Albert visits Salvador

Albert (and Bethany) came to visit for my third week in Salvador. It was a working week: I ended up having three meetings and making multiple phone calls. The exhaustion of mono has passed. Meanwhile, Bethany had plenty of work on her own, and we had joint work to take care of. We have to apply for a mortgage, which requires gathering together every scrap of paper demonstrating that I indeed have money. We're in escrow on a house at 78 Raleigh Street, Rochester, NY, where we'll move after I come back to the States in August.

Above is a photo of Albert in front of the Lacerda Elevator, one of the famous postcard images of the city. Below is yet another photo in the series of views out my window. Like the view of Sugar Loaf and Guanabara Bay out of our apartment window in Rio, it never gets old. (My landlord stopped by the evening after Bethany left and guided me down the hall to show off the even more impressive view out the window of his larger apartment.)



We had a Monday lunch with the Vieiras down in Barra, and a later visit to Nosso Senhor do Bonfim Church and the delicious Sorveteria de Ribeira with Válmore driving. New slang Bahian expression: "O Pa' I!", a contraction of "Ohla Para Isso!" or "Look at that!" I could go into the nuances of where and when it should be used, but I'm still learning. I don't have many chances to use it in my relatively formal uses of Portuguese.

I have come to love and hate Salvador. I love Salvador because it's among my first experiences in Brazil and it's where I was made to feel like a member of the Vieiras' family. (Side note: They did an awesome job of making Bethany, despite her limited Portuguese, feel very welcome. We showed them pictures of the house in Rochester. And yes, as a side note, it's true that Bethany has done 99% of the work and I get to become a homeowner by default. I'm a lazy bum.)

But my dislike for Salvador grows every day. I don't mean for the people or the cuisine or the music or the sights. Those are all fantastic, warm, delicious, and welcoming. Instead, I severely dislike the city's layout and public transportation. Salvador is approximately the size and population of Los Angeles. It's enormous. The airport is thirty kilometers from the city center. The traffic is awful and getting worse.

However, while Los Angeles is more or less a grid or collection of grids, Salvador is a collection of loops and winding roads. To get to my doctor's visit yesterday, for example, I waited twenty minutes for a bus going to the main bus station and shopping mall, Iguatemi. I then took another bus down Av. Antônio Carlos Magalhães, which doubles back after it splits into Av. Juracy Magalhães Júnior (no relation, actually a political adversary of ACM). The bus ride home involved another twenty minute wait, two false starts of climbing onto a bus and asking if it passed Comércio and being told that it didn't, and sixty minutes in traffic. Perhaps I'm just in a bad spot for taking the bus. (Note: the touristy areas from Campo Grande to Barra to Rio Vermelho would be worse places.) A professor I met recommended that I live in Pituba, closer to the high-rises on Av. ACM and Av. Tancredo Neves. She has a point, but those local bus lines are even more confusing. (I got on a bus marked T. Neves to come and meet her office off Av. Tancredo Neves. It turned out, at the end of the bus ride, that Tancredo Neves is also a neighborhood. I took another bus and arrived late, after walking from Iguatemi.)

In short, I allow myself more or less 90 minutes to get to any work-related function in the city. And sometimes I still have to hop off the bus and flag a taxi.

The time wouldn't be extraordinary, except that it's consistently above 30 degrees and humid, and when the bus is stuck in traffic on a narrow avenue (I refer to Av. Heitor Dias in Sete Portas on the way to Av. Paralela as "Engarrafamento Avenue" - "engarrafamento" is the Portuguese term for traffic congestion, which literally translates to "bottling up"), I just have to lean forward in my seat and let the sweat and sunblock drip onto the floor so too much doesn't stain my shirt before an interview.

So, again, I love Bahians. And I hate whoever planned this city - which is no one; the city wasn't planned - with a passion. Salvador is very much like Los Angeles in that it's probably not a bad town if you have your own car, and an almost-impossible town if you have to take public transportation everywhere. (Finally, the taxi companies colluding and lobbying to guarantee that there's only one air-conditioned public bus to the airport, operating on an unreliable schedule every thirty minutes or hour, can burn in hell. Maybe hell for the taxi company owners - described here as in Rio as "mafiosos" - can spend eternity waiting in the sun and heat for a bus and fearing that they'll miss their flight.)

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Enough complaining.


On Saturday, after a week of afternoon rains that ruined chances at beach excursions, Albert, Bethany, and I headed off to Praia do Forte. It's a (quite touristy) beach town about ninety minutes by bus outside of Salvador. The sand and beach were nice, and the opportunity to swim (pretty much the first sustained physical exercise I've done since my mono diagnosis) were lovely. The ocean floor was sharp and rocky, however, and I scraped two of my toes when coming back into town.




The visit was a good break from Salvador and life in the Pelourinho. (I live right on the Praça da Sé, which has its ups and downs.) We had a chance to walk around the little town, and found the rarest of holy places on the main street: a Mexican restaurant. Of course we ate there, and it wasn't as disappointing as I had expected. Mexican food is hard to find here, despite the fact that the only ingredients that need to be added to rearrange mainstream Brazilian cuisine into Mexican cuisine are tortillas and avocados.

Praia do Forte is home to two interesting sites, of which we only saw one. We didn't get to see the ruins of the castle of Garcia d'Avila, a Portuguese settler granted an enormous land grant by the Crown in the 17th century. We did get to see the Tamar Project, which is an environmental group dedicated to repopulating sea turtles ("tartarugas marinhas") off the Brazilian coast.

Sea turles are fantastic.





As depicted, they had live turtles living in tanks, surrounded by educational materials about the turtles' lives, the project to save them, and tips on sealife preservation. I recommend Praia do Forte for the Tamar Project alone.

Tamar has other locations along the coastline. It involves local families, usually those led by fishermen, in turtle preservation and new economiic activities that help protect turtle ecosystems. The project claims to monitor about 1,000 km of coastline, which is quite impressive.

There was other sea life in the tanks, but it was most interesting to wait for a turtle to surface and breathe.




We made sure to buy lots of merchandise on our way out, to support Tamar.

