No artist portrayed the beauty of the Brazilian rain forest flowers better than Margaret Mee. This British Botanical painter, one of the finest of the last century, helped publicizing abroad the importance of the country’s biodiversity.
She moved to Brazil in the mid-50s (when she was already 47), where she remained till the end of her life, in 1988. In her 15 expeditions to the Amazon region, plus several to the cerrado (the country’s savanna) and the Atlantic rain forest, Mee produced a detailed images of the country’s flora, namely orchids, bromeliads and cacti.
Lack of comfort, tropical diseases or safety never deterred her – she would walk into rivers, climb trees full of ants and stand under huge tropical storms if that was needed to get the best angle. And to guarantee her safety – she was menaced by gold prospectors once -, she always carried a gun. Frequently, she would navigate the Amazon tributaries in a canoe and enter the jungle by herself. Many of her watercolors reproduce plants that were not yet described by Science and were later named after her.
Downtown Veranópolis, in the Southern Rio Grande do Sul state
People don’t live in countries or states – they live in cities. Ultimately, it’s the local government, infrastructure and cultural services that define one’s quality of life. And quality of life in Brazilian cities is changing quickly, according to a study just released by IBGE (the main national statistics bureau). For the first time in ten years, IBGE raised information from 5,565 local governments to draw the profile the country’s municipalities.
Overall, they seem to be offering more sports and cultural opportunities, but they still have to improve their policies concerning the environment, minorities and human rights.
The report’s main conclusions:
Bookstores can be found in only 28% of Brazilian cities (it was 35.5% in 1999). Apparently, book sales remain similar, because readers prefer to acquire them through the internet or in supermarkets. Also, the number of video rental stores is getting smaller, after many years of growth. Today, they can be found in almost 70% of Brazilian cities, but they are losing their costumers to cable TV and the internet.
What makes caipirinha, Brazilian’s national drink, unique? A mix of lime, sugar, cachaça and ice – you will answer. Not so fast, my friend.
The same way you cannot make a bacteria by putting together a bunch of proteins and carbs, you won’t be able to produce caipirinha by simply mixing its ingredients.
But first, a little History. Nobody knows, for sure, who conceived the first caipirinha. Some believe it was invented by slaves, who might have mixed garapa (sugar cane juice), lime and cachaça (which, you know, is distilled from sugar cane). Others believe it was originally meant for medicinal purposes – honey, garlic and lime were mixed to cachaça to cure colds, a prescription popular to these days. But my favorite version is told by Ernesto Britto, from Caipirinha Club. “In old times, people used to put cloths damped in alcohol on the forehead to reduce the fever and suck limes to improve the immunity. According to the legend, a feverish guy was sucking a lime and the alcohol dripped from his forehead to his mouth. Because it was bitter, he ate a spoon of sugar and, this way, came up with the idea for the drink”, he tells.
Also, nobody knows for sure why it was named that way – caipira is the native of rural parts of the state of São Paulo. Caipirinha might be his young daughter (the suffix inha indicates somebody young or small). Go figure.
All I know is it evolved to its present composition, which was made official by a 2003 federal decree (so the country can keep the intellectual property and the trade mark).
So, back to the secrets. Here are 10 tips to make your caipirinha experience unforgettable. They were collected from interviews with barmen from all over the country:
Don’t miss this opportunity: great Brazilian artists, journalists, scientists, businessmen and philosophers speak their minds in the new TED conference series produced in São Paulo.
Some highlights (for the versions with English subtitles, click on their names and make sure the CC button, that turns on the captions, is on):
Regina Casé is the comedian who founded Asdrúbal Trouxe o Trombone troupe in the seventies, then gave life to memorable characters of the comedy show TV Pirata, in the eighties. In 1989, she met researcher Hermano Vianna and this led to a turning point in her career. Together, they created a group of studies and professional partnerships that caused her to shift the focus of her work from art to anthropology. This partnership gave way to Brazil Legal, Muvuca, and Central da Periferia, among other projects that bring to the little screen the realities of the country.
Fabio Barbosa, president of the Santander Group Brazil and my former boss, one of the leaders of the debate about corporate responsibility and sustainability in the country. A brilliant man with a very advanced vision. Since 2000, he developed a strategy at Banco Real (that now belongs to Santander) that includes offering lines of credit for companies that wish to comply with environmental standards and cutting companies that harm the environment off its client list (I was part of the team in charge of these cuts). The plan became the object of a study at Harvard University. Keep reading
Baré indians in the Cuieiras river, in the Amazon/photo by Daniel Zanini
by Sylvia Estrella, guest writer*
You may be under the impression – like most people – that Portuguese is the only language spoken in Brazil. In fact, 0.5% of the population (around 750,000 people) are native speakers of 200 other languages, including the indigenous ones.
According to Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), a non-profit that has the best statistics on the country’s native population, the 225 remaining Brazilian ethnic groups speak 180 different languages. A few Native groups abandoned their original languages and embraced other languages, such as Portuguese and French Creole (spoken in neighboring French Guyana).
Some of the Native languages remain relatively strong and are spoken by over 20,000 people. On the other hand, some are vanishing and are used by less than a couple dozen individuals.
