Brazil 1999-2000
BRAZIL 1999 – 2000
Some Reflections on a Trip
David and I left for Brazil on December 24, 1999, and returned home on January 23, 2000. For me, it was my first return to a country I had lived and traveled in some 20 years ago. For David, except for a brief penetration into Brazil’s Amazon region many years ago on a trip to Peru, this was his first time. In the four weeks we had, we were able to experience a few wonderful places intensely, but more than the sheer pleasure of the trip, it was a source of many reflections.
David at outdoor restaurant table, Ouro Preto
I’ve tried to break this into sections in case you cannot hold up for the whole, seemingly endless reading experience.
INTRODUCTION
For all their apparent differences and divergent histories, Brazil and the United States have some remarkable major similarities. There were two that struck us most profoundly. First, both have had a long and varied history of immigration and are diverse, multi-ethnic societies. Perhaps only Canada, and to a lesser extent, Australia, have so many significant ethnic pockets that richly contribute to make them what they are today. The second, and most significant, was that they were both major slaveholding societies and the impact of African races on their respective forced homelands has been profound. There are some other similarities. Both countries are enormous and only as you start traveling on the ground that you begin to get a sense of how vast and varied the countries are. The two countries also had many distinct indigenous tribes before the arrival of Europeans, and those populations have contributed to the richness of the contemporary society.
Judged strictly on its political and economic history, Brazil’s story tends to be a sad if sometimes fascinating one. From the little I know of it, there are few moments of governance, political theory, and the like to inspire one.
THE ROUTE
But on to the trip itself. The itinerary seemed modest enough, but filled our weeks amply, all the same. We arrived in Sao Paulo on Christmas morning, where good friends I had made when I lived there met us. We spent two relatively quiet days there, for two reasons. First, Sao Paulo is simply not a city of much tourist interest, and second, I had arrived with the cold I picked up a few days prior, and it only seemed to be getting worse there. Our friends made us feel very comfortable, we saw several people we knew and generally took it easy rather than slip immediately into playing travelers.
On Monday morning, two days later, we picked up a rental car, and leaving Sao Paulo around mid-day, made the steep descent (in much traffic) to the coast. Sao Paulo sits on a tableland at 2,500 feet, about 30 miles in from the Atlantic. The descent was quite spectacular, and arriving at the nearest shore town, our route was up the coast (the “Costa Verde”) to Rio de Janeiro, about 300 miles away, with a two night stop in a magnificent small colonial town, Parati, about at the mid-point. Interestingly enough, while I had visited Parati when I lived in Brazil, I had never gone up the shore highway – one of those magnificent stretches of coastline that rivals some of the best-known in this category (Big Sur, the Corniche along the Cote d’Azur, the southwestern coast of Turkey). While staying in Parati, and since we had a rental car, we managed to get to two relatively nearby but isolated beaches – each very distinctive, but truly magnificent.
We arrived in Rio on December 29. Through the very kind offices of the man I consulted for almost 20 years ago, we had an apartment in one of the best neighborhoods I(Leblon) at the very moment when 2.5 million people were converging to celebrate the turn of the millennium.
After 3 days in Rio, we proceeded to the old Imperial city near Rio, Petropolis, up in the hills. It was during the one period (of four days) when we got a lot of rain, but that was our only bad weather on the whole trip. From there we returned to the bus station at Rio to take an overnight bus to Ouro Preto, probably the finest colonial city in all of Brazil, and, like Parati, on the UNESCO list of protected world monuments.
All told we spent about a week in Ouro Preto and a set of other colonial cities in the mountains of the state of Minas Gerais. These had all been fabulously wealthy cities during the various mining booms of the 18th century. They are all well-preserved to varying degrees, with Ouro Preto the largest totally preserved city, and of them all, the best known. Other cities in the region that we visited , such as Sao Joao del Rey, Tiradentes, and Mariana, however, were all very beautiful.
The baroque churches of these towns are extraordinarily beautiful, inside and out. They display an aliveness and originality which we usually find lacking in the religious baroque. Outside, they are of light stone, framed on doors, windows, towers, and carvings, by the deep green local soapstone, which lends a pleasing contrast in a way that is entirely unique. Inside, the altars, side chapels, and ceilings are painted by regional masters in rich, but soft colors.