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Albert and Bethany left on Monday. After they left, I made one call and received another, both of which declined to schedule interviews this week. It's Semana Santa, with Easter on Monday. Tomorrow is Holy Thursday. I'm instead working and planning for the next stage of the trip.

I have a plane ticket for a flight to Belém do Pará on Monday afternoon. (In an either foolhardy or brilliant move, I scheduled a layover in Guarulhos Airport in hopes of getting a São Paulo area code SIM card for use later in the project. We're now scheduled to visit São Paulo in late June and July, and it would help move things along if I could secure a SP phone number ahead of time. We'll see how successful this idea is.)

It's going to be six weeks on the road. I take "on the road" to mean living in hotel rooms, without all my luggage and without my printer-scanner. I've scheduled two weeks each in the capital cities of Belém, Pará, São Luis, Maranhão, and Fortaleza, Ceará. This will be the longest "on the road" period of the entire year, and we'll see how it goes.

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Oh, and my opinion of the Brazilian press fell a little lower. I was in the checkout line at the supermarket yesterday, and all three national weekly newsmagazines - Veja, Isto É, and Época - had dramatic front-page covers about the verdict in the Isabella Nardoni Case. Veja even had to write on the cover: "Condemned. Now Isabella can rest in peace."

The case is the equivalent of the Laci and Scott Peterson case in the US. A father and stepmother were convicted of dropping their five-year-old girl out the window of their high-rise apartment in São Paulo. They claimed that she accidentally fell. The event was tragic and gruesome, and the press coverage was overwhelming and nauseating. Only the public access station had the sense to wonder aloud why the press had instantly condemned the couple, and whether public opinion had been driven too far against them for a fair trial. (There was also an explanation of how jury trials, of which this was one, are conducted.) The rest of the press behaved as Nancy Grace, a loathsome human being, would have acted. If you want to know every gruesome detail of the crime, every speculation on motives, and every horrible description for the convicted, even before they were convicted, they're not hard to find.

Really, this didn't need to be a cover story. But I guess it moves sales. Had one of the three big weeklies tried to differentiate themselves with a different cover, I would have purchased it out of gratitude. Blech.

Food blogging: O Nordeste

Above is a bottle of prune/plum-flavored yogurt from Alagoas. Admit it, you couldn't think of a better name if you tried.

Sick in Salvador, Bahia: My rant about Brazilian television

So I’ve been to a specialist and taken additional lab tests and, yes, I have mononucleosis. It seems to be only a moderate case; I spend less time in bed or on the couch every day.

The common name for mono in Portuguese translates to “the kissing illness,” which is similar to the slang term in English. It’s a common infection spread during Carnaval. I have a feeling that people (the Vieiras, the doctor here) just don’t believe me when I say that I haven’t kissed anyone or had any type of saliva contact with anyone. It even seems far-fetched to me that I got it from a dirty glass or some other source. But so it goes.

I should note that there’s no evidence that I picked up mono in Brazil, or specifically Bahia or Alagoas. The virus is dormant for some time before symptoms occur, and the window of time (symptoms starting on the first Thursday in Maceió) suggests that I could have been infected in Rio, on a plane, or in the United States.

In any case, the doctor’s orders to rest and stay well hydrated, when combined with the fact that I have no home internet connection, have led me to watch a lot of Brazilian television.

Some background for a subtitle: the movie Wayne’s World, which I saw in the bargain bin in Lojas Americanas long ago, has the Portuguese title “Quanto Mais Idiota Melhor.” Literally translated, Wayne’s World becomes “The More Idiotic, the Better.” I found this both funny and mildly insulting to one of the better products of American pop culture in the mid-1990s. Anyway, if I were to write a documentary about Brazilian TV, I would entitle it “O Globo Me Faz um Idiota” or “Globo Makes Me An Idiot.”

There are multiple television networks in Brazil (roughly, Band, Globo, SBT, and Record). Of these, Globo is dominant. It’s not even close. Globo is also omnipresent: when you go to the notary, the supermarket, the bar, the restaurant, the bank, the pharmacy, the mall, the airport, the bus station, or any one of many other public spaces, if there’s a television nearby, chances are 95% that it’s tuned to Globo. Walking down the beachfront avenue in Maceió one night, past some hotels and apartments, I heard the iconic sounds (doo-doo-duh-doo-doo! doo…) of the novela “Viver a vida,” the current 9:15 PM Globo drama, coming out of multiple windows. (I might qualify this by noting that special sporting events (read: important football games) are sometimes only shown on SportTV, which will have a high percentage of viewers. However, SportTV is itself owned by Globo.)

There’s a long political history about how Roberto Marinho, Antonio Carlos Magalhães, and the military regime worked together to bring Globo to every corner of Brazil in the postwar period. Local distributorships were usually sold to local political bosses. Hence, for example, the Globo distributorship here is owned by ACM’s family and the Collor de Melo family owns the Globo license in Alagoas. I can’t provide the entire story.

In the time that I’ve consumed TV, I’ve come to two observations about Globo’s programming: 1) it’s incredibly insipid, and 2) it’s incredibly self-promoting.

WARNING: Rant to follow. As a mental health break, here are some photos of the view out of my apartment window in Salvador. I look down on the Lacerda Elevator, the south end of Comércio, and the old São Marcelo Fort. The church steeple in the foreground belongs to the Igreja da Misercórdia, the first hospital in Brazil. To the far left, near the Elevator, is the Palácio Rio Branco, the old colonial administration building for the entire colony of Brazil and current city hall. Visible ships are moving products in and out of the port at the north end of Comércio, and from other points in the Recôncavo Baiano (the shoreline around the bay). This view looks into the Bay of All Saints, with Itaparica island on the other side, about 15 km away . It’s truly magnificent.






Back to Globo. Start with the novelas. There are approximately five or six novelas playing on Globo at the moment. The afternoon one about people living on the frontier (unclear whether in Brazil or America) just ended, and has been replaced by another about a slave-owning plantation family and their relationships with their favored slaves. The evening novelas feature some woman who just got thrown in jail, a pair of rival rock music dynasties in São Paulo, and a novela about the difficult lives of supermodels who live in either Rio de Janeiro or Buzios, the resort town east of Rio.

