From now on, you will be able to read this column on early Saturdays (for your weekend reading pleasure). I hope to improve its quality, offering more content from news agencies, newspapers, magazines, websites and blogs. The Weekly Headlines articles (that covered the three main Brazilian weekly magazines) weren’t getting much response, so I will stop with those, at least for now.
I hope you like the new format. Comments will – as always – be welcome!
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.
IBSA – Closer Social Connections, Not Just Gov’t Ties (bout the India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum that is building a fund to help other developing countries)
Daily life – and not politics, crimes or weather catastrophes – dominate the headlines this week. Veja discusses euthanasia and the new Brazilian Medical Ethics Code, that gives the patient more power over his treatment and his life. Época investigates what makes an outstanding teacher while Isto é discusses the evolution of birth control and the new generation of pills.
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.
Nothing particularly exciting this week: Veja interviews former São Paulo governor and presidential candidate José Serra (who, according to a poll published today by newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, is leading, with 38% of the vote intentions, against 28% for Dilma Rousseff, president’s Lula favourite). He says the impressive growth of the country was merely consolidated by Lula on a base built by the whole society, since the struggle to overcome the military dictatorship and the adoption of the 1988 Constitution. He also criticized the president’s foreign policies, mainly his very friendly relationship with Cuba and Iran.
Época teaches how to save your marriage (among its advices: understand that it is not about romance – but partnership – and spend more time with your beloved). Isto é discusses the fitness revolution, new techniques that can put you in shape in no time.
