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Brasília – five photos

15/05/12 - 18:15
BY Vincent Bevins

Five photos of one of the world’s most fascinating capital cities.

The fact that Brasília is a very special type of city, one that resembles a settlement on Mars more than the seat of the Brazilian government, is not exactly news. But that didn’t stop it from taking me by surprise again last weekend.

It’s not only that Oscar Niemeyer’s monumental creations evoke a mid-twentieth century vision of a utopian future. It’s also that they are plopped in the middle of the Planalto, or Brazil’s hot central plateau, where there was nothing before they decided to build a city there in the 1950s. So the structures jut into a huge and very blue sky.

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Alex Atala and the feeding of the 5,000

11/05/12 - 19:11
BY frombrazil

One brave idea proved much too mouth-watering for its own good at São Paulo’s Virada Cultural

By Claire Rigby

There were sharp elbows, sharp tongues and a few sharpened knives out over the weekend, when an event intended to bring the cream of São Paulo gastronomy to the streets attracted more would-be diners than it could feed. To a loud chorus of tutting and media disapproval, the planned 500 free portions of galinhada – a signature chicken dish at Dalva e Dito, the less formal sister to chef Alex Atala’s world-famous main restaurant, D.O.M. – were eked out to 600 on Saturday night, but were unable to feed the crowd of 5,000 who turned up hoping to try it.

Part of the Virada Cultural, São Paulo’s 24-hour annual cultural marathon, held over the 5-6 May weekend, the outdoor cookup was a new event, Chefs na Rua (Chefs on the street), which brought kitchens downtown from twenty of the city’s most exciting restaurants to serve up takeaway versions of their dishes at prices ranging from R$5 to R$15.

The late-night event, which was preceded by a rainy and wet ‘dry’ run in April, had started out with the best possible ingredients.

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On beauty in Brazil’s old-school celebrity culture

04/05/12 - 18:52
BY frombrazil

By Dom Phillips, in Rio de Janeiro

“Happiness and beauty are incompatible. And if a beautiful woman is happy, we would be certain of a visual mistake – she’s not beautiful,” the great Brazilian writer Nelson Rodrigues once said.

Not in Brazil’s celebrity world. Here, to be successful, an actress and/or model and/or television presenter (and it’s usually all three) needs to be both beautiful and happy.

Oh, and a good person. Smiling relentlessly while exuding sweetness, light, and the all-important simpatía - sympathy or niceness – while playing out a public role as a nation’s sweetheart. Nasty celebrities usually don’t get on in Brazil – at least, not if they’re public about being catty.

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Another embarrassment for US workers in Latin America

02/05/12 - 14:52
BY Vincent Bevins

Well, this surely won’t help improve the reputation of US workers in Latin America.

Even as the sex scandal surrounding Secret Service agents in Colombia continues to unfold, we have a new incident, involving a Brazilian woman, that the US may have to defend itself against.

Former prostitute Romilda Aparecida Ferreira (pictured) has said she will sue the United States Embassy this week. She claims 3 Marines and another government worker ran her over and left her bleeding in a nightclub parking lot.

The Americans had been in the process of contracting her and her friends for sex when a scuffle broke out, she says.

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Brazinglish

26/04/12 - 19:14
BY frombrazil

Brazilian Portuguese has taken on so many words from English that some don’t just have different pronunciations. They have developed wonderful new meanings.

By Claire Rigby

Soon after taking my first steps towards speaking Portuguese years ago, I got talking to the owner of a small-town language school in MInas Gerais. Happy to be speaking English to a live specimen in the wild, she was explaining her marketing strategy for the school when we hit a brick wall. ‘Outchydoor’, she told me. She was wondering whether to advertise on one. What? OUTCHYDOOR, she said again, looking irritated that her English was letting her down. Spelling it out didn’t help (‘outdoor’), but an explanation of the concept finally cracked it.

‘Billboard’. It was a billboard, and my first contact with the rich vein of English loanwords in Portuguese. Outdoor is still my favourite, and one of the many loanwords that grab a word by the scruff of the neck and haul it in, almost severing it from its original meaning.

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Criolo – from the ghetto to the clouds

20/04/12 - 20:05
BY frombrazil

Brazil’s reigning musical deity has given his blessing to its newest national poet. Criolo has broken out of the the ghetto, but he has taken the ghetto with him.

by Dom Phillips, in Rio de Janeiro

The thousands packed into Brazilian rapper Criolo’s show last Saturday at Rio’s cavernous Fundição Progresso were already jubilant when God walked in. God’s appearances are rare these days, and this one came unannounced.

