Adventures of a Gringa

Back to Recife

It had been nearly six years since I'd been to Recife, where I visited on my first trip to Brazil. At the time, everything was so new and exciting that I was fascinated by every single place I went, so after living and traveling in Brazil and going back, I was curious to see how'd I feel about the city. I didn't have very much time, but I think I actually liked it even more.

The mixture of the stunning coastline, the incredibly rich history, the beautiful colonial architecture, the food, and the urban center all together gives the city a feel that is somehow distinct from Rio or other historic coastal cities in Brazil. It actually reminded me much more of the Caribbean this time; wandering through the outdoor markets in Centro, I felt I could have been in Santo Domingo. On the other hand, other parts of the city feel more like Miami, with rows and rows of high rises. It's a weird mix, but it works.

Photo: Guilherme Jofili

I also think that while Rio has had a renaissance in the last few years, you can feel Brazil's growth and development much more acutely in Recife. Not only is the sense of optimism strong, but the signs of construction, new businesses, and the growing middle class are nearly everywhere you look. That's not to say there's no longer poverty; you can see the favelas as you fly in, and there are still people living on the streets. But based on what I've read, this trend of exploding development is all over the northeast. So for those looking to see change and development in Brazil, it's a good idea to head north.

That said, the cult of Lula is strong here, since he is originally from Pernambuco. Dona Lindu Park, named after the former president's mother, was built on the waterfront a few years ago, and now has a theater and leisure area. There park also has this statue of Dona Lindu and all of her children.

Photo: Raul D

The other thing I noticed this time was the Pernambuco accent. It used to sound strange to my ears, even to the point of being a little irritating, but this time for some reason, I got used to it, and even grew fond of it.

Recife doesn't seem to be an obvious destination for American tourists; many of the foreign tourists I saw were European. But beyond Rio and Salvador, for example, Recife is the perfect mix of beaches, culture, and history, with plenty to explore outside the city and along the coast. There's so much to see.

But one of the problems is getting there. I had to fly through São Paulo, three hours in the wrong direction when flying from the U.S. There are direct flights from Miami, but I did quite a few searches using different dates, and only came across them occasionally. Now, tourism officials are in talks to establish a direct flight from Recife to New York, which would be pretty great.

So I guess what I'm saying is that if you've already seen Rio and São Paulo, it's time to head north. It's well worth it.

Interview With Alex Castro

This week, I had a chance to catch up with Alex Castro, one of my favorite Brazilian bloggers. He has a  keen and critical eye for some of the most sensitive social issues in Brazil, including racism, machismo, and domestic workers. After living abroad, he also writes with an fascinating perspective on social differences between the United States and Brazil. He writes his own blog, Liberal Libertário Libertino, as well as contributing to Papo de Homem. He's also written several books, including short stories and novels. He also was one of the founders of the hit Tumblr Classe Média Sofre, a crowdsourced blog that pokes fun at Brazil's middle class. It's become a cultural phenomenon in Brazil, falling somewhere between Lamebook and White Girl Problems, but providing more insight into social idiosyncracies. 

We chatted about his return to Brazil from New Orleans, emblematic of Brazil's increasing reverse brain drain, his various projects, and his thoughts on Brazil's changing role in the world.

What were you doing abroad?

I was living in New Orleans. I was a Ph.D. candidate at the department of Spanish & Portuguese at Tulane University. As such, part of my duties included teaching classes on the Spanish and Portuguese languages, plus the odd Brazilian literature and culture classes. My dissertation is about slavery (or the lack thereof) in Brazilian 19th century literature.

‪Can you tell me about why you decided to move back to Rio from New Orleans?‬

I came back because a man who is a living god to me once said: "I celebrate myself, and sing myself, / And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. // I loafe and invite my soul, / I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. ... / I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, / Hoping to cease not till death." And even though he has never died, because he cannot die, I know for a fact that he suffered a stroke 18 years after writing those words.