The last is Viver a vida, or “To Live Life.” It’s the most important soap in Brazil at the moment. (It enjoys a charmed spot, at 9:15 PM right after the national news on Globo.) I explained to Neal that I finally realized what makes Viver a vida such captivating TV: all of the actors and actresses are drop-dead gorgeous. They’re hot, outstandingly hot, including the men and the older characters. The entire cast has more sex appeal than should be legal. Neal replied that this is true of many novelas. And while it’s true that novela actors are by definition good-looking – and yes, Brazilians are already on average beautiful people – I think that Viver a vida stands above the rest in the sheer sexiness. This is altogether fitting; it’s, as I noted, a novela about the lives of supermodels.

Of course, being soap operas, they’re ALL THE SAME. There are only a limited number of plot devices, love triangles, emotions, and manipulations possible. The plots move much more rapidly than do plots in US soap operas, but this doesn’t mean that they cover new ground. The Globo soaps are mainly shot in massive sound stages (bigger than aircraft hangars, and sometimes visible when you fly in) located west of Rio de Janeiro. Sometimes they feature new backgrounds. (The popular novela that previously occupied Viver a vida’s spot was about family intrigue in India. Some outdoor shots were done in India.) In general, however, the plots and emotions and actions have been constant since the debut of television here.

The other networks have their own soaps, but the production quality is slightly lower and none of the titles seem memorable.

On Globo, after the news and Viver a vida, they have Big Brother Brasil. The concept is the same as the original UK version, except that the show is shown five days each week. There’s little in a single day that can be edited down to good moments, but they show it anyway. I must confess that I’ve never watched more than a minute. I can get my fill of reality shows featuring idiots acting idiotically in the States.

BRIEF DISCLAIMER: I don’t mean to suggest that Brazil is alone in trashy TV. Goodness knows that the United States is a pioneer in the field: Jerry Springer, reality television, E, VH1, and so on. I would, however, wager that the average 24-hour line-up on NBC, CBS, and ABC is probably less insulting to one’s intellect than is the Globo line-up. (And I confess to enjoying Family Guy and the Simpsons, so maybe Fox should be thrown in there.) Whether this is a function of the level of education among viewers, in a country still in development, I leave as an open possibility.

I should also note that Jornal Nacional, the evening national newscast that comes between the soap about the rock producer families and the soap about supermodels, and sometimes after the local news, has the best production values of any news show in Brazil. (JN has its own complicated history and accusations of bias.) And unlike most other news programs, especially those on other networks, it doesn’t dwell on the latest grisly crimes of the day. Jornal Nacional’s news clips, available online, also helped me learn Portuguese, so I have a soft spot for the husband-and-wife weekday announcing team. (They have triplets and live in a penthouse in Lagoa in Rio.)

Globo then goes out of its way to use the rest of its programming – except for feature films (recently, for example, Herbie and Jurassic Park 3 – The Plotless World), mid-day news and dubbed anime cartoons – to promote the line-up of soaps and Big Brother Brasil. The weekend variety shows feature interviews with the actors and reality stars. (I recently figured out how much Faustão’s show is one long series of commercials. And I now want to physically harm Luciano Huck, but that’s another story.) A morning program with an incredibly annoying parrot puppet and a cosmetically-enhanced blonde features interviews of the same. Every commercial break recently has had an announcement about how “it’s worth seeing again the emotions of [novela about frontier life that is ending].” Commercials themselves feature the soap stars pitching products or program tie-ins. At lunch time, there’s even a game show that revolves around how much contestants remember about previous and present Globo novelas. And in every case, Globo just happens to find people in malls, on the street, and in the audience who can talk at length about how they feel about any given soap star or personality on Big Brother. I’m always astounded at how much people care. (The “people on the street” are, without fail, in São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro.)

The other networks feature even dumber variety shows (“O Melhor do Brasil,” whatever show Ratinho is on), news shows that feature a host fulminating about how awful crime and criminals are while his correspondents flash updates and stick their microphones in the faces of the accused (“Brasil Urgente”), a version of Wheel of Fortune sponsored by a cosmetics company that seems to feature players who don’t really know the strategies behind Wheel of Fortune and an older cosmetic-surgery-up-to-the-gills host who wastes time staring at the board and trying to figure out what the puzzle is (on SBT), a version of the Price is Right, and the same news and movies that Globo features. To my benefit, I guess, I’ve learned that Brazilian law doesn’t necessarily include Miranda rights. I was shocked the first time I saw a local reporter walk up to an accused, stick a microphone in their (dropped, hidden) face and ask them why they committed the crime. The taped police interrogation of the accused murderer of a cartoonist and his son in São Paulo has been played multiple times now. (He confessed to the crime. It’s a sad story.)

As an aside, one of the networks features the dubbed cartoons of Woody Woodpecker (“Pica Pau” in Portuguese). I don’t understand that cartoon. Woody is, at root, an anti-hero and a real asshole. The comedy consists of nothing but physical violence; there’s not a bit of clever wordplay. And then Woody the raging asshole always seems to win against his stupider, abused opponents. Who wrote and approved this garbage? (Unless the fact that Woody is red-white-and-blue is a political commentary on American aggression abroad during the Cold War, which might start to make sense….)

In sum, my brain is not enhanced by network TV here. I do enjoy watching football, but had to do it with the door closed last time because the neighbor down the hall kept cursing loudly at the TV.

There is one shining exception. The public access television station in Bahia (TVE, channel 2) has real investigative reporting, few commercials, interesting interviews, and Sesame Street (Vila Sésamo). I think I saw a similar channel in Alagoas that had an interesting interview with a PSDB state deputy and a member of an anti-corruption NGO about spending in the state assembly. (Alagoas still has problems paying public worker salaries. While I was there, the State Assembly voted an increase in their own annual bonus, to be retroactive to last year. By one account, with two or three exceptions, the state deputies in Alagoas are all self-interested crooks.)

Thank goodness for this public access channel. I learned that, in Portuguese, Big Bird is Garibaldo, Ernie is Élio, and Cookie Monster is named Come-come, or “Eat-eat.” Fantastic.