In addition to the colonial cities, we made a pilgrimage to another city in the region that has what is, without doubt, one of the greatest works of art anywhere, namely the sanctuary (church and chapels) of the Bom Jesus do Matosinhos, high above the town of Congonhas do Campo. This place represents the apogee of the work of the architect and sculptor, Aleijadinho (“little cripple”) He got this name because he suffered from a wasting disease, and did most of his greatest work with cutting and carving tools strapped to his useless hands. The six chapels below the church contain sculptural ensembles representing the life of Jesus, and are remarkable works. But without question, what blows you away is the ensemble of the twelve Hebrew prophets that line the balustrades of the stairs up to the terrace on which the church sits and along the balustrades of the front of the terrace. These soapstone figures are so dynamic and relate to each other in such powerful ways that as you walk up the stairs, around the terrace, you yourself become the 13th figure. This is a grouping that grasps one by a power that art is rarely able to convey in so visceral a manner. Ask most people outside of Brazil about this place, and they won’t have ever heard of it. Once seen, though, and you know you have been in one of the great places in the world.
After our colonial city jaunts, we had perhaps our most unusual experience. Prior to our departure we had toyed with signing up for a customized tour to several of the natural parks and reserves that are quite plentiful in Minas Gerais. In the end we decided not to, in part because the cost was prohibitive, but one of our guidebooks, the excellent Brazil Handbook, provided detailed information on how to get to one of the places we almost plunked our money down on, Caraca Natural Park. As the crow flies, it was relatively close to Ouro Preto, but without a car, we went all the way to Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais, and the 3rd largest city in Brazil, and then back out again. As a “natural park” rather than a “national park” Caraca is privately owned by a religious order. At the center of the park, is a seminary, but part of it has been converted to accommodate guests in simple rooms. There is a network of trails, and the right time of the year (not when we were there) one of the richest assemblages of bird life anywhere in the tropics. We took a basic room in the old wing. (It was one of our great bargains – the room, in a building reminiscent of an old monastery in some forgotten part of Italy, looked out on the seminary garden – a simple place beautifully kept, a gentle fountain bubbling in the center, and hummingbirds everywhere. At the end of the garden terrace, the world dropped away and beyond, was an absolutely breathtaking view of mountains.
In addition to many mammals and reptiles, Caraca is most famous for being the domain of the only native wolf in Brazil, the maned wolf, a most unusual looking creature. Over the years, the brothers have persuaded one wolf family to come for a nightly feeding of raw steaks, so indeed, we got to see the wolf – it is a big nightly show. We hiked numerous trails, and found the place enchantingly beautiful. Since we know we are cursed with poor luck on spotting wildlife, we went there with the idea not to expect to see much, and our expectations were fulfilled. A few tropical birds, no monkeys (we did see one tiny species of monkey in Rio’s elegant Jardim Botanico and another type on a forest walk out of one of the colonial cities), coatimundis which fed near the seminary. All this grandeur, and a room that had real character, with three all you could eat meals a day, came to about $28/day for the two of us, our best bargain of the trip! And some extras also, such as the cooking staff starting up large, traditional wood-burning ovens with griddles on top, and leaving a supply of fresh, brown eggs for you to make your own eggs on it, toast rolls, and melt cheese.
We then made our biggest geographic jump, taking a bus from Belo Horizonte to Salvador – a 24 hour trip away, that put us back on the coast in the 4th largest city, capital of Bahia, and in a different world entirely. Salvador is considered the capital of Afro-Brazil, the original settlement area of Brazil in the early 1500’s (Brazil was discovered by Europeans in 1500), the epicenter of slaveholding, and now a population that is predominantly black. In our relatively short amount of time there, we were present for two of the very biggest annual festivals, and got to experience dancing, music, and unrestrained partying on a scale that simply dwarfs anywhere else in the world. We also were able to make arrangements to be present at a Condomble religious ceremony in a house converted to a place of worship in a poor neighborhood of the city. Condomble is the religious fusion that weds various African gods with their Catholic saint counterparts. The syncretization was originally essential, since African religious practices were strictly outlawed by the slave owners and the church.
We made several side trips – one to a simple colonial town, Cachoeira, beautifully set on a river that reminded me, for setting, a little bit of the Rhine. The other, and final excursion was to a funky but extraordinarily lovely beach town, Praia do Forte, about 50 miles north of Salvador, where we took it easy for our last few days. This beach place is also the headquarters to a huge, successful, and popular project, Projeto TAMAR, to save Brazil’s five species of marine turtle.
