very soon falls in love with another man.

Romantic comedy directed by Domingos Oliveira, with Fabio Junqueira, Ricardo Kosovski Domingos Oliveira, Maria Ribeiro, Nanda Rocha.

A Vida em Cana (Life in Sugarcane/Jail)— Brazi1/2001—Documentary directed by Jorge Wolney Atalla. The hard life of Brazilian sugar cane cutters. Interviews with the workers during the harvest show a suffering group who is still full of hope and dreams.

Books best sellers FICTION I. Mulheres Alteradas 1 (Rocco) Maitena Burundarena (2— 3)

III 0 Exercicio (The Exercise)—How a couple of actors deal with their tension the day before the premiere. Written by Lewis John Carlino, directed by Monica Lazar with Luciano Szafir and Larissa Bracher.

Vamos Sair da Chuva Quando a Bomba Cair (We'll Get Out the Rain When the Bomb Falls)—Angela, an independent woman and Hassin, the romantic bum meet and start a romance. Written and directed by Mario Bortolotto with Bartolotto and Fernanda D'Umbra.

Vida Dupla (Double Life)—A ménage a trois involving two gay men and a woman in the jungle of a big city. Written and directed

by Cadu Favero, with Felipe Martins, Bruno Padilha and Luisa Third.

Capitanias Hereditdrias (Hereditary Captaincies)—After embezzling a huge amount of money, a trio composed by an unscrupulous banker; his partner, plus the sister-inlaw try to leave the country. Written by Miguel Falabella and Maria Carmem Barbosa, with Jose Wilker, Ney Latorraca and Natalia do Valle.

Norma (Norma)—A problematic and solitary fiftyish woman meets an outgoing young men and things start to happen. Written by TOnio and Dora Castellar, with Ana Lucia Torre and Eduardo Moscovis.

UI PAM 0 Analista Macho° de Bage (Bage's Macho Analyst)--Paulistano actor Claudio Cunha is back on the stage after a three-year break interpreting his hilarious creation, a psychoanalyst. Written, directed and starred by Claudio Cunha, with newcomer Thais Lima.

Memorial do Convento (Convent's Memodap—The adventures of Father Bartolomeu de Gusmdo ("the flying priest" - 1685-1724) and his flying machine. Adapted by Jose Sanchis S inisterra from Jose Saramago's 1982 Memorial do Convento, which was published in English in 1988 as Baltasar and Blimunda.

Directed by Christiane Jatahy, with Leticia Sabatella, Caio Junqueira and Fernando Alves Pinto.

BFtAZZIL - MARCH 2003

JUST-RELEASED OR RE-RELEASED FOREIGN-LANGUAGE MOVIES: Adaptacao (Adaptation), Amor a S'egunda Vista (Two Weeks Notice), Amores Parisienses (On Connait la Chanson), Arca Russa (Russkij Kovcheg), As Horas (The Hours), Bully (Bully), Casamento Grego (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), Chicago (Chicago), Demolidor - 0 Homem Sem Medo (Daredevil),Fale corn Ela (Hable corn Ella), Femme Fatale (Femme Fatale), Gangues de Nova York (Gangs of New York), Harry Potter e a Camara Secreta (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets), Meu Pequeno Neg6cio (Ma Petite Entreprise), Mogli - 0 Menino Lobo *2• (Jungle Book 2), IVavio Fantasma (Ghost Ship), 0 American° Tranquil° (The Quiet American), 0 Chamado (The Ring), 0 Filho da Noiva (El Ho de la Novia), 0 Homem Sem Passado (The Man Without a Past), 0 Pianista (Le Pianiste), 0 Senhor Dos Aneis - As Duas Torres (The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers), 0 Ultimo Beijo (L 'Ultimo Bacio), Os Thornberrys- 0 Filme (The Wild Thornberrys Movie), Planeta do Tesouro (Treasure Planet), Prenda-Me Se For Capaz (Catch Me If You Can), Quem Sabe? (Va Savoir), Samsara (Samsara), Sexo por Compaixcio (Compassionate Sex), Simplesmente Martha (Mostly Martha), Stuart Little 2 (Stuart Little 2)

Cristina Quer Casar (Cristina Wants to Marry)—Brazi1/2003—Cristina is the last hope for Chico to save his failing matchmaking agency and get out of his lackof-money mess. Directed by Luiz Villaca, with Denise Fraga, Marco Ricca, Fabio Assuncao.