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My internet connectivity should be back up soon, and Bethany will be here at the end of the week. In sum, I’ll watch less of Globo, and my blood pressure will hopefully stabilize.


+++ Footnote: my beef with Luciano Huck. Huck is everywhere. He advertises more products than does any other celebrity in Brazil. He’s the goofy-looking guy pointing to products on signs at bus stops. Recently, his show featured a kid who was part of a surfing school in a favela in Rio. To fulfill the kid’s dream, they flew the kid to Hawaii to surf with Kelly Slater. First, they had to show the kid’s background – how he lived in a house on a morro that didn’t have a refrigerator. (They later showed this footage to Kelly Slater, who acknowledged that, while he grew up poor, Kelly never had to live without a refrigerator.) It struck me as a terrible use of money to fly the kid to Hawaii in a new wardrobe to surf for a few days when he continues to live in poverty. But at the end of the show, Huck promised to sponsor and help the surf school provide alternatives for kids in the favela. Okay, fine, whatever.

Fast-forward to next week. Huck’s show – the Saturday variety show on Globo – again features the same family. And he promises to give the family a new house. Great! With one catch: to win the house, the father, who, it is shown, makes a living selling trinkets and necklaces on the beach in Rio, has to balance on a wooden board over a rolling fulcrum for 45 seconds. What!!!??? This family’s fate is turned into cheap amusement for a national audience? Fuck you, Luciano Huck. (Postscript: the father succeeded. It’s unclear how they’re supposed to pay the maintenance on a new house, but I’m sure that will be passed over.)

Maladies and memories: Maceió, AL

I should apologize that I didn’t take any photos of Maceió. The sun was hot, and I was often sick during my visit. Below is a collection of my thoughts from the visit.

First, Alagoanos are extremely nice, warm, welcoming, and friendly. I enjoyed their company and their hospitality.

But there’s a contrast….
Maceió, the city, well, needs improvement. Friends who had visited rave about its beaches. And it’s true: the beaches of Ponta Verde, Jatiúca, and Pajuçara are nice. They’re palm-fronted, with acres of sand at low tide, a gentle curve not unlike Copacabana. The beaches to the north and south of the city are supposed to be even better.

So that part of the city is nice, and is appropriately full of new apartment buildings, tourist hotels, and tasty restaurants.

Then there’s the other part of Maceió. Two blocks from the beach in Pajuçara (the part where I stayed, most fashionable during the 1970s) are roads without signs for their names, full of dirt and often trash and low-slung houses crumbling under the sun.

I had almost all my interviews in downtown, or out in more distant neighborhoods. The center is terribly disorganized, with the same lack of street signs and no grid-like layout.

The city bus system is among the worst I’ve experienced. (I must admit that I only took two buses in Campo Grande, and one took too long and wandered so much that I finally jumped off to grab a taxi.) The buses run terribly infrequently, and one has to resort to asking every driver whether a given bus goes to a given destination.

Trash collection on our street happened once in the eleven days I was there. The rest of the time, I had to walk around torn-open garbage bags with remnants from the butcher on the other side of the street. There are open canals that run to the ocean that can be smelled from within the bus, even if the bus is a block away.

In pop sociology mode, I would think of Maceió as a microcosm of inequality, in Brazil and in general. The rich in Maceió all drive their own cars, and live in gated communities protected by private security and shards of glass in Ponta Verde and northward. They only escape their hygienic bubble for a bit, when necessary. The poor live in the rest of the city, and wait for infrequent buses in the hot sun. They walk around trash on the streets and open sewage drains. (This situation also describes Delhi and perhaps Los Angeles.)

But yes, Maceió does have astounding beaches.

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I did get the chance to escape the loneliness of individual travel and meet up with Daniel’s cousin and her future husband. We went to a cachaça bar Água Doce up in Ponta Verde, where the loveliest of Maceienses drink and chat. (And they were indeed all lovely.) I later had a chance to interview Bernardo’s uncle, and have perhaps the most interesting informal conversation of the trip thus far.

I was given directions to this last office as the following: near the rodoviária, on a viaduto that goes to the beach, there’s a tall tower that has a Banco do Brasil agency on the ground floor. The office is on the sixth floor. I was impressed that the taxi driver thought these directions no problem, and when I later read the address, I understood why. The address itself, given that the building is tucked back between a freeway and a Sam’s Club, is probably of no use.

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On my first Thursday there, I started to have shooting headaches on the left side of my head, and a swelling under my throat. I soldiered on, but spent more time in bed and more time taking naps. I drank more water, and finally gave in and bought ibuprofen and Claritin. The ibuprofen seemed to keep the sharpest pains at bay.

Thus I didn’t get out to see much. And this undoubtedly colored my impression of Maceió, probably not for the better.

Upon my return to Salvador, today, I was taken to see a doctor. The diagnosis from the blood tests: mononucleosis. We’ll see what happens next.

Blood, Sweat, and Sugar: Maceió, Alagoas

I’ve returned to Brazil after a few weeks in California. My first impression of California was that it was very, very cold. The day I left Rio, the temperature was 40 degrees Celsius, which is about 104 degrees Farenheit. And of course it was humid. Rio de Janeiro was the hottest major city in the country on January 20th. Some days later, Jornal Nacional had a clip in which a reporter went around downtown reading off the thermal index, the “real temperature.” It was around 50 degrees C in some of the places I recognized instantly, higher elsewhere. Apparently the buildings in downtown Rio, which provide so much lovely shade, also don’t allow air to circulate. Heat pockets form in downtown. In the Bay Area, temperatures didn’t get above the low sixties, and I unpacked boxes to pull out my sweaters and jackets.

My second impression of California and the States was how pessimistic the economic and political news is, and how glad I am to be away for a short bit.

Now that I’m back in Brazil, I can confirm my third impression: things just work more efficiently, and with a greater sense of order, in the States. This point is obvious; I perhaps noted it anew because five months (from August 12 to January 20) was the longest period that I’ve been outside the United States before.

Oh, and things cost more there, except rent and houses in Rochester.

