São Paulo « Deep Brazil

Brazilian (Blog) Carnival

The blogosphere is full of really cool stuff about Brazil – if you know where to look for.

This is the first edition of the Brazilian Blog Carnival – the first of many, I hope. It will be a monthly event, always on the second Friday of each month. Please, keep sending your suggestions.

Check these:

Masters of the World, by Michael Silvers, an ethnomusicologist and Fulbright Fellow that is traveling the country to study the relationship between the culture of forró, a popular dance music, and the climate of northeastern Brazil. This post is about “an event where “masters of culture” from small towns are invited by the Ceará state government and other organizations to share their work”.

Mercado Central – Where all Belô meets – This wonderful photoblog brings us pictures of the main food market of Belo Horizonte.

Cashew is not nuts, a post that reminds us of the juicy fruit hanging under those nuts, is part of the Good Blood blog Friday Fruit series. Check also for Ten Top Brazilian Films of the Decade, a great guide for all movie buffs out there.

Sunday is Street Art Day (or What is it like to be a graffiti artist in Bahia?) – an American living in Salvador offers a colorful answer, while describing one episode of his daily life.

Carnival in Paraty (1, 2 and 3) is a series of posts that show how this historical city celebrates the festivities (including the famous mud bath), through the eyes of a Canadian visitor.

Straight from the Heart – Victim of theft in a bus, Carmen sums up the paradoxes of São Paulo.

Tips for teaching English in Brazil (1 and 2) – great insights from an American teacher living in a small city in the state of São Paulo.

The Best (Brazilian) Dessert – Brigadeiro recipe for those with a sweet tooth (and who hasn’t?)

Learn about Brazil – A very sweet collage of videos of Brazilian students answering questions about the country (language, weather, food, subjects studied at school)

Olga Benário Prestes – Forgotten Women blog portraits the life of the biggest muse and martyr of Brazilian communism.

Life in Brazil costs an arm and a leg

A worker that earns the average Brazilian salary would need to work 40 minutes in São Paulo and 51 minutes in Rio to buy a Big Mac. In contrast, an average New Yorker would have to work mere 14 minutes to buy McDonald’s bestselling sandwich. The so-called Big Mac Index is only one of the instruments used by the Swiss bank UBS to illustrate the fluctuations of the purchasing power in several parts of the world.
São Paulo and Rio are, indeed, pricey cities. The disproportion is the same for other products. To buy 1 kilo of rice, for instance, you have to work 12 minutes in São Paulo, 15 in Rio and 8 in New York.
Still according to UBS – that systematically compares the cost of life in 73 cities – São Paulo got the 45th position and Rio the 48th in the last survey. This means they are more expensive than Prague, Bangkok, Beijing or Moscow. Naturally, there are fluctuations depending on the product or service you look at. Even if renting an apartment is expensive in Brazilian metropolis it cannot be compared to the exorbitant NY rentals. This explains why New York appears in the UBS study as the 6th most expensive metropolis.

Thomas Berner, an American economist that works for UBS on this study, says prices have been growing consistently in Rio and São Paulo in the last 10 years. The price of the products and service that the bank uses as a reference became aproximately135% more expensive in reais, the national currency, between 2000 and 2009. Berner was interviewed by G1, a website related to Globo, the main Brazilian news network. G1 chose the Honda Civic to illustrate this. The car costs around 15,000 dollars in the United States and 65,000 reais (35,000 dollars) in Brazil.

Once the average income didn’t grow proportionally, you have to work many more hours to keep buying the same. Consequence: the average paulistano may consume less than half what a New Yorker can purchase.

What is your experience? Do you find you find your purchasing power lower in Brazil?

São Paulo, 456 candles

Favela do Moinho, a downtown shanty town

Happy anniversary, Sampa.

A few pictures to sum up the highs and lows of my hometown. Plus, images produced in 1929 by Rodolfo Lustig and Adalberto Kemeni, when São Paulo, then the coffee capital of the world, was transitioning into a huge industrial and financial hub. It was also the eve of the so-called Revolução de 30, when its historical alliance with the state of Minas Gerais collapsed, and São Paulo lost a political battle to define who the next president would be. The main outcome of the conflict was the rise of Getúlio Vargas, that commanded the country for most of the following two decades.

Postscript – I did a lot of reflection after receiving Ray’s comment and seeing, at least partially, his point, decided to remove the homeless boy’s pictures from my original post. I appreciate my readers help. This blog is still trying to find its voice and its right tone