Monthly Archives: August 2010

No Longer The Country of The Future

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If Foreign Policy’s recent 5-page article titled ‘Beyond City Limits‘ contains any indicators of what is to come, the Brazil of the future will be made of just two supercities: São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. If the increase in urban migration continues (currently 50% of the world’s population lives in cities), and all signs say it will, both São Paulo city and the city of Rio de Janeiro may just become a single administrative entity or, in the least, the peripheries of each will at one point run into each other. The Southeast may become the region of the future while all other Brazilian geographical regions will support it. With the up and coming bullet-train connecting the future supercities, there will be those who live in Rio but work in São Paulo, or vice versa. Due to a combination of the green movement and traffic congestion, São Paulo’s license plate lottery will occur with less frequency and cars may just go away all together. Public transportation via super subways will get Caristanos (Cariocas + Paulistanos) where they need to be while rural areas will begin to fall under a UN Agenda 21-type program, meaning these areas will be federally protected and no one will be able to live anywhere but in the cities.

With the urban population in Brazil last counted at 81% back in the 2000 census, the supercity notion may be the Brazil of the future. What do you think?

The Thirty Valérios – Brazilian ‘Photoshopping’ in 1901

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The photographer Valério Vieira (1862-1941), in the beginning of the 20th century, performed a study in photo montages of his own image with many negatives in which he played every role. The result was “Os Trinta Valérios”, his self-portrait from 1901 – which won the silver metal in 1904 at the International Fair of Saint Louis, in the USA.

It seems that Brazilians were ‘photoshopping’ long before anyone else!

The Paper Sculptures of Carlos Meira

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“Born in Rio de Janeiro, Carlos Meira’s artistic endeavour began when he joined the printmaking course at the School of Fine Arts at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

In early 1990, Carlos moved to Portugal where he developed his unique style of paper sculpture. He returned to Brazil in 1996 and settled in Florianopolis where he further strengthened his illustration side. He has held six solo exhibitions and illustrated several books since then.

Carlos Meira has now devoted himself to illustration and paper sculpture having worked as an artist, designer and art director within the advertising industry. He also runs his blog where you can catch-up on his latest work.” – Source

Brazil’s Bid to Be the Four Seasons of Medical Tourism

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“Brazilians endlessly repeat the old saw that the world thinks of only three things when it thinks of Brazil: samba, carnivale and football. But its healthcare industry would like to add a fourth–surgery. As part of Brazil’s efforts to leverage both the tourists and the infrastructure investments expected in the wake of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, the country hosted its first medical tourism conference last week in São Paulo.

One of the speakers was Ruben Toral, the former marketing director of Bangkok’s Bumrungrad International Hospital who I profiled in Fast Company two years ago. Since then, the number of medical tourists leaving the United States for heart- or hip- or brain surgery abroad has risen from 540,000 in 2008 to an estimated 878,000 this year. And that will practically double to 1.6 million in 2012, according to Deloitte’s projections. But earlier this year Congress threw a monkey wrench into Toral’s grand vision for the “Toyota-ization of healthcare,” in which U.S. hospital groups would buy foreign ones and insurers like Aetna and United Health Group would offer patients discounts in exchange for outsourcing themselves and their bad knees overseas. It hasn’t happened, thanks to health care reform. Not because 47 million uninsured or underinsured Americans are suddenly covered, but because the legislation created so much complexity the insurance giants have curled into the fetal position.

Healthcare reform “sucked all of the oxygen out the industry’s hopes that insurers would engage,” Toral said Thursday during a break in the conference. “The un- and underinsured won’t be coming anymore. Instead, you’re going to see people with money leaving,” the same kinds of people who have been fleeing the long waits in socialized medicine for decades. “You’re getting the Canadian system,” in other words. “They’re better-informed medical travelers looking to meet their needs rather than head someplace that’s cheap. They’re going to be leaving for service. The industry is in the midst of transforming itself.” – Source (more here)

Mind Games In Portuguese

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Let’s test your mental capacity to understand Portuguese, even when it’s jumbled. Many of us, I’m sure, have seen these in English. The second example is even more ridiculous. Have fun!

“De aorcdo com uma peqsiusa de uma uinrvesriddae ignlsea, não ipomtra em qaul odrem as lteras de uma plravaa etãso, a úncia csioa iprotmatne é que a piremria e útmlia lteras etejasm no lgaur crteo. O rseto pdoe ser uma bçguana ttaol, que vcoê anida pdoe ler sem pobrlmea. Itso é poqrue nós não lmeos cdaa ltera isladoa, mas a plravaa cmoo um tdoo. Sohw de bloa.”

“35T3 P3QU3N0 T3XTO 53RV3 4P3N45 P4R4 M05TR4R COMO NO554 C4B3Ç4 CONS3GU3 F4Z3R CO1545 1MPR3551ON4ANT35! R3P4R3 N155O! NO COM3ÇO 35T4V4 M310 COMPL1C4DO, M45 N3ST4 L1NH4 SU4 M3NT3 V41 D3C1FR4NDO O CÓD1GO QU453 4UTOM4T1C4M3NT3, S3M PR3C1S4R P3N54R MU1TO, C3RTO? POD3 F1C4R B3M ORGULHO5O D155O! SU4 C4P4C1D4D3 M3R3C3! P4R4BÉN5!”

