First, I should apologize again for not taking any photos of São Paulo.
Second, I don't think I got it right when I noted that São Paulo is bland because it's just a little bit of everything. While running on Praia do Flamengo in Rio on my penultimate day, I came to another conclusion.
All of Brazil has a flavor. In the Northeast, there are lovely beaches and historic colonial towns and the history of a sugar cane boom mixed with the stain of years of slavery. (And in many cases, the Afro-Brazilian culture that came from slavery.) The South has its European immigrants, the efficiently-run cities full of (relatively) well-educated citizens, and the legacy of agriculture. Rio de Janeiro is unique, and was the capital for almost two hundred years. Brasilia is Tomorrowland. The North is properly tropical, centered on rainforests and rivers.
By contrast, São Paulo doesn't really have a flavor. In the national stereotype, people who live there work hard, are rich, and are dull. Parts of São Paulo look like any other large city in the world, especially in Zona Sul. My cousin Chris made this observation as we walked down Avenida Paulista, the Wall Street of Brazil. Aside from the structures at Masp and Fiesp, the Avenida would not be out of place in New York, LA, or Chicago.
In sum, Sampa is generic. It doesn't have anything that makes it stand apart from the rest of Brazil, except that it's big and rich. It's flavorless.
That being said, I'll probably live there again. To begin, it has the best universities and the best libraries in the country.
Showing posts with label cities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cities. Show all posts
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Winter travels: São Paulo and Manaus
For four weeks, we lived at the center of it all. The expensive, expansive, hectic, maddening and refreshing center of Brazil, São Paulo.
Specifically, I splurged and rented an apartment in an apart-hotel in Moema, a neighborhood on the south side of the center, only a few blocks from Parque Ibirapuera. I had limited time to find and reserve a place, and many places to be. The apartment ended up sheltering Bethany and my cousin Christian as well, so maybe it wasn't a terrible expense.
In reserve order, the ugly, the bad and the good of São Paulo.
The Ugly
Moema is, after Jardins and whichever neighborhood is currently trendy, the third-nicest neighborhood in São Paulo. Or at least it should be; it's certainly expensive enough. (Note: Due to circumstances, it was once necessary to search for lunch in Jardins. I consider myself lucky to have escaped after losing less than R$20.)
We lived five blocks from an Applebee's, and six blocks from a Starbucks. This combination might exist in Barra da Tijuca (and maybe in Brasilia), but otherwise nowhere else in Brazil. (Perhaps nowhere else in South America.)
On every corner, and in front of every decent restaurant, stood valets willing to park your car for around R$10-R$15 for the duration of lunch or dinner. Even the gym up the hill had valet parking. Admittedly, there wasn't much open street parking, but this is true in San Francisco as well. I can proudly say that I ate lunch regularly in most towns for less than it costs to park one's car in Moema.
Bethany and I went to a local joint to eat burgers, fries and Cokes for the 4th of July, in our best ironic manner. We chose a place called America Pasta & Burgers instead of Applebee's. The bill totaled R$88, and we never ate there again.
The above examples illustrate the ugliest part of São Paulo's wealth and inequality. In the finest neighborhood, the rich spend large amounts of money to enjoy a standard of living on par with that of the United States. For the quality of products and services, prices are outrageous. And the streets are stale and soulless. There's very little public space, because everything has to be held behind gates or under vigilant watch or hidden. (Granted, there is more public space downtown.)
Last December, while we walked around Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas in Rio, I commented to friends that I wouldn't mind retiring to a high-rise apartment in Lagoa. Valmore questioned this, noting that he envied the United States, where everyone has a small single-family house with a yard and a fence; why would I want to move to an apartment? His point was taken, though I did later see upper-class single-family homes (most memorably, near the park in Campo Grande) in Brazil. The major distinction between single-family homes in Brazil and the States is that the former are almost always behind guarded walls.
In short, the rich of São Paulo can indeed lived charmed lives, but they pay exorbitant amounts to do so, and to keep that world protected. (This is already widely known; I'm just relating my encounter with it.)
The Bad
In many cities, I've met people who say "Oh, the traffic here in [my city] is getting to be as bad as São Paulo." It's an interesting point of reference, because I didn't find traffic to be too much of a problem in SP. (See above point: this may be due to the fact that I lived in Moema. I admit that traffic did once make us late to the SPFC-Avaí game, but we didn't miss much.) The bus system is not too bad, the metro is speedy, and I don't own a car. (Really bad traffic is in Salvador. F--- you, Rótula do Abacaxí.)
But if the traffic isn't bad, the air pollution is. My eyes stung from time to time, in the same manner that they always sting when we crest the hill up near the new Getty Museum and enter the LA Basin.
And every driver was, of course, sitting in his or her own car, most without passengers. As my mother asked in Salvador (not rhetorically), "Has the government done much to encourage carpooling?" Ha! Crazy lady. The current government is trying to put more cars on the road as fast as they can, with special tax incentives and discounts.
There are some kinks of developed world life not worth imitating, as São Paulo develops.
The Good
But the integrated bus and metro system was great! And two museums, the MASP and the Museu da Língua Portuguesa were lots of fun! And Rua Augusta is a good bohemian/alternative break from the blandness of Zona Sul. Chris especially liked Augusta, aside from the very disappointing Mexican restaurant at its peak.
And yes, one does get the feeling of being in the center of the world. You can take a bus in São Paulo and pass the corporate headquarters for, say, the maker of a brand of urinals that's all over the country. Or the headquarters of a beverages company whose juice you drank long ago at a dark bus station in Goiânia. You can go to the Tietê bus terminal and literally find a bus for anywhere in Brazil. Every touring show or band or exhibition will pass through. (50 Cent played while we were in town, and the Bodies exhibit was open at the MAM. Tickets for Mr. Cent's concert started at R$200, which seemed steep for a hip hop artist who hasn't been relevant for five years.)
And oh, the park. Parque do Ibirapuera, as previously mentioned, has a 6000 meter dirt trail around its perimeter, with three water stations and two bathroom stops, varied terrain, and plenty of shade. There are running routes in Brazil that are more scenic (Aterro do Flamengo, Rio), longer and with more bathrooms (Parque da Cidade, Brasília), shadier (Parque Mãe Bonifácia, Cuiabá), with cleaner air (Praia do Calhau, São Luís), or with more fun wildlife (Parque das Indígenas, Campo Grande), but Ibirapuera wins the all-around prize.
It took two tries to figure out how to manage the course while running clockwise (the direction without signs), but two or three loops could be combined and cut into almost any distance. I think I topped out at 18 km. I don't remember.
Sadly, the park is a slight break, but not a complete break, from the smog and exhaust of the streets.
There was also a fruit market on Saturday up the hill in Vila Nova Conceição. And tofu and yakisoba noodles in local supermarkets. (And peanut butter, but only the Peter Pan sugary type.) We never had very good Japanese food, but did find some good pizza after a search.
Finally, interviewees in São Paulo were just as friendly and helpful as those in other states were. I picked up a little of the paulista r in my accent, which I've retained to the present, but I still find José Serra's accent a little over-the-top. (In a funny coincidence, only after a visit to the Museu da República in Rio did I realize that one of my interviewees was the spokesman who announced Tancredo Neves's death in 1985.)
The Uncategorizable
São Paulo is not soulless. It is just too splintered and diverse to be categorized. I'm sure that if I traveled for the sake of experiencing specifically art, fashion, food, music, architecture, history, or any interest, I could really dig deep into one part of the city and be richly rewarded.
