Reading List
- The Accidental President of Brazil, Fernando Henrique
Cardoso and Brain Winter
- Why is This Country Dancing?, John Krich
- A Death in Brazil, Peter Robb
I.
To name, they say, is to conquer. Few names in recent times have had
quite the grip of the McKinsey group's
BRIC,
the quartet of countries leading the developing world: Brazil, Russia,
India, and China. You can argue about the massive differences in
status and potential between these countries; you could argue about
missing worthies (as Argentinians have, suggesting alternate
formulations such as BRAC). But to contend the point is to concede
it. And now, on account of being invited to deliver a keynote talk at
the Brazilian Programming Languages Conferences (SBLP), I have the
chance to see this sibling country up close.
II.
Ipanema is dorsal. Look down that grand sweep of beach, and over at
the end stand two enormous, sharp peaks of rock, like a pair of
breaching orcas. In photographs, they always look misty and just a
little surreal. And that's just how they appear to the human eye,
filtered through the distance, the humidity, the spray and, yes, the
smog. The two giant fins could be the symbol of a city if it didn't
already have so many to offer.
If Ipanema is dorsal, I suppose Copacabana is ventral. No longer the
glamorous queen, it ought to have slipped into the role of the dowdy
dowager. And, I suppose, some of its oceanfront hotels do. But there
is life here—even if it's all cheap and kitchy and blandly uniform,
somehow it feels a little more alive, too. It too, is punctuated by
its own morro, the totemic Pão de Açúcar. And
all these granite giants are simply a small part of what Guanabara Bay
has to offer.
What is stunning is not that these beaches are the way they are, but
that for so long, they weren't at all. The human obsession with the
beach is relatively recent, newer even than the fancy for
mountains. But whereas mountains were just dark and treacherous,
beaches were...unnecessary? Ocean-going people knew the water
already, while landlubbers had already chosen to avoid it. Who, then,
had use for stretches of sand, or even the time and leisure to wallow
in them? And thus these two had to wait until the 20th century to be
“discovered”, though even then, it's a little difficult to
understand why they weren't colonized simultaneously. Not that it
helped, architecturally: neither appears to have a single redeeming
building. But more on that in a bit.
I stay in Copacabana, wary of the clichés.
I had actually hoped to be in Santa Teresa
through a b&b service called
Cama e Café.
But repeated emails to them proved to be a highly frustrating
experience, and I didn't want to trust my trip to them. Besides,
there's something to be said for the anonymity of hotels over forced
intimacy. In the end, Copacabana proves to be a perfectly fine base.
Both its seediness and its commotion feel real, and I miss
the hustle of the center of a large city.
Long before I cast my eyes on any rocks or beaches, however, I have to
get into town from the international airport. Rio's Zona Norte is
notoriously poor and slum-ridden, and in this the ride resembles
nothing so much as a drive through Mumbai, down to the few
half-finished houses, small bits of cement and plaster (as much as
could be afforded) holding together brick, wood, and whatever other
materials were available...and these are the grander accommodations.
It's one of the great, great ironies of both Mumbai and Rio that some
of the best views are afforded to those who might lose them at any
moment by virtue of having their dwellings washed away in a rainstorm.
And just as we pass this dwelling—on one of the major highways
coming into town—a man runs right across the street, right across
three lanes of traffic each way (imagine I-95), and at that instant I
know I am closer to India than to the US. I continue to be so
stricken by the similarities between the two cities that I wonder if
this is some sort of curse of the Portuguese, from Bom (Boa? Boim?)
Bahia to the Cidade Maravilhosa.
I also wonder, not for the first time, whether someday all
our cities will have to feel like this. But that's another matter.
III.
I am on the metro at around 10am, in the recently-opened Cantagalo
station. I have already fulfilled my tourist ambition to give
directions (correctly) in every place I visit. In this case I can
take no special pride at all: the woman wants to know whether the
train will go to the Central station; there is only one line, we're at
the end station, and everyone is on one platform. My only
accomplishment is processing the Brazilian pronunciation of the
terminal -l (yes, the rest of the world has been mis-pronouncing
“Brazil” all along, in addition to mis-spelling it).
The platform is full, and filling. Few people look like they're from
the beach; most look like workers or other natives. The platform gets
fuller and fuller. On the opposite side are several workers, and just
past the end of the opposite platform is a stationary train. Everyone
is calm.