The Death of Dating in Brazil

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Studies on socialization, flirting and dating in Brazil can be enlightening at times and so I found myself reading someone’s dissertation titled “The Stud, the Virgin, the Queer, and the Slut: A Qualitative Study of Brazilian Sexual Identity in Three Brazilian Communities” on Google Scholar (which I link to at the bottom). For anyone who has spent enough time in Brazil or around Brazilians, you might have heard of their version of having fun with no strings attached, which is not to say that all Brazilians actually do it but it does play a role in the ‘dating’ scene down there. It’s known as ficar (to stay) and the people who practice it are ficantes. In my high school years, there was a similar practice called ‘getting with someone’ (or ‘hooking up with someone’) which, like ficar, has a wide range of possible interpretations. When I suggest that ‘dating is dead’, what I really mean to say is that ficando has assumed the common role among 20-somethings and younger that dating once held. If the ‘hook up’ has gained such prevelence, where it once had from very little to none, then will its ‘market share’ just continue to increase until we enter a Brave New World where we ‘engage’ each other at will and whim?

“Chaves (1994) discusses a new behavior that has completely changed courtship among teenagers — teens just stay together, acting as if they were girlfriend/boyfriend, but have no commitment. Her study of middle- and upper-class teenagers in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Belo Horizonte suggests that this type of relationship which appeared in the eighties attracts, seduces, and corrupts individuals to the extent that it offers immediate and non-committed pleasure. If this kind of rationale stimulates the ficantes (those who ficar) to ficar with as many partners as possible, it is also true that male and female ficantes face different consequences for the same act in terms of reputation. For the male, ficar with more than one female in one night suggests he is a stud. For the female, the same behavior is not well regarded among males and may ruin her reputation.

According to the picture drawn by mothers from all social groups in all three sites, dating was quite different when the mothers of teenagers were teenagers themselves. It was strictly supervised and there was not very much they were allowed to do in terms of physical contact with their boyfriends — which does not mean there was no such contact. Dating was, in the past, the natural path to marriage which, many females believed, would free them from their authoritarian fathers. Thus, marriage tended to happen very early in their lives. Yet freedom was not always the consequence of getting married. As one mother reports, her husband is as authoritarian as her father was and, instead of freedom, she has moved from one prison to another. Her experience is exactly the same Freyre (1956) reports to be the case for nineteenth century Brazil, when females moved from the “stern tyranny of their fathers [to] the tyranny of their husbands” (1956: 419).

In the past, you dated to get married. (Catholic mothers, Montes Claros)

The other day I was talking to my aunt, she said she dated 12 years with commitment. She said he [the boyfriend] never hugged her, never kissed her. (More educated mothers, Macambira)

I married very young and also with my first boyfriend. I started dating him when I was 13 and I married when I was 16. So, I married to have more freedom, because in my house it was very much like a very closed system. I didn’t go out, I didn’t have any freedom. So I thought that, if I married early, I was going to have more freedom, and all that. It ends up, you know, with you going to another prison. (Upper income mothers, Montes Claros)

But lately people are getting married with this conviction that, if it doesn’t work, they break up. This is what I think. Not in the past [when it was different]. First people dated (…) and [then] married the first boyfriend. They got engaged before they got married. Nowadays the person is pregnant when [he/she] gets married. (Catholic Private School female teens, Montes Claros)

As the female teens from the Catholic Private School mentioned, dating today is completely different from what it used to be. In fact, nowadays there is more than dating or having a steady relationship. Ficar (to play around) has become a very common behavior among Brazilian teens. It means staying together and acting as boyfriend/girlfriend but with no commitment. It may involve one or more actions such as kissing, hugging, cuddling, petting, and having sex. If a couple fica together one night, it does not mean they are going steady.

Other evidence that suggests the difference between ficar and going steady is the fact that ficantes, especially males, do not necessarily care about beauty or the physical appearance of the other. The important element in ficar is just having fun. When asked about characters in the telenovela they would like to date, marry or ficar, many teenage participants state they would ficar with characters they would not necessarily go steady with or get married to. – Source (continue from pg. 12)

95% of Brazilian Internet Commerce Goes To LatAm Websites

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“Web adoption is growing faster in Latin America than anywhere on the planet, according to comScore. Its audience grew 23% over the last year, and currently makes up 8% of the global Web population. That’s larger than the Middle-East and Africa’s Web audiences combined, and almost half of North America’s Web population.

But underneath those rosy top-line numbers, the Latin American Web market is a mess of contradictions and that has implications for Internet companies in both South and North America hoping to cash in on the growing market. We invited Web entrepreneur Bob Wolheim of SixPix Content on this week’s “Why Is This News” to discuss the reality of Web life on the ground.