Ana Vilacy, a Native languages specialist that works for the Emílio Goeldi Museum, in Belém, Pará, explains that the diversity of native languages is enormous. There are at least 40 different linguistic families in the country.
Some of them have lots of phonemes, while others have a very limited number of vowels and consonants. Some are tonal – certain syllables have a higher tone than others, like Chinese and Bantu. And some only use different tones to differentiate sentences (differenciating questions from affirmative phrases, for instance), just like most European languages.
The Tupi-Guarani family includes languages spoken all over the Brazilian territory and has most speakers. They can be found in the states of Rondônia, Amapá and Pará, in the Amazon region, and also in the Southern states of Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul.
The three other main linguistic families are the Jê – spoken from Maranhão, in the Northeast, to Rio Grande do Sul, in the border with Argentina –, Aruak – in the West and East portions of the Amazon, in the states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul – and Karib, found mostly North of the Amazon river.
Around 1,000 languages disappeared since the arrival of the Portuguese colonizers, in 1500 (two per year). Their extinction began in the colonial period but continued during the Empire (19th century) and the Republican period. Recently, the phenomenon was particularly intense due to the agriculture and urban expansions towards the states of Rondônia and Mato Grosso between the decades of 1950 and 1970. These days, one of the main menaces to native languages is the break of traditions – the younger generations move to cities and small towns and loses contact with their original cultures.
The survival of native languages is fundamental because they contain part of the country’s cultural heritage that cannot be translated. Their destruction implies the disappearance of myths, grammatical structures, vocabulary, and of a point of view that cannot be replaced.
*Sylvia Estrella is a Brazilian journalist and translator specialized in the Environment and Aviation.
The most graphic city in the world becomes middle aged today. Fifty years later, Brasília’s curves, ramps, wide avenues and huge open spaces keep their freshness.
Conceived by architect Oscar Niemeyer and urbanist Lúcio Costa to host the Brazilian federal government, Brasília was custom made to fulfill president Juscelino Kubitschek’s utopia. He dreamed of a modernist city right in the middle of the country, many hundreds of kilometers away from the coast and any major city. It was meant to integrate and develop areas that were scarcely occupied and also to remove the high bureaucracy from Rio, the former capital, a city full of distractions.
To Brasília converge not only all the power, but also all of those prone to mysticism. Many believe the city has a special energy, whatever that means. This legend began with Dom Bosco, the Italian saint that founded the Salesian order in the 19th century. In a vision, he saw a promised land of immense riches that would be the epicenter of a new civilization. It would be built in the next four generations and would be roughly located where Brasília was established. Many Brazilienses believe the capital materializes that vision.
Several esoteric groups congregate in the capital. The most famous is Vale do Amanhecer (Dawn Valley), that believes that we descend from extraterrestrials that colonized the planet 32,000 years ago. These revelations were made by the group’s main founder, known as Tia Neiva, who believed she was the reincarnation of Cleopatra and Nefertiti. Vale do Amanhecer mixes spiritualism, Christian concepts, plus African, Mayan and Roma traditions.
In the following video, a cool summary of the pioneering years of this very peculiar city:
Brazilians have a somewhat disturbing tenderness for certain types of criminals. Let me drop some names that will prove my point: Meneghetti, Adhemar de Barros, Lampião and your generic malandro.
Take, for instance, the figure of Gino Meneghetti. Born in Pisa, Italy, in 1870, he became a huge celebrity in São Paulo, between 1914 and the sixties. He was known as the “good thief”, “the greatest criminal of Latin America” and the “roof cat”, due to his ability of jumping from one house to another to deceive the police. The public passion for Meneghetti florished thanks to the massive media coverage of his feats and the fact that he never hurt anybody, only stole from the rich and performed spectacular escapes.
The second name in our list: coffee producer and politician Adhemar de Barros, the very popular governor that ruled over São Paulo state during part of the forties, the fifties and the sixties. One of his mottos, of striking candor, is still remembered by those who distrust politicians: “Roubo, mas faço” (I steal, but I also build). Indeed, he was very hard working and left a legacy of power dams, roads, schools and hospitals. But his government was also marked by several corruption episodes. Till today you can find elder adhemaristas that still long for those days.
"Letter from Satan to Roberto Carlos", a cordel litterature book by Enéias Tavares Santos
Brazil is a monarchy ruled by a few kings. If you ask anyone on the streets, he/she will probably name three: soccer genius Pelé, Formula 1 mega-champion Ayrton Senna (promoted to god-status thanks to his early death, at 34), and pop singer and composer Roberto Carlos.
Portrayed today by The New York Times , Roberto has been a major success for 50 years. Very ecclectic, he debuted as a heartthrob with early-Beatles-like songs, then became a major romantic reference and, later in life, developed a taste for religious themes. His songbook goes from the sexually graphic songs (“Concave and Convex”) to the mystical experiences (“Jesus Cristo”, where he shouts, “JC, I am here!”).
To understand what this is all about, check this three highlights of his career: “Que Vá Tudo para o Inferno” (1965), “De Tanto Amor” (1971) and “O Portão” (1974).
