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.
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
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.
Brazil is well positioned to achieve the Millennium Goals – the eight development objectives that the United Nations member states are supposed to attain till 2015. The federal government just released the fourth annual report detailing the country’s progress and the results are definitely encouraging.
Among its main conclusions (to make this easier on your brain, green indicates good news; orange, neutral. No item was fully bad, according to the report):
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Around 25.6% of the Brazilian population lived on less than $1 a day in 1990. The target for 2015 is 12.8%, but this number was down to 4.8% in 2008.
In 1996, 4.2% of the children were underweight. The target for 2015 is 2.1%, but the most recent statistics (2006) indicate that hunger is now affecting 1.8% of this population.
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
Around 95% of the Brazilian kids between 7 and 14 years old are enrolled in schools.
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
For every 100 boys studying, there are 93.8 girls (in primary education) and 133.2 (in secondary education).
Goal 4: Reduce child mortality
In 1990, there were 53.7 deaths of children under five per thousand babies born alive. In 2008, this number was down to 22.8. The 2015 target is 17.9.
Singer Seu Jorge, made with circles cut from magazines
"Toy soldiers", made of...idem
Pasta Meduse
'Action Photo (After Hans Namuth)', made with chocolate syrup
You may have heard of Vik Muniz, the highly successful New York-based Brazilian artist that experiments with all sorts of materials, from diamonds to chocolate, creating images both fun and inspiring. Now you can watch a sample of Waste Land, the documentary about Muniz that won the Public Award in the last edition of the Sundance independent film festival, in January. It shows his work with garbage pickers in Jardim Gramacho, the largest landfill of Rio de Janeiro. It focuses on the transformative power of art and gives a pretty close look on the life of those who live from the trash and surrounded by trash.
And here, in the really cool TED conference series, Vik discusses what is creativity and shows some of his works.
IBGE, the Brazilian bureau of statistics, released today the 2008 edition of its Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios (Pnad), a reduced version of the census. In my latest post I quoted an economist who, based on this report’s data, concluded that Blacks have consistently improved their financial situation in the last 15 years. The statistics published today highlight the state of the country’s health.
These are the main conclusions:
77.3% of the interviewees consider themselves healthy or very healthy (this percentage is higher in the upper classes). Only 3.8% said their health was bad or very bad.
On the other hand, 11.2 million people over 14 informed they have physical limitations. For them, it is difficult to walk 100 meters (328 feet) or to go to the bathroom by themselves. This is a slightly growing trend that affects 7.5% of all men and 9.1% of women. Among the elder population, 27% face that type of restriction. Keep reading
A new study concludes that 53.5% of Brazilian Blacks and 47.3% of those with a mixed Black and White heritage belong now to the middle class (which includes the so-called A, B and C classes).
According to economist Marcelo Neri, interviewed this week by daily O Estado de S. Paulo, these numbers show a very positive evolution in the last 15 years. In 1993, less than a quarter of the Blacks (23.8%) and just a little over one fifth of those with mixed heritages (21.7%) were in the middle and upper classes. Also, he verified that the mobility of Whites in this period was, in comparison, less accentuated.
Neri, who works for the Centro de Políticas Sociais of Fundação Getúlio Vargas (a respected university and think tank), based his info in data collected in the 2008 edition of Pnad, a reduced version of the census, with a limited sample of interviews, produced by IBGE, the federal bureau of statistics.
Naturally, we can argue that the Pnad – which asks the interviewees to define their own color – may be misguided by those who prefer to see themselves as whiter than they effectively are. Census interviewers have been reporting for decades that many people refuse to be classified as Blacks, preferring to state that they are tanned or morenos (a word with a slightly vague meaning, that normally applies for a brunette or maybe someone of Mediterranean origin). But, if that is the case, there is a good chance the presence of Blacks in the middle classes might be even higher.
The slow ascension of the Afro-descendants is still very far from solving the Brazilian disparities (racism was the topic of a recent post), but it deserves to be celebrated, anyway.
They were not canonized. They are controversial. There is even doubt if some of them really existed. Nevertheless, Brazilian popular saints generate deep devotion, pilgrimages and flourishing commerce.
Take, for example, Escrava Anastácia. This beautiful slave of blue eyes, that supposedly lived in the 18th century, was obliged by her master to wear a mask covering her mouth, because she refused to, you know, accept his sweet love. Apparently, this device was commonly used in the gold mines, so the slaves wouldn’t ingest (and steal) the metal. There is almost no evidence that Anastácia really existed, but she is still considered a big miracle worker.
Another powerful popular saint is Padre (Father) Cícero, a priest, landowner and conservative political leader of Juazeiro, in the Northeastern state of Ceará. Also known as Padim Ciço, he was excommunicated in the late 19th century by the local bishop after a series of supposed miracles that his superior considered a fraud: the host offered by Cícero would systematically turn into blood when ingested by one of the priest’s followers. Later his excommunication was invalidated by the Vatican but he was never allowed to return to his parish. His popularity never diminished, though. He amassed a huge fortune, including 34 rural properties, and became the state’s vice-governor.
Neither Giselle, nor destitute homeless. A new portrait of Brazilian women emerges from a series of studies released in the last few days. She studies and works hard, both at home and professionally, earns less than her male counterparts and has an increasing importance in the country’s economy.
Study more – 56.8% of 15 to 17-year-old girls were in school in 2008 (at the grades expected for their age), while only 44.4% of boys were studying. A similar proportion can be observed among young adults, according to Ipea : 15.7% of women and 11.8% men between 18 e 24 were in college two years ago.
Do most of the housework – Really, no surprise here. According to Ipea, women dedicate, in average, 23.9 weekly hours to cooking and cleaning their own houses, while men spend 9.7 hours on those chores.
A high percentage hasbad jobs – In 2008, 42.1% of working women are paid either low or no salaries, or have informal jobs (no vacations, no job stability, no paid retirement). In contrast, only 26.2% of men work under those conditions. In fact, these numbers hide some good news. Things are getting a little better. In 1998, 48.3% of women and 31.2% of men had jobs this insecure. Keep reading
