Reporting from Brazil

This is my fifth day in Brasilia. Five days of relaxing in relative quiet, tucked comfortably into Nina and Beto's flat, allowing myself to be led about, sleep in, read books. I am not quite able to relax, to separate myself from the guilt that threatens to peek out from behind my masquerade of vacations. Five days away from the frantic rhythm of conference attending in Río de Janeiro, and then the 4 days of walking, walking, walking over the mosaic-lined streets, past sex-workers and tourists, few (fewer than I expected) famished children, and beautiful bodies that exercise at all hours of the day and night along the gorgeous coastline.

Friday night, my plane descended through darkness, over a city with wide avenues and neatly laid axes dividing it. It is a strangely desolate city, beautiful (if you can call it that) in its futurist government fantasy, straight-lined ministry buildings that comfort with their sameness, or perhaps threaten with their militaristic soldier's stance. Nina smiled and waved as I stepped out of the baggage claim area, and we slipped past the throngs of others to a flat, newly paved parking lot, driving into the black. It was so good to see her, to feel like the last two years since we saw one another in Mexico, melted away. So many things have changed, but things have stayed the same, including the sense that we meet people at certain points in our lives because we are meant to.

The "festas juninas" are in full swing, celebrating the patron Saint of Bahía: São João. The weekend passed in a flurry of activity, slow cafés de amanhã, food and parties. I spoke Portuguese, for practically the first time since I have been here, that is, if you exclude my typical chatting with taxi drivers, and straining to make some sense of meaning from bar-goers. I am finally immersed in an educated and engaging language environment, and it is exhausting.

Among the educated here, English and Spanish are commonly spoken, but I chose to fumble around in my inter-language, and have learned quite a few odds and ends along the way, words that complete certain lacunae, others that I never knew I was missing. A few examples are as follows:

gatinha = linda = cute
estufa= greenhouse
hortelã = mint
manjericão= basil
um cara= guy
urubu= black carrion eating bird
ameixa = ciruela = plum
castanha de cajú = cashew
tarada = (not like in Spanish where it means idiot/ jerk, or Brazilian "babaca") sex fiend

Nina and her lovely friend Ana Caro, have been accompanying me in the evenings, and girl-time, while something I have gotten plenty of with the new friends that I met in Río, is always welcome. We spent a lazy Sunday reading at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, and then Nina and I got comp tickets (her mother was a professional theater actress, and her friend was producing) for an international theater festival: a Russian clown tragicomedy about "Family" in which there were no words spoken. It was hilarious, and, in fact, profoundly emotional. The audience participated in such a natural way, and the sound-track was an integral part of the show. Today I spent the afternoon with Nina's 78-year-old grandmother who worked for years in the Senate, and was present for the 1988 constitution creation, as she took me around the Senate and the Congress and to the Palace of Itamaraty (Foreign Relations building, the name in Tupi–Guaraní means light/ or clear rocks, and apparently the Baron whose namesake this is was one of the early colonial precious stone merchants). The wide-open spaces that Oscar Niemeyer envisioned for this capital city, built from the ground up in 1960, are still impressive and respected. The grandiose scale is personally dwarfing, but, I can't say that it lends itself to bridging the vast gap between the bourgeoisie and the rest of the country. As Nina and Beto both work in government positions, we have been discussing (among other things) the difficulty of praxis, of actually putting into action the ideas and ideals for which one fights from within a system.

I am amazed at the contrast between Brasilia and its counterpart, the old capital, Río de Janeiro. My wanderings, though by no means exhaustive, lead me to the conclusion that the two places are as different as day and night. This is not a judgment, but rahter an (if cliché) observation. Where Brasilia is peopled by single-occupancy vehicles, Río is teeming with bodies in motion. In the affluent southern zones like Ipanema and the Lagoa, with well-kempt, figure conscious bodies pursuing exercise, in the "comunidades" and other more "popular"areas, with workers, fatigued at the end of the day, fighting against the impossibility of low wages and large families, on the beaches, soccer balls, always flying, sometimes in games of "soccer-volley"in which hands are off limits and heads, chests, thighs and feet are the means by which balls are propelled over the net, at night, on the sidewalks of Copacabana, women not so much strutting or hawking wares, but making those wares noticeable nonetheless, with a gentle sway of the hips, or perhaps a defiant thrust of the chin.