In any cases, I had an epic series of flights that convinced me of the value of paying a little more for quick connections. I left the San José airport and said goodbye to Bethany at noon on Tuesday; I arrived into Salvador and picked up my bags on Thursday morning at 1 AM, via Dallas, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro. Oh, Webjet, I shake my fists at your flight delays. Thank you for not charging me too much for my extra luggage. Azul would have charged me R$10 per extra kilo, or R$70; I paid R$39 for my stripped-down luggage.

I returned to Salvador, home of the Vieiras and my previous longest stay in Brasil. It’s the city where I learned Portuguese, but that lovely, smooth, even Bahian accent has been corroded by the various states I’ve visited since.

And boy is Salvador terribly organized and laid out. It cost me R$75 to take a taxi to Nick’s place in the center, through every curving ugly concrete on-ramp and off-ramp that engineers could imagine.

And yet it’s a lovely city on a stunning bay. The Trade Winds come from Africa and cool down the city, making it rarely as hot as Rio in the summer (but sometimes hotter in other seasons). As a special treat, we went swimming at Porto da Barra, in view of the Vieiras’ apartment building, and had a delicious moqueca stew for dinner. I thought it unfortunate that my camera is not waterproof and thus I can’t get a shot of Porto da Barra from the water, or the little fishes (me, into the water, audibly: “peixinhos!”) that school underfoot. Below are photos from Nick’s apartment balcony, looking west, that deserve the caption: “Convents to the left of me, churches to the right, here I am, stuck in Bahia again.” Apologies to Bob Dylan.





I wasn’t stuck in Bahia long. I took a cab to the bus station (R$22! Oh, for the days when trips to the rodoviaria or airport only cost R$4 in otherwise-expensive Rio de Janeiro) and an overnight bus to Alagoas.

We didn’t get blankets on the bus, despite paying more for “Gold Class” service, but the nice lady sitting next to me saw me folding my arms and shivering, and offered to share her blanket. They keep those buses extremely cold. I should have known better.

I awoke when she got off, just as the sun rose around 6 AM. In between short sessions of dozing, I began to watch the fields pass by.

This is the land of sugarcane. It looks like a big grass-like shrub, and it’s everywhere. Alagoas is also one of the poorest states in the country, with an abysmal score on the Human Development Index. I didn’t see a donkey cart (which sometimes still travel down major streets in Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires), but there was little besides roadside shacks for miles. Every decoration and wall painting, including political paintings (identifiable at high speeds because they’re often nothing more than a name and a five or six-digit candidate number), seemed faded in the hot sun. And the sun is hot. Maceió is fewer than ten degrees from the equator, which is closer than I’ve ever been on land. (Flying doesn’t count.) From what I’ve heard and read, sugarcane cultivation is difficult and dangerous work. Working in the pounding sun can’t make it easier.

Perhaps the most dignified buildings we passed were the refineries (usinas in Portuguese). The sugar refineries are busy turning cane into ethanol and making Brasil a pioneer on the relatively-cleaner energy front. Here, the refineries and the plantations are owned by powerful families. Which leads me to the violence.

The processing plants all seem to have the last names Melo, Calheiros, and Vilela. The first name is attached to Fernando Collor de Melo, the only president (1989-1992) in Brazilian history to be impeached, and a current senator. His family also owns the local paper Gazeta de Alagoas, the local Globo TV franchise, and some radio channels. The second name is of Renan Calheiros, a senator whose own scandals – in which construction firms laundered hush payments to his pregnant mistress, overpaid to buy his farms, and paid his son’s mayoral campaign under the table – were front page news in Folha de São Paulo and Veja when I was last in Salvador in 2007. He’s still senator, though no longer Senate President. (If you scroll down to a previous entry, you’ll find that his replacement is current Senate President, former President of the Republic, and all-around charmer José Sarney. I’m going to his home state soon.) Oh, and Teotônio Vilela Filho (Filho is Portuguese for “Junior,” meaning that the son got the father’s name), is the current governor.

These families have long controlled the land, and local politics. In fact, they’re so dominant that the whole enterprise seems novel-worthy, in a tragic sense. I’ve been doing some reading on recent history. To wit:

In the 1980s, when he was governor, Fernando Collor signed an agreement with the refineries “in order to attract them or keep them in Alagoas.” In return for staying, the refineries would pay no state taxes. None. (Big industrial taxes are the main source of state funds, besides federal transfers. Brazil has a complex system in which a value-added tax is paid where a product is produced, rather than where it is purchased. State taxes and an enormous industrial base are the reasons that the government of São Paulo is so rich.) In any case, in 1996, during the governorship of another character who had to resign when police salaries went 12 months in arrears and enraged public workers stormed the State Assembly, some employee at the state Finance Secretary was given the job of investigating just how much the refineries should be paying. That employee was shot dead on the state assembly steps during the day; the case has never been solved. His brother resigned from the finance secretariat rather than meet the same fate. His wife, a judge, had death threats made against her after she indicted/denounced a child prostitution ring. (source: Gazeta Mercantil, 16 April 2001)

By 1999, the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo estimated that the state of Alagoas had failed to collect R$850 million in taxes from the refineries.

Oh, and those same refineries didn’t pay their energy bills for years. When the electrical company tried to collect, or threatened to cut off their power, the refinery heads went to a local judge and got a temporary restraining order keeping the lights on. There are multiple cases (including one involving Renan Calheiros) in which the local judges are cousins to heads of a sugar-refining operation. (The owner of the largest refinery in the state is the former senator, former national president of the PSDB, and current governor T. Vilela Filho. His father was a political boss before him.) Given the pace of the Brazilian justice system, a temporary decision can endure for years. The state energy company has long had an inability to collect, which was a minor reason the federal government (who took it over in order to pay off state debts, but that’s another tale) tried to privatize it and found no buyers.

Then there’s another story about the federal deputy from Alagoas who was kicked out of office for ordering a (successful) hit on a fellow deputy. The victim – Ceci Cunha – died. On his way out, the offending deputy declared that he would stay in Brasília, and look for work as a gynecologist. He claimed to be a good doctor.

