Carnaval is Coming!

Carnaval is upon us!  In the last week, the street bands, beer drinking, and sales of paraphernalia have ramped up in anticipation of the onset of Carnaval this coming weekend.  For the uninitiated, Carnaval is (ostensibly) a Christian tradition of celebration and excess before the onset of Lent beginning on Ash Wednesday.  From Ash Wednesday to Good Friday (about six weeks) observant Christians are supposed to emulate the wanderings of Jesus in the wilderness prior to his entry into Jerusalem and his crucifixion and resurrection.  At least, that is the official rationale.  I am not sure the millions of Brazilians, and others around the world, are thinking a whole lot about religion when they take to the streets and parties in the days prior to Ash Wednesday!

Pre-Carnaval block party in Leblon yesterday (7 February)

In the United States, our version of Carnaval is Mardi Gras in New Orleans (Fat Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, get it?).  Imagine the images you have of Mardi Gras, magnify the party and then extend it across the country.  That is Carnaval in Brazil.  The festivities differ significantly across the diverse regions of Brazil.  I have spent a lot of time living in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais over the last thirty years.  For all intents and purposes, in Belo Horizonte (population 4 million) there are no parades comparable to Rio de Janeiro or Salvador.  The landlocked mineiros (those from Minas Gerais) are famous for heading to the coast during this time of year.  Salvador da Bahia is famous for taking the party to the streets with large trucks loaded with bands (trios elétricos) moving through the streets following by the dancing and drinking masses of the bahianos (the locals).

Carnaval in the streets of Salvador da Bahia

The most famous version of Carnaval is Rio’s extravaganza.  In the early twentieth century, samba emerged as the music and dance of the slums (favelas) and of street parades during Carnaval.  In the 1930s and 1940s, the government (Rio was, at that time, the national capital) formalized the process and marketed the images of Carnaval to the world.  By the 1960s, the large samba organizations (known as schools) had developed a highly ritualized process of parades, judging, and the crowning of a champion.  In the 1970s and 1980s, money from the jogo do bicho (see earlier posting), then television rights, and then funding from the cocaine traffickers ramped up the glitz and professionalism of these samba schools located in the favelas.  (Several thousand people participate in the 90-minute parade of each school.)  The city built the sambodrome downtown—a structure that looks like a football stadium with its grandstands and luxury boxes extending for several blocks, and open at each end.

Rio's Sambodrome

Carnaval Sambodrome

The samba schools are judged and scored, and there are two divisions (like futebol).  Those who fall at the low end sometimes fall back into the second division, and those at the top of the second division can move up to the big leagues.  The judging process is incredibly complex, highly contentious, and always incredibly close.  The top schools parade on the Monday and Tuesday nights from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m.  In theory, the holiday is over at midday on Wednesday.  Few people report to work that day, needless to say.

Mangueira Samba School

Carnaval dancers

As many cultural critics have pointed out, Carnaval is the “world turned upside down” for a few brief days.  All—or nearly all—is pardoned.  Men dress as women, the poor dress as royalty, the rich sport costumes of  Indians, the people take to the streets, and the wealthy retreat to their exclusive masked balls.  Everyone understands that this moment, when all rules are off, is just . . . momentary.  (What happens in Carnaval stays in Carnaval?)  One of the more striking features of Brazilian Carnaval, especially in Rio in recent decades, has been the increasing prominence of female nudity.  First, there were the very scanty string bikini like costumes, then topless, and finally, full nudity with the only body paint as a “costume”.  There has been a strong reaction to this shift, and in recent years, levels of female nudity decreased.  The traditionalists, quite rightly, complained that the focus should be on the extraordinary music, dance, and costumes and not nudity.

Luma de Oliveira

Although the samba schools originated in the favelas and, therefore, were predominantly Afro-Brazilian, by the 1980s it became increasingly common to have celebrities featured on the floats and in the parades.  (It turned out that some of them did not samba very well!)  At the same time, more and more lighter-skinned, middle-class Brazilians began to join the schools and parades.  These shifts in the 1980s are wonderfully chronicled by the great journalist, Alma Guillermoprieto, in her book, Samba.  She spent a year in Rio, joined the classic Mangueira samba school, lived in the favela, and then paraded with them.