However, in taking a little bit of everything at once, I must admit that I found São Paulo to be bland. Sure, it's the most populous city in the Americas, but it lacks the romantic feeling of "here I am!" that one gets in Manhattan. Even on Avenida Paulista, or in the park, or at the monuments or at Praça da Sé or Praça da República, there's little romance or style in the city. I blame this on the car. In Manhattan, one sees (and gets bumped and shoved by) the multitudes on the streets and the subway. Here, there are crowds on the subway, and people on the street for lunch, but it's all just so mind-bogglingly spread out that it doesn't feel dense. (Disclaimer: Anhangbaú metro station did feel dense at Tuesday, 8 AM.) Many people just get in their cars and pass you by.
There's also no center. The city is too big to concentrate on any one plaza. Not all roads lead to Praça da Sé or da República, or to Terminal Bandeirantes. Corporate office parks are in Chácara Santo Antônio, a good 15 km from where their daily occupants and masters (probably) live in Jardins. Hence the helicopters.
For that reason, with apologies to all readers, I never took a photo in São Paulo. Of anything. It never dawned on me to do so, even when visiting monuments and museums. I don't have a good explanation why.
Will I be back? Rapáz, seria quase impossível continuar estudando o Brasil sem voltar pra Sampa. Of course. And I'll give it another go. (But not that Mexican place, Tollocos. That stunk.)
---
It occurs to me that my reports on places always include complaints about one thing or another. I'll never be satisfied. So let me refrain from detailing my thoughts about Manaus.
It will suffice to say that I prefer Belém to Manaus, and that Manaus will need a lot of work to become an adequate host city in 2014.
It was nice, however, to get back to the familiar signs, sights, and smells of regular Brazil. And we ran into Alceu and his family (visiting from Fortaleza) on the plaza of Teatro Amazonas. The plaza is a lovely public space.
And while I met more than one paulista who explained to me (in SP) how Brazil feeds almost parasitically off the wealth that São Paulo produces, I also met two Amazonenses who explained that the industrialization (and coffee boom) of the Southeast was financed by tariff duties on rubber, and so the rest of Brazil owes Amazonas a debt.
As two small momentos of Manaus, here's a picture of Albert in front of Teatro Amazonas, and a stuck turtle at the Bosque da Ciência.
---
I have a flight for San Francisco in four days.
Specifically, I splurged and rented an apartment in an apart-hotel in Moema, a neighborhood on the south side of the center, only a few blocks from Parque Ibirapuera. I had limited time to find and reserve a place, and many places to be. The apartment ended up sheltering Bethany and my cousin Christian as well, so maybe it wasn't a terrible expense.
In reserve order, the ugly, the bad and the good of São Paulo.
The Ugly
Moema is, after Jardins and whichever neighborhood is currently trendy, the third-nicest neighborhood in São Paulo. Or at least it should be; it's certainly expensive enough. (Note: Due to circumstances, it was once necessary to search for lunch in Jardins. I consider myself lucky to have escaped after losing less than R$20.)
We lived five blocks from an Applebee's, and six blocks from a Starbucks. This combination might exist in Barra da Tijuca (and maybe in Brasilia), but otherwise nowhere else in Brazil. (Perhaps nowhere else in South America.)
On every corner, and in front of every decent restaurant, stood valets willing to park your car for around R$10-R$15 for the duration of lunch or dinner. Even the gym up the hill had valet parking. Admittedly, there wasn't much open street parking, but this is true in San Francisco as well. I can proudly say that I ate lunch regularly in most towns for less than it costs to park one's car in Moema.
Bethany and I went to a local joint to eat burgers, fries and Cokes for the 4th of July, in our best ironic manner. We chose a place called America Pasta & Burgers instead of Applebee's. The bill totaled R$88, and we never ate there again.
The above examples illustrate the ugliest part of São Paulo's wealth and inequality. In the finest neighborhood, the rich spend large amounts of money to enjoy a standard of living on par with that of the United States. For the quality of products and services, prices are outrageous. And the streets are stale and soulless. There's very little public space, because everything has to be held behind gates or under vigilant watch or hidden. (Granted, there is more public space downtown.)
Last December, while we walked around Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas in Rio, I commented to friends that I wouldn't mind retiring to a high-rise apartment in Lagoa. Valmore questioned this, noting that he envied the United States, where everyone has a small single-family house with a yard and a fence; why would I want to move to an apartment? His point was taken, though I did later see upper-class single-family homes (most memorably, near the park in Campo Grande) in Brazil. The major distinction between single-family homes in Brazil and the States is that the former are almost always behind guarded walls.
In short, the rich of São Paulo can indeed lived charmed lives, but they pay exorbitant amounts to do so, and to keep that world protected. (This is already widely known; I'm just relating my encounter with it.)
The Bad
In many cities, I've met people who say "Oh, the traffic here in [my city] is getting to be as bad as São Paulo." It's an interesting point of reference, because I didn't find traffic to be too much of a problem in SP. (See above point: this may be due to the fact that I lived in Moema. I admit that traffic did once make us late to the SPFC-Avaí game, but we didn't miss much.) The bus system is not too bad, the metro is speedy, and I don't own a car. (Really bad traffic is in Salvador. F--- you, Rótula do Abacaxí.)
But if the traffic isn't bad, the air pollution is. My eyes stung from time to time, in the same manner that they always sting when we crest the hill up near the new Getty Museum and enter the LA Basin.
And every driver was, of course, sitting in his or her own car, most without passengers. As my mother asked in Salvador (not rhetorically), "Has the government done much to encourage carpooling?" Ha! Crazy lady. The current government is trying to put more cars on the road as fast as they can, with special tax incentives and discounts.
There are some kinks of developed world life not worth imitating, as São Paulo develops.
The Good
But the integrated bus and metro system was great! And two museums, the MASP and the Museu da Língua Portuguesa were lots of fun! And Rua Augusta is a good bohemian/alternative break from the blandness of Zona Sul. Chris especially liked Augusta, aside from the very disappointing Mexican restaurant at its peak.
And yes, one does get the feeling of being in the center of the world. You can take a bus in São Paulo and pass the corporate headquarters for, say, the maker of a brand of urinals that's all over the country. Or the headquarters of a beverages company whose juice you drank long ago at a dark bus station in Goiânia. You can go to the Tietê bus terminal and literally find a bus for anywhere in Brazil. Every touring show or band or exhibition will pass through. (50 Cent played while we were in town, and the Bodies exhibit was open at the MAM. Tickets for Mr. Cent's concert started at R$200, which seemed steep for a hip hop artist who hasn't been relevant for five years.)
And oh, the park. Parque do Ibirapuera, as previously mentioned, has a 6000 meter dirt trail around its perimeter, with three water stations and two bathroom stops, varied terrain, and plenty of shade. There are running routes in Brazil that are more scenic (Aterro do Flamengo, Rio), longer and with more bathrooms (Parque da Cidade, Brasília), shadier (Parque Mãe Bonifácia, Cuiabá), with cleaner air (Praia do Calhau, São Luís), or with more fun wildlife (Parque das Indígenas, Campo Grande), but Ibirapuera wins the all-around prize.
It took two tries to figure out how to manage the course while running clockwise (the direction without signs), but two or three loops could be combined and cut into almost any distance. I think I topped out at 18 km. I don't remember.
Sadly, the park is a slight break, but not a complete break, from the smog and exhaust of the streets.
There was also a fruit market on Saturday up the hill in Vila Nova Conceição. And tofu and yakisoba noodles in local supermarkets. (And peanut butter, but only the Peter Pan sugary type.) We never had very good Japanese food, but did find some good pizza after a search.
Finally, interviewees in São Paulo were just as friendly and helpful as those in other states were. I picked up a little of the paulista r in my accent, which I've retained to the present, but I still find José Serra's accent a little over-the-top. (In a funny coincidence, only after a visit to the Museu da República in Rio did I realize that one of my interviewees was the spokesman who announced Tancredo Neves's death in 1985.)