For more of these “wow, Alagoas is like the Wild West” stories, see Peter Robb’s A Death in Brazil. The book was an interesting read. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the many accusations he makes, given my lack of local knowledge. It is true, however, that the “death” in the title is still an unresolved case. (On Monday, I passed a sign in front of the cathedral that read, “Honestly, Governor, they’re killing like never before. We have the worst [per-capita] homicide rate in the country.”)

Back to the bus trip. So we finally arrived in Maceió. My first verdict, based on my time in the beachfront neighborhoods of Pajuçara and Ponta Verde, is as follows. If Florianópolis, Campo Grande, and Miami Beach somehow had a love child, it would look like Maceió. The water offshore is indeed emerald-colored in the middle of the day, and a soft blue at sunset. This is a beach town like Floripa, but much more tropical. Like Miami Beach, it’s built for tourists and the prices are a little ridiculous. And like Campo Grande, there seems to be little attention paid to clean gutters, public trash, and traffic rules (or traffic common sense). Most frustrating of all, a very low percentage of streets have their name on a sign or on the wall. Still, it’s a charming little beach town in a sea of sugar cane fazendas.

Unfortunately, I’ve been without an internet connection throughout Monday. I dread that it’s a problem with my laptop (translation into Portuguese: “laptop”) and not with the connections. We’ll see.

---
Wednesday update:
I had my first few interviews, and then a 50-minute bus ride around the town. (I was on the right bus, but it followed a terribly complex route and only passed my stop on the return.)

Other parts of the city are nicer and more developed than are my neighborhood of Pajuçara and the center. And the spilled trash on the sidewalk out front – here since Sunday – is being swept up and collected as I type this.

The people, as always, have been very helpful and friendly. I think I offended one of them, and I feel bad. I was chatting with a secretary, waiting for my appointment. We made the usual small talk about my travels and regional Brazilian accents and how much she likes living here but how hot it is, and then I asked if it was a portrait of the current governor on the wall. (There was also a crucifix, but so it goes.) She acknowledged that it was the current governor. I then mentioned that one of the things that fascinated me about Alagoas – and about this particular bureaucratic body – was “that this agency does a good job, when there have been so many instances of political problems in the past, delays [atrasos] in salaries and the like.” She repeated, “yeah, that’s the governor” and her mood visibly soured. I felt really bad, but I didn’t know how to apologize. I thought of stating that I didn’t mean any offense, but that would only bring it up again and, given that I’m me, I might put my foot in my mouth even farther.

Lesson: don’t come to someone’s home and say, “by the way, the politics here are a mess.” Even more so if they’ve been held up to ridicule and scorn by the rest of the country. (I’ve seen at least one national newspaper article quoting a politician in Rio saying “things are bad here, but this is not [as bad as] Alagoas.”)

I should have known this earlier.

After all, I’m from California.

---

Nine more days or so more in Maceió.

A fugutive in Brazil, again

For a brief few days after Christmas, Bethany came to visit. We enjoyed excursions to Petrópolis and Penedo in the state of Rio de Janeiro. We spent New Year's Eve dancing and watching the fireworks on Copacabana Beach.

That was enjoyable, and maybe one day I'll write about it and post the photos.

But more importantly....

* * *

When we last left our hero (or anti-hero, or regular schlub)...

I arrived back into the country from Buenos Aires and was given admission on a tourist visa. The federal police asked me, in due time, to go back to the Ministry of External Relations (Itamaraty) to get my visa situation clarified. These events are detailed in a prior post.

Bethany arrived a few days later. While we were in Petrópolis, I received an email from Patricia Grijo at the Fulbright office in São Paulo. (Patricia is, by widespread acclaim, the Greatest Brazilian Ever.) Patricia had emailed a contact at Itamaraty to inquire about my situation, and the error by which I have a "Prazo de Estada/Duration of Stay" of ninety days only. Her contact forwarded the message to the Department of Immigrations (DIM), who in turn contacted the San Francisco Consulate.

The Consulate, in turn, admitted that a mistake had been made, and that the term should be for one year. They then asked DIM to correct the error. DIM emailed Patricia to let her know that the Itamaraty office in Rio de Janeiro was being instructed to make the necessary changes.

I was filled with joy at this, the best Christmas present ever.

The day after Bethany left, this Wednesday, I dressed up to go to Itamaraty and make the changes. Given that I'm now a battle-scarred veteran, I knew that this wasn't to be a simple process. Oh, I've been in Brazil too long to be that naive.

I note that I dressed up because it's been punishingly hot and humid in Rio this week. The breeze usually doesn't start until noon, and has been almost completely absent as of late. I was soaked in sweat from the minute I got off the bus at the Central train station, two blocks away.

On my Wednesday trip to Itamaraty, I did a poor job of explaining the situation to the official at Consular Affairs. I hadn't slept much the night before, bothered by a lingering fellowship deadline. At first, he assured me that nothing needed to be changed, that, look, although the prazo was for 90 days, the visa was valid for one year! (This same line, which I once accepted at the SF Consulate, started this whole mess. I'm wiser now.) After I protested, he told me that he needed the date in the Diário Oficial da União (the national government's official gazette) in which the change was published. I was baffled, but I dutifully went home and did an online search for my last name in the DOUs of the last year. Nothing appeared.

In despair, I emailed Patricia to ask if she had access to the DOUs. (Free full-text access is free for two issues, then costs R$399 or so for membership.) After lunch, however, I recalled that I lived near the National Library, and so headed over there. I would be looking for a needle in a haystack, but at least I knew where the haystacks were.

I was slightly off; though the National Library has old DOUs, the newest versions are kept at the Finance Ministry's office, five blocks away. I headed over there, and met some helpful librarians who did a search for me. Nothing.

[Mental health break: this story is long and boring. Here's a picture of a statue of Dom Pedro II, the former Emperor, in his summer vacation town:


]

On Thursday, I returned to Itamaraty to point out that my name was to be found nowhere in the DOU, and to ask for a clarification. The same official took my passport this time, with attached email chains, and disappeared into his office. I stood in the quite lovely courtyard, admiring the swans in the fountain and sweating profusely.