At this time of year, so much is put on hold.  One of the favorite phrases at this time of year is, “after Carnaval”.  My next post will be . . . after Carnaval!

Without a Roof/Sem-Teto

For the past two days I have been reading through student journals commenting on a panel session that they attended on homelessness.  Three presenters spoke directly and eloquently to these Vanderbilt students about life on the streets of Nashville, how they came to live there, and how they survive and strive to get off—and stay off—the streets.  The students were deeply moved and impressed with the testimonials of these three people, and forced to confront their own views of the homeless, and how to deal with homelessness.

Although these reflections dealt with homelessness in Nashville, Tennessee, they pushed me to think about the homeless here in Rio de Janeiro (known in Portuguese as “those without a roof”—sem-teto).  In a city like Nashville, with some 600,000 inhabitants, the number of homeless is generally estimated at somewhere around 1,800.  In Rio de Janeiro, a metropolis of 10 million, probably a third of the inhabitants live in slums (favelas), that is, several million people.  The roughly one thousand favelas in Rio range from those constructed over decades that have gradually been “urbanized” to include some paved streets, access to water, electricity and other services, to those of more recent origin.  The latter are closest to the shanty towns and tent cities we see in the U.S.  Built more recently with scrap construction materials, cardboard, and tarps, these favelas are home to hundreds of thousands of the truly abject poor—those living on less than $2 a day income.

A small section of the Rocinha favela

No one really knows how many Brazilians live on the streets.  In Rio, it must be in the thousands, if not tens of thousands.  There is very little here in the way of the infrastructure that has emerged in the U.S. in the last thirty years—soup kitchens, Room in the Inn programs, and extensive municipal services aimed specifically at the homeless.  Historically, so much of services and assistance in Latin America have been provided by the government or the Catholic Church.  Civil society—the numerous private, voluntary organizations so common in the United States—has historically been weak in Brazil.

One striking feature of homelessness in Brazil is the number of children and adolescents living on the streets.  An anthropologist, Tobias Hecht, has written a poignant and eye opening ethnographic account of these children in the cities of Recife and Olinda in his At Home on the Street:  Street Children in Northeast Brazil (Cambridge University Press, 1998).  These children, like many adults, move back and forth between life on the street, and at times, the homes of their families or friends.

My students’ reflections on their personal experiences in interacting with the homeless in the U.S. forced me to reflect on my own direct experience here in Rio.  In particular, they made me think about one homeless man (I will call him Pedro) I have been seeing on my street for the past five months.  In those months, I have seen him sleeping in the doorways in different spots in an area of about four blocks along the Rua Visconde de Pirajá, the very busy commercial avenue where I live that runs the length of Ipanema.  His pattern seems to be to sleep and rest during the days at different spots along the street, and then stay up most of the night.  Most days, he has a small suitcase or bag of belongings.  He also seems to get food from different restaurants up and down the street.  In the evenings, he is usually in my block, most nights sitting near the entrance to the local supermarket, Zona Sul.  He usually has a small box of candies and nuts that he sells.  Starting back in late September, when I first noticed him, I began a daily ritual of stopping by the Zona Sul each evening to buy soft drinks for the next day.  As I leave the store, I stop and buy a small bag of peanuts from Pedro for one real (about fifty cents).  It does not appear he gets many takers.

Zona Sul supermarket on my street

After a while, he began to recognize me, and I got up the courage to try to talk with him.  Although I am highly fluent in Brazilian Portuguese, I can barely understand him.  Partly it is his speech patterns, but I think it is also partly because he has mental problems.  I was going to say that he is an “older man”, but he is probably only in his forties and just looks much older due to his hard life.  By Brazilian standards, he is black (that is, he is very dark skinned).  For about the past two weeks, he has been sleeping right in front of my apartment building so I see him in the morning as I come and go.  He recognizes me, but always seem a little confused when we greet each other and I try to speak with him.