Dois Perdidos Numa Nolte Suja (Two Lost Souls in a Dirty Night)--Brazi1/2002—Two undocumented Brazucas, a shy man and a promising singer, are roommates in New York. Directed by Jose Joffily, with Debora Falabella and Roberto Bomtempo.

Deus E Brasileiro (God Is Brazilian)—Brazil/2002—God decides to take a vacation, but before leaving his post, He has to find someone to take over during the break. Comedy directed by Caca Diegues, with Antonio

2. A Casa das Sete Mulheres (Record) Leticia Wierzchowski (1 — 8) 3. As Mentiras Que os Homens Contam

(Objetiva) Luis Fernando Verissimo (3 — 114) 4. Melancia (Bertrand Brasil) Marian Keyes (0— 1) 5. Seu Creysson Vidia i Obria (Objetiva) Casseta & Planeta (4 — 17) 6. De Repente (Bertrand Brasil) Barbara Delinsky (9 — 1) 7. A Intimacio (Rocco) John Grisham (5 — 30) 8. Cidade de Deus (Companhia das Letras) Paulo Lins (10 — 23) 9. 0 Homem Duplicado (Companhia das Letras) Jose Saramago (6— 16) 10. Alma Gemea (Rocco) Deepak Chopra (7 —2)

11111FICTIII

I. Tudo Tern Seu Preco (Vida &

Consciencia) Zibia Gasparetto (3 — 14) 2. A Semente da Vit6ria (Senac)Nuno Cobra (5 — 89) 3. Quem Mexeu no Meu Queijo? (Record) Spencer Johnson (1 — 113) 4. A Ditadura Envergonhada (Companhia das Letras) Elio Gaspari (2— 15) 5. Quem Ama Educa! (Gente) Icami Tiba (4 —13) 6. Estacao Carandiru (Companhia das Letras) Drauzio Varella (7— 153) 7. A Arte da Felicidade (Martins Fontes) Dalai Lama (10 ,— 108) 8. Ninguem de Ninguem (Vida & Consciencia) Zibia Gasparetto (9 — 40) 9. Voce E Insubstituivel (Sextante) Augusto Jorge Cury (6 —32) 10. Decifrar Pessoas (Alegro) Jo-Ellan Dimitrius (0 — 0) The first number inside the parentheses tells the position the book was in the previous week. The second number indicates for how many weeks the book is in the list.

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Discarded Kids of Brazil Part I What would a UK Social Services department make of all this? I guess all the children would be immediately rounded up and shunted off into care, and there would be calls for a Royal Commission to be set up...but were are in Brazil. According to Unicef there are from seven to eight million kids in worse shape, living or working on the streets.

MARK EREIRA

From London to Rio (Day 13th February) The prospect of escaping the endless grey skies and the damp and cold of an English February for the potential of 30 C. degree sunshine is quite uplifting. Only the M25 crawl and machinegunned squaddies at London's Heathrow International Airport appear to stand in the way. With a warm glow of expectation 1 am off to Brazil for my second trip there. This vast country always conjures up images of a massive swirling Amazon, piranha, amazingly colourful and noisy Carnavals, dancing, and the best football in the world.

And now I am headed to Rio de Janeiro, a destination to die for, since every lifetime should include just one glimpse of this most beautiful of cities with its Sugar Loaf mountain and statue of Christ high up overlooking the beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema.

