The other day, I stumbled upon a massive film set right in the middle of Manhattan, which was evidently a Mark Wahlberg movie. When I went to look it up on IMDB, my jaw dropped when I saw his newest movie, due to be released in 2011: The Brazilian Job.
A sequel to The Italian Job, the movie stars Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron, Seth Green, and Jason Statham, who head to Rio to pull off their latest heist. According to IMDB, they're in the scripting phase, though there are rumors that the movie may not happen at all.
While it's exciting they're expected to film nearly the whole thing in Rio, I can't say I anticipate a very balanced view of Brazil or Rio. I'm guessing there will be lots of scantily-clad women, caipirinhas, favelas and thugs. But god help them if they cast Latin, non-Brazilian actors to play Cariocas, or worse--if they give the Brazilian characters lines in Spanish. It wouldn't be the first time for Hollywood.
This is exactly the worst kind of movie that could possibly come out just as Brazil is taking its place as a serious player on the world stage, since it will likely be a movie awash with the same stereotypes, misinformation, and misconceptions, especially about Rio. But given the amount of uncertainty surrounding the remake, it's possible it won't get made. For Brazil's sake, I hope it doesn't.
Occasionally, I receive emails from Internet marketers trying to get me to write about their TV show or book or product without directly asking, but giving a lengthy explanation of why their product is so great without bothering to look up my name to add to the salutation.
The other day, I received this one. Since I changed the names, you can take a guess as to whether this marketer bothered to research my profile and to see whether this would please me and make me want to market the show for free, or completely irk me and make me want to scream. See for yourself.
Hello,
TV Channel X is launching a new show next Monday, September 21st, called New Show and the premiere episode is in Brazil. Given the nature of your blog [Adventures of a Gringa], I thought I would share more information with you! Personally, I really like this show and think it's different than anything else TV Channel X has aired before. Below is more information.
What is New Show? The #1 TV show in Finland, New Show is on a quest to explore the most insane destinations in the world! Bob and Rob are two fearless Finns who cross the globe carrying nothing but backpacks and cameras from the Himalayas to the African deserts, from Tokyo to Polynesia.
Brazil Details (Premiere episode) Bob and Rob, the two Finns behind the madness, begin their journey in Brazil where they encounter dangers I personally wouldn't dare to face. The episode starts with Bob in a medical chair getting his bicep sliced open with a scalpel. What for? A diamond of course! He gets a diamond sewn under his skin in case he gets robbed and needs cash fast.
This precaution makes more sense once they reach their first destination: a shanty-town (Rocinha Favela) run by gang members. The murder rate in this town is significantly higher than Rio's, which has one of the highest crime rates worldwide. A lot of criminals move to the shanty town to get lost after leaving prison. Bob and Rob get up-close-and-personal with one of the gang members and his guns. Here's a sneak peek video of their experience (feel free to post on your blog).
Next they head to the rainforest to take part in an Ayahuasca ceremony. Ayahuasca is a psychoactive plant extract, that is ingested during a tribal ritual. Before the ritual started Bob said, "I'm afraid of going nuts". I don't blame him! What happens after they drink this plant extract is pretty wild.
Southeast Asia Summary In this episode, Bob and Rob travel through Southeast Asia in search of freedom. Drinking cobra blood and shooting bazookas, our mad men take on the ruthless military junta of Myanmar.
Tune-in for a wild ride with Bob and Rob! Also, check out the slideshows from these two episodes. You can get updates on the show by following us on Twitter.
O Brasil não tem conflitos raciais mas, ao ficar falando de racismo e
estimulando as pessoas a se identificarem racialmente, você arriscam
criar conflitos que nunca existiram.
Minha opinião é oposta: acho que a falta de conflitos raciais é um dos grandes problemas do Brasil.
Muito estrangeiros consideram os Estados Unidos, por exemplo, uma
nação fraca por causa de seus conflitos internos. Do ponto de vista,
digamos, de uma nação pacífica, como a Arábia Saudita, os EUA são um
poço de crimes, contradições, ódios. E eles têm razão. A diferença é
que os conflitos são a fonte de força dos EUA, não de fraqueza.
Sociedades
que não tem conflito são em geral estratificadas e anti-democráticas.