Pedro’s plight personalizes homelessness and poverty in Brazil in ways that books and even having poverty around me everywhere in Rio cannot.  Pedro forces me to think hard about what to do about poverty in a very specific and concrete way.  He brings home the stark contrast between his life living on the street and my life in the comfortable apartment building looming above him.  (See my earlier blog entry, A Lucky Man.)   Even though some of us on this street may see him daily and provide Pedro with small amounts of money, food, or other help, that does not get him off the street.  In the U.S., I might be able to help him get into a shelter, at least at night.  Here, the number of people like Pedro on the streets makes that very unlikely.  The scale of the challenge here is so much larger than a place like Nashville or even New York City.  I am also not sure what Pedro wants.  I will keep trying to talk with him, and hope that we can begin to understand each other so that I can find out more about him.  Just maybe, he will help me understand the situation of those like him here in Rio and, just maybe, I can do something to help him.

The sidewalk in front of my apartment building.

Seismic Waves from Haiti to Brazil

The earthquake in Haiti on January 12 also sent shock waves through Brazil.  The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH)—operating since 2004—is commanded by a Brazilian general, and more than 1,200 Brazilians form the single largest contingent in the force.  The second ranking official in the UN mission in Port-au-Prince was a Brazilian diplomat, Luís Carlos da Costa (60), with four decades of service including some danger zones (Liberia and Kosovo).  He died, buried in the ruins of the mission headquarters.  Most poignantly, Zilda Arns, a physician and the founder of a non-profit to protect children, Pastoral da Criança (Pastoral Care for Children), had just finished speaking in a church in downtown Port-au-Prince when the massive seismic waves rippled through the city, and brought down the cathedral on Dr. Arns and the priests and parishioners around her.

Video shot by Brazilian soldier outside the Sacré Coeur de Tugeau Church moments after the earthquake. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1bCwioJaJI

Seventeen Brazilian members of the peacekeeping force died in the ruins in Haiti, most in the MINUSTAH headquarters.  The Brazilian government has pledged to send more troops to Haiti and some $200 million in aid and assistance.  The peacekeeping force should rise to more than 12,000 with the addition of more Brazilian, French, and Chilean troops.  The coverage of the disaster has been prominent in the Brazilian media with a significant number of Brazilian journalists, both print and television, reporting daily.  The Brazilian government is anxious to show a leadership role in this crisis that has caught the attention of the world.  It is striking to see this in depth coverage in the media, especially since the poverty and despair in Haiti rivals even the worst that can be found in the infamous interior of the Brazilian northeast.  These pockets of extreme poverty in the Brazilian interior, however, must seem less daunting when juxtaposed with the scale of Haiti’s misery—more than 80 percent of its nearly 10 million people living on less than $2 a day income.

The death of Zilda Arns brings to a close a long and incredible life.  The thirteenth child of a German-Brazilian family, Arns was born in 1934 in southern Brazil.  At a time when there were almost no female physicians in Brazil, she persuaded her father to let her study medicine and become a doctor.  Her older brother, Paulo Evaristo, helped convince her father.  Now 88, the retired archbishop of São Paulo, Dom Paulo Evaristo, is one of the towering figures of the opposition to military rule in Brazil in the 1970s.  He spearheaded the “Torture, Never Again” project that published the landmark book, Brazil:  Never Again in 1985, documenting the extent of torture in Brazil with the military’s own court records, secretly photocopied and microfilmed over years by cooperating lawyers.

Zilda Arns Neumann, M.D.

In the 1980s, at her brother’s suggestion, Zilda Arns led the Pastoral da Criança.  The organization is simple and direct—it recruits and trains hundreds of thousands of women in the poorest regions of Brazil to give their children a simple mix of sugar, salt, and water to stop diarrhea–and save lives.  The infant mortality rate in these poor areas dropped from more than 120 per 1,000 live births to less than 25 in a very brief period.  The Pastoral, under her leadership, has been a major factor in the steady reduction of infant mortality in Brazil over the past generation.   After the success in Brazil, she took her work around the world in the last two decades, from East Timor to Haiti.  Her work in Haiti in the past few years has helped cut the infant mortality rate drastically.