A few minutes into this, a functionary in a rather more
serious-looking uniform (the workers on the other platform were in
drab grey; the new one is in a very deep blue, clearly indicative of
higher rank and authority) runs down the opposite platform. People
are curious but only a few heads follow this motion. Then another. A
small stream of people has been steadily heading back upstairs—these
must be people on an actual schedule—but everyone else waits as even
more people pour in. Everyone is utterly calm, utterly patient.
Nobody seems to even ask the officials what's going on.
Finally, one more deep-blue-besuited official descends to the opposite
platform, and he says something. Now people are upset. They
are shouting, hollering, whistling, shaking heads, and showing a range
of emotions. It's fascinating that simply the statement of the
obvious releases this reaction, even though having said that the
official may actually have hastened these people on their way to their
destination.
My metro experience having been thwarted, I decide it's time to try
the buses. The buses of Rio are mildly terrifying, and that's when
they aren't outright heart-stopping, driving at what appear to be
dizzying speeds and without regard for lanes. The system itself
appears close to unstructured: there are hundreds of lines without
clear markings of routes, stops, or anything else.
Not surprisingly, with a little inspection the system appears to be a
wonder. The buses have dispensed with niceties such as route maps for
the simple reason every bus says on its front where it's going and
via which places. The buses do have numbers, though
they're not always easy to find; and, more to the point, they don't
really matter. Trying to get to Centro? Just stand where a bunch of
other people seem to be standing, flag down a passing bus that says
Centro, hop on (carefully, as this sometimes means crossing a lane of
traffic), pay at entry (fixed rate no matter how far you're going)
and, when you see your destination, press a bell, and hop off. In
fact there appear to be numerous bus lines operated by different
companies, with varying degrees of comfort (and perhaps safety).
Their rates differ, too, but the rates are prominently displayed on
the front. By staying away from the buses during rush hour, I've been
grinning during and after every trip.
Of course, it doesn't help that as we lurch through town (the speed
is a little oversold: what is dizzying is their momentum), I glance
out my window and, in a storefront reflection, see the name of my bus
company: Verdun. Not a comforting name for a system with a slightly
dubious reputation for respect for human life.
Eventually I do use the Metro, and I use it quite a bit. It's clean,
well-organized, easy to use, timely, and regular. It has some of the
best, most rational signage of any metro I've ever used (though the
announcements are spotty and sometimes wrong). The stations range
from pleasant to excellent (Cantagalo mimics the Washington DC station
structure). Low coverage aside, it does almost everything one could
possibly want of a big city metro system. It is almost certainly a
far better public transportation, along the same stretches, as the bus
system, and will presumably eventually supplant most of it.
But it misses on two counts. For one, the turnstiles have a terrible
sense of rhythm: you'd expect to insert your ticket and walk right
through, and the half-second gap it forces always breaks my stride.
In the nation of samba, this should be considered criminal: as if the
metro is in Rio, but not of it.
Which it is. There is something human and visceral about these buses,
and every time I speed between Zona Sul and Centro, across the arc of
Botafogo beach, looking out over the morros of Guanabara Bay, with the
Pão de Açúcar standing sentinel and the
Corcovado's Christ statue towering over the scene, my heart races a
little. If I lived here, if I did this every single day of my life, I
think I would still feel a little bit happier every time I saw this
sight.
But then, the metro, too, has its moments. It is late at night, and I
am returning to my hotel. I am changing between tracks at
Estácio, and we're waiting awhile. Suddenly a tune of haunting
beauty floats in over the tannoy. I do not recognize it; I cannot even
place it; but it swirls about me, enchants me, and then settles deep
inside my bones. I let a train pass, hoping the music will never end.
IV.
I don't know how long it takes to get to Centro, or what time it is
when I get there. I don't know these things because I'm not wearing a
watch. I was told, you see, that to avoid being targeted by muggers,
it'd be best to not be wearing any sharp-looking watches. So I left
behind my watch; the plan was, once I landed here, I'd wander down to a local
store and buy the cheapest thing I could find. But I'd gone a
whole day without one, and when I did spot a store with the
appropriate quantity of appropriately shoddy timekeepers, I...just
kept walking. Somehow, it just seems appropriate in Brazil.