Não existe conflito porque uma classe social, etnia ou grupo religioso
está totalmente sob o controle de outra, especialmente se essa
superioridade já está culturalmente introjetada. As mulheres africanas
não se revoltam contra a circunsição feminina porque elas sabem que são
naturalmente mais propensas ao pecado e que o prazer sexual só serve
para estimular a luxúria. Como poderia haver conflito nesse cenário?
Yesterday, Sarah Lacy over at Tech Crunch started a massive anti-American Internet intifada by writing about her very bad experience trying to get a visa to Brazil. She had been planned the trip for four months and taking Portuguese lessons, evidently making a concentrated effort to understand the country and language before she left, unlike the typical American businessman. She had intended to scope out IT companies, entrepreneurs, and other potential investment opportunities. An excerpt:
I paid an expediting service hundreds of dollars to ensure I’d be
getting this visa, and clearly they’ve been getting an earful from me
over the last week. If not for a phone call from the owner this morning
finally agreeing to waive the fees I paid them, this post would largely
be skewering them. But she assures me no one is getting into Brazil and
her week has been even worse than mine. Apparently, the Brazilian
government decided to switch to a new computer system for all of its
consulate offices and only sent two computers to each office, and not
the adequate software to process everything. So everyone has been in a
holding pattern. Some consulates aren’t promising any visas before 25
days; others won’t even take an appointment with prospective travelers
unless they show documents showing travel in the next 15 days. In fact
my visa is the first one the processing firm will get back—that is, if
they actually do get it today as promised. They’ve not only been
screamed at by me, but loads of business travelers—and even a coach for
a national soccer team who can’t get in the country.
Sarah, however, made the big mistake of defacing the Brazilian flag with a little message and using some inflammatory language toward the end of the post directed at Brazilians and the Brazilian government. As a result, she was lambasted by Brazilians and a scattering of other Latin Americans, accusing the US of having an unfair visa policy and claiming she had no right to complain.
Unfortunately for her, Sarah didn't know that any minor bit of criticism towards Brazil will provoke sheer outrage, and since her post was very accusatory, she actually got death and rape threats (no joke). Defacing any flag is generally a very bad idea, as is blogging when angry and/or making sweeping accusations (trust me, I know from personal experience). So attracting an angry mob wasn't surprising.
But what irritated me about the reaction to her post was that it was so typical, something most gringos who write about Brazil have to deal with, and frankly, the reaction ended up doing an equal amount of damage to her visa issues. And as you know, I've had to deal with the US visa system for the past 10 months, so I'm well aware of how it works.
First off, Sarah was accused of being irresponsible, and everyone put the blame on her. It could be true she waited until the last minute to apply for her visa, and it could be true she didn't do her research about the complexity of the visa. But what's more important is that the responsible authorities (the visa company, which she paid to do a service, and the Brazilian consulate), ultimately were the ones who failed to do their job. And unlike seasoned travelers to Brazil, she didn't do a jeitinho and apply for the much easier tourist visa instead. She did it the right way.
Second, it is useless to compare apples to oranges. Brazil and the US have totally different visa systems with very different purposes. The US system is a mess, but more importantly, it's not always fair because we have a huge amount of illegal (and legal) immigration. The Brazilian visa system, aside from super quick and easy tourist visas, tends to be inefficient and slow, but also does not have to deal with the sheer mass and constant pressure of millions of immigrants.
But this is even irrelevant when it comes down to the fact that the US system has nothing to do with Sarah's frustration. She did not mention the US system nor does she defend it nor is she responsible for it. If she were from England or France or Australia, she would have received the exact same response, because Brazilians have an extremely hard time accepting criticism about their country (and a harder time when it comes in the form of an angry accusation like Sarah's). And any immigration issues with Latin Americans will always be a sore subject.
This used to happen to me a lot, and still sometimes does: "What right do you have to criticize the Brazilian government/system/economy/judicial system? Yours is screwed up too!" If this illogical double standard were true, I wouldn't have this blog.In fact, I'd delete the whole thing. We have two totally different countries, and criticizing one is valid based on our experiences in that country. There's a huge amount of anti-American sentiment in Brazil (I was sometimes shocked at the things people would say to my face), while the average American largely ignores Brazil until things like this happen; when they do, some Brazilians assume a double standard about who has the right to talk smack about whom, about who's system is worse than the other's.