On her last visit, she arrived in Port-au-Prince on January 11.  On January 12 she spoke to more than 100 priests on the third floor of the Sacré Coeur de Tugeau Church.  She finished her talk at 4:45 p.m. and was speaking with some of the priests who remained in the room.  Within minutes the tremors struck, and the building collapsed–killing Dona Zilda and most of those around her.  At a wake for her on January 15 in Curitiba, President Lula da Silva, the governor of the state of Paraná, the two leading contenders in the upcoming presidential election, and many other dignitaries paid their respects to an exceptional woman who forged an exemplary life helping children around the globe.

President Lula and other dignitaries at Zilda Arns wake

Happy Birthday/Parabens para Marshall

Yesterday I celebrated my 57^th birthday.  There is something about celebrating anniversaries—especially anniversaries of the day of our birth—that moves us to reflect on where we have been and where we are going.   The opportunity to spend this year in Brazil has led me to think a great deal about how much this country has been a part of my life–and for so long.  I got started in Latin American studies by doing public health work in the highlands of Guatemala during the summer between my junior and senior years in high school (1970).  While an undergraduate at the University of Kansas, I went off to the Universidad de Costa Rica as an exchange student for three semesters (1973-74).  Only after I had spent a good deal of time in Central America, and after I had learned to speak Spanish, did I eventually develop my focus on Brazil and begin to learn Portuguese–the most beautiful language in the world.

Marshall trying to play soccer in Turrialba, Costa Rica (1973)

I first began to study Brazil with some purpose and direction when I was in my first year in graduate school, at the age of 21.  As I mentioned in an earlier post many weeks ago, I first arrived in Brazil just over thirty years ago, in August 1979.  A few months later, I celebrated my 27^th birthday.  I have now been studying and writing about this amazing country for nearly all of my adult life—for nearly four decades.

Although I have traveled across nearly all of North, Central, and South America, and parts of the Caribbean, most of my travels and serious study, and certainly the majority of my writing, have been about Brazil.  Although I know more about Brazilian history than most Brazilians, I will never be Brazilian.  I have written and reflected systematically on Brazilian culture for close to forty years, but I will never have the intimate knowledge and feel for Brazilian culture that a Brazilian has by virtue of his/her place of birth and upbringing.  Even if I spend another couple of decades observing and writing about this country, I will always remain an outsider (although a very well informed one, I hope).

By accident of birth, I spent nearly all of the first 18 years of my life in East Texas, on the western fringe of the U.S. South.  I have lived in the U.S. South for most of my life—for the first 18 years, and for the last 27, or some 45 of my 57 years on this planet.  For as much as I have always felt out of place and out of sync in my own society, it is the one place in the world that I feel least out of place.  Although I have not lived in Texas for nearly fifty years, I still deeply identify with my home state, and I have an insider’s feel for the place that a Brazilian could never achieve, even if s/he studied Texas for as long as I have studied Brazil.  I will always be a Texan, and a Southerner, just as the visiting Brazilian scholar would always remain an outsider in Texas (and the South), even if an exceptionally informed and astute one.

All this is to say, that when I write about Brazil I have to face my limitations—as someone who was not born and reared here, and as an outsider with a very deep and thorough (but ultimately limited) knowledge of Brazilian culture and society.  I write with a certain authority, but also with humility—the authority of the knowledgeable observer and the humility of the outsider.  Ultimately, I hope that Brazilians who read my work about their country appreciate my love and appreciation for Brazil, and understand that I do not seek to claim insider omniscience, but rather the informed sensitivity of the participant observer.  I am a sort of anthropologist and I periodically live among my “people”–the Brazilians.  I can never go completely native, but then, when I go back to my own people, I can never be just a Texan or a Southerner.  I am richer for having lived in both worlds, and having been out of place in each.