We then took a 27-hour bus trip from Salvador to Rio, on one of Brazil’s luxury buses. The finale was worth it – about an hour and a half before our arrival in Rio, we passed through the Serra do Orgaos National Park with gigantic rock formations piercing the low cloud cover – one of the most stirring mountain settings I’ve ever seen. We arrived in Rio about 4 hours before our flight to the U.S. On the spur of the moment, we decided to spend our last Brazilian reais to engage a taxi to go to the top of Corcovado, the highest place in Rio, surmounted by a huge statue of Christ, arms outstretched, giving a perpetual benediction to the entire city far below. Our taxi driver was a delightful young native Brazilian of Japanese descent (remember, all that immigration?) who made us feel very relaxed. The drive up was great, and the views from the top mind-numbing. It had rained lightly the day before and cleared Rio’s air. Below us lay the bay, the mountains, Sugar Loaf, the lakes, the beaches, the lagoons, the islands, the ocean. The sun was getting low and David and I felt that we had closed out the trip on a truly heavenly note. The driver then descended and took us out to the International Airport, and that was the end of our trip. As if to confirm it, we arrived in a cold, gray Atlanta, icy rain pouring the entire day, as dreary as Brazil had been brilliant.
ABOUT TRAVEL IN BRAZIL
Travel, per se, was cause for a number of thoughts that we could not help having, given that just one year before we had been in India, and before that, had been going to Mexico for about 10 days each year over the Christmas – New Year’s closing at work.
As I will try to explain, Brazil is one of the most delightful and satisfying places to travel on many counts – it has natural beauty, wonderful people, a good tourist infrastructure, excellent food and drink, historical places, etc. And yet what we could not figure out is that we saw so few non-Brazilian tourists, in contrast to most places we have been. In fact, other than Italians and some French, travelers from most of the rest of Europe were not much in evidence, and Americans were positively scarce. We became more and more mystified by why a country that had so much to offer had not been “discovered” – yet, at a selfish level, we were very glad not to have the sense of being overrun with others like ourselves, and traveling always felt more natural, less like we were in a tourist Disneyland.
Another element, which I enjoyed particularly, was that while some Brazilians spoke English, it was not all that common, so that for almost all interactions, speaking Portuguese well (which I can more or less still do) is extremely useful and made the day-to-day mechanics of traveling infinitely simpler than they would have been otherwise – not to mention that on occasion I could get into a real conversation about something interesting.
This trip felt like our good kharma trip compared to last year’s tough kharma trip in India. We could not help making comparisons on such matters as the ease (in Brazil) of arranging travel from one city to another, of getting reliable information, of things going more or less as one might have expected, compared to India.
We were pleasantly surprised by the overall cleanliness – in both public and private settings. If you travel around Mexico a lot, as we have, you see a land that looks beautiful, but has often been disfigured by human development, and more immediately, by incredible trashing up and littering of the countryside. Taking the roads in Brazil, at least the parts we were in, was quite startling – there was virtually no litter to be seen along the margins of roads. It made experiencing the lush beauty around us a completely positive one.
Cleanliness extended to building interiors as well. Even simple restaurants seemed very clean, and most rewarding of all to the traveler, was the high percentage of bathrooms, in establishments at all levels, that were kept in excellent shape.
Furthermore, the air in cities in India was, by and large, polluted to a degree we are not used to in the U.S. In Brazil perhaps we were lucky, but in the big cities we were completely surprised at how clean the air seemed and the sparkling visibility we had. Considering it was summer and that the humidity is pretty high, this was even more amazing. When we lived in Washington, DC, summer days were typically hazy with the humidity (and pollution as well). Instead, in large cities like Salvador and Belo Horizonte, the visibility and sparkle were comparable to what we treasure about New Mexico’s stunning visibility.
One thing that had gotten to David in India was his sense that there was no good design incorporated into modern life there. Brazil was quite the opposite. In countless small ways, we were taken with a sense, everywhere, of good design around us. This struck one most notably with new apartment buildings – many used non-standard construction techniques, bright colors that worked, and typically, excellent landscaping. Even minor elements, like the new public telephone booths on the streets, were noteworthy.
Perhaps the design experience that delighted us the most was the use of modular pedestrian bridges over broad roadways in Salvador. The bus station in Salvador is out from the center of town, and is across the highway from the biggest American style shopping center in that city. A series of pedestrian bridges connect you from the one to the other, with intermediate descents to median areas where various municipal bus connections can be made. The pedestrian bridge was covered, and the railing was a series of horizontals spaced at approximately one foot parallels. The railings were blue, the covering was yellow, and periodically there was a splash of red. Looking from the sidewalk at the busy pedestrian traffic crossing this series of units, was like looking at a contemporary outdoors piece of installation art– the people rushing along, cross-hatched by the lines of the horizontal railings, was like mesmerizing show of pure movement, with pizzazz!
