Brasileros, South America's most vibrant people

May 1, 1991
Greetings to All:
When last we wrote we were on our way to meet Sandra in Brazil. It was nice to se her again. She bought her new boyfriend alon so that I would have somebody to talk to which habe the ahd Carol a chance to do their thing without having to worry about anythird party. The two of them picked up right where they left off and the gabed the whole night. Her new boyfriend wanted ot know how long the two of them had known each other since they seemed like old friends. Sandra told Carol that here she is, 28 years old, a university graduate, an architect, and she had only known this guy for three days and he was already telling her how she should plan and organize her life. No problem with her taking care of herself, however.
Brazil is thes incredible place where everything is run at about 150%. We asked Brazilians why the country was so different from the others in S.A. and they just laughed and said. "It's Brazil, that's all." They also said that theynever notice the life of the country until they leave and then everything seems so slow, the people so dead, and dull. Brazilians seem to have this feeling that the only thng that is important is right now. That gives them this wonderful joy of living, but it is also the same trait which causes them to fail to plan for tomorrow. It is both a blessing and a curse, and you feel the life of the country the moment you enter it.
One of our ex-students came to Brazil as an exchange student and so fell in love wih the place that she now lives here permanently and is planing on marrying a Brazilian. Kim Genschmer was really a Brazilian when she was 13, but just didn't know it until she came down here. She fits in so well.l She really hit the jackpot with one of her host families. One of the sons is now her fiance. We wanted to look her up and had imformed her that we would call when we arrived. She attends a university about 20 minutes away from the family and when we called, her "Mother-in-law" answered the phone. she came to pick up at the bus station and would not hear of us staying at a hotel. they brought out coffee (that's Brazilian coffee, realllly liquid sugar, very thick and very strong), and within 20 of talking with her, she had our next week plananed. WE would go to their beach house on Wednesday and stay overnight so that we could visit a beautiful area along the coast. On Friday, upon our return, we would go to the farm and visit there, and it just so happened that the grandfather of this family was being honored in Rio on Saturday night with his picture being put on the new monetary note being issued, so we had to go the the dinner and celebration with them on Saturday. On Sunday was a birthday party and the whole family would be there so we had to come, tool. This is the way they are. You walk in, and immediately, you are one of them. It was great to relax in a home for awhile.
Some family history. The grandfather who was being honored was named Vital Brazil. He is the one who discovered the anti-venom snake preventative. He had several friends die from snake bites and wanted to do something about it and experimented with the venom. Nobody took him seriously until in 1915, while in NYC for a conference, a man was bitten and nobody could save him. Somebody remembered that there was this Brasalian in town and why not try anything. He saved the man's life and became a big hero in Brazil. He went on to found several clinics and is the father of all such medicine and research. He had 22 children by two wives, the first one died, no surprise. One of his son's was named Ruy. A family crisis brought one of Vital Brazil's cousin's family with 19 children to live in this house and one of those children was a girl named Alda. Alda was three when she came to live there and Ruy was four. They are now 79 and 80 and have been married for 60 years. Not only that, but tghey became boyfriend and girlfriend almost immediately. She loves to tell the story that he kissed her for the first time behind the curtains when she was seven years old, and they have been together ever since. Old and stooped now, they still kiss when passing the hallway. She still pats him on the backside, and you would think they just became lovers. It is so wonderful to see. One of Ruy and Alda's sons is Tirso Vital Brazil and it is in his home that we stayed.
After our wonderful week we wre back on our own. Travelling across Brazil is like riding on this green carpet. Everything is green: mountain tops, valleys, just this lush richness to the entire country. The highways are dangerous as hell, everybody seems to be in such a great hurry in Brasil, afterall there is no tomorrow. Traffic accidents are everywhere. There is a group called the "Angels of the Ashpalt," stationed every few kilometers which rush to the aid of traffic victims. They are kept very busy. Along the way we passed many motels. NOthing unusual about them until we asked Kim and Alvaro about them. They laughed because motels in Brasil are trysting places. Very private, they have names like The Edan, Shrangrai-la, The Ideal, Valentine, and so forth. The rooms rent for four hour blocks. You drive in to a private garage, the carport door rolls down so tht nobody can see your car, you order food and, or drink, over the telephone. They are delivered in a kind of dumb-waiter system, and when it is time to leave, you ring the office, a light comes on near a window, it opens up and a hand is thrust into your roomwith the bill. You then put your hand into the blackness on the other side of the windo with the money, the window closes, you get into your car and drive off. All very private, all very discreet. They are everywhere which makes onbe think that there is a lot of trysting going on. supposedly, the occupants of the rooms are over the age of 18, but kids use them a lot. If they have a driver's license, they have access to them.