My afternoon in Centro reminds me of nothing so much as another leafy
but large and congested, sub-tropical southern hemispheric city
located by a fantastic bay: Sydney (minus, of course, the abject
poverty of Rio). And just as Sydney is all modern but for a tiny
sliver of preserved colony, so with Rio. Nobody standing in the
afternoon sun in the Praça Imperial, amidst random statuary of
unknown worthies and surrounded by low, white buildings with
wrought-iron balconies can help but be transported to Portugal or the
Mediterranean. To be sure, the moment passes quickly, but there are
other such details dotting the city. My favorite was walking by the
southern wall (on the other side from the flyovers) of the Museu
Histórico Nacional and looking up to see blue tiles along the
rim of the slightly-overhanging roof.
The Museu itself is worth a little while. It is mostly potted history
that should be familiar to anyone who did a little reading before
their visit. But a few objects stand out, and there are two new
areas—a restored room of ceiling frescoes about the laws that have
governed Brazil, and a section on native Indian art—that are both
worth examining. Far less appealing is a recently created exhibition
on health and medicine in Brazil, funded by Lisbon's peculiar
Gulbenkian Foundation, whose entries are—unlike the rest of the
museum—in Portuguese only. This is less of a pity than it might
seem (for what a fascinating topic it is!) as the exhibit itself
appears to be low on content and high on uninformative visuals. As
for the rest,
the
historical paintings, busts, and the like are by a series of European
nobodies who were smart enough to realize that with their talents,
they would die poor and unknown in their native countries but would be
feted as French or Italian painters and appointed to the court in
Brazil. (It would have been interesting to learn more about episodes
such as Projeto Rondon, about a modern variant of which I saw one
photograph but learned nothing, and for which there's virtually no
information even on-line.)
Brazilian TV is famed for its awfulness. I see nothing to redeem it,
and there's certainly much about it that is abysmal in any language.
But I do wonder if its reputation is overdone a little, or perhaps it
has improved to the point of being only bad, and thereby not
compelling enough. All of this, I must add, simply did not prepare me
for the moment when I turned over a channel, landed on RAI (the
Italian network), and found, dubbed in Italian, a modern Amitabh
Bachchan movie.
V.
I want to go for a walk in the evening, and somewhere I read that Rua
Visconde de Pirajá is an interesting shopping street. This is
just as well, because I'm looking for a bookstore on the street, and
figure I could scout it out. But I get there to find a drab, dismal
street—worse even than the worst I'd prepared for, which is rows of
boutiques and bijouteries—and I'm so depressed I turn around after
two blocks. I stop in a store to buy some bread, only to find that a
man blocks me and won't budge until the bread is up to his standards
(the rolls look fine to me—and prove to be so), and the woman
checking out in front of me handles her purse and purchases with the
snobbish slowness of one who can't be seen to acknowledge other humans
around—and I contrast all this to the essentially Brazilian good
cheer of the staff, and remind myself never again to shop
where the rich live.
The street, and the store, are in Ipanema. As I've mentioned, Ipanema
is where it's at. Well, not really; Ipanema is yesterday's news, and
the rich Cariocas have sold and moved on to Leblon and points further
west. But they've left in their wake a place of unimaginable
ugliness. It reminds me of...well, I can't really remember its name,
and that's the point, but the similar area of Mexico City. As
Ibero-America got rich in the 50s, 60s and 70s, they built buildings
of truly striking blandness that combine to blight the landscape at
least as much as the favelas their owners no doubt despise.
The names of these buildings—for here, all buildings are named, much
as they are in the rest of the developing world—speak of unrequited
aspiration; the Edificio Mondrian, for instance, is an ugly brown
stone with a brown-tinted glass foyer, conceived by an architect who
cannot possibly have known even the very first thing about the
Dutchman. These architectural crimes, combined with the fact that
it's the only part of town when I ask a question in Portuguese and am
responded to in English, means I avoid it entirely for the rest of my
stay.
Speaking of aspirations, Kathi and I have been playing an informal
game of Curves-spotting. Curves
is a women's-only gym that is characterized by cheap locations and
blinds and, I believe, a lack of mirrors (on the sound principle that
women would be more likely to stay fit if they didn't have to worry
about preening men or women, or intrusive eyes). Curves seems to be a
class-marker of the solidly middle-class (you can fill in your own
pop-sociological reason for why). And there, at the north-western end
of Copacabana, I see my first Curves in Brazil.
VI.
Returning to the concrete matter of shopping for rolls, the astute
reader will notice that I have entered that territory that every
traveler outwardly dreads but secretly loves: that of Things That Must
be Weighed. (I had thought rolls would be sold in whole units, but
they are priced by weight.) This momentarily strikes terror: I
gesture to the woman beside the bread tub, she signals to the weighing
scale, I try to ask her what code to use, she doesn't understand, I
desperately scan the bread sign for a code, find absolutely none, in
despair place the bread on the scale, and it magically knows what I've
ordered. That's right, there's nothing else around to be weighed. I don't
feel too foolish as I grab the sticker it prints.
