Beautiful Horizons

The Ring in Manaus

Every time I mention to people that I have visited Brazil several times, they always ask me if I liked the Amazon region. I have yet to go to the Amazon, although I'm dying to visit Manaus and Belem. Flying to Manaus is very expensive and airfare is usually cheaper to Miami from São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro than it is to Manaus.

Nevertheless, I will go someday. One of the sites I want to see above all is the Teatro Amazonas, the Italian Renaissance style opera house within walking distance of the Amazon. it was built by rubber barons whose wealth was so staggering that during the rubber boom of the 19th century they sent their shirts to London to be laundered.

Now the first performance of the Ring Cycle in Brazil is being performed at the Teatro Amazonas. Larry Rohter has this article definitely worth your attention in today's New York Times.

Seek and Ye Shall Find

David Holiday asked the following here:

Okay, so getting back to the first question, if Randy Paul is out there anywhere, could you please recommend a couple of books for me to brush up on Brazil basics? I also thought Brazil might be the top exporter of cocoa in the world. After all, in recent years all those yummy Brazilian chocolates turned up in Salvadoran supermarkets.

The answer:  Ivory Coast. (Note: they also use child slaves to harvest cocoa beans.)

First, regarding the exporting of cocoa from Brazil, I posted about it here in the context of an article about Brazil nuts:

The 19th Century also saw the rise of the cacao plantations in and around Ilheus in the state of Bahia. Many of the plantation owners did not reinvest the proceeds back into their business and merely took the profits out. As a result of this and also due to a fungus called Vassoura da Bruxa (Witch's Broom), Ilheus, once the cacao bean center of the world had to import cacao from the Ivory Coast in order to keep the processing plants running.

As for books on Brazil, I recommend The Brazilians by Joseph Page, The Brazil Reader,  A Concise History of Brazil, and Brazil: Five Centuries of Change by Thomas Skidmore would be good places to start.

A Broken Clock is Right Twice a Day

Larry Rohter has an article worth reading in today's New York Times regarding the legacy of human rights abuses committed by Brazil's military government and the need for the country to come to grips with this. I urge you to read the article, even if you find Rohter to be annoying. I think he happens to be pretty accurate this time.

Once a Nazi . . .

. . . Always a Nazi in the case of Josef Mengele:

Josef Mengele fled as the Third Reich collapsed, finally moving to South America where he evaded Nazi-hunters until his death in Brazil in 1979.
 
Now a collection of his previously unseen letters and diaries has emerged after they were discovered in a police store-room in São Paulo.
 
The writings depict a man who remained unrepentant of his crimes against humanity, who continued to support Adolf Hitler’s plans to create a master race and who applauded South Africa’s apartheid system. The diary material and letters, found last month on the tenth floor of the federal police building in São Paulo, were seized in 1985 from the home of a German couple who hid Mengele in Brooklin, São Paulo and from a house outside the city where the Nazi once lived.
 
They are testament to his loyalty to mass murder, racism and twisted science.

I cannot help but wonder what went through his mind when he went to the city of São Paulo, if ever. Arguably, it's the most ethnically diverse city in Brazil and probably in Latin America. It also has the largest Jewish community in Brazil.

Congratulations, Brazil!

Congratulations, Brazil on the 115th anniversary of the Declaration of the Republic!

The Past Rears Its Ugly Head

Larry Rohter has an important article in today's New York Times about torture under Brazil's 21 year military dictatorship and how little the country has done to address the questions of responsibility and justice in this area.

What spurred this was the discovery and publication of a pair of photographs of Vladimir Herzog, a television journalist in São Paulo, who died in military custody. The article does get one issue slightly wrong. It states that Herzog was "summoned for questioning at intelligence headquarters" in São Paulo, but in fact had been advised that he was being sought and voluntarily went to the authorities.

The reaction to Herzog's death was largely one of outrage and rejection of the official version: that Herzog had committed suicide. Students at the University of São Paulo went on strike and the Bar Association issued a statement charging the government with torture. Forty-two bishops in São Paulo signed a letter condemning the government violence. Cardinal Evaristo Arns, in an act that can only be described as supremely brave, put together and conducted a joint Catholic-Jewish (Herzog was a Yugoslavian Jewish immigrant) memorial service.

So what is the military's response to this nearly thirty years later?