Since most travel throughout Brazil is easy going, calm and relaxed, I have packed little more than T-shirts and shorts for most of the visit. I have also purchased an internal transfer which is easily available, especially if one books in advance with British Airways or V arig, the Brazilian airline. Anyone with a view to some internal travel would be wise to buy one (at $360 for five flights) before they arrive in Brazil. This facilitates seeing something of the country at a tremendous value.

My journey to Brazil takes about 12 hours from Heathrow. Sao Paulo, which is one of the biggest cities in the world with nearly 20 million people, is my first port of call. Just a transfer landing. Then on to Rio—another 45 minutes by plane. The skyline is a mixture of modern high rise buildings incongruously set against the chaotic anarchy ofthefavela (shanty town) structures hugging the mountainous terrain.

The cities of Sao Paulo and Rio act as magnets for impoverished Brazilians from the Northeast and the rural hinterland, and many start their lives in these cities building their humble homes from whatever they can find at hand. Over time these neighbourhoods become more established with (if you are really lucky) some sewage facilities, electricity and—this is real luxury—paved roads and street lighting.

Upon arrival at Antonio Carlos Jobim International in Rio,! start my stay with a delicious breakfast inside the airport consisting of scrambled eggs, cheese, freshly squeezed orange juice, rolls, cakes and succulent looking watermelon, washed down with coffee—all for about £2.70 ($4.3). This is really enough to keep me going for a whole day. And, there is a real joy upon discovering that! can use my mobile telephone, so I start madly texting people while I wait for my connecting flight. The exchange rate has stabilized at just under R$6 to the pound, which means that a few pounds can go a very long way indeed. This bodes well for a UK registered charity wishing to support work with children in Brazil. It is the reason why I am here.

Let me back up a little...

Brazil—a country of contrasts Looking beyond the tourist treats of Sugar Loaf mountain and the Christ statue, one finds a grim poverty existing within an excluded majority. Brazil is a vast landmass, 35 times larger than the UK, but with a population only three times as large, at 175 million. This is a country of extreme social contrasts hosting the biggest gap in the world between the wealthy and poor—most markedly seen within its own north/south divide.

The developed southern portion ofthe country has more prosperity and has; in many places, a southern Mediterranean feel although still gaping social inequalities exist. The Northeast is notorious for

its poverty and is home to a third of the Brazilian population. Many millions migrate out of the region looking to improve their lot in the more populated southeast. Some key facts include: -55 million Brazilians live on £48 or less per month; this means that a third of the population lives on less than a US$1 per day - The average income of 10 percent of the population is 32 times higher than that of the poorest 40 percent - One in 16 children dies before the age of five - Over 40 percent of children up to two years-old suffer from malnutrition.

Brazil's children at risk Millions of children find themselves living or working on the streets of Brazil. Unicefestimates that number at seven to eight million.

Also, according to Unicef, 36 percent of Brazil's children are poor. This means almost 21 million children under the age of 17 live with families considered 'miserable', their monthly income corresponding to halfthe minimum wage, which comes to about R$100 (approximately £20 or $32).

Only a minority, estimated at 450,000--are totally on their own—orphaned, abandoned or without any contact with their parents. The majority try o maintain some contact with their family, however tenuous. Most try to supplement the incomes of their families by doing whatever they can to make just a little money. They may not have a home, .-z,00d education or good nutrition but they surely have a great creativity to earn oven a small amount of money, such as by selling things or juggling at traffic Helpfully, Unicef has classified street children into the following categories: Children On the street—this is the largest group, consisting of chi ldren who work on the street.

Children Of the street—this includes runaways, abused, and alienated children from derived and poverty-stricken lamilies who are unable to maintain 'normal' family units.

Children In the street— the smallest group consisting of orphans and abandoned children whose parents have died ofillness, are on drugs, or simply unable to look after them due to family circumstance.