Marshall and his older daughter, Lee, on Corcovado

The Animal Game

One of the key characters on my street is the man who sells tickets for the “animal game”.  He is one of thousands of men and women who sit each day along the sidewalks of Rio de Janeiro at pontos (points of sale) selling tickets for the oldest lottery in Brazil, the jogo do bicho (or animal game).  This is an illegal, but widely respected, lottery that the authorities (usually) choose not to bother.  Rio, like all Brazilian cities, has many legal lotteries that are very popular.  The jogo do bicho, however, has a longer history than most of the legal lotteries.

My local lottery guy

It began in the late nineteenth century, as a way for the Baron João Batista Viana Drummond to raise funds and publicity for the zoo he had created.  To make the lottery more easily understood, he used animals (ostrich, dog, alligator . . . .) instead of numbers.  Over the years, the lottery became widely played by the locals, and by the late twentieth century, it was in the hands of the so called bicheiros, or numbers bankers.  There are twenty-five different animals each assigned a set of four numbers between 1 and 100.  A bettor can place money on combinations of numbers of two, three, or four digits and one of the animals (the last two digits have to be associated with that animal).

Animals & Numbers

Today, the jogo do bicho is played by tens of thousands of cariocas (natives of Rio) on a daily basis.  (The game is played elsewhere in the country as well.)  The man in the pictures at the beginning and end of this blog entry is a vendedor (dealer) who sits in a broken chair in front of my building most days with a set of note pads and a shoebox. At times, he has someone else with him, and at other times, someone substitutes for him.  People come up, buy an animal ticket and number, and then wait for the results to be announced in the afternoon.  (The drawing is usually at 2 p.m.)  You find out the winning numbers/animals at particular locations in each neighborhood where you can redeem your ticket and receive you winnings.  I have seen these numbers posted at different locations up and down my street.  In the age of the internet, the jogo do bicho now has its own webpage, if you want to check it out, go to:  http://www.ojogodobicho.com/index.htm

Printing up the winners

Over the last 120 years, the government has sometimes tried to suppress the game, in particular, because it is a convenient way to launder money, and because it has often attracted high powered criminals to run it.  There has been an ongoing discussion about legalizing the game.  In the 1980s and 1990s some of the richest bicheiros began to put their money into some of the famous samba schools in Rio.  In recent years, a number of the directors of the samba schools have been murdered in what were apparently struggles over control of the game.  Reputedly, about a dozen powerful “bankers” control the operation.  When one local judge in the mid-1990s cracked down on the bicheiros and finally managed to jail some of them, her life was threatened.  None of them served much time.  The recent president of the samba schools association is reputedly the most powerful of all the bankers.

In a survey I saw in the 1990s, this “illegal” lottery had the highest confidence rating of nearly any institution in Brazil.  It easily beat out the police, the courts, and the utilities companies.  I would imagine the Baron Drummond had no idea that he was creating what has become one of the quintessential Rio institutions!

Penny capitalism at work

The Multiplier Effect

Before I go on with my description of the cast of characters in my neighborhood I want to pause and write about an incredible community service project a friend of mine, Chris “Sparky” Sparks, has been working on for the past two years.

Chris is an amazing guy.  A Marine pilot with experience flying missions in the Middle East, he was an ROTC instructor at Vanderbilt, and a student in the Owen Graduate School of Management.  He decided he wanted eventually to pursue a career in international business.  He studied Portuguese at Vanderbilt and decided the best way to gain true fluency was to move to Brazil.  When he went into the Reserves last year, he came down to Rio and, on his own savings, began to build a non-profit (NGO, non-governmental organization) in the largest slum (favela) in Rio–Rocinha.  With some 350,000 inhabitants, Rocinha is a small city that has grown up on the western slopes of the Dois Irmãos mountains that separate Ipanema/Leblon from Barra da Tijuca, the highest priced neighborhoods in the city.