Asked to comment on the photographs, published on Oct. 16, the army at first responded defiantly. It issued a declaration warning against "petty revenge-taking" and defending the violations of human rights that occurred under the military dictatorship as the necessary response to Communist provocations.

"The measures taken by legally constituted forces were a legitimate response to the violence of those who rejected dialogue and opted for radicalism," the statement said. The army acted "in response to a public clamor" for a hard line against political subversives, the statement said.

This response was received rather poorly.

That argument has proved extremely unpopular, especially to the many members of the current government who were jailed, tortured or exiled by the military government. Mr. da Silva, a former labor leader and political prisoner, was reported to be livid, and the army commander, Gen. Francisco de Albuquerque, was called to the presidential palace for a dressing-down early this week.

The army was required to issue a second statement, saying it "laments" Mr. Herzog's death and acknowledging "the lack of a profound internal discussion" about human rights among troops. "I understand that the manner in which this matter was addressed was not appropriate," General de Albuquerque said in the note, adding that the views the army initially expressed were "out of line with the current historical moment."

This is disturbing. Brazil had the longest running continuous military dictatorship of the Southern Cone countries in the 1960's, 70's and 80's, and it may have made the least progress in facing up to the past. Brazil did not have the disappearances and extrajudicial executions to the same extent that Chile and Argentina did, but torture was widespread and institutionalized.

The Argentine military is acknowledging its role in the 1970's. Chile's defense minister, until recently was the daughter of a military officer who had been tortured by Pinochet's goons. So what are the consequences of Brazil's failure to deal with this past? Widespread torture in the Rio de Janeiro State Police and prison system. A culture of impunity among law enforcement officials. There's also this:

In interviews this week, the military intelligence agent who supplied the photographs, José Alves Firmino, has also raised eyebrows by saying that military intelligence continued clandestinely to spy on left-wing parties and politicians, unions and social movements long after military rule ended. He said that during the mid-1990's he even monitored Mr. da Silva's activities, offering a photograph of himself with the future president as proof.

If respect for human rights and civilian authority isn't being taught at the Brazil's equivalent to West Point, The Agulhas Negras Military Academy in Resende, Rio de Janeiro, then it really needs to be. For, as Firmino "described his career in military intelligence. 'I spied, I stole, I received orders to kill,' he said in one. 'In short, I was a criminal.'"

So are those who gave you your orders.

Minas Gerais

One of the ongoing sources of annoyance for me about the history and culture of Brazil, especially as portrayed in US media is the emphasis on Rio and São Paulo as well as the perception that the bulk of the country's culture is focused on the ocean. There is so much more than this.

Lula on the Cover of the New York Times

The New York Times magazine has a cover article about Lula that I think is generally fair. Much of the focus is on the difficulties that have plagued Brazil for generations: the incredibly poor distribution of income and the massive gaps between rich and poor as well as the differences between the desperately poor northeast and the more affluent southeast (for a compelling visual representation of this issue, see the map in this post). This paragraph iin the article really speaks to my thoughts:

Brazil, so goes a common gibe, is the country of the future -- and always will be. With 175 million people, it is the world's fifth most populous nation, and its territory is slightly larger than the continental United States. In the 16th century, Portugal claimed this immensity as a colony, and the crown soon divided 2,500 miles of coastline into a dozen captaincies, some of them larger than the mother country itself. Sugarcane was introduced, and Brazil today still lives with the legacy of a plantation culture that consumed four million African slaves and left land ownership hideously askew. An elite 1.7 percent of the landowners continue to own nearly half the arable land; the top 10 percent of the nation earns half the income.

What is compelling about this paragraph is this: Brazil is the only Ibero-American country that achieved its independence from its former colonial master not with a war of liberation, but with the son of the Portuguese emperor declaring the nation's independence. Accordingly, for the first 70 or so years of Brazil's independence, it was a monarchy with the colonial social structure of Portugal imposed largely intact upon the nation, particularly in the northeast. The northeast is a region in which those with susbtantial means and political influence known as coroneis (literally, colonels) often operate with impunity. It also happens to be the region which gave Brazil the corrupt and disgraced former President Fernando Collor de Mello (Collor's father while in Brazil's senate, by the way, shot another senator on the floor of the senate. Nothing happened to him).