There can be a callous indifference to their plight, with he wealthy elite somehow re1 uctant to take concerted action to improve the children's lives. Often there is real hostil-

ity to the children. Typical ideas wer received in a recent email sent to AB (Action for Brazil's Children Trust' from the infamous Clean the Streets cam paign: "I can see those children from m window everyday.. .sleeping, sniffin glue, begging, fighting, shitting, steal ing, and ambushing old ladies...."

They want them out of the way. 0 ten the children are not viewed as chil dren at all, but as a threat to their prop erty and even a threat to their lives Death squad activity and police coin plicity have been documented—best re membered from 1993 following a world wide furor when five members of Rio' state police force opened fire on 5 sleeping street children. Eight wer killed. It, is conservatively estimated that in Rio alone, two children.a day ar assassinated on the streets.

What, why, how...ABC. Which brings me back to why I here...

The charity's main aims are to rais awareness and funds to help disadvan taged children and adolescents in Brazil, focusing on empowering them to transform and improve their own lives. As well as ensuring their basic needs, safety and well-being, ABC offers positive education and training opportunities through several community-based projects. , Patrons include Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, whose partner, Jimena Gomez-Paratcha, founded the charity, and Brazilian soccer stars Pele and Silvinho.

ABC has some truly inspired benefactors. Apart from raising funds from individual donations and events ABC has major corporate supporters: Hunter Hall Investment Management, Carlton TV, Gibson Guitars and Barclays. Two trade unions—USDAW and UNISON are also providing support along with grant-making trusts.

ABC also has supporters in the United States and dynamic volunteers helping to raise funds for projects.

So this is what ABC is all about— helping projects which work with street children and those at risk.

But let me continue on...

Salvador (Days 14th & 16th February) From Rio I take a short two-hour flight to the Bahian capital of Salvador.

The swish and breezy airport of Salvador is much geared up to the visitor with everything available from the usual tourist information, car hire, and even a post office. Bahia—the size of France—is a major tourist destination.

On Friday I meet with Alberto Lee, a charming Brazilian man who is a tourist guide, runs a travel agency, and teaches tourism management courses at the University in the evenings. Attaining a more middle class of existence often means having at least three jobs. I stay in a wonderful apartment owned by one of ABC's Brazilian trustees (Graca Fish) which has a stunning view of the bay.

Abrigo da MAe Preta The next morning we meet about a potential new project for ABC—Abrigo da Mae Preta, just down the road from the tourist centre of the Pelourinho on Ladeira da Montanha. This is one of the poorest places I have ever been to. The 'house' is no more than a hole in the wall, though nearly 40 children are living within it. Electric cables are everywhere and chaotic. Water is dripping, or rather running, in the toilet area.

I have been asked by Friends of Maria, a small UK-based charity, as to how ABC can assist the project in a more strategic way by finding out what Maria's needs are, and seeing how the children are getting on. The local council, via the Mayor's office, gave her the property some 10 years ago. That is all they have ever done for the project, besides make a few well-meaning promises that came to nothing. Interestingly, neither they nor the police do anything to hinder Maria and her work with the children.

Although Maria is 79 years old, she certainly has more energy than many halfher age.

A deeply religious woman, she has had 15 children herself, and after leading a very hard life, still wants to help as many children as she can. She used to live in the heart of the old city—the Pelourinho—before the authorities moved people out and restored it. There are 39 children and teenagers living in her home at the mo-

55

ment. I meet about half of them, and then the rest as they return from school.

I can't understand where they all sleep as the place is so rickety and appallingly dirty. Maria explains that many of the children sleep on the floor and in the rafters, since, when it rains, the water pours through the myriad of gaps in the deficient roofing. The place is very dark, gloomy and damp. It reminds me of Fagin's den and the word Dickensian springs to mind. Most of the children had lived here from an early age. Maria has adopted a firm and disciplined approach so that they respond to her commands and display great respect for her.

Apart from schooling the children receive medical attention. Few of the children have ever really known their parents. Others had mothers who are still very actively making a living as prostitutes. The project desperately needs a new structure to rent. Maria wants a new building to accommodate the younger children, and then to refurbish the current location for use by the teenagers.