So, when I turned 37, last year, still in perfect health, and hoping not to cease till death, and not knowing how long would I have before my heart attack, I decided to return home and live the life of a writer. Because if even HE died, what hope can I have? On the contrary, I have to RUN and LIVE. I realized that I was and had always been a Brazilian writer. So even though I had lived in New Orleans for 7 years and could write in English, I had never felt the urge to write to New Orleanians about Rio but, on the contrary, I was always coming up with new things about New Orleans and the U.S. to tell Brazilians. I realized that, in my head, I was always talking and writing to Brazilians. They were my core audience, and so it made no sense to stay away.

Throughout the years, there had always been events and stuff that I was invited to and couldn't attend because I was in New Orleans. None of them by themselves were a major deal, but the career of a minor independent author is made of baby steps, so I felt my incipient (actually, non-existent) career was at a standstill. Now, for example, I'm going to Belo Horizonte in April for a roundtable about e-books. So I came to Rio and I'm now making a living as a writer, writing and editing for Papo de Homem, translating for Editora Record, and trying to finish my dissertation and my novel.

Tell me about your book, Onde Perdemos Tudo.

It's actually an old book, written in the early 90s. But I think it withstood the test of time, so here I'm publishing it. It is the only one of my books to be actually published by an actual publishing house. All my other books were self-published. It's composed of five short stories about loss, all kinds of loss, from losing a friend to losing your wife, or your career.

Why'd you go the self-publishing route with the other books and the publishing house route with this one?

It wasn't a choice. Nobody wanted to publish the other ones. For Onde Perdemos Tudo, I had a publisher interested in my work and an able literary agent who got her interested. Still, unless you're a best seller, one can make a lot more money self-publishing.

How has the book been received?

It's very hard to break through. It has been positively reviewed in blogs here and there, but nothing in the mainstream press. It's as if the book has never existed. But I have a loyal following of readers, and so it keeps selling. It can be frustrating, but it's the only way. Baby steps, as I always say. But at least now I'm here to network and promote the books.

In Papo de Homem and your blog Liberal Libertário Libertino, you write a lot about racism and machismo with a critical eye. Why are these issues important to you?

That's a very good question. I really don't know. I guess I had a very very privileged, sheltered upbringing, something that I only realized very late in my adult life. So I felt the need to.... give back? Finally look at other people other than myself? That sort of thing. Also, the American academic environment was the main catalyst, that's for sure. If I had stayed, maybe I'd be reading Veja. I remember I rather liked Diogo Mainardi, if you can believe that.

You have a really unique perspective that's sometimes hard to find in Brazil, particularly with racism. How did your views on that issue evolve?

People say that I'm bringing racial conflct into Brazil and I argue, Yes! We need more racial confrontation! One of the major problems in Brazil is the fact that we never "confront" the issues.

You've also written quite a bit about domestic workers, which is also something of a taboo topic in Brazil. What got you interested in this?

Well, actually it was my interest in slavery. I think domestic workers, as the profession has established itself in Brazilian culture, is a direct relic of slavery. Only a former unapologetically slave-owning country such as we are could ever have such a slavery-like institution as our live-in maids. So it is a bit of the past alive in our daily lives up to today.

On the subject of your blogs, given your perspective and knowledge of these issues, why is it more important for Brazilians to be your audience, rather than an international one?

It's the other way around. It's not that talking to Brazilians is more important than talking to an international audience, but rather that I feel I have something to tell, teach, show to a Brazilian audience that I don't have to an international one.

Let's talk about Classe Média Sofre, but I noticed you don't seem to have your name on the blog, at least not very visibly. Is there a reason for that?

Well, for starters, it is a collective and collaborative enterprise, so it's not mine per se but I'm one of the founders and co-creators. Since then, everyone else has left, other people have gotten involved and left again, and now, pretty much, I'm the only one left managing the business. But the site still depends of the anonymous collaboration of hundreds of people every day. I'm more of a curator than anything else. I try to keep it faithful to its original vision, but mostly the only reason I'm the visible face of it is because I'm a writer, so I need the visibility and it does help me to sell some books. Actually, if it weren't for that, the site would either still be 100% anonymous or, more likely, I'd have gotten bored and left with everyone else. Still, it's the one thing I've done that I'm actually proud of.
 
Can you tell me about how the blog got started, and why you thought it would be worthwhile?