Walking back, and at several other times,
I feel myself gently spritzed by water from above.
My first two or three times I worry that it's about to rain, and find
it odd that it could do so without a single cloud in sight—the
Southern Hemisphere must be a truly strange place. Eventually, I
formulate a reasonable hypothesis: this must be from stand-alone
air-conditioners mounted on upper floors. It's winter here in Rio,
which means it is merely somewhere between warm and hot but not
blistering, and I feel sorry for these poor people who had to inhabit
the mores of their settlers from temperate European lands.
VII.
As I walk around town, I notice several kiosks for chaveiros,
and they appear to be key-makers. A quick search confirms this.
Chalk this down to the opposite of a faux ami (a bon ami?): the root
for the word in Portuguese sounds surprisingly similar to the word for
‘key’ in Tamil. Of course, this may not be coincidental: perhaps the
Tamilians had no need to lock anything down until the marauding
Portuguese showed up.
VIII.
As I drink a vitaminas (a fruit drink with milk rather than water,
which would make it a sucos) at a roadside stand, a few blocks inland
from Copacabana beach, I see something odd. A very fair-skinned woman
walks up to the stand, towing a black boy. The woman is just pushing
past 30, and is dressed to stand out: black pants and a shiny orange
top buttoned tight; the boy is about seven, wears beach bottoms and
nothing else. The woman is asking him to pick a drink; she leaves him
there for a moment with the menu while she walks around the corner
with purpose; while she's away, he fingers some cash (a two or five
reais bill, and some coins); she returns; a drink is ordered, but I
never hear a word from the boy. I nurse my drink, but I'm really
quite done, and his drink is taking a while to make. I walk away.
An hour later, I'm walking to the shopping street, and four blocks
from this encounter, I see the woman again. This time she's walking
hand-in-hand with a much older man—about 55, heavier, a head mostly
full of unruly white hair, comfortable and seemingly prosperous but,
if he's filthy rich, hiding it well.
They don't say much, and I don't understand what they're saying.
IX.
In the evening, after sunset, I go to Arpoador Beach, the eastern end
of Ipanema. It's quieter, calmer, there, and traces of pink paint the
western sky. Copacabana is crowded, in part, because of separated
“bike” lane that runs between the road and the beach proper; I use
scare-quotes because there are relatively few bicycles in it compared
to foot traffic, especially runners.
I had heard about the running in Copacabana, but since I'm traveling
extra-light, I haven't packed running shoes. But as I come around the
corner, I'm seized by the desire to move; so I tighten the straps of
my Teva sandals, pick a particularly ugly hotel about a kilometer away
as a target, and start to trot. It's tiring, and it feels great. To
cool down I walk another kilometer. As I turn around, my legs
suddenly start to move involuntarily. Running westward is less fun,
because you're immediately beside the chugging traffic, but I feel
propelled by forces I don't entirely grasp. I get to and pass my
target (the same ugly hotel) without even noticing it, and keep on,
and on—I must have a tailwind!—until I realize I'm a few blocks
past my hotel, and I could go on forever with this wind...and I stop.
There will probably be hell to pay on my kees eventually, but I'll
take it.
X.
Rio has numerous “kilo” vegetarian restaurants. Some are purely
vegetarian, while others have the odd non-vegetarian dish and are
labeled “natural”. They range in quality, but the good ones are
outstanding.
My favorite is one called Reino Vegetal. It's nowhere near anything
you'd expect: it's neither in the chic Zona Sul, catering to the
swelte, nor in the heart of Centro, ministering to executives.
Instead, it's deep in the heart of a very old-fashioned commercial
area—the kind of place where the streets are still cobbled (and not
to be charming), the sidewalks are still high, and some of the signs
look like they haven't been painted in decades. I've been here
before: not here here, but it's Bangalore's N. R. Road and
the old commercial center of very many other third-world cities. It's
far from the searching eye of a tourist, executive or yuppie; indeed,
it's far from the eye of all but the all-seeing Google (or, in this
case, Happy Cow).