Finally, it was summer in Brazil – besides warm to hot weather, and long days (Brazil has daylight savings time also), the technicolor brilliance of lush greenery studded with intenses flowers – on trees and bushes and pretty much everywhere made for a rich treat on the eyes. Returning to New Mexico in the middle of winter, in a place that even during the summer, has an overall dry look, was difficult. While we love the beauty of New Mexico, the first few days everything looked hopelessly dreary and we could not find the beauty. Now it is all returning and we are getting comfortable with it again, but the initial shock, after a tropical place like Brazil, was dramatic.
TRAVEL INFRASTRUCTURE
One of the unanticipated but to me fascinating aspects of travel in Brazil is the intense development of bus travel. Every city and town has a “rodoviaria” or bus station, that is a hub of activity. The long distance bus system is entirely run under private enterprise, with countless companies, some small and providing service to the immediate region, others going further afield, and others covering great distances. It is easy to find what you want, times and costs are usually posted, and the whole hive of activity efficiently buzzes along. The buses are comfortable, and as you go longer distances, include seats that recline way down, have an on-board bathroom, and a look of being well-taken care of. Costs are very reasonable.
In cities the municipal bus systems always seem comprehensive, buses running frequently and connecting one end of the largest cities to the other. The tie-in of the municipal system to the long-distance system is very well done. This was particularly notable in Salvador, where there were several huge islands outside the main bus station, all well-laid out with numbered platforms and sub-positions, with the destinations of all the bus lines that stopped at that position. Buses in cities were usually full, but not excessively crowded and getting a seat was not a problem as a rule.
One thing Brazil does not have in an otherwise modern seeming infrastructure, is many limited access highways, so that while the buses themselves were well-run, it did take longer to cover equivalent distances to those in the U.S., since the bus always had to go through towns, and these, without exception, had a seemingly endless series of speed bumps.
FULL EMPLOYMENT
We know that Brazil is a country of great extremes of wealth and poverty – perhaps the greatest anywhere in the world. But generally, a traveler briefly in the country, is not aware of that. As mentioned already, most things functioned well, buildings were often modern, clean, and well-taken care of. Unlike other poor countries where we have traveled, poverty in Brazil did not pervade every other aspect in a way that made it seem the feature you could never forget.
One aspect of the economic structure that was true in India as well, is that the country has many, many people doing jobs that in the U.S. would be considered wasteful, and which we would have eliminated by virtue of technology. A few examples – all municipal buses have two employees – the driver and the conductor or fare collector. At service stations (which generally were elaborate and far more handsome than what you see in the U.S.) there were whole fleets of employees to pump your gas, clean your windshield, and the like. Parking meters are unknown – instead there is a system where you pay for your parking time, generally from 2 to 24 hours, to an attendant who is responsible for that street. In a city the size of Rio de Janeiro, that means a lot of jobs, when you consider the number of blocks, all told, there must be.
In the U.S., we are geared to maximizing productivity, and this means reducing, relentlessly, the number of people it takes to do a job. We introduce technology whenever possible to replace people. For whatever reason, in Brazil technology has not yet displaced people who would not otherwise be employable – they do inefficient tasks that we would never permit. Brazil may be expressing a societal value in so doing, but this approach offers a tremendous other benefit - there is SO much more social interaction in the course of a day – there are innumerable opportunities to deal with people, rather than machines, and that makes for a more enriched daily experience. You discover that life is about much more than efficiency – in Brazil you enjoy the many contacts.
FOOD AND DRINK
One of the elements that made being in Brazil (and there were numerous elements) so absolutely enjoyable was eating and relaxing with something to drink in a pleasant place. The thing that struck us about Brazil was that everything was served fresh – be it fruit, vegetables, eggs, and the preparations derived from good raw ingredients.
For one thing, Brazil is a land of home cooking – a simple restaurant is typically a family operation in which a home kitchen gets kicked up a notch to serve a clientele, but all the same, eating there feels like a simple, tasty affair. Essentially we never had a bad meal – it might have been basic and unsophisticated, but it was unvaryingly good.
We have countless memories of eating well. An American in Brazil immediately notes that good food comes without pretentiousness of calling attention to itself. For me, the classic example was orange juice. In Brazil, wherever you go, if you ask for orange juice, it means that the person on the other side of the counter grabs half a dozen sweet juice oranges and squeezes them, and you get about a pint or more of heavenly orange juice (costing somewhere between 40-50 cents U.S. in most places) and that’s that. Here, if a restaurant serves fresh orange juice, the menu description makes a big production about it. It was like that everywhere.