And one of Maria's main priorities is to get a new fridge, or even better a freezer, to keep the food which local market vendors can't sell and therefore donate to her. Today she is cooking up a massive cauldron of ch icken feet. Rather unappetizing, but at least food. This lunchtime meal appears to consist of everything that anyone else would have simply discarded as noxious rubbish.

Bubbling away in the cauldron, it is like a scene from medieval times.

With Alberto, I go and buy one week's worth of food supplies for all the children. I spend just under R$400 (or £75 - $120) for two massive shopping trolley loads of sustenance: fruit, vegetables, rice, beans, milk, meat and other basic foodstuffs. The Brazilian government recently did some research showing that a family of four could purchase R$28 of basic foodstuffs a month and survive.

We buy one of these bags of food. I doubt whether a family of four could really survive off this. Maria greets our offers of help and arrival with practical assistance, as if they are gifts from God; she weeping in gratitude and clasping her hands together as if to pray. It was somewhat overwhelming. How can some people have so much and then others so little?

Maria has managed to hook up with some electricity and water supplies. They term it 'borrowing'. To call the arrangement adequate would be stretching the point, but at least they have these things.

They possess a fridge and an old black and white TV, though neither of them

56

work. The environment is ghastly, but safe. Many of the children suffer from ailments and sickness, although remarkably many of them appear very well and high spirited. So the children receive food, but they were not well-nourished, and many still bear the scars of abuse and illness.

What would a UK Social Services department make of all this? I guess all the children would be immediately rounded up and shunted off into care, and there would be calls for a Royal Commission to be set up... but in Brazil there is a lack of funds for these kinds of social interventions and social welfare programmes to grapple with the immensity of the problems for its impoverished children; Thus, this is better for them.

Instead of the hardness and danger of sleeping in the streets, here they are being provided with a degree of care, love and a collective sense of working together.

I speak to Paulo, nearly 18 now, who has lived with Maria for almost five years in place of sleeping on the streets.

I leave a camera for them to take pictures of their lives and send to me. I leave pens, pencils and some sweets I have bought. The pens and pencils have been donated by Denny Bros and Trendex— two local companies back in Bury St. Edmunds. I have balloons and bags from the Bury Free Press. The children relish the colour of the pencils and eagerly (but very politely) take the sweets I have bought as a treat.

So we resolve that apart from the new building, the most pressing priority for Maria is to get a new freezer so that donated food can be kept longer than one day. We dash offto a modern middleclass shopping centre in the Barra neighbourhood—couldn't have been a greater contrast—to purchase one. We succeed in getting one for R$880 including a two-year warranty. This will be delivered the next day.

We try to get an appointment with the local authorities to find about renting a new house, the costs etc, but this is not possible until the following week. At least a meeting is arranged, and Alberto is prepared to escort Maria and try to negotiate terms. He commits to taking photographs of the prospective new building and we discuss the proposal of employing a social worker—there are many unemployed graduates from the university—who would be prepared to work with Maria and develop the project.

Some observations....

In the taxi on the way to the Recife airport, later on my journey, I will think back to this place and how you couldn't have a clearer sign of the wealth dispar-

ity of people sitting in their latest model cars, contrasted by people with children begging and selling at traffic lights. Could a more dangerous job exist? Three disabled people in wheelchairs begging, and swerving around the traffic is a desperately demeaning sight, but an everyday reality for a society with little social welfare provision.

The flip side is that many of Brazil's middle class live within fortress complexes with guards, porters and high railings. These gated communities are common in the wealthy neighbourhoods.

Great big apartment blocks with underground car parking. Many families employ maids from the favelas, which, for me, has somewhat embarrassing overtones from the days of slavery. The wealthy of Brazil inhabit a completely different social reality with their modern shopping malls, the latest in mobile phone technology and designer clothes.