Wolheim is a Brazilian, and no surprise he said that the simplest way to look at Latin America’s Internet market is to look at Brazil and countries-that-are-not-Brazil. The numbers back his patriotism up: While tiny Colombia had the largest percentage increase in Internet users—at a whopping 38%– the largest number of users were added in Brazil, with some six million new Web residents. Brazil has more than double the Internet users of Mexico and Argentina, and those Brazilian Internet users spend the most time online, at 26.4 hours per month.

Bad news, US companies: With the exception of Orkut and Hotmail those Brazilians like Brazilian things. The vast majority of Brazilians only surf Portuguese language sites, while Spanish-speaking countries surf a mix of Spanish and English sites. And while Facebook dominates Latin American countries like Chile and Colombia, Google’s Orkut remains the social media giant in Brazil. One thing the region can agree on is Twitter, which grew 13x in Latin American over the last year, the largest surge happening in Brazil. That compares to five-fold growth worldwide for Twitter, according to the report.

And Brazilians shop patriotically too. Brazil makes up 35% of Latin Americans online, but they spend 61% of the region’s e-commerce dollars. And 95% of Brazilian purchases were made on Latin American sites; even though in other Latin countries like Puerto Rico, 95% of ecommerce dollars were spent on non-Latin sites, primarily those in the US. Local Groupon-like sites have been one of the fastest growing: Peixe Urbano says last Friday it signed up its millionth users in five months of business, and some 20 competitors are gunning for the space as well.

The good news for Brazilians? Given the proclivity for sites built locally, if this type of growth, time spent on the Web, and ecommerce dollars keep ramping, we predict that Silicon Valley will start making some small but rapid acquisitions south of the boarder in coming years.” – Tech Crunch (go here for video interview)

Download the comScore Latin America Report April 2010

Juca Pato – The Politics of Humor

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(His slogan: “Podia ser pior” – “It could be worse”)

Juca Pato was a creation of the cartoonist, illustrator, painter, historian and journalist Benedito Carneiro Bastos Barreto, known by his pseudonym Belmonte. From the 1920′s to the 1940′s, he had his satirical illustrations shown in the newspaper Folha da Noite (later called Folha da Manhã and now known as Folha de São Paulo). From the start of the 30′s and the coup d’etat led by Getúlio Vargas, the DIP (Dept. of Propaganda) prohibited Belmonte from critisizing the Brazilian government through the use of humor, something he had been doing quite successfully throughout the 1920′s (and which was ironically also temporarily prohibited in the current 2010 Presidential race in Brazil).


(Belmonte)

Belmonte’s signature caricature was Juca Pato and the only role that characterized protest for more than 20 years. Juca Pato was the voice of the non-conformists, of the ‘Zé Povinho que sempre paga o pato” (Joe Blow that always gets blamed for everything), he was the common citizen, the worker, the honest one, the tax payer. Juca was often perplexed and irritated at the cost of life, at bureaucracy, political corruption and the exploitation of the people.

The well-humored figure known as Juca Pato spoke the language of the people – he became the name of a race horse, brand of notebook, cigar, bleach, coffee and the unforgetable Juca Pato Bar, in downtown São Paulo, the meeting point for the bohemians of the city, mainly theater actors, radio personalities and soccer players. Back in the late twenties up until the 1940′s, one could ask popular opinion on the streets of São Paulo who best represented them and the answer was likely to be ‘Juca Pato’. I think it’s time Juca gets brought into the 21st century.

Short Documentary (in PT)
Article on Belmonte & Juca (in PT)
Archive of Belmonte texts (in PT)
Banning Political Humor in Brazil – Time

Alex Atala – Brazil’s Top Chef

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He is seen as one of the most exciting chefs of his generation, and the first Brazilian chef to become well known outside his own country. Alex Atala is a mega-celebrity in Brazil, and his name there is a synonym for fine food.

He was a punk and a DJ, with tattoos and an irreverent attitude, working in a night club in São Paulo. He was restless, curious, and wanted to see the world. When he was 18 years old he saved a little money, sold his records and left his country to backpack through Europe. In Belgium, he first worked as a wall painter to survive, washed dishes in a restaurant, until he was convinced by a friend to enrol in a catering school. This was not a career choice, but an easy way to get a work permit. He never thought that this accidental choice would give his life a new direction! After graduating, Atala was in Italy, France, and in Belgium where he worked at Jean Pierre Bruneau’s Restaurant and with the legendary Chef Bernard Loiseau at the Cote D’Or Hotel. In 1994 he returned to Brazil with a solid foundation in French cuisine, and with a great desire to find his own culinary identity. He developed this identity in the following years after his return. In 1999 he opened the restaurant D.O.M. (an acronym for a Latin phrase meaning “God, the best and greatest”). Thus began a new era in the Brazilian Gastronomy. – Source (article by Luciana Bianchi)

There is a reason why Alex Atala’s D.O.M. is rated the top restaurant in São Paulo, Brazil and Latin America, year-after-year… and this year, D.O.M. is ranked #24 in the World by Restaurant Magazine. Alex now has a new restaurant in the same neighborhood in São Paulo. The restaurant is called Dalva e Dito, a culinary tribute to 100% Brazilian food.

More Info

Bloomberg article