As I'm ordering a drink, one of the staff asks me whether I'd
like...well, I'm not sure, really. It sounds a bit like the word for
ginger, but it's definitely not. It sounds closer to injera, but
surely not; nobody would put that in a drink! I decide it must be yet
another of the local exotics, so I give her my assent. She's
delighted; she repeats this to another person. Am I being had? The
staff seem really nice and decent folk; and then, it hits me, she's
asked me whether I'm Indian! (Why can they never phrase questions the
way they're listed in the language guides?) [Tip for the baffled:
Brazilian Portuguese pronounces “di” with a `j', so “India” comes
out rather like “Inja”. That's right, I'm an Injun.] She goes out
into the dining area and tells one of the diners—who I think is one
of the owners—this. And the next time I walk in (how could you not
return to such a place?), she immediately greets me with a great big
smile and announces, the Indian is back. She's so taken with this
that every time she walks past my table she comes by to ask me a
question about the food and my enjoyment of it, and rapidly she has
exhausted every word and phrase I know. It doesn't deter her one bit.
XI.
In the evening, I am on the metro when an elderly, dignified-looking
white couple walk in; the woman seems much firmer than the man. A
young black woman gets up to offer her seat to him. They thank her;
then the older man says something, the younger woman asks something,
and suddenly these three have begun a discussion that goes on for
several stops. To be able to understand the language!
I do not have to wait long. The next day, an old dame sits by me.
She has just squeezed through what have to be the narrowest of
turnstiles to board a bus; though in fine shape, she's annoyed by this
and tells me about it. I offer the universal roll of the eye in
assent. Now she complains about something on the metro. What where
they thinking, too, I agree. I'm worried that any moment now
she's going to start asking questions, and I'll have to drop the
pretense. It turns out she already has, without the intonation, and
is awaiting my reply. I stutter out that I don't really understand,
and at the same instant we both blurt out, “Descuple!” [I'm sorry.]
She finds out I'm from America (no reaction), and that I'm Indian
(delight!). Now that she's established I don't speak any Portuguese,
we begin talking again, this time with very small words. The
“conversation” covers religion, her sister, politics, her hometown
of Santa Caterina, and poverty. It's heady stuff, even if I haven't
an idea what she's saying. (Well, generally there are only two
mainstream opinions on any of these issues, so it's pretty easy to
establish which half of the equation she's on, but the bit about
religion involves Christianity, her sister, and something about the
Buddha, and I'm pretty much lost.)
XII.
In general, the people I encounter are everything the stereotypes
suggest: warm, friendly, and patient. Yet there is such a species as
the impatient Brazilian, and I find its natural habitat: the trains.
As a metro train pulls into an end-station, the entire crowd lurches
towards the (closed) doors, leaning on them, banging on them, some
even trying to pull them apart. Something is afoot, I figure—maybe
the doors open too briefly—so I join the throng. Then we are
inside, the doors remain open for generously long, and I'm baffled.
Next time, same behavior, again I join in, again the same response.
So the third time, I stand back and watch.
They are rushing for the seats. They are not merely rushing, they are
charging, knocking over one another, scattering in every direction
inside from the door like roaches in a bright light. And then, once
they're settled, they resume being Brazilian. (There is a similar
scene near the beginning of Central Station where, before
the train doors open, people pour into the cars through the windows.)
If you don't want a seat, there are entire prairies of standing room
awaiting your habitation. The one time I'm on a metro car that
still has empty seats, two women walk in and proceed to stand at a
pole. I am scandalized by their un-Brazilian behavior, until one of
them pulls out a Lonely Planet guide.
This love of automated comfort carries over elsewhere. Put a
staircase next to an escalator? Why bother? Even as dozens of people
are queued up to get onto the escalator, I am stared at for taking the
staircase—even in this town of legendarily buff bodies. (Then
again, the turnstiles on the buses are so narrow and so firm, abs
develop naturally and fitness is essential for using public
transport.)
XIII.
The downside to all this urbanism is that it's simply impossible to
see the night sky. I feel sorry for the vast majority of Brazilians,
whose only exposure to the constellations must be the ones on their
flag. In a few generations they may not even know what those stars on
their flag stand for.
XIV.
One of the great joys of visiting Brazil is surely attending a soccer
game, and in Rio, where would one want to watch one more than in
Maracanã, that throne of Brazilian football? Of course, the
thought of a football game at Maracanã is enough to raise
every alarm about safety and security in Rio. Not
surprisingly, an entire industry has sprung up where desire meets
fear. For a neat sum, a tour guide will pick you up at your
hotel, bundle you into a van of other (presumably) equally nervously
excited tourists, take you to the stadium (where your ticket has been
bought for you), have you all sit together in the stands, and then
escort you back out into the safety of the van, to be returned to the
hotel.