The Uncategorizable
São Paulo is not soulless. It is just too splintered and diverse to be categorized. I'm sure that if I traveled for the sake of experiencing specifically art, fashion, food, music, architecture, history, or any interest, I could really dig deep into one part of the city and be richly rewarded.
However, in taking a little bit of everything at once, I must admit that I found São Paulo to be bland. Sure, it's the most populous city in the Americas, but it lacks the romantic feeling of "here I am!" that one gets in Manhattan. Even on Avenida Paulista, or in the park, or at the monuments or at Praça da Sé or Praça da República, there's little romance or style in the city. I blame this on the car. In Manhattan, one sees (and gets bumped and shoved by) the multitudes on the streets and the subway. Here, there are crowds on the subway, and people on the street for lunch, but it's all just so mind-bogglingly spread out that it doesn't feel dense. (Disclaimer: Anhangbaú metro station did feel dense at Tuesday, 8 AM.) Many people just get in their cars and pass you by.
There's also no center. The city is too big to concentrate on any one plaza. Not all roads lead to Praça da Sé or da República, or to Terminal Bandeirantes. Corporate office parks are in Chácara Santo Antônio, a good 15 km from where their daily occupants and masters (probably) live in Jardins. Hence the helicopters.
For that reason, with apologies to all readers, I never took a photo in São Paulo. Of anything. It never dawned on me to do so, even when visiting monuments and museums. I don't have a good explanation why.
Will I be back? Rapáz, seria quase impossível continuar estudando o Brasil sem voltar pra Sampa. Of course. And I'll give it another go. (But not that Mexican place, Tollocos. That stunk.)
---
It occurs to me that my reports on places always include complaints about one thing or another. I'll never be satisfied. So let me refrain from detailing my thoughts about Manaus.
It will suffice to say that I prefer Belém to Manaus, and that Manaus will need a lot of work to become an adequate host city in 2014.
It was nice, however, to get back to the familiar signs, sights, and smells of regular Brazil. And we ran into Alceu and his family (visiting from Fortaleza) on the plaza of Teatro Amazonas. The plaza is a lovely public space.
And while I met more than one paulista who explained to me (in SP) how Brazil feeds almost parasitically off the wealth that São Paulo produces, I also met two Amazonenses who explained that the industrialization (and coffee boom) of the Southeast was financed by tariff duties on rubber, and so the rest of Brazil owes Amazonas a debt.
As two small momentos of Manaus, here's a picture of Albert in front of Teatro Amazonas, and a stuck turtle at the Bosque da Ciência.
---
I have a flight for San Francisco in four days.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Passing back around: Cuiabá, MT
I'm back in Cuiabá, a city I have previously described as "ugly" where "aesthetics are not necessarily a high priority." I stand by that assessment.
I'm back to see if I can't conduct follow-up interviews and round out my knowledge of these cases. So far, I've been only mildly successful. At this point in the trip, however, I'm satisfied with mild success.
It has been cooler here than it was during my last visit. That time in Cuiabá was probably the hottest visit "on the road," second only to the time around Christmas in Rio when it hit the low 40s. Cooler weather, which failed to last until Friday and won't endure through the weekend, can't disguise the fact that this is still not a pretty city.
That being said, the people are wonderful. I regret that I didn't get in touch with more of them, but my time here is limited. (Thursday was also Corpus Christi, which meant that many people have taken a four-day weekend.)
In any case, I encountered two notable sights.
First, I went running, and found my way up to a track open to the public but maintained by the Brazilian Army, and to Parque Mãe Bonifácia, a shaded park with a few kilometers of running paths. These two great running destinations are only about two hundred meters from each other, in the same neighborhood. I have to run one kilometer to get there.
On my way to and from the park, however, I noticed the following street sign:
This choice of colors strikes me as incredibly poor. Sure, the pale green is the official green color of Cuiabá, "the Green City." In my mind, however, they could not have picked a worse contrast, or have cluttered up the street sign more. I have no idea how drivers at night are supposed to read this at any speed. The use of white-on-blue and big names for streets in Fortaleza (and supposedly São Paulo) is a much better idea.
Oh, and that's the town symbol, with a touch of soccer ball because this will be a host city for the 2014 World Cup.
Second, I'm staying at the same hotel as I did previously. The neighborhood is changing slightly. The motorcycle shop across the street went out of business, and it looks like the car rental place next door is going to follow. But it's not all bad news. Down the hill, a boxing gym has opened.
This gym is only noteworthy in that the name is a transliteration of the English word "knock-out," as it would be spelled by a Portuguese speaker. Literally, one would say the word "knock-out-chee," with the stress placed on the last syllable varying according to where in the Lusophone world you happened to be. The word "blacaute" is used similarly for power outages.
It made me smile.
In two weeks and a few days, se Deus quiser ("God willing"), I'll be in São Paulo, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language. I can't wait.
I'm back to see if I can't conduct follow-up interviews and round out my knowledge of these cases. So far, I've been only mildly successful. At this point in the trip, however, I'm satisfied with mild success.
It has been cooler here than it was during my last visit. That time in Cuiabá was probably the hottest visit "on the road," second only to the time around Christmas in Rio when it hit the low 40s. Cooler weather, which failed to last until Friday and won't endure through the weekend, can't disguise the fact that this is still not a pretty city.
That being said, the people are wonderful. I regret that I didn't get in touch with more of them, but my time here is limited. (Thursday was also Corpus Christi, which meant that many people have taken a four-day weekend.)
In any case, I encountered two notable sights.
First, I went running, and found my way up to a track open to the public but maintained by the Brazilian Army, and to Parque Mãe Bonifácia, a shaded park with a few kilometers of running paths. These two great running destinations are only about two hundred meters from each other, in the same neighborhood. I have to run one kilometer to get there.
On my way to and from the park, however, I noticed the following street sign:
This choice of colors strikes me as incredibly poor. Sure, the pale green is the official green color of Cuiabá, "the Green City." In my mind, however, they could not have picked a worse contrast, or have cluttered up the street sign more. I have no idea how drivers at night are supposed to read this at any speed. The use of white-on-blue and big names for streets in Fortaleza (and supposedly São Paulo) is a much better idea.
Oh, and that's the town symbol, with a touch of soccer ball because this will be a host city for the 2014 World Cup.
Second, I'm staying at the same hotel as I did previously. The neighborhood is changing slightly. The motorcycle shop across the street went out of business, and it looks like the car rental place next door is going to follow. But it's not all bad news. Down the hill, a boxing gym has opened.
This gym is only noteworthy in that the name is a transliteration of the English word "knock-out," as it would be spelled by a Portuguese speaker. Literally, one would say the word "knock-out-chee," with the stress placed on the last syllable varying according to where in the Lusophone world you happened to be. The word "blacaute" is used similarly for power outages.
It made me smile.
In two weeks and a few days, se Deus quiser ("God willing"), I'll be in São Paulo, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language. I can't wait.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Something something something dark side: São Luís, Maranhão
São Luís took some time to understand.
To speak well of it, I would note that it has a little bit of almost every Brazilian city I’ve visited: it has a lagoon like Rio and Florianópolis, it has long, wide beaches like Maceió, it has a colorful colonial center like Salvador, and it has office towers and political offices in high-rise buildings in the middle of nowhere, like Cuiabá and Salvador. In fact, I would consider it Salvador in miniature, with the same long looping roads, inexplicable traffic, coast and historic center, racial diversity, and (until recently) oligarchic politics.