Sarah wasn't justified in going after the entire country and its people because of what happened. But instead of chastising Sarah for her condescending tone and the flag issue, she was viciously attacked for criticizing Brazil and for coming from a country with an unfair visa system. The idea was basically: "Look at what we have to go through all the time. See how it feels when the shoe is on the other foot?" The problem is, the ha-ha, you deserved it, na-na-na-na-na attitude that a lot of people had just helps xenophobic Americans feel secure in their same attitude towards foreigners in the US. Two wrongs don't make a right.
But as far as I'm concerned, that's not the point. Everyone deserves the right to be angry and upset when they have to face visa issues, no matter where they're coming from or where they're going. I think she's completely justified to criticize the Brazilian consulate, as are any Brazilians are justified to criticize the US consulate after having problems entering the US (and which they do a lot, justifiably). Brazil's biggest hope is its rapidly growing economy, and incidents like this do not encourage foreigners to invest there or consider traveling there on business. Similarly, it's in the US's best interests to speed up visas for investors and businessmen coming to the US. Given my experience with foreigners in Brazil, Sarah's experience isn't new; any visas that involve doing some sort of work in Brazil are much more difficult to get and require much more red tape than a straightforward tourist visa (ask anyone who has ever been transferred to Brazil working at a multinational). Frankly, they're a nightmare to get.
Had Sarah taken a more diplomatic route, and/or had the response to the post been different (like Fabio Seixas' eloquent open letter), I expect the author might have written an apology. But since her anger was met with outrageous threats and accusations, it made her look like the victim, and it looks like Tech Crunch is standing behind her. And given the criminal nature of a few of the comments (the rape and death threats have been deleted from the site), it didn't make Brazilians look so great. Plus, given the vitriolic response to a valid complaint (albeit masked in ugly words), I doubt Sarah or anyone from Tech Crunch or their affiliates will keep Brazil on their radar for potential opportunities.
The bottom line is that you can't possibly expect people not to get angry about bad experiences they have in Brazil (or anywhere for that matter), and not to share those experiences when they're frustrated. Lashing out at Brazilians and using the Brazilian flag with FAIL on it was in poor taste, and it would be in the author's best interest to remove it from the site. But so were a lot of the comments. And everyone was the loser in this affair: Brazil and its up and coming IT companies, Sarah, and those who made offensive remarks when attacking her. Go ahead and demand she remove the flag, and explain to her about the danger of angry accusations and how they hurt everyone. But don't expect her not to feel justified in her frustration. Because that's a very big double standard.
We're all just humans. We all deserve the right to complain--even about Brazil. But we must always respect each other, or else we will never be able to get along.
Unlike the US, Brazil doesn't have two separate social classes, divided between whites and blacks. Though there are very few black people at the top of the social pyramid, they form a part of the Brazilian upper class, despite the fact that the country is far from a racial democracy. Much ado has been made about the growth of the Brazilian middle class, which has included an increase in middle class blacks, as well as the simultaneous boom of consumerism. But as you'll see from this terrible story--which as of Sunday night had not made headlines in a single mainstream newspaper or TV program, while the sole "official" publication mysteriously was shut down last night--things aren't that simple.
Januário Alves de Santana, age 39 and originally from Bahia, is a family man who lives in Osasco, a suburb of Sao Paulo. He works as a security guard at the University of Sao Paulo, where he has been employed for eight years. His wife, who works at the Museum of Modern Art at the university, decided to buy a Ford EcoSport for the couple to share two years ago. Considered a luxurious car, the couple are paying R$789 installments in a set of 72 installments to pay off the purchase.
Note: Januário and his wife are black.
Last Friday, the couple, their two year-old daughter, five year-old son, and Januário's sister and brother-in-law headed to Carrefour to go food shopping. The toddler fell asleep in the car, so Januário arranged with his wife to stay in the car with his daughter while the others went shopping. Shortly after, he noticed two suspicious men running away as a nearby motorcycle alarm went off. The motorcycle's owner came over, and Januário commented that it looked like the men were trying to steal the bike. Standing outside of the car, he noticed more suspicious men approaching him. Then one--who was actually a security guard--approached him and took out a gun. He attacked Januário without identifying himself, and Januário didn't know if it was a mugger or a cop.