Its major inspiration was White Whine and Louis C K, when he says something like this. So a friend and I had the idea, and we started looking for examples. They were so numerous that it took us a day to fill several pages, and two days later we were already receiving more contributions than we could handle. On day 4, I kid you not, on day FOUR, we got our first complaint that the tumblr was no longer as good as it once was.

It caught on pretty fast.

Yes, it was amazing. And people were already self-censoring their worst bullshit pretty fast too. It was inspiring.

The blog's been featured around the web and it's literally become a cultural reference. Why do you think it hit a nerve?

Well, on one hand, lots of people feel really really defensive about it. They take the site as a personal attack to them. On the other hand, for several other people, the blog gave them their first way to vent their frustration at some of the most whiny, elitist comments their friends make. You can bet people will say that there's nothing more classe media sofre than giving this interview in English! I especially love it when people accuse us of being "middle class too," and of course we are. What did they think we were? Millionaires? Favelados?

What's the absolute worst thing you've posted on there?

There can be no worst. You can always sink lower.

Ok, so your favorite?

"Pior dia da minha vida: acabou o chocolate." [Worst day of my life: the chocolate is gone.] Simple yet perfect.

Can you tell me your thoughts on the complexo de vira-lata and the obsession with everything foreign/in English?

Brazilians are obssessed with Brazil to an extent that only Americans are obssessed with the U.S. We are truly kindred peoples, yours and mine. I'm pretty sure, given the power, Brazilians would have done every single thing Americans have. Brazilians are as proud, egocentric, and naive as Americans. We have our own version of manifest destiny (the Bandeirantes), etc.

I've never seen any people as interested about what people are saying about them abroad. In a way, in Classe Média Sofre, we talk about both sides of this coin. So, in a very schizophrenic way, what comes from abroad can seem very important or not at all important. And of course, I'm guilty as charged, because I travelled, and I studied abroad, and I could have studied anything, I could have dedicated myself to ancient Greece or pure mathematics, but here I am thinking about Brazil and writing about Brazil. It's kind of a curse, but it was also my choice, so I don't in any way exclude myself from this. I'm part of it.

Brazil is undergoing so many changes in terms of its place in the world. Is there a chance it could become more insular and inward looking like in the U.S., or is this fascination with other countries here to stay?

I think Brazil is in fact getting more powerful as a country, so other countries will tend to seek Brazil's opinion or support more often, and consequently, Brazilian politicians and statesmen will be forced to be more versed in international affairs than their predecessors, and consequently, the Brazilian voter as well. You can see that starting. These past years, Honduras, Cuba and Iran were more talked about, even during elections, than I had ever seen before. In elections before 2010, foreign affairs had never had any relevance at ALL.

When I started teaching Portuguese in the U.S. in 2005, most of my students were there because they had a Brazilian signficant other, or a Brazilian parent, or liked bossa nova and City of God. Period. When I left, in 2011, most of my students were actually seeking employment, business or research opportunities in Brazil. There were lawyers and business majors; most of them had not watched City of God, but they knew about Petrobras, pre-salt and biofuel. It was a complete revolution in less than 6 years. Several  of my former students are now either working and living in Brazil, or living in the U.S. but working as "Brazilian liasons" with companies that do business in Brazil.

I think it's exciting and I'm a part of it. I'm part of a large reverse migration of Brazilians coming back from abroad these last few years, exactly because of all these opportunities, but it's important not to let this go to our heads.

Why's that?

The United States was once a country that was actually a beacon of democracy and of high ideals, before it stated having imperial dreams and conquering Mexico, the Phillipines, Cuba, etc. Brazil was an actual empire-empire once. People were afraid of us in the 19th century (my main area of knowledge). Brazil used to topple Uruguyan presidents in the 19th century the same way Americans did to Central American ones in the 20th century. Besides, we do tend to be overconfident and overindulgent. Raising people from poverty should continue to be number one priority.

So you don't want history to repeat itself, in other words.

Actually, that particular history has no chance of repeating itself, I think. But we can be stupid and overconfident in several new ways now.

What are your hopes for the future now that you're back in Brazil?

My main priority is being a writer. That's all I know how to do. Write, write, write, until I die. That's my only ambition. Get some writing done. Publication will take care of itself, or not. But time is running out and I need to get some books out of me. That's it.

