Increasingly, Brazilians are blasé about two things most everyone used to be excited about – the FIFA World Cup and a wave of protests. We’ll see which way the pendulum swings again come June. Above, last year’s protests become the theme of a small ‘bloco’ at this year’s Carnaval. By Mauricio Savarese Attitudes went from(…)
Carnaval spreads across the land
Carnaval, long concentrated in traditional party centers like Rio, Salvador, and Recife, is taking roots in new cities all over the country. James Young reports from landlocked BH, Brazil’s unglamorous third-largest city, which is learning to put on its own celebrations. By James Young Brazil’s carnaval capitals are well established. There’s frevo music on the steep cobbled(…)
Brazil’s Gay Kiss
By Dom Phillips Last month, Brazilian television network Globo showed something shocking it had never shown on a prime time soap opera before: a kiss between two men. The kiss, between Félix (Mateus Solano) and Niko (Thiago Fragoso), had been anticipated and was shown in the final episode of the novela Amor à Vida (Love(…)
Interview: Alex Ellis, British ambassador to Brazil
Alex Ellis took over as the British Ambassador here last July, having previously served as Ambassador to Portugal. Claire Rigby spoke with him last week following the opening of a major David Bowie exhibition at São Paulo’s MIS museum, which arrived in Brazil following showings in London and Toronto. By Claire Rigby Are you really(…)
Brazil does not have apartheid, exactly
“Apartheid” is too strong a word to describe Brazil’s serious class and race problems, says Mauricio Savarese. But it comes closer to describing the truth than the often-repeated claim that Brazil is a country without racism. Here, it’s not the state which is prejudiced. Above, youth at a planned ‘rolezinho’ in Rio de Janeiro. By(…)
Terror in Brazil’s prisons
A gruesome video recently released is only one example of a penitentiary system often dominated by medieval conditions and shocking violence, Dom Phillips reports, and quasi-feudal political arrangements in the state of Maranhão have done little to improve the system there. By Dom Phillips It cannot have been an easy decision for this newspaper to(…)
Reclaim the streets
In São Paulo, taking to the streets involves far more than protests, riots and demonstrations. It’s also about taking back space from the concrete jungle for parties, festivals, public parks and shopping-mall meetups – ‘rolezinhos.’ The poster in the photo above by Claire Rigby reads “More love, please.” By Claire Rigby 2013 may be remembered(…)
Brazil 2013, in stories
In deference to what now seems a rule mandating publications to ‘wrap up’ the past year, this is a list of some of the articles, in English, that told the story of Brazil in 2013. For this we turned to Sergio Charlab, a Brazilian journalist who maintains a very active Twitter with updates on pieces written(…)
Corruption – it’s the private sector
Corruption isn’t mostly about politicians. In its present form, it means that powerful companies dominate Brazil. Above, what corruption looks like. In Brazil, one simple image of corruption is often dominant: some politician, usually an overweight middle-aged man, grabs money from the public coffers, stuffs it into a big sack, and takes off to spend(…)
Inflation and the Petrobras problem
The world expected Brazil’s state oil industry to oversee a boom driven by offshore reserves. But Petrobras is stuck between a rock and a hard place, as the government has needed to use the company to combat the eternal threat of inflation, grinding relations with the investors the industry needs. By Dom Phillips Graça Foster,(…)