Every hotel or pousada we stayed at included café de manha – breakfast – and it was always a wonderful buffet that included fresh juice (sometimes up to four, including such tropical fruits as guava and small, coral colored papaya), fresh fruit (the pineapple was to die for), fresh rolls with butter and jam, a variety of simple cakes (usually looking like our bundt cakes), in some parts of the country, a tasty white cheese, ham, and of course, unlimited quantities of wonderful coffee. We never spent more than $30/night, often less, but without exception, breakfast was always a treat. Often it was in a beautiful setting. A reason one could eat so well is that labor is cheap, so that even a small pousada typically had about 4 cooks keeping things going, and made everything from scratch.
While we ate at some fancy restaurants, more often, we ate in a family-run operation. Where the pleasure of eating well hits you most is going to the beach – however remote a beach was, there was always one or more shacks where you could have well-prepared fish, first-class french fries, a table with an umbrella, and usually, Brazilian music.
There were some marked differences between the regions. In the interior state of Minas Gerais, the food was heavy and meat-oriented, along with some nice local cheese. In Salvador it was strongly influenced by Africa and we ate lots of fish. Everywhere, the portions were gigantic – we finally realized that though the menu did not always explicitly mention it, most main dish courses were considered to be for two and so we ordered accordingly.
We drank more beer than I will probably drink in the next year. Beer almost always comes in a 600 ml. bottle – that’s twice the size as our beer bottles, and the basic price was about 75 cents U.S.!!! It was cheaper than a soft drink, twice the size, and on a hot day, served ice cold, truly the pause that refreshed.
For David, the real new thing was drinking caipirinhas, a national drink mix that is made of cachaca (strong alcoholic distillation of sugar cane, like aguadente) with ice, sugar, and lots of crushed limes. “Caipira” refers to things rustic, kind of like we would say “hick” and the ending “inha” is a diminutive. It was one of life’s little pleasures to have dinner outside, and for him to begin it relaxing with one of these.
I think what I enjoyed most about all this is that the elements of the good life were there for even people of little means. Beaches were public, simple restaurants abounded, and friends, clearly not with much of an income, still had the means to get together and have a good time. Everything was lively, people always seemed to be having a great time, and to be immersed in it became totally infectious.
It was not just food and drink done in a way to make life enjoyable. Brazilians just seem, from our perspective, to know how to have a good time, even with very little in the way of material supports. A table, a few plastic chairs, an umbrella, and beer flowing constantly, and you have the makings for a great time.
In fact, related to this was another realization – despite Brazil’s heat and tropical humidity, air conditioning is very uncommon. What this results in is a life in which buildings, including huge structures like bus stations are open all year; the simple hotels we were in sometimes had windows with decorative brick grills, but no glass covering. It changes life entirely to be in a world where cold is never an issue. By not having air conditioning, what results is a way of life in which indoors and outdoors are totally interconnected and not a frontier, and in terms of social interactions, there is a warmth and vitality that we have traded in. You would hear music wafting out, family conversations, neighbors calling to each other. We could walk past a beautiful antique store or gallery in the old part of Salvador and poke our heads in the window to take a look, without going in – if the proprietor walked into the front room, there was always a few friendly words exchanged.
As previously alluded to, in discussing employment differences, our observation on the impact of air conditioning led us yet again to think of how much we have lost in the U.S. through our complete love affair with technology. We have all too quickly traded in many of the time-honored, eternal human pleasures that have been part of communal life over the millennia. Somehow, Brazil seems surprisingly modern, but many elements of an older, more well-grounded world have survived, and as travelers, it was a special pleasure.
CELEBRATIONS AND FESTIVALS
When I lived in Brazil 20 years ago, I was exposed to a people who instinctively know how to have fun effortlessly. It didn’t seem to have changed at all. We got drawn into some of the wildest, most animated public celebrations I’ve been in since my last time there.
First of course, was New Year’s Eve in Rio de Janeiro. We got to Copacabana, the epicenter of Rio’s celebration, about 6:30 that evening – the entire area had been closed to cars, but even by bus, it was slow going – millions were expected. Five enormous stages – speaking of design, these were knock-outs from a design standpoint – had been set-up along the 2-mile stretch of the beach, with a terrific line-up of performers.