Circo Picolino In the afternoon, I head off with Alberto toward the beaches in the south of the city to visit ABC project Circo Picolino. This is a children's circus that brings together around 200 children and young people. Last year ABC had given funds to provide for the training of 10 circus skills instructors. We have a bid from them to assist again, but this time for 20 of the young people to become instructors; the cost is R$40,000 (£7000 -$11,000).

The circus is based at Pituacu and fronts right on to the beach. It is an impressive project. Everyone I mention it to in Salvador knew of it and their work. I am greeted by the project coordinator, Ana Maria Bourscheid, and meet with six of the instructors whose oneyear course is due for completion in late March. I request that they return a standard application form and an account, written by the young people themselves, of what difference the circus skills have made in their lives.

I see and meet other younger children who were there receiving circus skills tuition. These children—mainly girls—are from very poor backgrounds.

Many come from orphanages. The program is doing all it can to encourage the children's attendance at the project allied to regular attendance at school. The program also has a computer room— three computers—and a small library which functions like a sort of homework club for the children by providing them with access to books and materials which most of them would not have available to them at home.

The workers are proud of their achievements and the project has developed considerably since it started in 1985.

BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

Most ofthem work part-time (some as little as five hours per week).

Some are actually paid, ifand when, there are funds to do, so. The project is experiencing very real difficulties securing donations from other financial partners. Two months into the year, they are surviving offjust the little that they've managed to bring forward from the last year.

Financial constraints mean that they can offer fewer public performances, thus further undermining income potential. The Brazilian authorities have very little to distribute to social endeavors and the Circo Picolino project further suffers, especially since it has as its core objective highlighting a cultural dimension which thus further undermines their priority status.

Estrela On Saturday morning, I take a taxi into the Pelourinho to meet with an ABC contact, Julia McNaught. She is the Brazilian-based coordinator for UK-based charity Estrela. This charity seeks to develop people to people links between northeast Brazil and northeast England (their UK base is in Gateshead), to broaden understanding mainly utilizing community arts activities.

We meet for the first time at the Filhos de Bimba Capoeira School, just off the Largo de Pelourinho. They work with disadvantaged children from across the city. The importance of capoeira to the northeast cannot be understated; it links the people to their past lives as slaves and their African heritage. It emanates from Angola, where most of Salvador's black population came from, thanks to the Portuguese colonists who brought them over to work on the vast sugar cane plantations.

Capoeira is like a ritualised fight which has evolved into a graceful semiballetic art form somewhere between fighting and dancing. It is accompanied by the rhythmic twang of the unusual berimbau. As a martial arts dance form it develops a child's discipline and selfesteem, appealing especially to boys, although girls participate as well. I meet with the director Manual Nascimento Machado and observe more than 200 young children in their clean white capoeira T-shirts performing and loving every minute of it.

Pelourinho There is always something to look at and enjoy in the Pelourinho, as throughout the district there are music bands, capoeira demonstrations, street vendors and women in gorgeous traditional African clothes. Pelourinho is an attractive and touristed area with wonderful Portu-

BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

guese colonial architecture, restored to its original glory, to where lots of pastel blues, greens and pinks predominate.

Most of the original residents—like Maria—were moved out to undertake all the work.

Restaurants serve delicious sea food meals and moquecas, so that you can while away a few hours in the numerous cafés in the public squares and dreamily gaze at the wonderful buildings and churches. The street life is endearing but the street vendors sometimes become a little too friendly and overzealous. A Bahian breakfast is a must, including a plate of all the regional fruits: mango, pineapple, passion fruit, watermelon and others unknown to the UK traveller. A sumptuous breakfast for one costs less than £3 ($5). My whole family would have struggled to eat it all!

I had hoped to visit ABC-supported Buscape project but simply ran out of time. This is a project for street children and young people with disabilities which aims to involve them in the design and making of costumes, music, song and dance for the Salvador Carnaval and other events. As it is the run up to Camaval, the group, under the direction of Damien Hazard, is very busy indeed.