God was silver-haired, wearing what appeared to be an elegant, if casual, blue-grey Nehru suit and what was most definitely a huge smile. He danced enthusiastically with Criolo as the two performed the rapper’s biggest hit, the bitter ‘Não existe amor em SP’ (‘Love doesn’t exist in São Paulo). God takes many guises, as any good Christian knows. In this case, his name was Caetano Veloso. And the response that greeted his arrival on stage was suitably ecstatic.

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Brazil investment advice – agriculture

17/04/12 - 22:44
BY Vincent Bevins

If you have a long-term interest in Brazil, where is a good place to put your money? That is, you are looking past currency risks and short-term volatility and want a good, safe investment?

Over lunch recently, a high-ranking executive gave me a strikingly obvious bit of off-the-record advice: “There might be a day when the Chinese stop building so much with steel, but there will not come a day when the Chinese stop eating.”

China is the most important consumer of Brazilian goods, and that is not likely to change anytime soon. At the moment, Brazil’s #1 export is iron ore, #2 is oil, and #3 is soya. But economists argue China needs to shift from a construction-heavy model to one based more around consumption. It’s also clear that Brazil’s potential to develop its arable land is enormous, and that the country could become one of the world’s breadbaskets.

Earlier this month, I reported on some more bits of good news for the agricultural sector in this piece in the Financial Times.

Click here to keep reading, “Brazil: soya bonanza” at the Financial Times.

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How many more lives will the US-led “war on drugs” take?

13/04/12 - 18:18
BY Vincent Bevins

Denis Russo Burgierman wrote a very interesting piece in today’s Folha de S.Paulo. I’m reproducing it below in full. These words are not mine – I’m just the translator. VB

Heads of state from all the countries in the Americas will spend the weekend in the beautiful city of Cartagena das Índias, on the Colombian coast. The meeting promises the same old scenes: speeches about the blockade on Cuba, Chávez acting up, and Obama’s glittering smile, with the Caribbean as backdrop.

Meanwhile, Latin America is drowning in a sea of blood. It’s the most violent piece of land on the planet, much worse than Africa. Out of the 14 countries with the world’s highest murder rate, seven are in Latin America, starting with El Salvador, where the chance of being shot to death is higher than in wartime Iraq.

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Lollapalooza Brazil

11/04/12 - 20:42
BY frombrazil

The latest in a wave of Brazilian mega-festivals brings the eager masses some long-time favourites amidst moments of old-school Brazilian chaos.

By Claire Rigby

The racetrack at São Paulo’s Jockey Club was a hive of activity under a layer of floodlit mist last week, while inside the bar, a handful of punters placed their bets with a young woman circulating with a stack of race cards. But it wasn’t race night, and the only bets going were on races beamed in from Rio.

What had the place lit up and rigging crews working flat out was the setting up for Lollapalooza – the first Brazilian edition of the Chicago festival founded by Perry Farrell of the band Jane’s Addiction, following a version in Santiago de Chile in 2011.

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Is the real problem infrastructure?

10/04/12 - 21:31
BY Vincent Bevins

Continuing on yesterday’s theme, here is another major consideration: I report in this Los Angeles Times cover story that Brazil’s infrastructure is woefully inadequate. Investments here could not only improve prospects for the World Cup in 2014 and the Rio 2016 Olympics, but also make Brazilian products more competitive and give those of us that live here relief from severe headaches.

SAO PAULO, Brazil — If you plan to fly somewhere in Brazil on a busy weekend, you’d better be prepared to wait. At some airports, up to a third of the flights can be canceled or delayed.

If you choose to drive, you’ll sit in traffic. The 50-mile trip from Sao Paulo to nearby beaches for the Carnaval holiday this year took as long as five hours.

If you’re counting on the planned bullet train between Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, good luck with that. It won’t be ready when Brazil hosts soccer’s 2014 World Cup. In fact, the transportation minister said recently that it won’t be operating until 2022, at the earliest.

And if you’re a farmer, whose commodities are helping fuel Brazil’s export boom, you’d better count on up to a third of your harvest falling out of trucks navigating bumpy old roads on the way to market. Then you might wait for days at overwhelmed ports to unload the rest.

Continue reading “Brazil wins the gold medal in gridlock” at the Los Angeles Times.

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From Brazil

by Vincent Bevins

Brasília – five photos

Alex Atala and the feeding of the 5,000

On beauty in Brazil’s old-school celebrity culture

Another embarrassment for US workers in Latin America

Brazinglish

Criolo – from the ghetto to the clouds

Brazil investment advice – agriculture

How many more lives will the US-led “war on drugs” take?

Lollapalooza Brazil

Is the real problem infrastructure?

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by Vincent Bevins

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