I asked my new friend Niamh one night, late, as we walked back to our hotel after celebrating, I think, my birthday. "How does one procure a prostitute? I mean, men obviously have some training that we do not. What sort of initiation must you employ. How do you know?" We pondered this for a bit, imagining that there must be some sort of code. I was thinking how dreadfully embarrassing it must be to make a mistake, and as I pondered this, a man neither young nor old, neither attractive or horrible un-so, says to us "Compro sexo". We burst into laughter as we march past him, in our very un-alluring clothing (Niamh is wearing long tights under a skirt and chunky sandals with a Mexican rebozo wrapped tightly around her, to combat the late night chill, I am also wearing sandals, and a modest (very modest) dress and sweater). "Well, I guess we have our answer," she laughs... "But wait, was he buying or selling? What does that say about us?!"

OF course, what it says is that we were doing precisely what we were warned against, walking alone, two women, unaccompanied. Nevertheless, and despite such well-intentioned and well-advised warnings, that was, perhaps, the most pernicious experience that we had. Earlier that day, Selene and Sara and I, after our wandering through Santa Teresa (which, at the time I only imagined, but later confirmed is in quite a dangerous spot, as it lies in all its decadent colonial splendor, precisely between two warring Favelas) were sitting by the ocean-side contemplating the graceful curves of the rock-embraced bay, when after declining his wares, a kindly vendor warned us with gestures that were unsettling (an imaginary knife slicing an imaginary throat, presumably one of ours) that we should not stay on the beach after dark because the police could not see us. It was still light, and despite our gringa chatter, we proved ourselves aware of our surroundings, and did in fact, get up and leave en-masse when two questionable "figuras" or characters, came ambling our way in a vaguely menacing manner.

There was a general consensus among the female conference-goers that Río was far more inviting and far less dangerous-feeling than we had imagined before comming. I certainly spent a good deal of time comparing it with Mexico City and concluding (not surprisingly) that the cultures are entirely disparate. The most notable differences regarding my sense of personal comfort and safety are the following: 1) Unlike the experience I often have in Mexico in which men leer, make obscene gestures and comments, and catcall from distances (and don't get me wrong, I love Mexico, and once in a while even miss such enthusiastic attention, especially when trapped in the heart of gringo-babilonia in which no one looks you in the eye, let alone makes you feel lust-worthy), the tendency that I noted here, beyond appreciative looks, was that men will engage in flirtatious behaviour (rather readily) only when invited to do so, by means of casual conversation (as in the case of taxi drivers who assert their single-ness and disbelieve one's own), and, at least as far as my 10-day experience goes, comments rather than lude and degrading, tend to be friendly and uplifting (if not necessarily sincere). 2) Personal space is respected, and even in crowds, other pedestrians are given a decent berth that seems almost iviolable. 3) Beach-peddlars, and street-vendors, while enthusiastic, are, in general, very easily and graciously denied. That said, I found that in my brusque ways (accustomed to my stone-faced blocking of tenacious hagglers and hangers-on), I actually offended several, until I realized that they were, in fact, quite sensitive and that a smile was an acceptable out, rather than an invitation for unwanted sales attempts.

So Río, in all its 75 degree late-fall wonder, indeed holds a place in my heart, and an invitation to return. Though my initial exuberant claims of wanting to live there are, I realize, not essentially true, mostly because it feels like a city that when lived in loses much of the glossy sheen, and the profound class discrepancies likely wear on one's conscience to the point of agony. And, Brasilia, a bit like LA, and DC, and at the same time nothing at all, has offered quite a bit of insight into the inner workings of the Brazilian government, with its ambitious youthful middle class, and its sense of austerity and containment. Next, Nina and I are off to São Paulo this Friday, which, I have hear compared to NYC... We shall see... We shall see... In the meantime, I am off to the "Clube de Choro" to hear a child-prodigy play the songs of Chico Buarque, and perhaps to the National Museum tomorrow.

PS
The concert was so amazing, and much more than just Chico Buarque... but here is a sample: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn2YPiqdUH4