To say the very least about São Luís, I would comment that it’s almost like a bad caricature of Brazil and the challenges that Brazil faces. The lagoon surrounded by luxury apartment buildings smells of sewage (a constant algae bloom, according to one respondent). It rains a lot, and every time it rains, the lovely beaches are unfit for swimming. I walked into the ocean the morning after a rain and had two little white worms with black eyes attach themselves to my arm and bite. I crushed them both, and never went into the water again. Open rivulets of city water carry trash and debris onto a beach that is otherwise stunning. The historic center is colorful, in that you can look at the buildings, but the museums don’t offer much information and aren’t terribly captivating. The center is pretty, but it lacks a sense of life. (According to my new maranhense friend, almost all the residents were expelled from the center when the city got UNESCO status and the state government developed it into a tourist attraction.) I was the only visitor at two museums, and there just weren’t that many people - tourists or locals - on the streets on a Saturday.
Photos below are of colorful streets in the city center. My favorite is the Rua da Giz, the middle picture. I wish there was some exhibit on the design of the streets, or their history, or settlement patterns, or name origins. If there was such an exhibit, I missed it.
The city is famous for its use of azulejos, or blue-and-white tiles in a Portuguese style. According to the guide, it was discovered that azulejos worked well in cooling buildings and fending off São Luís’s ever-present humidity. I can understand how the first task works by reflecting sunlight; I can’t really grasp how the latter works.
At the Visual Arts Museum, a curator named Mario explained the differences among old Portuguese tiles (connect in sets of four to form very straight geometric patterns), French tiles (form more artistic, curved patterns in sets of four), German tiles (much more elaborate, multi-colored) and English tiles (mass-manufactured, all the same, don’t connect to each other). I took some photos from around the historic center.
Ah, but I wasn’t here for the azulejos. I was in São Luís for the politics.
The story begins and ends with the Sarney clan. (“Clan” is the preferred term used in Folha de São Paulo.) In 1966, an ambitious young federal deputy named José Sarney was appointed governor of Maranhão by the military regime. His clan would only lose a state-level election for the first time in 2006. In the meantime, José Sarney has been governor, senator, vice-president, President of the Republic, and President of the Senate, as well as a well-acclaimed fiction writer.
To understand how the clan has stayed in power so long, it helps to know that Maranhão, the state of which São Luís is the capital, is among the poorest in Brazil. I recall (but can’t locate at the moment using XP) an article from 2000 noting that, of the 100 poorest municipalities in Brazil in 2000, 83 were located in Maranhão. The bus ride into São Luís from Belém certainly didn’t offer any evidence to undermine this statistic. (I really can’t or shouldn’t judge relative poverty levels from a bus window.)
I can’t state for sure that the Sarneys (oh, it’s plural - his daughter is currently governor, having engineered to throw the candidate who beat them in 2006 out of office in 2009 by means of judicial rulings on vote-buying) employ vote buying or turnout buying. Or that they engage in electoral fraud. I have no solid evidence. Not having evidence, however, didn’t stop plenty of Maranhenses from leveling these accusations in our discussions.
In any case, here’s the view of the colonial center from the north end of the José Sarney Bridge. By coincidence, I took these photos on the Senator’s 80th birthday.
Sarney, you might recall, was previously in the news last spring for a series of accusations that he, as President of the Senate, issued a bunch of secret acts to give relatives and friends jobs and contracts. I can’t remember all the details because it’s all gone down the Great Brazilian Memory Hole and we’ve all moved on to present scandals. He’s still President of the Senate, being a Senator from Amapá. (He stepped aside so that the next generation of Sarneys could take over in Maranhão; Amapá is a smaller state where it’s presumably cheaper and easier to win elections. After all, he’s a former President of Brazil.)
In any case, being a poor state with a nationally-prominent patriarch from the right-wing means that federal monies are very important, and that Mr. President of the Senate matters in getting the pork from Brasília. Thus, as a corollary, they’re always on the side of the president. Roseana Sarney was an ally to Fernando Henrique Cardoso. She’s now an ally to Lula. (Painted walls in town read Roseana 25 Lula 13, which is not a football score but rather the two electoral codes for their respective tickets.)
I talked to two sets of non-Sarney administrators. A former governor, who broke with the Sarneys after being appointed and elected with their support, pointed out that Vale’s projects to invest in steel plants in Maranhão were all shelved after José Sarney objected. Cooperation with the World Bank on a sanitation project was stopped because the Senate would never approve a loan. In short, the governor said, after his break, Maranhão received no money that wasn’t already its legal automatic due. José’s hope was that his daughter would win in 2006, and receive all the acclaim for re-starting the stalled investments and projects.
I’ve been to other states before where conflicting personalities among political elites stall or reverse projects. Rio de Janeiro comes readily to mind. But Rio de Janeiro isn’t as desperately poor and in need of investments as Maranhão is. I don’t mean to dramatize the situation, but lack of investments in sanitation mean that people are dying of preventable illnesses. Lack of investments means that people aren’t getting jobs or better jobs.
(Oh, it almost goes without saying that the good Senator from Amapá also blocked extra federal monies for the administration of Jackson Lago, who beat Roseana in 2006.)
It started to put a human face on the costs of sub-national oligarchy and one-party rule in Brazil. The political science term “sub national authoritarianism” isn’t exactly right, but the phenomenon is similar. I was more than a little sickened by these tales. (I still need to find numbers to corroborate the stories.)
---
Oh, and the governor’s palace sits perched on a hill overlooking the river, at the north end of the historical center. It’s the Palace of the Lions, but I never learned why.
The city was originally founded by the French, specifically by a guy named Daniel de la Touche. Write your own silly joke with that. The Portuguese expelled them soon after.
The visit was unremarkable. I stayed on the northern coast, ate at touristy but empty restaurants for lunch, sweated a lot, cursed aloud when I found out that the day after my arrival was another national holiday, and ran on the beach until wild dogs and rivers of run-off blocked my path.
It rained every day, usually in quite heavy bursts. The city sits on the margins of the Amazon ecosystem, but still close enough to receive the Amazonian downpours.
I did make a new friend, who grew up in São Luís but goes to graduate school in Belém.
---
I’m now in Fortaleza. On Friday afternoon, I showed up early to the airport hoping to get some work done on the laptop. São Luís’s airport, however, is the first I’ve encountered in Brazil that isn’t air-conditioned in its lobby. It was a long wait.
I did go to my first running event here in Fortaleza (and in Brazil). That story is forthcoming.
Below, a view of the upper-class neighborhood Ponta d’Areia (Sand Point), looking back across the muddy Rio Anil and the Ponte José Sarney. Also, an explanation of the state flag, from the plastic bag of a Maranhão-only grocery chain, Mateus. It’s not the only state flag in Brazil that bears a passing resemblence to the Stars and Stripes, and the resemblence is not coincidental.
To speak well of it, I would note that it has a little bit of almost every Brazilian city I’ve visited: it has a lagoon like Rio and Florianópolis, it has long, wide beaches like Maceió, it has a colorful colonial center like Salvador, and it has office towers and political offices in high-rise buildings in the middle of nowhere, like Cuiabá and Salvador. In fact, I would consider it Salvador in miniature, with the same long looping roads, inexplicable traffic, coast and historic center, racial diversity, and (until recently) oligarchic politics.
To say the very least about São Luís, I would comment that it’s almost like a bad caricature of Brazil and the challenges that Brazil faces. The lagoon surrounded by luxury apartment buildings smells of sewage (a constant algae bloom, according to one respondent). It rains a lot, and every time it rains, the lovely beaches are unfit for swimming. I walked into the ocean the morning after a rain and had two little white worms with black eyes attach themselves to my arm and bite. I crushed them both, and never went into the water again. Open rivulets of city water carry trash and debris onto a beach that is otherwise stunning. The historic center is colorful, in that you can look at the buildings, but the museums don’t offer much information and aren’t terribly captivating. The center is pretty, but it lacks a sense of life. (According to my new maranhense friend, almost all the residents were expelled from the center when the city got UNESCO status and the state government developed it into a tourist attraction.) I was the only visitor at two museums, and there just weren’t that many people - tourists or locals - on the streets on a Saturday.