By the time we arrived, it was already looking pretty busy, and it just got more and more filled with people. We had contacted friends of a colleague of David’s the day before to say hello and wound up being invited to their New Year’s Eve party – their apartment was the entire 2nd floor of a grand old apartment building right on Avenida Atlantica – the broad, classy, beach avenue of Copacapbana, so whenever we wanted to leave the madness, we had a ring side view from their balcony. All the same, we made sure to go down on the beach around 11:40 and stayed for one of the most spectacular firework displays I’ve ever seen. They were set off at several points along Copacabana and Ipanema beaches – unbeknownst to us, we were very close to the biggest fusillades, and unlike in the U.S., people were not kept very far away – it turned into a pretty scary affair for us. After deserts at the party, we left about 1:30 and found ourselves in bus gridlock – though not all that far away, we didn’t get to our apartment until 3:30.
New Year’s Day a storm moved in, and it was super dreary. That combined with the sense, which I am sure I was not the only one who had it, of, so what was the big fuss all about, brought us down from the hyped-up millennium cloud.
Really, what was more fun were the goings-on in Salvador. During our short stay, there were two of the biggest outdoor festivals and party of the year (not including Carnaval, of course). The day after we arrived, there was the Lavagem do Bomfim – the washing of the steps of the Church of the Lord of the Good Ending – the church most associated with Afro-Brazilian religious fusions. A parade begins in the old commercial center, and wends its way 9 km to the church, where the old Afro-Brazilian women, known as Bahianas, all in elaborate, traditional white outfits and headdresses, wash the steps. Meanwhile, the parade is really an excuse for musical block associations, trade unions, political groupings, etc., to get their message across. Being Brazil, this is all done with live music, dancing, beer flowing, and everyone having a good time. All ages, economic classes, ethnic groups, were there, and it is pretty hard not to get drawn into it all.
In fact, what’s special about these public events is that they are not spectator activities – despite there being 10s or 100s of thousands showing up, it is everyone’s party, and everyone has a good time. We were adopted by three middle-class women, and when their block association passed by, they joined, had me join (David was more circumspect) and we all danced and paraded. Noise, madness, abandonment – the Brazilian way to have a good time.
It was even wilder two days later when an enormous pre-Carnaval outdoor party took place in Barra, an upscale oceanside neighborhood. This was a kind of trial run for Carnaval – 25 of the biggest block association groups participated – they all have trio electricos, which are enormous (and I mean ENORMOUS) sound trucks with the musicians, the lights, the dancers, on them, moving down the street – “move” here means about 1 mile every three hours, since the wide avenue was filled as far as the eye could see – behind us and before us. This event must have had 200,000 people partying – mostly young. Office buildings across the street had their high windows open, and people were standing on unwalled ledges, dancing their heads off as the trios passed by. The block associations play their Carnaval songs, written anew and specially for each year’s Carnaval. These are disseminated on the radio and CDs ahead of time, so the crowd was familiar with them, and as a trio truck slowly passed, everyone sang the songs, raised their two arms and danced in place as if this was their final night on Earth. From having experienced Carnaval in both Rio and Salvador, I knew what these outdoor events could be like. I think David was impressed because nothing, anywhere else is like this mass involvement. We only stayed about two hours – but the event went from 2 in the afternoon until 2 in the morning.
HISTORICAL PLACES
Most people unfamiliar with Brazil do not realize how much richness there is in terms of history, well-preserved towns and neighborhoods. Several places we went to are on the UNESCO list of world monuments – others are national monuments.
The colonial mining cities of Minas Gerais were high points – set in the lush green mountains, we experienced my kind of summer – hot days, but deliciously cool nights, even in summer, with sleeping under blankets (Ouro Preto, for example, is at 3,300 feet). These are some of the loveliest, best preserved towns we have seen anywhere.
Rio and before it, Salvador, were both former capitals of the country, and have wonderful historic buildings as well as whole neighborhoods worth wandering in. In fact, the Pelourinho neighborhood in central Salvador is considered the finest colonial assemblage of any large city in all of South America.
A few things we remember with particular fondness. One was an incredible building in downtown Rio that was a government ministry originally (before the government left Rio for Brasilia) that was designed by Oscar Niemeyer and Lucio Costa, later the architects of Brasilia – the landscape architect was Roberto Burle Marx, who became world famous. Candido Portinari, considered by some Brazil’s finest 20th century painter, did murals in azulejo – the traditional Portuguese blue and white tiles. Corbusier advised them on this building, which embodied all the best of the modern architecture movement – it was built in the early 40’s, and shows clean lines, logical design, and top notch materials. We were able to wander in to some of the best parts of the building. Also quite fine was taking a cable car up to the Santa Teresa neighborhood, a hilly enclave near the center of Rio, but in a world by itself – a larger version of Telegraph Hill in San Francisco, with the same kind of funkiness and terrific views out.