While they struggled, passersby called for help, and Januário thought he was saved. Several security guards from Carrefour approached, and he explained that it was a misunderstanding--he was not in fact trying to steal the motorcycle nearby. The security guards grabbed him and took him inside to a small room to "work out" what had happened. "So," they said, "you stole an EcoSport and were trying to take a motorcycle, too?"
The five security guards then proceeded to beat Januário senseless, in what the original report called "a torture session," hitting, punching, headbutting, and pistol-whipping him, knocking out his teeth and leaving him bleeding heavily.
Januário says he tried to explain that the car was his, and that his baby daughter was inside while his family was shopping. His attackers ignored him. "Shut up, n*****. If you don't shut up, I'll break every bone in your body," one of them yelled. They laughed when he insisted it was his car. The beating lasted around twenty minutes, before the police arrived.
But the torture wasn't over yet.
One of the military policemen, by the name of Pina, didn't buy Januário's "story." "You look like you've been in jail a couple of times. Come on, fess up, it's ok," the police officer said. Another police officer didn't believe he was a security guard, and started quizzing him about security rules. Finally, the police went to Januário's car and confirmed it did in fact belong to him and his wife. His family was there, shocked to see him bleeding with cracked teeth, and his daughter was still asleep in the car.
Instead of helping the couple or offering to send an ambulance, the police left. "If you want to write up a report, you'll have to go to the station. You can sue Carrefour." The family first went to the hospital, where Januário was treated for shock and lacerations.
Meanwhile, Carrefour released a statement saying the incident was nothing more than a fight between a few shoppers. The family registered a complaint with the local police, but it's not clear what will happen next.
[It's not the first time Carrefour's security guards have been violent. Earlier this month, Carrefour security guards in Sao Carlos, Sao Paulo beat a construction worker in the store's bathroom after he was caught stealing R$26 ($13) worth of groceries. After a brutal beating, the security guards locked the man in a closet until closing time at 10PM. He died several days later of head trauma and internal bleeding.]
So what will happen with this sickening race crime? Will the security guards be charged? Will they be sent to jail? Will they even lose their jobs? Will Carrefour get sued? Will Januario get a reasonable settlement? (For context, in Rio last week, a woman won R$25,000, or US$12,500, after she sued the state government for being mistakenly shot by a military policeman in 1999.)
Or will Carrefour, one of Brazil's largest retail chains and one of its most profitable foreign retail companies, go unpunished?
Inspired by a new found obsession with Sergio Fajardo, I decided to start a series to show how Brazil can learn from lessons in Colombia and, perhaps, vice versa. Brazil, like the United States, is a world leader, especially in the region, and there's a latent disdain for other Latin American countries (and a lot less latent for Argentina) for being beneath them (similar to some Americans' ethnocentric mentalities). While Brazil looks to its neighbors for trade potential and as a helping hand during diplomatic crisis, it doesn't seem to consider them real peers. Colombia is still viewed as a cesspool of drug trafficking, responsible for feeding Brazil's own narco-trafficking problems, and Colombians in Brazil are often teased about being drug dealers.
But the truth is that Brazil and Colombia have a lot in common and a lot to learn from one another. Though they don't share the same language or colonizers, they do share a similar history and contemporary situation.
Brazil is the largest country in Latin America, with 8,514,877 square kilometers and the largest population in South America, with nearly 199 million people. Colombia is the fourth-largest country in South America, with 1,138,914 square kilometers and nearly 46 million people, the second-largest population in South America. Both countries had large populations of indigenous tribes living there before European colonization, and still have significant communities in rural areas. They also both had large numbers of African slaves who were forced to work the plantations and cash crop farms, some of whom escaped and formed independent communities (palenques in Colombia, quilombos in Brazil). While both countries are ethnically diverse, both have had a difficult time coming to terms with inequality and racism, which is what we're going to take a look at today.