ABC has supported the costs of a new roof, staircase and decoration for their facility. Their building looks most impressive from the outside and is situated in the heart of the Pelourinho.

Stop the War demonstration Before visiting another Estrela supported project there was the small matter of attending the Stop the War demonstration being held in central Salvador that afternoon. It is a demonstration Brazilian-style, occurring under clear blue skies with rhythmic drumming and some of the most colourful flags I have ever seen. Such a joy to behold! Electrifying and hypnotic, with Julia, on stilts, wearing a symbolic headdress saying Paz

(peace), leading the march right into the heart of the Pelourinho.

The speeches are passionate, antiimperialist, and very anti- George Bush.

The anti-Americanism is driven by different forces which also drive feeling back in London, involving the disproportionate economic might and influence that America brings to bear on its southern Latin American neighbours.

Since U.S. economic and cultural imperialism is despised by the left in Brazil, the U.S. flag is burnt by the demonstrators with great relish and enthusiasm.

Casa Teatro Popular, Later in the afternoon, I meet with the coordinator, Kuka Matos, of Casa Teatro Popular who only a few hours earlier that day had been an enthusiastic demonstration participant dressed as a massive puppet. The project was formerly called Projeto Ativacao, a Childhope UK-funded group, and is based in Rua Carlos Gomes.

This enterprise brings together community-based theatre groups, consisting of children and young people from the favelas, and tries to assert their cultural heritage through gaining their full civil participation. There is a strong focus on citizenship. They offer training programmes, workshops, and organize colourful and participative events and activities to raise public awareness about social and health issues in the poorest and most marginalized communities in Salvador. Street theatre activity involves use.of performance along with the utilization of giant puppets.

This year Childhope UK has nor managed to raise any funds for the project, and they have not overall managed to raise any money to pay for their project over-head, Lquipment and rent All the project's committed 'staff' work on a volunteer basis.

Lenceis & Rural Bahia

(Days-16th, 17th, 18th & 19th February) The journey there....

On Sunday, I go to the Salvador airport to meet up with ABC volunteer, Ritchie Tennant. He is a teacher of excluded children in Suffolk. We hire a basic car for the journey via Feira de Santana, and then on, through the dry Sea-do, to LencOis where two ABC projects are situated.

This 450-km drive from Salvador takes us a little more than five hours with only two of the briefest stops to buy coconuts and fruit (jaca) from a road side vendor. There is something wonderfully timeless about stopping at a bar in the middle of nowhere for a cool, refreshing beer and gazing out at the deserted road and other beer drinker's horses tied up under the trees.

You can travel overland by bus as well. A bus leaves Salvador every night at 23.30 and takes about six to seven hours and costs about R$60 ($17) with return. There is also one plane a week leaving Salvador. For the adventurous traveller, LencOis is certainly worth all the effort of getting there. Last time, when! went with my family, my children really enjoyed the ride and the little excitements along the way.

The last 40 minutes of the journey were especially hairy because, as darkness falls, we have to swerve to miss the profoundly deep potholes—missing the traffic coming the other way trying to equally miss their potholes. This is an essential driving skill in Brazil! Driving at night is not something recommended outside of the cities! Children running into the middle of road throwing sand is something else which you need to learn to miss. The children are trying to get motorists to slow down and give them a few loose coins. In return for this, they will continue to fill in the potholes with sand, and you can always buy some of the fruit they have collected.

The sertao is very dry and desertlike. Rural poverty shouts out to you.

Outside the more established settlements—which are few and far between— some people are living in mud-hut style, or even worse, black plastic bag accommodations. You can't receive any radio stations until you get nearer to Lencois where you can pick up the station run by young people at ABC project Avante LencOis. The radio is operative every day from 8am to 2pm.