Salvador is filled with fabulously rich churches and numerous lovely squares (as is Rio). But perhaps are high point was the Museum of Sacred Art, in a former nunnery that overlooks the bay. It is down a quiet side street. You enter a courtyard with some giant mango trees, suddenly you are in a quiet, peaceful world, and the blue of the sea sparkles over the low wall. There was almost no one at the museum, which had brought magnificent sacred art from all over the northeast of Brazil. The church of the nunnery contained innumerable beautiful pieces – carved wood, murals of handsome tile, and much more; as we walked on, through the cloister, and to other wings, we had one surprise after another, always with a view out to the sea.
PEOPLE
As should be apparent by now, the people were what made a trip to Brazil truly a special experience. It is hard to figure out where it comes from, but we found, with rare exception, people uniformly friendly and accommodating – accommodating is not really a strong enough word. It seemed that anything you asked of a stranger was answered in the affirmative. “No” seems to be a word that is close to unknown in Brazil.
Not only were responses in the affirmative but they were enthusiastic, with a broad beaming smile. Smiles were every where in Brazil. It became infectious, even for two old fogeys from the East Coast – you just get in this mood and swing of easy-goingness, friendliness, warmth, and animation, and after a while it penetrates into your skin, like the soothing heat and the humidity that softens everything. If you needed to use a bathroom you could walk into a restaurant and just ask, and never get turned away. Much of the time, the universal gesture of OK was included – thumb pointed out and up, the rest of the fingers closed in a fist, and then motioning up and down – it was a gesture that told you, things are fine, not to worry, hey – life is short, why not be friendly.
Gather at any of the little places where people gather - a café or simple “lanchonette” (“lanche” means “snack”) – seemingly one every 25 feet, serving beer – and there were always parties of lively people laughing, shouting, enjoying themselves in an almost Rabelasian manner.
At the beach shacks, the young waiters would put the consumed beer bottles in the sand by each table so they could compute the final bill (remember – these bottles are double the size of ours) – even a party of just two would accumulate five or six bottles, whereas we misers would get along with one, and on a rare occasion, two!
Rio was an experience all its own – restaurants were packed from 8 o’clock on, and often it had not even peaked by 12 midnight – it just kept getting busier and busier and busier. Great food, beer flowing all the time, loud as the devil. Of course, Rio is one of those places that is a continual show. For one thing, it is a body show – some of the greatest, most beautiful bodies in the world are in Rio – not just on the beach, but on the streets and in the buses as well – it seemed half the town was either in a string bikini (female) or the male equivalent on the bottom – and that was it, even on an elegant street in an upscale neighborhood. And if you are into gorgeous figures of either sex, it would be hard to surpass Rio. Some of the handsomest examples of the human race were to be seen there and not just occasionally, but every few seconds!
Also, people moved with a flowing, easy motion – so different from the stiffness of northern peoples – this became painfully obvious when you would see a group of tourists from Europe (particularly northern Europe) in a public place.
People had soft, gentle features, and along with that, gestures and ways of speaking that, even if you could not understand a word, made you feel good. The words flowed, were musical, were accompanied by body movements of every kind – we saw that over and over again. The contrast with the ghastly paleness of so many northern visitors with their splotches of red and dour faces, made the Brazilian “look” such a delightful experience. The racial and ethnic mish-mash that goes into making Brazilians was one I liked so much. I could not help frequently thinking of that most extreme example of Western racism – Nazi ideology – with its insane certitudes about Aryan superiority and the evils of race-mixing. Brazil seemed like such a superb answer to that madness!
This all sounds quite exaggerated, but if you have not been to Brazil, you are missing one of life’s great experiences in how to live well with not a lot. If you have been to Brazil, then you know exactly what I am talking about. I’d simply forgotten what it was all like (probably because it is so incredibly unbelievable once you are away from it) until you are back in it – but it was the same now as I remembered it from before.
RACE
The United States and Brazil are the two largest countries to have had the experience of African slavery as a core element of their histories – the trade in slaves and the use of slaves to work large plantations and mines have many common elements. African slaves were a substantial percentage of the population, but all the same, a minority. Brazil was the last country to officially end slavery (1888) but it actually was not that long after the U.S. (mid-1860’s).
Observing, however superficially, race relations in these two countries, could not help but lead to much thinking about our respective sad histories.