Rocinha with peaks of Dois Irmãos to the upper right, and Ipanema and Leblon in the distance

After encountering a series of frustrations trying to work with some existing NGOs in Rio, Chris eventually moved into Rocinha to live with a family and started Crossfit, a “strength and conditioning program for many police academies and tactical operations teams, military special operations units, champion martial artists.”  The idea is simple:  teach people how to get into shape, do with some martial arts, and then teach them how to teach others.  The multiplier effect.  Through his own extraordinary efforts, he has raised donations (cash and equipment), rented a location in Rochinha, and trained locals to run the operation.  With some luck, and all his hard work, he may be able to secure the sponsorship of some athletic companies, especially with the World Cup and Olympic Games coming to Rio in the next few years.  If you would like to see something about Crossfit, check out the website at www.rocinhacrossfit.com To see his blog go to http://notesfrombrazil.weebly.com/

Crossfit loction in Rocinha

Recently, Chris took a job in Brasília and this will make his work here in Rio more dependent on those he has trained to run the operation in Rocinha.  If you would like to help Chris out, he is in always in need of volunteers to help with fundraising, doing the paperwork to register Crossfit as a U.S. non-profit, or to secure donations of equipment.  Chris has done an incredible amount of work to get this project off the ground, and it is on the verge of sustainability.  I hope some of you reading this will help him out with this amazing project.



The Gatekeepers

Now, where was I when I left off . . . .

Oh, yes, the cast of characters in my neighborhood.  This will take a few segments in the coming weeks so I can talk about the porteiro, the newsman, the bicheiro, and the trumpeter—for starters.

One of the most important people in my life in Rio is the guy who sits at a desk in the lobby at the entrance to the building, the porteiro (loosely, doorman, or what is often called the super or supervisor in New York apartment buildings).  Every apartment building in Rio has its porteiros.  In the really expensive real estate around me, these men sit in glass booths, at the entrances to their buildings, normally with some sort of gated courtyard in front of them.   They are, quite literally, the gatekeepers to life in the building.  No one goes in or out without passing by them.  Underneath most of the tall buildings around here are subterranean parking garages so the porteiros are also the gatekeepers for cars coming in and going out.  (Not the case for my building.)

Entrance to my building to left of the graffiti filled wall; apartments are on the floors above

The porteiros also serve a vital security function that has become increasingly important in Rio with its increasing crime problem.  The experienced porteiro comes to know all the inhabitants of a building, as well as their daily habits.  Anyone who is not recognizable has to identify him/herself to gain access—first to the gated courtyard or entrance, then to the building itself, usually via the elevators.  The job must be incredibly complicated socially for the porteiro in the high-rent district.  They cannot afford to offend the friends and relatives of the wealthy tenants, but they also cannot err and let someone in the building who might cause problems.  In the last decade, increasingly bolder thieves have sometimes talked their way into the porteiros and then seized them to gain access to apartments to shake down the tenants before heading off with jewels, cash, and valuables.

My building is clearly of the more modest variety with an undistinguished entrance and no gates.  One walks directly into the lobby and up to the porteiro who sits next to the elevators and stairs.  The job here must be more complicated than normal with the constant changeover of tenants.  Probably half the apartments in my eight-story building have temporary tenants, largely tourists, who come for a few days to a few months and then move on.  In short, it must be next to impossible to know with any real certainty who belongs and in the building and who does not.

After observing them for close to three months now, I have realized there are four porteiros who rotate through shifts.  One of them is a young fellow, probably in his early twenties who will barely speak to me.  Two are men probably in their forties who are friendly enough to acknowledge my coming and going with the polite “bom dia” and “boa noite”.  I have been unable to engage either of them in more than the most minimal conversation.  The fourth porteiro, Fernando, is another matter.  He is clearly the senior member of the crew and puts in the most hours.  He is also the friendliest.  More so than the others, he chats with what appear to be the long-term residents (generally an older crowd), and the tourists.

Fernando is a nordestino, that is, from the Northeastern states, the poorest region of Brazil (roughly the equivalent of our Appalachia).  He is from the tiny state of Paraíba on the Northeastern coast.  Like hundreds of thousands of others from the region, he migrated to Rio with his family forty years ago.  I am guessing he is probably in his mid-fifties.  He is very friendly and it took him a while to convince him that I was American and not English.  Go figure.