LencOis is a former diamond-mining town and acts as the main tourist center of the beautifully uplifting Chapada Diamantina, an area of magnificent mountains, rivers, and water pools which are great for the adventurous trekker. It

has some fine old buildings dating back to the days of its former mining predominance. I love this place with its rivers and surrounding greenness. It receives about 80,000 visitors each year, though a maximum of 3,000 tourists can be accommodated at any one time.

Tourism is very important to the local economy and there is a distinct focus on eco-tourism and long-term sustainability. We manage one trip out to see the mountain range, and get into the heart of the Chapada. I enjoy a great lunch offend°, arra.: and frango at a restaurant near to the river. Here. there is nothing more delicious than an after lunch dip. with lizards scuttling away as you take the path down to its edge.

We agree to visit a village some 45 kms from Lencois called Assentamento Padre Cicero. This is located about 2 km down a bone-dry dust track from the main road. About 25 families live here with between 6-8 people in each unit.

Their houses had been built by the government a year ago, since, previously, residents were living in mud-hut style dwellings by the side of the road. They draw water from a well. Water, that essential ingredient for all life, is such a precious resource that much ofthe project work centers on mcie agua (mother water). It is as scarce as food often is. The environment is very harsh and every household has constructed elaborate systems to try and capture any rain water that comes their way. It hasn't rained for nearly two months and most of the local rivers are very low in water. They plant beans and corn, and I am shown large maniocs that are co-operatively grown.

On Mondays there is a typical small town market scene, with the addition of children hurriedly and determinedly ferrying around wheelbarrows full of groceries, delivering them throughout the town in order to earn one Real (20p).

This is extremely hard work in very hot conditions. I meet one boy, who suffers from epilepsy, pushing a fully loaded wheelbarrow of water containers. He is really struggling with tears running down his face.

I am told by the Avante project staff that this boy doesn't go to school, his family life is chaotic, and that they have tried to involve him in their project on several occasions. His deep and palpable sadness really moves me, as he displays autistic behaviour. I give him an ABC whistle. He grasps it and looks at it like it's the first thing that anyone has ever given him in his life.

Rural life is not all toil. Although of course there is plenty of good honest outdoor work to do, there is also plenty oftime for just sitting and talking, watch-

ing and soaking up the pleasure of just being! City dwellers would be amazed by the amount of spare time people in rural areas have, as they often like to think that rural life is a kind of hellish place full oftedious backbreaking work, thus leaving them feeling better and somewhat superior about their urban lives.

These outlying people want to continue to carve out a life from themselves in rural Bahia rather than forsake it for the disconnectedness and social misery found in the big city favelas. Work with these communities is vital (being that their needs are often overlooked) so that their children and young people have the necessary skills and confidence to remain in their villages, being able to contribute just as well as the others who have priorly fled to the cities. Although street children comprise an urban problem, the roots can be traced to the rural poverty, neglect and the enforced, even violent, displacement of large numbers of people from this and other rural land.

There are many laws about child labour in Brazil, but necessity, and lack of enforcement, mean that many children work long hours to supplement the family income. Seasonal employment— fruit picking, for example—takes children away from their schooling in order that they can work for their families.

While some reasons for the existence of street children can be blamed on family breakdown, conversely one can see that many other families, though faced by severe economic problems, remain very functional and cohesive.

Children are motivated by home ties and personal strengths to where they are willing to go out to work to sustain them.

Research has consistently shown that the quality of the family, along with its resilience to poverty and hostility, have proven to be the most effective elements in keeping such children from living on the streets.

To be continued.

Mark Pereira is Chief Executive of ABC Trust which was one of the organizations featured in the article "Helping Hand's" in Brazzil's November 2002 edition. He actively oversees the operations of the Trust and maintenance of its philanthropical projects benefitting disadvantaged youth in Brazil. More information on ABC is also available at www.abctrust.org.uk or you may e-mail Mark directly at info(&abctrust.org.uk.

Jennifer Grant, a regular contributor to Brazzil, collaborated with Mark in putting the diary into final form.

BRAZZIL - MARCH 2003

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