São Paulo Airport Mayhem

Last week, the Brazilian government finally took the step of starting the privatization process for the country's airports, starting with São Paulo's Guarulhos, Campinas, and Brasília. Rio will likely come next, as well as Belo Horizonte and Manaus. Because of the growing economy and burgeoning middle class, airports across Brazil are bursting at the seams: demand for air travel grew 194 percent in the last decade and 16 percent last year, with over 107 million passengers in Brazilian airports in 2011. Guarulhos and Galeão, two of the largest airports in the country, are among the worst, and the government hopes to improve airports across Brazil before the World Cup and Olympics. But the reality is that the airports need to be upgraded right away to handle the skyrocketing number of Brazilian travelers, as well as an influx of foreign business travelers and tourists.

São Paulo is a case in point. Brazil's biggest city has an international airport that was rated the worst airport in Latin America for business travelers, given "long lines and inefficiencies." A Brazilian grad student at the University of Manchester dedicated his dissertation to a case study on Guarulhos, examining its problems and possible solutions. In it, he identifies seven big issues: "existing safety and security procedures; lack of political will from the airport administrator to implement the solutions; inefficiencies in different elements of the process; existing physical infrastructure and lack of flexibility; necessity of stakeholders cultural change; conflicting stakeholders interest; and existing procurement legislation." I would soon experience most of these.

                                                                          Photo: David Gacs

The first thing I noticed when I flew in to São Paulo last week was that we had to disembark right onto the tarmac and take a bus to the terminal. I've flown in to Guarulhos before from abroad and from within Brazil to make connections and don't remember this happening. But this time, it happened for every flight, both domestic and international flights. I wasn't sure why they couldn't just get a jetway, especially for the larger international flights. The buses were ok, but they slowed things down, especially when we were running late for a connection on the way back to New York. I figured it would be okay though, since we didn't have to check in. I was wrong.

When we got to the international departures entrance, my heart nearly stopped. There were hundreds of people in line, which snaked around four times before stretching back down the hallway.

                                                                                Photo: David Gacs

After waiting in line for twenty minutes or so, slightly feverish with anxiety, the clock ticked to the exact time our flight was supposed to start boarding. Finally, at the advice of a guy at the information desk, we got out of line and went to speak to the lady checking tickets in front of the immigration area. "No, no, you can't come in here. Sorry," she said, after we explained our flight was boarding. "Talk to that guy." She pointed to a TAM employee, who was studiously switching back and forth between a walkie-talkie and a cell phone. We hurried over. He acknowledged our presence, but refused to put down his two devices, and continued switching between them while occasionally holding up a finger in our direction to recognize that he realized we very much wanted to speak to him. This went on for a few minutes, at which point I was literally squirming with impatience. He shot me a half-annoyed, half-bemused look before putting down his phones.

"Do you speak Portuguese?" was his first question. English was a nonstarter, apparently - gringos be damned. He then proceeded to explain that a guy would take us and other passengers from our flight over to another terminal, which would theoretically be faster, and then we would go back to the other terminal to board our flight. He did not seem concerned that our flight was supposed to leave in less than an hour. Soon, other passengers began gathering, and a group of maybe twenty people began following the guy appointed to march us to the other terminal. On the way, I overheard him telling another employee that there were only five federal police working at the original terminal, which was part of the reason for the horrendous line. I didn't find out why this was, or what the real number of agents that should have been working. One time when I was leaving Rio, a strike caused some pretty bad lines going through immigration, but it was nothing in comparison to this one.

The pack leader walked pretty fast, with mostly Brazilians in tow. We snaked through a strange back corridor with only airline employees idling in the narrow doorways, some of whom I nearly crashed into as we swept through. It was a decent walk, and I couldn't tell if we lost people along the way. When we got to the terminal entrance, the guy checking tickets said, "Miss? You can't come in this way." I pointed to the leader. "He said we could!" I proclaimed, and off we went. As it turned out, we were in for more lines. The Brazilian line at immigration was long and very slow. The foreigner line was shorter, but also painfully slow; there only seemed to be one agent for the line. When I finally got through, I was a little overheated; there didn't seem to be functioning air conditioning in the room. The female agent also seemed to have noticed, and she had stripped down to a white tank top as she stamped passports. After feverishly rushing through security, we were home free! Or so I thought. The pack leader was idling at the security exit. "Yeah, just go back to the other terminal now," he told us. "Is everything going to be ok?" I asked, stupidly. He was unfazed. "Yup. Just head over there." This strange scheme did not seem to be out of the ordinary. I wondered how often they did this passenger relay game.