Fernando on duty

A good relationship with the porteiro is crucial to living in Brazil.  Not only does he know everything going on in the building, he knows who to talk with or where to go to fix any problems you might have.  Where can I find a good store for this or that?  How do I fix my clogged up sink?  What do I do with my plastic bottles and newspapers?  What was all that screaming and shouting in the apartment above mine last night?  Fernando is the man with all the answers.  I have probably been here longer than most of the transient tenants, but not that long yet.  I will keep working on getting to know him in the coming months.  After all, he is the gateway to so much of daily life in the neighborhood and Rio.

On the Street Where I Live

After two months in Ipanema I have begun to get to know the neighborhood so I thought I would give you a brief tour.

Map of Ipanema and Leblon

I live on the Rua Visconde de Pirajá, the main commercial street that runs the length of Ipanema (about 1.5 miles).  The street runs in an east-west direction–parallel to the beach–which is two blocks to the south.  Ipanema and the neighboring Leblon (beginning about three blocks west of my apartment) are some of the most affluent neighborhoods (bairros) in Rio.  To the east (around the point—Arpoador) is Copacabana, to the west the Two Brothers (Dois Irmãos) mountains rise up with the Vidigal favela on one side and Rocinha favela on the other.  Behind Ipanema (to the north) is a large lagoon/lake, and rising up above the lake is Corcovado mountain and Rio’s most iconic landmark—the Christ statue.

Leblon and Ipanema looking from west to east with the Lagoa to the left and Copacabana beach around the point

Looking west from Ipanema Beach to Dois Irmãos (18Nov09)

As a rule, real estate values and the “chic quotient” rise as one moves into Leblon and to its west side.  My street continues westward into Leblon as Ataúlfo de Paiva.  This long avenue from east to west is home to many upscale stores and boutiques.  Once you get into Leblon, think M Street in Georgetown (DC) or Westwood in Los Angeles.  The streets on either side of me, especially to the north, are largely residential areas dominated by high-rise apartment buildings, although the occasional old home (built before the 1950s) survives.

My block is primarily high-rise apartment buildings with stores and retail outlets on the street level.  Just across the street I have a small supermarket—Zona Sul.

Zona Sul supermarket

One block to the west is my favorite local bookstore, Livraria da Travessa, which has a very nice café on the second level.  Both stay open until midnight allowing me to come over and browse books, read, and have sandwich or a cappuchino later in the evening.

My favorite bookstore - Livraria da Travessa

One of my favorite spots is a block and half down the street to the east, Polis Sucos (Juice City).  This is a very typical “juice bar” a la Rio.  These places are everywhere and they mix up an astonishing variety of fresh juices and smoothies in minutes.  I am addicted to a thick smoothie made with açaí, a berry from a variety of palm tree.  Brazilians love this fruit.  It is reputed to have health benefits, but I just love the grapelike flavor.  I have to pace myself when I eat this purple concoction with a spoon to avoid “brain freeze”!

My favorite juice bar

Polis Sucos is on a very busy intersection.  I like to sit on the edge of the planter box that surrounds a tree in front of the store.  If I look to the south I can see the beach two blocks away.  If I look to the north, I am staring up at Corcovado Mountain and the Christ statue.  Not a bad seat.  I spend most of my on that spot sipping my juice and watching the people go by.  In my next post I will introduce you to some of the cast of characters in my neighborhood.

Corcovado Mountain & Christ Statue

The Night the Lights Went Out in Brazil

At approximately 10:20 p.m. last Tuesday night, the power suddenly went out in my apartment.  Thinking it was something local, I looked out my back window only to discover a city of ten million inhabitants in nearly complete darkness.  Within a few minutes, I could see flashlights and candles appearing in a few of the windows of the high-rise apartment building surrounding me.  When the power did not come back on within a few minutes I could hear rowdy and playful shouts coming from the bars on the street below.  I don’t think the lack of light slowed down the drinking or the singing. . . .