Photos below are of colorful streets in the city center. My favorite is the Rua da Giz, the middle picture. I wish there was some exhibit on the design of the streets, or their history, or settlement patterns, or name origins. If there was such an exhibit, I missed it.
The city is famous for its use of azulejos, or blue-and-white tiles in a Portuguese style. According to the guide, it was discovered that azulejos worked well in cooling buildings and fending off São Luís’s ever-present humidity. I can understand how the first task works by reflecting sunlight; I can’t really grasp how the latter works.
At the Visual Arts Museum, a curator named Mario explained the differences among old Portuguese tiles (connect in sets of four to form very straight geometric patterns), French tiles (form more artistic, curved patterns in sets of four), German tiles (much more elaborate, multi-colored) and English tiles (mass-manufactured, all the same, don’t connect to each other). I took some photos from around the historic center.
Ah, but I wasn’t here for the azulejos. I was in São Luís for the politics.
The story begins and ends with the Sarney clan. (“Clan” is the preferred term used in Folha de São Paulo.) In 1966, an ambitious young federal deputy named José Sarney was appointed governor of Maranhão by the military regime. His clan would only lose a state-level election for the first time in 2006. In the meantime, José Sarney has been governor, senator, vice-president, President of the Republic, and President of the Senate, as well as a well-acclaimed fiction writer.
To understand how the clan has stayed in power so long, it helps to know that Maranhão, the state of which São Luís is the capital, is among the poorest in Brazil. I recall (but can’t locate at the moment using XP) an article from 2000 noting that, of the 100 poorest municipalities in Brazil in 2000, 83 were located in Maranhão. The bus ride into São Luís from Belém certainly didn’t offer any evidence to undermine this statistic. (I really can’t or shouldn’t judge relative poverty levels from a bus window.)
I can’t state for sure that the Sarneys (oh, it’s plural - his daughter is currently governor, having engineered to throw the candidate who beat them in 2006 out of office in 2009 by means of judicial rulings on vote-buying) employ vote buying or turnout buying. Or that they engage in electoral fraud. I have no solid evidence. Not having evidence, however, didn’t stop plenty of Maranhenses from leveling these accusations in our discussions.
In any case, here’s the view of the colonial center from the north end of the José Sarney Bridge. By coincidence, I took these photos on the Senator’s 80th birthday.
Sarney, you might recall, was previously in the news last spring for a series of accusations that he, as President of the Senate, issued a bunch of secret acts to give relatives and friends jobs and contracts. I can’t remember all the details because it’s all gone down the Great Brazilian Memory Hole and we’ve all moved on to present scandals. He’s still President of the Senate, being a Senator from Amapá. (He stepped aside so that the next generation of Sarneys could take over in Maranhão; Amapá is a smaller state where it’s presumably cheaper and easier to win elections. After all, he’s a former President of Brazil.)
In any case, being a poor state with a nationally-prominent patriarch from the right-wing means that federal monies are very important, and that Mr. President of the Senate matters in getting the pork from Brasília. Thus, as a corollary, they’re always on the side of the president. Roseana Sarney was an ally to Fernando Henrique Cardoso. She’s now an ally to Lula. (Painted walls in town read Roseana 25 Lula 13, which is not a football score but rather the two electoral codes for their respective tickets.)
I talked to two sets of non-Sarney administrators. A former governor, who broke with the Sarneys after being appointed and elected with their support, pointed out that Vale’s projects to invest in steel plants in Maranhão were all shelved after José Sarney objected. Cooperation with the World Bank on a sanitation project was stopped because the Senate would never approve a loan. In short, the governor said, after his break, Maranhão received no money that wasn’t already its legal automatic due. José’s hope was that his daughter would win in 2006, and receive all the acclaim for re-starting the stalled investments and projects.
I’ve been to other states before where conflicting personalities among political elites stall or reverse projects. Rio de Janeiro comes readily to mind. But Rio de Janeiro isn’t as desperately poor and in need of investments as Maranhão is. I don’t mean to dramatize the situation, but lack of investments in sanitation mean that people are dying of preventable illnesses. Lack of investments means that people aren’t getting jobs or better jobs.
(Oh, it almost goes without saying that the good Senator from Amapá also blocked extra federal monies for the administration of Jackson Lago, who beat Roseana in 2006.)
It started to put a human face on the costs of sub-national oligarchy and one-party rule in Brazil. The political science term “sub national authoritarianism” isn’t exactly right, but the phenomenon is similar. I was more than a little sickened by these tales. (I still need to find numbers to corroborate the stories.)
---
Oh, and the governor’s palace sits perched on a hill overlooking the river, at the north end of the historical center. It’s the Palace of the Lions, but I never learned why.
The city was originally founded by the French, specifically by a guy named Daniel de la Touche. Write your own silly joke with that. The Portuguese expelled them soon after.
The visit was unremarkable. I stayed on the northern coast, ate at touristy but empty restaurants for lunch, sweated a lot, cursed aloud when I found out that the day after my arrival was another national holiday, and ran on the beach until wild dogs and rivers of run-off blocked my path.
It rained every day, usually in quite heavy bursts. The city sits on the margins of the Amazon ecosystem, but still close enough to receive the Amazonian downpours.
I did make a new friend, who grew up in São Luís but goes to graduate school in Belém.
---
I’m now in Fortaleza. On Friday afternoon, I showed up early to the airport hoping to get some work done on the laptop. São Luís’s airport, however, is the first I’ve encountered in Brazil that isn’t air-conditioned in its lobby. It was a long wait.
I did go to my first running event here in Fortaleza (and in Brazil). That story is forthcoming.
Below, a view of the upper-class neighborhood Ponta d’Areia (Sand Point), looking back across the muddy Rio Anil and the Ponte José Sarney. Also, an explanation of the state flag, from the plastic bag of a Maranhão-only grocery chain, Mateus. It’s not the only state flag in Brazil that bears a passing resemblence to the Stars and Stripes, and the resemblence is not coincidental.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Back in the South: Curitiba, Paraná
"Curitiba is not particularly sophisticated or sexy, but its residents enjoy a quality of life unparalleled in other parts of the country.... It is not a beautiful city," states Lonely Planet.
They're not far from the mark; it doesn't shine or spread out in grand vistas any more than do the Brazilian cities I've visited. A part of me had hoped for a shiny, clean American-style city, but those expectations were probably unrealistic. The streets are calm and the bus stations are funky, but it's like any other major Brazilian city on a Sunday. Everything is closed. Metal grating over storefronts is not terribly attractive.
I've returned to the richer, more industrialized part of Brazil. The Center-West, which includes Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul, does have some large landholdings and agrobusiness families. I mean to say that there are rich people and developed areas in the Center-West. This state is also agricultural and is the breadbasket of Brazil; roughly 25% of the grains produced in Brazil are grown in Paraná. Here in the South, defined as Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul, however, there's a larger middle class and more development. There is also a more diverse range of immigrant communities - I'm meeting people with Polish and other Eastern European last names this week. I don't stand out as much when I walk down the street.