Which only in part accounts for the pregnancy rate here in Brasil. Kim and Alvaro had this long discussion about whether 80% or 90 % of the girls are pregnant when they get married. I won't quibble, lets just take the 80% figure. The two of them could only think of one girl who was not pregnant when she got married in the four years that they have been going out. Birth control pills are available, but Kim's theory is that if they take the pills then it is the same as admitting that they plan on having sex. By not taking the ppills, they only have sex as a spur of the moment thinng, and that is very different in their minds. It is not just a problem with the lower economic groups. Kim and Alvaro's group is definitely middle to upper class and it is the same.
The position of women is improving but still remains in the dark ages. The 60 Minutes show where a man can kill his wife and escape punishment is still true and it is hard for women to be taken seriously. Statements like "That is a very intelligent thing to say, considering you are a woman," are the norm and it is hard to move up in a male dominated society.
In Rio we were warned so much about our personal safety that we were continually on guard. We didn't have anyproblems, but the stres really wears on you. The warnings didn't just come from trvellers who had been robbed, but from Brasilians as well: "Don't wear any jewelry of any kind. Take off your wedding rings, if they can't get them off, they'll cut your finger off. Don't speak English to each other - it identifies you as a tourist. Don't walk on the outside of the sidewalk- they drive by with big hooks and hook your purse from their cars. Beware of anyone with a rolled up newspaper - it hides a knife or a gun. Don't let strangers talk to you. Don't accept rides incars. don't ride the buses, and above all, when you are robbed have some money on you, because if they are going to take the time to rob you, they expect something. If you have nothing, they get angry and violent. As I said, in the end, we did not have any problems, but when people are poor, they do desperate things.
Brasilians are very active. We stayed 1/2 block from Ipanema Beach and on weekends and holidays, they close off the street and everybody and their pets are out running, biking, skateboarding, walking with the dogs, or pushing prams all day long. They start about 6:30 a.m. and it continues long after dark. During the week, they just use the sidewalk, but they are the most health conscious people we have ever seen.
The beaches, and there are many, in Rio are filled with surfers, swimmers, fishermen with nets casting into the water, and of course there are "The bodies." Men sculpted in stone strutting their stuff, and women in bikinis held together with 4 pound test fishing line. All the women wear these suits from age 8 to 80. One girl about 21 passes you and you say, "Oh, my God," then a woman of 75 passes you with the same kind of bikini on and again you say "Oh, my God." All levels of the titilation scale are reached on Rio's beaches.
We went to see a soccer game in the huge 250,000 capacity Maracana Stadium. It was an internaional match between a Rio team and one from Buenas Aires. The home team won and the ride back on the bus was one of the wildest events of this entire trip. Everybody packs into the buses until there is absolutely no room for anyone else, and then another 20 muscle their way on. No room inside, no problem, jump up nd grab the windows, and off we go down the road with people hanging out the windows, their feet inside and the rest of their body outside. People hanging on to the bumpers, and everybody screaming and singing the local team's song for the entire ride. Everybody shouts at the driver to stay on the left so that more people can cram on. The light turns red, but the drivers screams on through it to the wild cheers of the riders. We pass some girls sitting on a bench, even wilder cheers and songs that I don't really understand, but I really do. We pass a police checkpoint and everything gets very quiet until we pass and then delirious joy erupts.Ass this happens at about 45 miles an hour through Rio's curvy, bumpy streets.Everybody expects the bus to tip over and when the curve is successfully negotiated, what else but more wild cheering and singing. All this singing is supposed to be accompanied by clapping, but when you are hanging one with one hand, yor can't clap, so you bang on the bus. With closed fist, with feet, with whatever you are carrying.By the end of the 40 minute ride across town, the bus is a shambles. The plastic interior is broken, seats have been torn up, and all the time, the driver just drives on, never looking back. Stupid he is not.