We then discovered just how far we were from the other terminal, and the fact that our flight was just about to leave, we started to run. By the time we got to the gate, I was huffing and puffing and covered in sweat. Though the flight should have been taking off, to our dismay, our gate was marked Buenos Aires. Where the hell was our gate? We asked around and determined that yes, that tiny area in the basement was in fact our gate, and mercifully, our flight was delayed. If it hadn't been, we likely would have missed it.

We hurried back downstairs and miraculously, our flight was now on the board and people were lined up to get on the bus. It turns out they had switched the gate at the last minute and made all of the passengers run (literally run, according to an older woman in line) to the new gate. At this point I was shiny with sweat, my hair was in disarray, and I'd discovered a large sunburned patch on my arm from wandering around in the sun earlier in the day. Needless to say, I was picked for the extra security check.

When we finally sat down in our seats, I was never so grateful to be in the uncomfortable sardine can that is the very back of coach for a ten hour flight. I wondered how many other Guarulhos passengers felt the same.

First Impressions: São Paulo

After living in Brazil relatively close to São Paulo, I'd been curious to visit but never really got around to it. I'd been more eager to see coastal cities, and figured I'd eventually have a good reason to go, since I have lots of Paulista friends and there are tons of events in the city. So last week, when I finally had an opportunity to visit, I jumped at the chance.

I tried not to let me expectations cloud my impressions, to try to go in with a blank slate. But there were so many things I'd heard about the city. Some say it's the New York of Brazil. Gringo friends who loved the city said part of the reason was because they like "complicated" cities. Other friends said they found the city overwhelming. Articles I'd read in travel publications made it seem incredibly cosmopolitan. Almost everyone I know who lives there has complained about how expensive it is. I wasn't quite sure what to expect.

It could have been that I was running on little sleep and struggling with jetlag, but the whole time I felt a little bit as if I was in a strange dream. The city feels like someone took a bunch of Brazilian cities and smushed them together to form this massive urban center. The city is a jumble of so many different forms of architecture, which can feel a bit jarring when seeing it for the first time: there are the gothic churches, the fancy luxury condos, the Niemeyer architecture, the modern skyscrapers, the gritty commercial underbelly, the contemporary mansions, peaking out from behind high walls, the brightly painted boutiques and restaurants, the car dealerships, the endless apartment complexes. I actually thought I might be hallucinating when I saw an enormous, undulating, shiny, very purple building rising over the smaller buildings of a leafy, upscale neighborhood. (I later found out it's a cultural center).

Photo: Tadeu Pereira

The city doesn't seem to end. Everywhere you look, the city keeps going and going. It's just incredibly dense;  if there ever was a concrete jungle, this is it. If you think about it too much, it can start to get a little overwhelming.

The juxtaposition of endless buildings and tropical foliage is somehow surprising; it seems odd that so much green could flourish in such a dense urban space. But beautiful purple trees and flowers and palms pop up all over the city. And even though it has been Brazil's largest and most prosperous city for so long, signs of the country's boom are everywhere.

I didn't have enough time to go to all of the places I wanted to see--there's so many museums and cultural centers I'd love to visit. Also, though I only saw a tiny sliver of it, the nightlife looked great; the bars in hip Vila Madalena were an interesting contrast to Rio's Lapa neighborhood. I'd also go back for the food. It's true what they say about food in São Paulo. It's so good. Everywhere I looked, there was mouth-watering food.

But I think what I loved most about the city was the people. I feel really fortunate to have friends there, and it was much more fun to see the city with them as my guides. Plus, the city really is the rainbow of people that Brazilians love to tout as representative of Brazil's diversity, even more so than in Rio, given the large Asian population as well as Latin American and Middle Eastern immigrants. The city makes for great people watching, no matter where you go.