(At the city council building in Cuiabá, instead of the usual "Você é de onde?" ("You're from where?") question, I got the question "Você é gringo de onde?" ("You're a gringo from where?"). I laughed, and asked, "Is it that obvious?" Yes, yes it is. In addition, often people will say "You speak Portuguese so well!" to be polite and friendly. This is obviously bullshit; I don't. However, at the Infrastructure Secretariat in Mato Grosso, a kind assistant was introducing me over the phone to a colleague and said in answer to a question, "Yes, well... he speaks Portuguese with an American accent." Her honesty made me laugh out loud.)
I'm overwhelmingly eager for this week to go quickly, and not only because I have a bargain hotel room with a ceiling fan instead of air conditioning. Bethany's coming to visit on Saturday. I'll admit that I'm distracted by her imminent arrival. I joked that, if I get either frustrated or overly enthusiastic in an interview, I'll ask my interviewees, "Look, could you please just ramble on about how the role of the state has changed since re-democratization for the next two hours? That will make my girlfriend arrive that much sooner."
I do plan to at least look into joining a gym. I spent my last week in Cuiabá going to a gym at night, and found it very satisfying. It made the evening pass more quickly. It certainly was better than a) writing up interview notes, which is inexplicably dull, or b) sitting in my room, reading off my computer and wondering how much time I had left in Mato Grosso. Also, I got a few pointers on lifting techniques from the staff, and the gym had a free cold water dispenser. All for five reais a visit.
---
The overnight bus ride down from Rio was tranquil and pleasant. The first few miles brought back a memory from 2005 of how winding and mountainous the overland western approach to Rio de Janeiro is. We stopped at two rest areas, in Resende, RJ and in Registro, SP. In my groggy state at 3 AM, I figured out our progress by noting that the anti-smoking emblem on the glass window was in the distinctive shape of the state of São Paulo. I did manage to sleep, and arrived in an awake, if not completely completely rested, state.
Curitiba is slightly hilly, and in some ways resembles Porto Alegre. (I might use my "this city reminds me of San Francisco" line again, if warranted.) It's been raining since 5 PM, very heavily at times, which also reminds me of Rio Grande do Sul. The pedestrian walk in town is nice, and the tree-filled plazas are pleasant. I'll hold off on a final judgment until after the city comes alive tomorrow. I have a 2:30 PM interview, and the weather is sufficiently cool and pleasant such that I think I'll walk the two kilometers to the office. There are two potential problems with this idea: it will rain at least some of the time tomorrow, and the city is only shaped like a grid for five-square block sections. Multiple streets end, curve, or hit each other at odd angles. I'll have to draw a map on a slip of paper to avoid getting lost.
POSTSCRIPT: I am not making up names. Brazil and its twenty-seven states are officially divided into five regions: the South, the Southeast (including Rio de Janeiro), the Center-West, the North, and the Northeast. These administrative divisions don't denote any political power; they're used as short-hand in government documents to categorize and refer to regions with roughly similar economies, geography, and levels of development.
SECOND POSTSCRIPT: Today is November 15th, which is Republic Proclamation Day here and the namesake for major streets. Emperor Pedro II was deposed in a military coup, and the Brazilian Republic was proclaimed, on November 15, 1889. To my relief, tomorrow is not a holiday.
They're not far from the mark; it doesn't shine or spread out in grand vistas any more than do the Brazilian cities I've visited. A part of me had hoped for a shiny, clean American-style city, but those expectations were probably unrealistic. The streets are calm and the bus stations are funky, but it's like any other major Brazilian city on a Sunday. Everything is closed. Metal grating over storefronts is not terribly attractive.
I've returned to the richer, more industrialized part of Brazil. The Center-West, which includes Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul, does have some large landholdings and agrobusiness families. I mean to say that there are rich people and developed areas in the Center-West. This state is also agricultural and is the breadbasket of Brazil; roughly 25% of the grains produced in Brazil are grown in Paraná. Here in the South, defined as Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul, however, there's a larger middle class and more development. There is also a more diverse range of immigrant communities - I'm meeting people with Polish and other Eastern European last names this week. I don't stand out as much when I walk down the street.
(At the city council building in Cuiabá, instead of the usual "Você é de onde?" ("You're from where?") question, I got the question "Você é gringo de onde?" ("You're a gringo from where?"). I laughed, and asked, "Is it that obvious?" Yes, yes it is. In addition, often people will say "You speak Portuguese so well!" to be polite and friendly. This is obviously bullshit; I don't. However, at the Infrastructure Secretariat in Mato Grosso, a kind assistant was introducing me over the phone to a colleague and said in answer to a question, "Yes, well... he speaks Portuguese with an American accent." Her honesty made me laugh out loud.)
I'm overwhelmingly eager for this week to go quickly, and not only because I have a bargain hotel room with a ceiling fan instead of air conditioning. Bethany's coming to visit on Saturday. I'll admit that I'm distracted by her imminent arrival. I joked that, if I get either frustrated or overly enthusiastic in an interview, I'll ask my interviewees, "Look, could you please just ramble on about how the role of the state has changed since re-democratization for the next two hours? That will make my girlfriend arrive that much sooner."
I do plan to at least look into joining a gym. I spent my last week in Cuiabá going to a gym at night, and found it very satisfying. It made the evening pass more quickly. It certainly was better than a) writing up interview notes, which is inexplicably dull, or b) sitting in my room, reading off my computer and wondering how much time I had left in Mato Grosso. Also, I got a few pointers on lifting techniques from the staff, and the gym had a free cold water dispenser. All for five reais a visit.
---
The overnight bus ride down from Rio was tranquil and pleasant. The first few miles brought back a memory from 2005 of how winding and mountainous the overland western approach to Rio de Janeiro is. We stopped at two rest areas, in Resende, RJ and in Registro, SP. In my groggy state at 3 AM, I figured out our progress by noting that the anti-smoking emblem on the glass window was in the distinctive shape of the state of São Paulo. I did manage to sleep, and arrived in an awake, if not completely completely rested, state.
Curitiba is slightly hilly, and in some ways resembles Porto Alegre. (I might use my "this city reminds me of San Francisco" line again, if warranted.) It's been raining since 5 PM, very heavily at times, which also reminds me of Rio Grande do Sul. The pedestrian walk in town is nice, and the tree-filled plazas are pleasant. I'll hold off on a final judgment until after the city comes alive tomorrow. I have a 2:30 PM interview, and the weather is sufficiently cool and pleasant such that I think I'll walk the two kilometers to the office. There are two potential problems with this idea: it will rain at least some of the time tomorrow, and the city is only shaped like a grid for five-square block sections. Multiple streets end, curve, or hit each other at odd angles. I'll have to draw a map on a slip of paper to avoid getting lost.
POSTSCRIPT: I am not making up names. Brazil and its twenty-seven states are officially divided into five regions: the South, the Southeast (including Rio de Janeiro), the Center-West, the North, and the Northeast. These administrative divisions don't denote any political power; they're used as short-hand in government documents to categorize and refer to regions with roughly similar economies, geography, and levels of development.
SECOND POSTSCRIPT: Today is November 15th, which is Republic Proclamation Day here and the namesake for major streets. Emperor Pedro II was deposed in a military coup, and the Brazilian Republic was proclaimed, on November 15, 1889. To my relief, tomorrow is not a holiday.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
The Minarets: Cuiabá, Mato Grosso
In honor of my cousin in the Australian Army who's on a mission peacekeeping in an Islamic country for the first time, I present the minarets of Cuiabá. This town has a lot of radio towers, cell phone towers, electricity towers, and towers. I attribute these numbers to the remoteness of the city and the size of the state. There are 141 municipalities in the state, spread from Amazonian jungle to Pantanal swamp to dry sandy cerrado. The capital lies roughly in the middle of it all. I guess that cell phone towers are there to relay calls from pretty remote locations. (The latest Brazilian air accident was an Air Force plane that went down northwest of here. The survivors were rescued after a native tribe alerted officials in their bi-monthly meeting with government officials. That's pretty remote.)