Both Colombia and Brazil have affirmative action bills in Congress to decide if the government will impose racial quotas. In Colombia's case, the law would create quotas in universities, government jobs, and the military, with incentives to increase the amount of Afro-Colombians in political parties and corporations. In Brazil, the bill has already been approved by the House of Representatives, and is currently stalled in the Senate. But unlike Colombia's bill, Brazil's is much more limited: the law would create racial and socioeconomic quotas in all federal universities (although there are already affirmative action programs at nearly twenty government-run universities). The bill proposes that 50% of all spots at public universities be set aside for students from public high schools; of that 50%, half of the spots would be set aside for blacks and indigenous students, depending on the state's ethnic make-up, and the other half of the spots would be set aside for low-income students.
But both bills face a great deal of controversy. In the past in both countries, governments have unsuccessfully tried to "whiten" the population, and later created measures to try to prevent racial discrimination. But in both countries, where the myth of racial harmony prevails, there is "structural discrimination" in which blacks make up the poorest and least educated strata of society, more vulnerable to health problems and with higher mortality rates. Though both bills are supported by black civil rights groups, not all blacks support the measure, since some fear would create more racial strife and enforce a separation of ethnic groups.
In addition, both countries have difficulty defining who would be covered by the law, since racial definitions are much vaguer than in countries like the United States. In Colombia's 2005 census, 10.6% of the population defined itself as black, but experts say that the number is probably around 26%, since some people of mixed race don't define themselves as black. If this were in fact the case, Colombia would have the largest black population in Latin America after Brazil. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, 42% of Brazilians consider themselves pardos, or mixed race, and only 7% consider themselves black. Brazil has the largest population of African descendants outside of Africa, but many Brazilians dislike defining themselves based on race.
The other problem with the quotas is that some claim the bills have little to do with discrimination. In Colombia in particular, there are outcries of foreign influence, especially from the United States, since similar affirmative action programs were implemented there, and because the US Black Caucus plays an important role in trade with Colombia. In Brazil, some argue that the problems aren't related to race, but rather to poverty in general. In both countries, some argue that the law shouldn't focus on perceived "segregation," but rather on leveling the playing field with better social and economic policies.
In Colombia, the debatecontinues as the bill makes its way through Congress, but in Brazil, supporters of affirmative action received an important win last week. The University of Brasilia (UnB) already sets aside 20% of its openings for blacks, and was the first public Brazilian university to do so, in 2004. On July 31st, the head of the Brazilian Supreme Court, Gilmar Mendes, denied an appeal made by the Democratic Party to overturn affirmative action at UnB. The political party argued that the quotas violate the "constitutional right of human dignity" and the universal right to an education. While the judge defended the constitutionality of racial quotas, he emphasized the need to focus more on socioeconomic quotas, rather than racial ones. "In Brazil, it seems there is no distinction between whites and blacks, but rather between the rich and the poor," he included in his decision.
While both Colombia and Brazil's legislatures decide the future of affirmative action, they could learn from each other's experiences and debates. They have a great deal in common and as such, a great deal to offer one another.
This week, a controversy involving racism broke out in Brazil, on the heels of a much bigger and more serious racism controversy in the United States, and I thought it was worth a look at both to help put into context the problem of racism plays out in both countries.
Last week, preeminent Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct after police mistook him for an intruder. Gates was unable to open his front door, but with the help of his driver, they managed to shove it open, though to a woman driving by, it looked like they were breaking into the house. She called the police, who arrived on the scene after Gates had entered his house. The cop demanded ID from Gates, who gave him a hard time but gave him his identification nonetheless. He then taunted the police officer, and the officer arrested him.
Why is it a big deal? Both Gates and his driver are black, and the police and 911 caller are being accused of racism. Gates, in the meantime, is one of Harvard's most famous professors and one of the foremost academics on African Americans, so the incident was something like Gloria Steinem being arrested for being mistaken for a prostitute. Due to Gates' high profile status, the aftermath was especially embarrassing for the Cambridge police. Later, President Obama commented on the case, saying the police officer had acted "stupidly," and consequently getting a ton of flack for his comment.
Even though charges against Gates were dropped, the media has beat the story like a dead horse ever since it broke, and every pundit and blogger has chimed in to give their two cents. The incident has sparked a dialog about how far the US really has come in terms of equality and tolerance, showing that racial profiling is a serious issue and that racism exists even in our country's most liberal areas.