Copacabana in the Dark

As it turns out, this was an enormous power blackout (apagão in Portuguese) that spread across most of Brazil—affecting 18 of country’s 26 states and some 90 million people for about three hours.  (In comparison, the blackout on the East Coast of the U.S. and Canada in August 2003 affected about 55 million people and lasted for several days in some areas.)  Brazilian government officials were quick to blame bad weather as the culprit although few Brazilians seem to accept this explanation.  I have to say, that the government explanations have not been very convincing and the Minister of Energy just seems to want to act as if nothing happened.  Officially, several transmission lines short-circuited in the state of São Paulo causing a cascading effect that rippled across the country, in particular, shutting down the massive Itaipú Dam complex on the Brazilian-Paraguayan border.  At the moment, Itaipú generates more electrical power than any dam in the world, and nearly all of Paraguay’s power.  More than 80% of Brazil’s electrical power is hydroelectric.

São Paulo in the Dark

Despite the massive power failure, the country seems to have survived fairly well.  There was no surge in crime, no looting, and hospitals seem to have managed to take care of the most vulnerable patients.  In the aftermath of the 2003 U.S.-Canadian blackout—apparently caused by overgrown trees around transmission lines in Ohio—former U.S. Secretary of Energy, Bill Richardson, supposedly said that the U.S. was “a superpower with a third-world electricity grid.”  Given Brazil’s experience last Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, maybe we should say that Brazil is a “third-world country with a first-world electricity grid!”

On Madonna and Penguins

I am back in Rio after my travels through the southern fringes of the earth.  Under a hot, sunny sky, I walked down the beach this afternoon to stretch my legs and take a break from work.  (Yes, I am working most of the time!)  Near the end of Ipanema Beach (near the point known as Arpoador, or Harpooner) I came across a restless crowd of photographers, cameramen, and curious tourists ready with cameras.  Turns out that Madonna is in town and she was inside one of the most exclusive hotels in Rio, just across the street.  I sat and watched the crowd for a few minutes and then headed back up the beach toward my apartment.

Strange as it might seem, the gaggle of photographers reminded me of the herd of tourists on my cruise through the Straits of Magellan.  In particular, on the last day of our cruise, we visited a small island across from the main port—Punta Arenas—near the Atlantic entrance to the Straits.  Besides a lighthouse, the island is inhabited by thousands of Magellanic penguins.  They are in the nesting season and the ground is riddled with shallow nests dug into the side of the hill rising up to the lighthouse.

Penguins & Lighthouse

When we came ashore early in the morning (7 a.m.), many of the penguins were waddling down to the beach for a dip in the water–and breakfast.  Others were sitting on eggs (usually two) in the nests, and still others wandered around, beaks pointed straight up to the heavens, honking loudly.  (Just in case you wanted to know, they sound a lot like donkeys braying.)

Penguin nesting

Much like the paparazzi chasing Madonna in Ipanema, the hundred or so tourists from our boat (Americans, Latin Americans, Europeans, Australians) staked out the penguins and snapped photos with abandon.  Tourists have to stay on a roped off path that leads from the dock to the lighthouse.  At times, the cluster of tourists must have been amusing for the penguins.  (We were told not to use a flash because it damages the penguins’ eyes.)  Occasionally, we were tripping over each other to get out of the way of groups of penguins crossing our path on their way down to the beach, or back.

Penguins & Paparazzi

I am not sure why humans find penguins so appealing, but we do.  They are curious little critters with their waddle and tuxedo coating.  The Magellanic penguins are not quite as striking as the Emperor penguins who became media stars after the March of the Penguins movie, but they are incredibly fun to watch.  Fortunately, their population is also expanding.   According to our guide, there are now more than 500,000 Magellanic penguins in Tierra del Fuego alone, and the community is slowly growing.  In a couple of months, they will all hit the water and migrate up the South American coast as far as southern Brazil, before returning next August.  They will come back to the exact same spot in the Straits of Magellan guided by some sort of internal genetic code.

Penguins on the Beach

I have to say that I gave Madonna about five minutes, before giving up on a sighting.  Fortunately, the penguins did not make us wait, were easier to photograph, and a whole lot more interesting than Madonna!

Penguins waiting on Madonna to exit Ipanema hotel

Madonna finally makes an appearance to the delight of penguins and paparazzi in the Southern Hemisphere