The last photo contains a view of the Verdão (the Big Green), the stadium that will host matches in the 2014 World Cup. There are stickers plastered all over town celebrating the arrival of the tournament to Cuiabá; there are also graffiti saying things such as "Cup = trash" or "Cup out" or "A Cup for whom?"
I can summarize my thoughts about Cuiabá in with a contrast. It is not a lovely town. It has alternated between extreme heat and uncomfortable humidity. However, the people have been wonderful, warm, open, and friendly. Despite their kindness, I'm glad to be going home to Rio de Janeiro soon.
Aesthetics don't seem to be a high matogrossense priority. Below are photos of City Hall and the Municipal Cathedral. Judge for yourself.
I don't mean to suggest that there aren't flourishes of beauty to be found. In front of City Hall is the ambition of numerous Americans: a Ten Commandments plaque! Long ago, I was shocked to notice graffiti on public monuments, specifically on the statue in front of the Congress in Buenos Aires. This phenomenon is not limited to Argentina. (The oddest graffiti below reads "Thou Shalt Not Burn Alligators.")
There's also a bust of Marechal Rondon, an intrepid explorer who was the first to string telegraph lines across the cerrado (predecessors to the radio towers) and discover the sources of numerous rivers. His life is pretty amazing, and it's justified that the nearby (even more remote) state of Rondônia is named for him.
The town is walkable, but is hillier and more hot and humid than was Campo Grande. I took two weekend walks in search of food and happened upon two of the three main shopping malls in town. This was very fortunate, because malls have three key items: food courts, air conditioning, and drinking fountains. (New lesson: when out walking, always carry an empty water bottle. It saves money and is refreshing. Also, note that airports also have those amenities.) I could sit in a food court and read without being bothered. On Sunday, I went to the mall, armed with a camera – because I was eventually going to a museum, but it was going to be closed for lunch hours – found a bookstore, found the politics section, located some books I wanted to read, found some pieces of paper in the form of deposit envelopes at a nearby Banco do Brasil ATM, and sat down to read, take notes, and photograph relevant pages for entry later. Isn’t that how everyone spends their weekend?
I later visited the third shopping mall, Shopping Pantanal, because it's right across the street from the state government/administration complex. It's the best of the three; it even has an H. Stern outlet. I spent yesterday there, after my morning interview, reading a book written by the former state Secretary of Finance and preparing for my afternoon interview. The afternoon interview was a fiasco; no one at the Secretary of Infrastructure’s office knew anyone who would be prepared to talk with me. I left empty-handed.
It was not all work and no play. I did eventually reach the zoo on Sunday afternoon. The museum was closed. The zoo’s located at the federal university in town and admission is free. (The ice cream vendors out front, however, had many, many sales.) Brazilian families and I walked freely around the complex, and the animals behaved exactly according to expectations: in the hot Mato Grosso sun, they lounged in the shade and tried to sleep.
I’ll just dump a bunch of animal photos on here. There’s no order to them. One is of a capybara up close. There are some birds. There was a concrete dinosaur, and a monkey banging a nut against concrete to break it open. Oh, and the colorful parrots are native. Always remember that Brazil has an incomprehensible amount of biodiversity.
The last picture was taken especially for Bethany.
In all, an okay town. I certainly wouldn't vacation here. I think Campo Grande is a better entry point to the Pantanal than is Cuiabá. Cuiabá is closer to the national park in Chapada. The zoo and the malls are better here; the food and weather in Campo Grande were more to my taste.
A final note: both towns have the same taste for ice cream. There seem to be ice cream shops (sorveterias) on every corner, and with good reason. As the following billboard illustrates, intense heat is best addressed via soft serve:
"Thirty years refreshing the Mato Grosso heat."
I'll be back in Rio de Janeiro in 48 hours. Thank goodness.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
"O que acontece?"
"Brazilian coffee - It's more delicious!" I can't deny or confirm this; the coffee is pretty good, but I don't normally drink coffee and thus can't make a comparison. Sadly, the photo I took left out the exclamation point. Also note that this ad is on the outside wall of a public school. I don't know why.
So this is my final day in Campo Grande; I'm leaving tonight for an overnight bus ride to Cuiabá. I don't have profound thoughts about Campo Grande. I largely enjoyed my time here, and the people were wonderful, though it was harder than my time in Porto Alegre. I felt a bit more lonely, bored, and depressed at times than I was in the South. It's harder to go out and see things and experience a city when the sun is blazing hot and the city is so spread out. (Although the city is walkable and easy to navigate, it's at least a one-kilometer walk to the nearest decent restaurant. That trip - down the same streets, past the same stores, under the hot sun - gets tiresome after a while.) Oh, and my stomach was a little upset for a few stretches of time.
Would I recommend someone visit here? If you're en route to the Pantanal or to Bonito, or overland to Paraguay or Bolivia, yes, of course. (I find our proximity to Bolivia strangely fascinating, given that, in my mind and memories, La Paz and Lake Titicaca are in another world entirely. Trivia point for the next time you're on Jeopardy: the only two South American countries that do not border Brazil are Ecuador and Chile.)
The expected temperature in Cuiabá tomorrow is a high of 37 degrees. That's pretty hot, especially without an ocean breeze, at only 15 degrees, 35 minutes from the equator. I have to adapt by learning to wake up early, get my tasks accomplished, and be content with spending the afternoon inside in the air conditioning. I've learned that behavior in Campo Grande; now I just have to live by it.
This morning, I retraced a route I ran yesterday evening. The street photos below are an attempt to give a sense of what Campo Grande looks like, and why I made the observation that it seems more Latin American than Brazilian. It's an attractive city in a certain sense, but I'll leave that certain sense to each of your particular tastes.
These views look east down Rua ("Street") Dom Aquino, toward the center of the city. This is my hotel's neighborhood, Amambaí.
As noted before, this city is the jumping-off point for the Pantanal. And if your city has one main attraction, and that attraction is spectacular, by all means you should play it up. So they did.
While running yesterday, I heard and then saw another blue and gold macaw. It was not as large as the ones below. It did, however, sound like a human. I thought someone had shouted at me, and turned to see the macaw in flight. She hadn't spoken in English or Portuguese, but the sound of her squawk certainly recalled a macaw or parrot's mimicry of human voices.
It was nowhere as large as these are.
Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of the phone booths that are encased in large parrots. Someone else has photos here. I do have a photo of an animal-pomorphisized trash can, from Indigenous Nations Park:
Some spare thoughts:
1. The title of the post is Portuguese for "Then what happens?" Almost all my interviewees have used it as a rhetorical device. I think there were one or two exceptions. You can hear Faustão (Big Fausto, host of a Sunday variety show for the last twenty years) use the expression here about thirty seconds in. He then goes on to discuss his recent weight-loss surgery. I don't mind the phrase; I just find it charming. I do get mildly annoyed at people asking "entendiu?" ("did you understand?") at the end of every sentence, but I stifle my annoyance.
2. Cuiabá will be one of twelve sites that host games in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Campo Grande will be left out. This is a sore point here; some of the campograndenses have mentioned it without prompting. I replied that I felt their pain, but that I have no influence over FIFA or CBF decisions.
3. Today marks the beginning of antimalarial pills! Hooray! My run yesterday went toward the airport, past the air force base and the general hospital. As I approached the airport, the roadside trenches filled with water grew larger and larger. I decided to turn around early; I had no idea what type of (possibly-dengue-carrying) mosquitoes waited on the surface and would take flight in the quickly-falling dusk.