He returned thirty minutes later, and said that they were prepared to make a change, but that they needed an official telegram with instructions from DIM. I left, and again emailed Patricia to see if she could ask DIM for a telegram.

Realize that I have a plane ticket and hotel reservation in Salvador set for Tuesday. Salvador, however, does not have an Itamaraty office. I grew a little concerned that these problems wouldn't be resolved before I left Rio, and that I would have to pay to come back for a visit.

Luckily, Patricia forwarded a response from DIM, which noted that they had already sent a telegram on December 24th.

---

So today I went back to Itamaraty, armed with the telegram number. Again I arrived in a sweat.

I presented the new emails, and the telegram number and date, to the same official. He disappeared into the office. While I was waiting, admiring swans, pacing nervously, and wiping sweat from my face, another American showed up.

We chatted a bit. She is a senior from Middlebury, visiting UFF (the federal university in Niteroi where my roommate now has a job) for a year. In her case, the Boston Consulate had entered the wrong code, and had given her a VitemI (visa for researchers) when she really needed a VitemIV (visa for exchange students). She was here to have the code changed, in order to stay for six more months, as the Federal Police had instructed her to do. (VitemI cannot be extended.)

The same official (I think his name was "Mauro;" I know that his boss's name was Cristiana) returned with her passport first. They had a long conversation in which, in sum, Mauro told the girl that there was no evidence that the Boston Consulate had erred, and that she would have to return to the US. She, in exasperation, pled her case. Mauro didn't budge, and she seemed close to tears as she left. I would have consoled her and chatted with her more, but they (both Cristiana and Mauro) immediately returned with my passport.

They said that I had overstayed my visa, and broken the law, and had to leave. I pointed out that I was now here on a tourist visa, and they disappeared into the office.

Ten minutes later, they emerged and Cristiana began by saying "Seu caso é único" ("Your case is unique").

First of all, I shouldn't be in the country on a tourist visa. Americans can only have one valid visa at a time, just as Brazilians can only have one valid visa while visiting the States. When I received the VitemI in San Francisco, the Consulate should have stamped "Cancelled" on my Vitur, my tourist visa. The Vitur is invalid, but the Federal Police didn't recognize this.

Second, they could not extend or modify the VitemI. When I overstayed the VitemI initially, it automatically expired. It doesn't matter that the VitemI says Multiple Entries or Valid for One Year. The VitemI is invalid.

Third, the instructions sent from DIM in Brasilia were made without knowledge that I had overstayed the visa. Had DIM known that I had overstayed the VitemI, they would not have sent the directions. (Cristiana had been on the phone with Brasilia, hence the delay.)

In sum, I don't have a visa to be in Brazil. Yes, I'm writing this from Rio de Janeiro, but only because I managed to inadvertently trick the Federal Police.

The first time I had encountered Cristiana, before the trip to Buenos Aires, she had yelled at me for breaking the law and said there was nothing she could do for me. This time, she was very nice and consolatory. (Mauro stood behind her, but was quiet.) It was a welcome change.

I still hold out hope that either a) the fact that SF Consulate admitted that the prazo should have been a year means that, in theory, I didn't overstay (this is unlikely, given that it's up to the Federal Police to define one's stay in Brazil, regardless of prazo), or b) I can modify the prazo to one year at the SF Consulate, rather than have to apply for a whole new VitemI.

I'm not too agitated. There's no point in being angry or in despair. My main concerns at the moment are the cost of getting back to the States, and the chance that, by leaving the country, I may forfeit the rest of my Fulbright-Hays money. I went afterward to a transportation consultancy to see if I could get access to a study they did for redesigning bus concessions in Mato Grosso. Their air conditioning was broken, which made reading the reports tricky.

If you're a gambler, bet on the fact that I'm going back to San Francisco soon.

At least I'm not here:



Although the building pictured was once a very nice house, it's now the Trauma Center of Petrópolis.

Fleeing the Country: Buenos Aires, Argentina and Montevideo, Uruguay

To resolve my visa problem, a few days before Christmas, as detailed below, I left the country. I found that the cheapest flight was to my beloved Buenos Aires, through Montevideo. Flights to Montevideo itself were more expensive, and Juan wasn't going to be there anyway.

(The formulation "my beloved Buenos Aires" is accurate and descriptive, but it's also a reference to "Mi Buenos Aires querido," a tango song made famous by Carlos Gardel.)

Some assorted thoughts from the trip:

The Uruguayan airline Pluna deserves my thanks for its low prices, especially for last-minute flights. However, I have two gripes. First, the displays and the announcements for flights to or from the largest city in Latin America refer to "San Pablo." I understand that this is a direct-to-Spanish translation of São Paulo. For the sake of consistency, however, one should then call my present home "Río de Enero." See how odd that sounds? The airline also flies to a city that might be called "Puerto Alegre," but they don't call it that. Be consistent! Second, they charged for everything, down to the water in-flight (US$2 for a 500 ml bottle). I wouldn't mind this, except that neither the Carrasco Airport outside Montevideo (pictured below; about the size of the Manchester, NH or Grand Rapids, MI airports), nor Aeroparque Jorge Newberry in Buenos Aires has a single drinking fountain. I am an entitled American (and a cheap bastard)! I demand free drinking water!





It must be noted that Rio de Janeiro does have drinking fountains in both its airports. Because I was delayed by my good friends at the Federal Police, I wasn't able to fill my bottle before the flight.

To its credit, however, Buenos Aires has something that is nearly impossible to find in Rio de Janeiro: peanut butter!



I once had the following conversation with the Secretary of Planning for the State of Rio de Janeiro, Sergio Ruy Barbosa:

Him: "I'm traveling to the United States next week; can I bring you back anything?"
Me: "Well, my girlfriend's coming soon and bringing me some things. Um... do you know what peanut butter (in my best approximation, manteiga de amendoim) is?"
Him: "No, what is it? Is it good?"
Me: (explains peanut butter)

Note that the peanut butter is right above the dulce de leche. I was in a Carrefour in Buenos Aires to buy bottled water. I thought to buy dulce de leche for Bethany, but didn't know if my credit card would work. I also figured that I could come back later for the dulce de leche. When I passed the supermarket again, it was closed.