And like Cariocas, Paulistas are warm, welcoming, and eager to show off their city. In that respect, they're not so different after all.

Brazil Through the Media Lens

Something that drives some Brazilians and Brazil observers crazy is the international media's tendency to constant relate Brazil's misfortunes to the upcoming World Cup and Olympics. After three buildings collapsed in Rio last week, likely due to illegal construction in one of the buildings, one of the most prevalent messages throughout the English-language coverage of the tragedy was relating the events to Brazil's preparedness for the international events. Not about Brazil's building codes, or construction laws, or safety regulations (luckily, some people did cover those issues, as you'll see shortly, and there are still plenty of talented journalists providing great coverage of Brazil), but just the basics of the aftermath and why the tragedy reflects poorly on Brazil's upcoming events. Just search for terms related to the building collapse with Olympics or World Cup and you'll find dozens of results. It's not that they're completely off target; some of the articles are thoughtful and sensible, like this one from the Christian Science Monitor, which delves into some of the important issues about construction. But it makes you wonder if journalists are legitimately connecting current events to the Olympics, or if the editorial directive is to make that connection in order to inspire interest in readers.

It's not as if there has been a shortage of tragic events in Rio in particular; as Julia Michaels explains on Rio Real Blog, "In the last year Rio has seen exploding manhole covers, trolley, ferry and bus accidents, metro stoppages and electrical blackouts, among other catastrophes." She also went on to discuss the background of what happened, and why it could theoretically happen again, and why it's a serious issue for the city. But in the mainstream media, the imperative seems to be to connect any negative news events in Brazil to the World Cup and Olympics. To give you an idea of how pervasive this narrative has become, my grandmother brought it up of her own accord over the holidays, mentioning she'd been reading and hearing about it on the news.

The same types of speculations were made about South Africa before the World Cup, wondering if they would be ready in time. Things worked out fine, in the end, and they likely will in Brazil, too, even if things wrap up at the last minute or if certain projects have to be abandoned. The more important questions, of whether all of the preparations for the events will benefit Brazil, or if rushing to finish projects for the events will negatively impact the country (as in, buildings collapsing out of thin air), are discussed infrequently outside of Brazil in the mainstream media. It begs to question: once 2016 rolls around, will anyone want to cover Brazil anymore? Without the big international events to constantly peg news to, will readers and viewers care? Or will Brazil gradually lose space in the international press, particularly in the English-language press? It even makes me wonder if they'll pull correspondents after the Olympics wrap up--it seems possible, sadly, despite Brazil's continually growing global importance.

It's possible another tactic to take will be on that some outlets already use: constantly mixing inappropriate references to stereotypical aspects of Brazilian culture to serious news pieces. It's something I've written about before, and is an unfortunate ongoing trend. In some articles, it seems difficult for outsiders to treat Brazil as they would a developed country, constantly needing to throw in some banal reference to samba or bikinis. Two recent examples: a comprehensive BBC article about the Brazilian economy, an excellent piece that was trivialized presumably by an editor who decided on the title: "Brazil's economy marches to a samba beat." There was also an otherwise insightful Wall Street Journal article about start ups in Brazil, but included an unrelated photo of a Carnival dancer (with a caption making a tenuous connection to the article) and this paragraph:

"Obviously, as everyone says, Brazil is the next China—it's now the sixth-largest economy in the world. 'The not-obvious part,' Julio Vasconcellos, cofounder and chief executive of Peixe Urbano, told me, 'is there is a ton of opportunity here and very few people taking advantage of it.' Why isn't every sunny young Brazilian with a tech idea taking the leap? Because, beyond the thongs, they've got issues. (Who doesn't?)."

It may seem trivial to point out this kind of framing of Brazil, but as I've written before, I do think it makes a difference in the long run of how foreigners perceive, and consequently interact with Brazil. It also helps perpetuate the complexo de vira-lata, as aptly mentioned in the WSJ article. The World Cup and Olympics actually can provide a break from this type of stereotypical and sometimes inappropriate framing of Brazil, even if mentioning the events isn't always warranted. But it does make me wonder what Brazil's "hook" will be in the international media after 2016. I guess we can expect a lot more samba references.