So tonight I take a ride out of this bus terminal, for the first overnight bus ride in Latin America since my trips in 2005. (My description of bus rides can be found halfway down here and here.) Lonely Planet describes the area thus: "The bus station in Campo Grande is an eyesore, rife with prostitutes and shady characters" (426). Yeah, my hotel is there, and I walked past this station daily to get into the center of town. As they also note: "Most budget accommodations are clustered around the bus terminal, but this is a seedy area with no shortage of small-time crooks and prostitutes" (426).
Judge for yourself. (Prostitutes most likely not pictured.)
Then there's this sign on the south side of the building (find it in the above photo!), which I found amusing.
The sign reads "This structure was the number one shopping center in Campo Grande and it was the postcard [image] of Mato Grosso do Sul." I don't know whether this is a protest, a boast, a lament, or just an observation. It certainly makes good use of the past tense.
In the city's defense, they're building a brand new bus terminal elsewhere, which is set to open in about one month. (In typical style, they already held the inauguration ceremony months ago, when the station was not yet operable. This same series of events happened with the Siqueira Campos metro station in Copacabana, Rio.)
Two more weeks until I return to Rio.
Monday, October 12, 2009
First Impressions, Campo Grande / Mato Grosso do Sul
Some brief notes:
Campo Grande is closer to Asunción, Paraguay, than it is to Brasilia or Rio de Janeiro, and it shows. (In fact, one of the recommended weekend outings is a trip to Ponta Porã, where one can walk freely into Paraguay to buy cheaper - read: black market - goods.) We're at the edge of the Pantanal and a few hundred miles south of the geographic center of the South American continent.
I came to Campo Grande late last night on a connection through Guarulhos airport in São Paulo. I had to make a domestic connection in São Paulo, but because my flight was continuing on to Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, it became a domestic-to-international-terminal transfer and another trip through security. Quite a pain. On the second flight, by sheer luck, I sat next to the Director of Tariffs for the municipal transit agency here and his family. They were returning from a week's vacation in Natal, RN, a later stop on my trip. We chatted for a while, and shared a cab ride to the neighborhood. I'll call him later this week.
I woke up today with plans to buy water. (This is always a high priority when one can't drink the water out of the tap. The hunt for water never ends.) I located a supermarket and set off walking.
My first impression of the town is that it seemed more Latin American than Brazilian. I mean to say that Rio de Janeiro has a uniqueness and a profile that sets it apart from other cities on the continent. Rio is unique, and is uniquely gorgeous, violent, chaotic, extreme, delicious. As I mentioned before, the River Plate Delta cities - Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and by extension Porto Alegre - all have a common look. Campo Grande, on the other hand, belongs to the group of cities that could be in Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, or the interior of Argentina, and not seem out of place. (The Portuguese signs might look odd.) The low rise of the buildings, the intermingling of pavement and dirt, the use of varied color and the faded paint recall Arequipa, Peru, or other medium-sized cities across the continent.
So I reached the supermarket - which turned out to be the first Hipermercado Extra in the country - and bought lunch, water, and some crackers. It's a long walk, not to be repeated often. If I do return, however, I'll bring my camera. It's the first store in my experience that sells groceries on the ground floor and - via an angled moving sidewalk - clothes, sporting goods, and TVs on the second floor. I wondered if Wal-mart owns the chain, and only later confirmed that it does not. (Wal-mart owns Bompreço, which is mainly in the Northeast.) Also seen on the walk back - stores that correctly used the English noun implied in the previous post.
The town was closed today for Childrens' Day, a holiday in which kids receive presents and no one works. The nightly news had a segment about kids waiting on the highway between Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais for presents dropped off by passing motorists, and how dangerous this practice is. This segment followed two reports on drunk driving arrests and state DMVs' inability to take away the drivers' licenses of offenders. In short, Jornal Nacional was in a mood for scolding tonight - the not-so-implicit message was "why don't the police/bureaucrats do their job in this country?" See here.
Overall, a curious town, with very friendly residents. I'm staying in a bargain hotel, but I get to use the wireless network, pool, and breakfast service of the twice-as-expensive up-market hotel next door. The major drawback: I have about as much personal space as a college freshman in the US does.
Calls to set up interviews start tomorrow.
UPDATE: While webjet offered sandwiches and a dessert for each leg of the flight to and from Porto Alegre, Gol only offered the following in-flight snack (and a mint):
It's exactly what it looks like: a Ritz-cracker sandwich with cream filling. And I'll translate - Presunto is Ham. It was not so tasty, but I was hungry.
Campo Grande is closer to Asunción, Paraguay, than it is to Brasilia or Rio de Janeiro, and it shows. (In fact, one of the recommended weekend outings is a trip to Ponta Porã, where one can walk freely into Paraguay to buy cheaper - read: black market - goods.) We're at the edge of the Pantanal and a few hundred miles south of the geographic center of the South American continent.
I came to Campo Grande late last night on a connection through Guarulhos airport in São Paulo. I had to make a domestic connection in São Paulo, but because my flight was continuing on to Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, it became a domestic-to-international-terminal transfer and another trip through security. Quite a pain. On the second flight, by sheer luck, I sat next to the Director of Tariffs for the municipal transit agency here and his family. They were returning from a week's vacation in Natal, RN, a later stop on my trip. We chatted for a while, and shared a cab ride to the neighborhood. I'll call him later this week.
I woke up today with plans to buy water. (This is always a high priority when one can't drink the water out of the tap. The hunt for water never ends.) I located a supermarket and set off walking.
My first impression of the town is that it seemed more Latin American than Brazilian. I mean to say that Rio de Janeiro has a uniqueness and a profile that sets it apart from other cities on the continent. Rio is unique, and is uniquely gorgeous, violent, chaotic, extreme, delicious. As I mentioned before, the River Plate Delta cities - Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and by extension Porto Alegre - all have a common look. Campo Grande, on the other hand, belongs to the group of cities that could be in Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, or the interior of Argentina, and not seem out of place. (The Portuguese signs might look odd.) The low rise of the buildings, the intermingling of pavement and dirt, the use of varied color and the faded paint recall Arequipa, Peru, or other medium-sized cities across the continent.
So I reached the supermarket - which turned out to be the first Hipermercado Extra in the country - and bought lunch, water, and some crackers. It's a long walk, not to be repeated often. If I do return, however, I'll bring my camera. It's the first store in my experience that sells groceries on the ground floor and - via an angled moving sidewalk - clothes, sporting goods, and TVs on the second floor. I wondered if Wal-mart owns the chain, and only later confirmed that it does not. (Wal-mart owns Bompreço, which is mainly in the Northeast.) Also seen on the walk back - stores that correctly used the English noun implied in the previous post.
The town was closed today for Childrens' Day, a holiday in which kids receive presents and no one works. The nightly news had a segment about kids waiting on the highway between Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais for presents dropped off by passing motorists, and how dangerous this practice is. This segment followed two reports on drunk driving arrests and state DMVs' inability to take away the drivers' licenses of offenders. In short, Jornal Nacional was in a mood for scolding tonight - the not-so-implicit message was "why don't the police/bureaucrats do their job in this country?" See here.
Overall, a curious town, with very friendly residents. I'm staying in a bargain hotel, but I get to use the wireless network, pool, and breakfast service of the twice-as-expensive up-market hotel next door. The major drawback: I have about as much personal space as a college freshman in the US does.
Calls to set up interviews start tomorrow.
UPDATE: While webjet offered sandwiches and a dessert for each leg of the flight to and from Porto Alegre, Gol only offered the following in-flight snack (and a mint):
It's exactly what it looks like: a Ritz-cracker sandwich with cream filling. And I'll translate - Presunto is Ham. It was not so tasty, but I was hungry.
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