Does anything sound more awful?
That said, I confess to thinking about this for a while. I am nursing
a cold, I am weary from the flight capers, I am...let's admit it, I am
a bit nervous. As a compromise, I email a guide named Sergio, who runs
such a service, but seems unlike the rest of his species. Sergio
isn't available the week I am in town (but, to his great credit,
happily answers my email questions). So I am on my own. I don't
shave for a day, to try to achieve the characteristic Carioca scruff,
and off I go.
Well, it's everything you might imagine. The level of play itself is
quite awful; other than a few inspired minutes when Recife Sport puts
together a textbook use of space—a display so good even the home
fans seemed to admire it—there isn't much to watch on the field.
(But as it is Brazilian football, there are a few moments of
absolutely dazzling virtuosity.) But one doesn't go to a Brazilian
soccer game to watch the play anyway. And I had, through a
combination of error and luck, landed bang in the middle of the
Flamengo cheering section, with drums right behind me and red flares
going off over my head. It is terrifying and exhilarating.
I stand for the hour I'm on the train, on the grounds that I'll be
sitting for the next two hours or so. As the fans file in, however,
the front row is standing, so the rows behind have to stand, and those
further back have to stand on their seats, and so on, until everyone
in the entire section is standing. Then we begin clapping and
singing—my hands begin to feel bruised, and I realize the game
hasn't even begun yet—and we continue thus for the entire duration
of the game.
This is Brazil, so of course we don't just stand. At various points
everyone begins to jump to the beat in—remember, this is
Brazil!—perfect harmony. I am jumping, too, but I feel an odd
sensation beneath my feet. So I keep my feet firmly planted to the,
uh, seat, and realize—the stadium is vibrating. It is
difficult to translate that moment of terror into words; the only
possible response to this is to resume jumping with everyone else.
This is so much fun that I go back and do it again later in the
week. One of the legendary rivalries in soccer is between the two Rio
teams, Flamengo and Fluminense. Having watched Flamengo play
(league-leading Grêmio), it seems only fair to also watch
Fluminense (play Recife Sport). Sergio—a Flamengo fan, it must be
said—has warned me to not expect much from Fluminense. In the event,
he was pretty accurate. At any rate, for the benefit of other
travelers, I offer the following:
What I most like is that people have a great time entertaining
themselves, without needing to be entertained. There is no pre-game
show; there are no cheerleaders; there are no clocks or replays
(though those may be safety measures). At half-time, a very, very old
man bounces a ball off his foot, never letting it touch the ground, as
he walks the entire length of the sideline; it is pure virtuosity; but
nobody seems to especially notice. Instead, I equip myself with the
cornerstones of every healthy meal, namely proteins and carbohydrates
(aka, nuts and beer), and do my best to cheer to the insanely catchy
Flamengo songs (though the Fluminense ones prove even catchier).
Police swarm the place, but uselessly; at one point a group of them
moves to investigate a flare-launcher; suddenly Flamengo scores, and
the sky overhead turns red, and the police return to obsolescence.
XV.
After Rio, I ask nothing of the rest of Brazil. Fortaleza reminds me
of nothing quite so much as Cairns, Australia, though the similarity
proves somewhat superficial. São Paulo feels like New York,
its language a jarring, truncated version of the mellifluous tongue
spoken elsewhere. The facade of Boa Viagem in Recife depresses me
during the day; even the brand new buildings are built with a pre-aged
look. But at night, the beach clear, I emerge from my hotel to see
the street-lights reflect off the dazzling white sand, and I find its
attraction. There is nobody about, but I walk down closer to the
water. Suddenly, I hear a muffled rhythm, and a barely-teen boy goes
past, riding bare-back on a white horse.
I haven't earned the right to conclude anything, but I decide that
Brazil feels like India about twenty years ahead. The traffic is
Indian, but there is no honking; the footpaths are Indian, but there
is no spitting. Yet again, I think,
this may be what the future will look like for
everyone.
But something special has happened here, where two potent, fecund
forces—the tropics, and immigration (some of it forced, regrettably)
to the New World—have collided. The street names in Rio (Venceslau,
Dodsworth, Ulrich), the buildings in Recife (Lundgren, Robert Bruce
Harley), and much else speak of great distances traveled for
opportunity. On the other hand, in a world that increasingly values
services over goods, it must be frustrating to be saddled with a
language of one's own. How those forces will balance out will be
fascinating to see.
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