My thoughts were prompted, in part, by the growing conviction I feel, that slavery and race relations are the single most defining element of the social and political and cultural history of the U.S. This combined with my increasing horror at just how terrible a crime this was – so vast, so pervasive, and for so much of our life as a nation (pre- and post-independence) that compared with the Holocaust, let us say, we are only, in the last 30 or 40 years beginning to grapple with it.
These thoughts intensified after reading (during our travels in India) the autobiographical writings of Frederick Douglass – I can think of few books which have so effectively conveyed the terrible ways that human beings have treated each other than this one. And Douglass’ was, miraculously for his circumstances, an articulate voice who could express what millions of others had no opportunity to do, but in extrapolating his one experience to a whole world of people, I could no longer think of the history of our country as a stirring story of great movements, writings, and examples for the rest of the world.
We talked often, in Brazil, about our desire to understand more of the history of slavery and post-slavery there, and wondered what books have been written which probingly look into the similarities and differences between the two countries.
I already knew that the darker the skin, the less likely was one to encounter a person in the professions, high political office, economically well off, and the like. But I also knew that Brazil had never practiced legal segregation, race baiting, or the countless acts of daily humiliations that any black person in the U.S. could count on, and in more subtle ways, still can.
It should also be said that whereas in the U.S. the “single drop of blood” defines a person as black, and that is contrasted with white – there is no middle ground, in Brazil, it is completely different. There, all the gradations of color from very light, to black, have different names, and someone on the lighter end of the spectrum does not consider herself black at all, nor does anyone else. So, our easy divisions into black and white, with no further differentiation, is unlike what exists in Brazil. This completely affects concepts of racial solidarity.
Several things struck us. First, in Brazil, everyone speaks the same Portuguese – there is no “black Portuguese” comparable to what is called “black English.” There are regional dialects, but the distinctions between regions are just that – the ethnic or racial differences within the same region do not impact how the language is spoken. So, speaking to a person of color was exactly the same as someone of Italian or Japanese extraction.
Second, social mixing of people of all different skin tones went far, far beyond what one would ever see in the U.S. There were numerous instances where we saw 20-somethings having a good time – at a table on the beach having beer – the kinds of situations where real friends gather, in which every shade of skin color could be found, and there was no sense that it mattered. In the U.S. people infrequently mix in that way in voluntary social situations. It was startlingly different in Brazil.
Another striking element was that I never, ever picked up any sense of smoldering, racial resentment – people of color appeared self-confident, and thus you sensed that since they did not have to be on the look-out all the time for slights or perceived slights, they could deal with you fully sure of their dignity. It was such a liberating feeling. I think if most of us are honest, we have to admit that in the U.S. one interacts with people who are racially different, especially in black-white relations, with the ever-present sense of possible misunderstanding, even with the best of intentions. In Brazil, that terrible legacy of our deep, deep racism, just did not seem to be part of the social structure, despite its own terrible legacy of slavery.
I got in an extended couple with one couple I met – a film critic for one of Brazil’s most respected newspapers and her husband, the owner of a public relations company. I asked them – surely there must have been a time, not so very long ago, when if a well-dressed black person went to an elegant restaurant in Rio (where they lived) he would be turned away or made to feel so unwelcome that he would not want to be there. They insisted (and by this time I felt sure they were not protective of their country, from other criticisms they abundantly gave voice to) that if a person had the money, they would never be discriminated against. The difference between our two countries, they claimed, was that race dominated in the U.S., whereas economic condition was the key determinant in Brazil.
Not that everything is perfect there. Blacks in the U.S. are probably better off economically and have more access to good positions, opportunity to engage professionally in society than in Brazil. But that difference relates to the extreme economic inequality that is the saddest truth of Brazilian life.
In fact, one big change since I lived in Brazil in that those who consider themselves blacks (which is defined differently, as indicated above, than it would be in the U.S.) are developing a black consciousness – in Salvador there were countless T-shirts with slogans that made you aware of this. There are musical “blocos” who are now getting the message out.
During the period of slavery, Brazilian slaves did not reproduce at a rate sufficient to increase, or even maintain, the population. However badly slaves in the U.S. were treated, they experienced population growth. So I am not arguing that it is a one-sided story. But how racial differences impacted public life was a fascinating aspect of the trip, and in this dimension, relative to the U.S., a positive experience.
IN CONCLUSION
I hope I have been able to convey just how wonderful but also interesting this trip was. Why more Americans have not realized that for pure pleasure, beauty and enjoyment of the truly good things in life, Brazil has so much to offer, is beyond me, but it was an absolutely superb experience for us, and for me, a return to a world and an experience that had a great impact on me and a chance to measure that first immersion in a different culture against a set of views and personal growth that came with simply getting older.