The normal bus fare in Rio was 56 Cruzieros. Except that there are not czs in single demonations, so you give, 110 120 for two people, whatever you have. Change never comes back. There is an area in the back of the bus where you can ride for free, so even the poor people can get around.
There is no such thing as change in Brasil, becuae nobody ever has any. Instead of change you get pieces of candy, razor blades, bubble gum, phone tokens, and any other item of inconsequential value which you don't really want, but the alternative is to get nothing. It is just the way things run in Brasil and nobody gets upset about it.
The poverty of Rio is a never forgettable sight. If you have a cardboard box, then you have a gome. Any projecting wall has whole families living under it. At dark, the mattresses roll out on the street and you have to pick your way around them, even in fashionable area like Copacabana and Ipanema. The hills, or favalaqs, are about as bad as they get anywhere in the world. Even the police won't go into them. They have their own laws and rules. Rio is a fantasy and dark reality all at the same time.
Education is the hope of the future, but in Brasil the hope is dim, for the education system is a ripoff of the poor. a number of years ago the government decided to subsidize the private schools. The reality of this was that tuition to public schools was reduced so now that the middle class as well as the rich could afford private education. Not only that, but private schools could now afford to pay their teachers significantly higher salaries and so all the gook teachers went to the private sector and the public schools were left with the poorest, (financially) kids, and the poorest (quality-wise) teachers.
Our week in Rio came to an end and we headed off for Brasilia, 700 miles to the west. This artificial capital of the country has very stuning architecture, the latest in urban planning, and some of the best minds in Brasil living there. It is also a dead city. A monument to the fact that when it comes to a city having a life of its own, it can't be planned into it. On the weekend, everybody who can afford it, heads for Rio or Sao Paulo, or anywhere where people actully live and not just work. People living in Brasilia asked us what we thought of it, and all we could say was that it was very pretty, very interesting, but didn't seem to have any life to it. They would laugh and respond that it didn't, and that it was the biggest joke in Brasil. The fact that all the great cities of the world are great cities because over the years they have developed personalities, individual neighborhoods which reflect the people. Brasilia has everythging perfectly planned, and it's dead.
Our last experience in Brasil was the Pantanal. This huge swamp is the size of Texas and is a wonderful sanctuary of bird and animal life. We had really been looking forward to seeing it and we were not disappointed. We saw two different aspects of it. We took a taxi ($100) to a hotes down the Pantanal highway. You can only get down it part of the year because it floods and the one story hotel was great. Wonderful meals, alligators right outside your room (the hotel is built out over the water) and the calls of so many different birds that you could hear but never see. At the other end of the spectrum, we joined up with a Brazilian guide who took us with him, his assistant, 5 Israelis, an Englishman a German girl, a Japanese boy, Carol and I, and the cook, who said that he was crazy. A;ll 13 of us in a modified short bed, narrow body pickup. People hanging out everywhere. 4 inside the cab, 4 in the bed of the pickup, 4 on top of the roof of the cab with their feet hanging down over the windshield (for better vision) and one riding on the hood of the truck. The cook is crazy? Hell, we were All crazy. We went back into the swamp for three days of terrible sanitary conditions barely tolerable food, (the cook IS crazy), dirty living accommodations (everybody in the same soom with hammocks and awful beds, and wild rides through the swamp, and loved every moment of the whole experience.
The whole area is filled with cattle ranches and is one of the few areas where man and nature really co-exist to the benefit of each. The ranchers have put up all kinds of signs "When you fire a gun, all you kill is nature." "If you burn a match, all you can harvest is ashes," and the like. So we rode all around the ranches, our guide was born on one of them and knows all the people out there.
We would be tearing across the land, when the brakes would slam on, Rudy, the assistant, would run off and come back with some exotic animal. We dug up, literally, armadillos, chased down wild boar, coatis, climbed trees trying, unsuccessfully, to catch monkeys, caught 6 foot alligators (using the blue thong of the Japanese as bait), found a 20 foot anaconda eating a 5 foot alligator, saw wild deer capibaras, rhea, and an extraordinary variety of animals which we will not soon forget. The pickup, we were told, had "Yellow fever." It got delirious and just kind of went all over the road whenever it wanted. But in the end we made it back asfely and whe whole experience was all we wanted it to be and was a wonderful sendoff to Brazil.

About Bolivia, next time,