So I took the local bus (only 1 peso, 20 cents, inserted into a cool rotating meter onboard the bus) to Retiro station into town from the airport, and passed along the Costanera Norte. Once upon a time, seven years ago, I went running and got lost near the Aeroparque. Passing the sights now, I considered that the run must have been pretty long, and I wondered why the large industrial blocks around the Aeroparque didn't dissuade me and make me turn around.

I had arrived after 9 PM, and the city was dark. Most of my photos didn't turn out. I can assure you that little has changed; the grand train station still sits next to the seedier-but-crowded bus station at Retiro. I set out to check the city against my memories.

I was first struck by how wide the boulevards in Buenos Aires are. Rio de Janeiro, the third-largest city in South America after Bs. As., has nothing approximating these wide streets. I don't even count Avenida 9 de Julio; I already knew how wide that was. (It requires two stop light cycles to cross.)




Buenos Aires strikes me as much more of a urban place, much more of a city. Rio de Janeiro is a marvel, and is also a city, but at most points you can look up at green hills or out onto crystal water, and you feel less enclosed by the urban edifice. By contrast, while in Buenos Aires, you never forget that you're in the biggest city in the country, an urban construction.

I walked up Avenida Santa Fé, a street I knew well. The Burger King was still there, as was the 24-hour cafe I was planning to use as an after-hours spot. I remembered the cafe - La Madeleine - from a particularly late night in which Karim, Pedro and I left Buenos Aires News (a disco now called something else) at about 5:30 AM, and stopped to eat breakfast, despite my grumpy protests. While I put my head down on the table and generally acted sourly, they ordered breakfast, made fun of me for the benefit of the waitress, and finally got up to go home at 8 AM.

Santa Fé seemed to have a lot more pizza and Italian places than I remembered. I was in search of a steakhouse (parilla), though I soon began to feel that I wanted to eat everything the city had to offer. The Italian food is very good, as are the various Argentine selections. The gelato is what I'd imagine Italian gelato tastes like, and on a muggy night there was a line at the most popular chain in town:



Given my previous experiences, of course I ended up at a mall, specifically at Alto Palermo, the mall closest to our dorm in the summer of 2002. Alto Palermo now has a Benihana, or, in the words of Michael Scott, "an Asian Hooters." This makes Buenos Aires even classier than Scranton, which in fact doesn't have a Benihana. I also noted that the new marketing slogan for Alto Palermo is "Pasión de la mujer." Sexist? Please! This is Argentina! There are far more sexist things in this country!



I ventured up Avenida Coronel Díaz to find the old dorm and see the neighborhood. The pizza chain Ugi's has been replaced by another pizzaria. The corner cafe still has a banner that reads "Quilmes - El sabor del encuentro." I couldn't find the local empanada shop that was on the way to the gym, but I didn't look very thoroughly. I was getting hungry. For the record, however, as I've told people, I used to live at the corner of Paraguay and Coronel Díaz. It exists.



I did eventually find a parilla that had filet mignon (bife de lomo) for about fifty pesos. I'd recommend this restaurant; it has a salad bar that comes free with dinner! Now, this is innovative for two reasons. First, orders at Argentine restaurants take anywhere from forty to ninety minutes to arrive. Although I could (and did) chew on the provided rolls and breadsticks, that becomes dull. Second, most Argentines' concept of a salad doesn't go beyond iceberg lettuce, chopped onions, and tomatoes (unless you add globs of mayonnaise to disguise the vegetables). This salad bar had much more variety. The place is Aires Criollos, at Av. Santa Fe, 1773 in Barrio Norte.

And the steak! Oh the steak! I took one bite and all the memories came flooding back. I love Brazilians, and I love Brazil, but nothing can dim my passion for Argentine steak. The steak was delicious, the house red wine was delicious, and the combination of the two made me sing out the following response to the waiter who asked how my meal was (in broken Portuguese/Spanish): "Lad (rapáz), I came all the way here from Rio de Janeiro just to eat Argentine steak, and it was all worth it."

After dinner, I went back to La Madeleine - which advertises with a neon "24 Horas" sign out front - and found the awful news posted on a flyer on the door: "closed for cleaning and fumigation until 6 AM." It was roughly 12:30 AM.

I instead found another cafe, and sat down to write. I ordered an espresso and a medialuna - a sweet croissant - according to plan. In the thrall of steak memories, good coffee, and another medialuna, I wrote for two hours or so.

The cafe closed at 3 AM, and I was forced onto the street. It was then that I concluded that my romantic vision of Buenos Aires as an all-night city was a little off. Santa Fé was closed except for a few pharmacies, and the street was quiet except for the trash-pickers. I walked a few blocks in search of a place to sit and snack, but without luck.

In defense of Buenos Aires, it was early Tuesday morning. All reasonable people should have been asleep, or at least at home.

I took a taxi back to the bus terminal, and a bus back to the Aeroparque. I tried sleeping on some seats and couches, but was awoken twice and shooed away by employees opening up restaurants in the food court at 5 and 5:30 AM.

In the early light at Aeroparque, I satisfied my interests in politics and travel at the same time. I snapped a photo of the Argentine President's official plane. As the United States gives their president's plane the codename "Air Force One," so Argentina gives theirs the name "Tango One." (You can see T-01 on the tail. "Tango Three," a smaller plane, was also parked there. News sources I found later confirmed that Christina Kirchner was in Buenos Aires.)



My flight took me back to Montevideo, where I used my last Argentine pesos to buy Bethany an alfajor, and gave the change to flight attendants collecting for a charity for premature Uruguayan infants. In the terminal lounge in Montevideo, I sat reading La República (depicted below, with a headline about the outgoing President's Lula-like high approval ratings) when I was approached by a woman with a clipboard. She asked me if I had a moment, and I did. She then asked me whether I had "Pluripass."

"Have what?"
"Oh, are you Uruguayan?"
"No, sorry, American."
"Oh, excuse me. Sorry to bother you."

It's okay. I'm still very flattered to be mistaken for a local.



I'm content being (legally) in Brazil for now. As I've known all along, Buenos Aires and Montevideo warrant future return visits.