Now, on to Brazil.
On Sunday, comedian Danilo Gentili from the comedy show CQC posted the following comment on his Twitter:
"Agora no TeleCine King Kong, um macaco q depois q
vai p/ cidade e fica famoso pega 1 loira. Quem ele acha q é? Jogador de
futebol."
[King Kong is on TeleCine. It's about a monkey that goes to the city, gets famous and then hooks up with a blonde girl. Who does he think he is? A soccer player.]
A little context: in Brazil, the term "macaco" (monkey) is one of the most common racist terms, used to describe black Brazilians (incidentally, Brazilians always accuse Argentines of using this term to describe Brazilians, even though monkey is "mono" in Spanish. But I digress).
People responded by accusing Danilo of racism, and he lashed out, claiming his followers were the racist ones by interpreting the joke like they did, and then taking a picture of himself in a cage, adding the caption: "Obrigado pessoal. Vocês conseguiram me prender igual um macaco por denúncias de racismo." (Thanks guys. You managed to cage me like a monkey because of racism accusations.)
On Monday, he published a rambling post on his blog (aptly titled "A Racist Post"), defending himself and explaining why he felt he has the right to make racist jokes. He claims that race doesn't exist, but admitted "blacks suffer the most out of any race in Brazil." In an act far stupider than his original tweet, he rambled on defending racism, comparing human races to dog breeds and proclaiming that political correctness is the real culprit in Brazil, not racism. Most of the comments were in his favor, and a poll online shows that 76% of those polled believe the joke wasn't racist. But a few commenters pointed out just how nonsensical the whole thing was, and bloggers pounced, saying that comedians should be held responsible for the actions, especially when their young audiences are highly suspectible to bad influences.
Then, Folha announced that the Sao Paulo federal prosecutor is investigating the incident to determine whether Danilo committed a race crime, since racial discrimination is illegal in Brazil. The newspaper quoted the president of Afrobras, a Brazilian non-profit that fights racism as saying, "Isso foi indevido, inoportuno, de mau gosto e desrespeitoso.
Desrespeitou todos os negros brasileiros e também a democracia.
Democracia é você agir com responsabilidade." (This was unncecessary, wrong, in bad taste, and disrespectful. He insulted all black Brazilians and he insulted democracy. Democracy means acting responsibly.")
Instead of conceding defeat and apologizing, Danilo forged ahead, making snarky comments on his Twitter, joking he'd sue TeleCine and the director of King Kong, and that he'd sue a commenter for making a joke about rednecks. Other Twitter celebrities weighed in, making light of the whole situation and even making subtle racist jokes (a coisa ta preta, Elcio Coronato wrote in a play on words.)
So what does one incident have anything to do with another?
One thing I noticed they have in common is that a lot of people think it's not worth talking about. Some Americans are complaining that "Gatesgate" is over and nobody wants to hear about it, while some Brazilians are saying that the incident with Danilo was blown out of proportion. There's sentiment in both countries to deny that there's a problem and to ignore it. We have much bigger problems, both argue.
But the main difference between the two incidents is that in the American case, the majority of those talking about the case believe it was a racist incident, while in the Brazilian case, the majority believe it was not. While in the US, everything is black and white, in Brazil, everything is a murky blur. Americans define themselves in very specific boxes (black, white, Hispanic, Asian), while Brazilians prefer to think of themselves as Brazilians rather than defining themselves by race. Many Brazilians believe that those who point out and make racial divisions are the real racists, not those who would like to believe everyone has equal rights, and the equal chance to be made fun of. One of the common threads in the reactions to the incident was that politicians supporting racial quotas are the real racists in Brazil, not someone making a joke at the expense of blacks.
While the US struggles with racism after a civil war and a civil rights movement, Brazil likes to purport itself as a racial democracy where the color of one's skin doesn't matter, though that is not in fact the case. Many Americans tend to be much more definitive in what they believe (racists vs. PC people), while Brazilians dislike conflict and don't like to take a stand on controversial issues. As a result, the Gates incident stirred up a lot of tension, while the Danilo incident had people buzzing to play down the seriousness of the affair.
Both incidents have started a dialog about race and racism in the US and Brazil, but what remains to be seen is if anything constructive will come out of either of them.