Despite this history, however, two of Brazil's greatest problems are two of Latin America's greatest problems: corruption and impunity. After years of generally being regarding as clean, Lula's party, the PT has recently been touched by allegations of corruption. Whether the allegations continue or go higher remains to be seen.

What I found most interesting about the article are these two issues:

His story itself: a man rising from horrific poverty with little education to become leader of his nation through democratic means. I just could not see that happening in the US these days. Whether one agrees with Lula or not, it is important to note that he has always attempted to achieve his goals, even if he lapses into some truly ridiculous mistakes.

The difficulty of being on the outside looking in and on the inside looking out. Clearly it was a lot easier for Lula and the PT to criticize his predecessors when they were in power; it is an entirely different set of circumstances when one is in power. Therein lies the explanation for Lula's moderation after taking office. Pension reform remains the great example of this. One of Lula's immediate predecessor Fernando Henrique Cardoso's major goals was to bring in pension reform to Brazil's huge public sector. The PT fought Cardoso's efforts vigorously. Pension reform was one of Lula's first accomplishments.

What the article touched on briefly, but should have emphasized more is the potential that Lula can have towards shifting the leadership role in the Americas from the US to Brazil and for Brazil to play a leadership role in the developing world. The recent decision on cotton subsidies in the WTO is a case in point. It is also worth noting that Brazil took this issue on not only on its own behalf, but on behalf of several small countries in Africa that might not otherwise have been able to bring this action.

Leonel Brizola Dead at the Age of 82

Leonel Brizola, former governor of Rio de Janeiro state, frequent presidential candidate and founder of the Democratic Labor Party in Brazil died last night at the age of 82.

Brizola was also the major source for Larry Rohter's article alleging that Lula had an alcohol problem.

The Canudos Rebellion as a Learning Metaphor

We have a Toastmasters Club at work and it has proven to be a valuable aid for those of us who participate. Several of my coworkers who I knew to be shy and withdrawn have demonstrated impressive cmmunications skills given the right environment and motivation. I would urge you if you are interested in improving your public speaking skills to get involved.

Yesterday I gave a speech about the Canudos Rebellion a major incident in Brazil's history and the subject of one of the most famous books in Brazil's history, Os Sertões or Rebellion in the Backlands in the English translation. It was also the subject of Mario Vargas Llosa's fine novel, The War of the End of the World and Robert Levine's excellent revisiting of Canudos, Vale of Tears.

I bring this up because I would never have known about Canudos if I had not had such a strong interest in Latin American history. I remember when I was taking some basic history courses in high school and college. "World" history consisted of Europe, Ancient greece and Ancient Rome. When I got to college this was called Western Civilization and also included the US, but absolutely nothing about Latin America that did not dovetail with Europe and the US and nothing about European colonial history in Africa or Asia. I think that it's a disgrace that you have to be exceptionally motivated in our educational system to find out more about the world around you. That's a failure of both the system and us as individuals.

Excuse me for sounding self-aggrandizing for a moment, but my interest in Latin American history and politics did not come until after I had finished college. I have pursued my reading and study independent of any degree program or of any career path. I did for the sheer pleasure of learning. If you think that is odd, consider this article in today's New York Times:

Kimani Nganga Maruge is living proof that an old man, even one who leans heavily on a cane and cannot see or hear too well, can learn new tricks.

By his own reckoning, Mr. Maruge is 84. He has no papers to prove his age, but his late father, an illiterate laborer, used to carve a notch in a stick every time a new child was born into the family. Mr. Maruge's notch, one of many his father would carve over the course of his life, indicates that Mr. Maruge came into the world sometime around 1920.

Mr. Maruge is a widower who himself fathered 15 children, 5 of whom survived. He is a great-grandfather who never spent a day in school. His own father had insisted that he look after the family's herd of livestock.

But all that changed when the Kenyan government declared a year ago that primary school education would be free through grade 8. Millions of new pupils showed up at neighborhood campuses, swelling enrollment from 5.9 million students to 7.3 million virtually overnight. Mr. Maruge, with his gray beard and weathered face, was among those in line.

On the first day of school, he put on some gray knee socks and blue trousers that he had cut off above the knee to resemble the short pants worn by schoolchildren all over the country. With his school uniform in place, he limped his way from his mud hut to the office of the headmistress, Jane Obinchu.

I salute you Mr. Maruge. You are living proof that it is never too late to learn.