12/16/2009

By Manuela S. Zoninsein and Steve Setzer

Signaling a move out of deflation, China’s consumer price index in November climbed 0.6% from a year earlier. This comes in tandem with the decision by China’s government, which had held prices for materials at superficially low levels, to allow them to rise and to begin introducing market competition in several key resource sectors.

Peng Sen, vice minister of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, said at a recent meeting the country is actively working to reform its resources pricing system. This move is part of a government push to achieve “more efficiency in industry,” says Rosealea Yao, research manager for Dragonomics Research & Advisory, Beijing. “It will help bring in excess capacity.”

Yao points to a report released last month by the European Chamber of Commerce in China that attributes much of the problem to the Chinese government’s overly large stimulus package. It claims the government “has poured credit into increasingly questionable projects and will almost certainly increase direct and indirect subsidies to investment and manufacturing.” Yao notes, “It is not that we have excess capacity; it is that we have an extremely loose monetary policy.” She contends that it will change as the Chinese government begins considering how to deal with inflation.

Michael Komesaroff, an Australia-based analyst of Asian commodity markets, notes in a recent trade-journal article that China’s steel mills, aluminium smelters and other manufacturing plants “still produce far more than the country can absorb. Excess production at home is exported, depressing international prices.”

Neville Smith, in-country manager at Gardiner & Theobald, an international construction-cost consultant, says construction cost indexes peaked in 2008 but have stabilized with commodity shortages. China’s push to acquire raw goods abroad “has rarely been out of the news, but the Chinese government has addressed the problem of insufficient supply,” he says. Smith adds that with the recession reducing demand, shortages seem to be a thing of the past.

According to Smith, clients of his firm experienced cost problems only with steel. However, since most contracts are set for periods of 18 months or longer, steel’s nine-month price peak in 2008 was not an issue. In response, China’s Tender Management Office, which approves large projects in Beijing, has asked for contract clauses to permit price fluctuations in the future, a sign that the “government is taking away protections for foreign clients in these areas,” he says.

In addition to China’s CPI nudging into the positive column this year, its property price index grew 5.7% in November on top of a 3.5% hike in October. Monetary policy remains unchanged, but Yao says many households and businesses are making banking and investment decisions with expectations of rising inflation.

Total investment in construction projects between January 2009 and August 2009 has increased by 36.2% year-on-year, while total planned investment in new projects in the same period has risen by 81.7%, year-on-year. By mid-2010, the Chinese government will need to limit stimulus spending or increase currency value to counter inflation.

With increased construction activity countrywide, tender prices are expected to increase mildly in the next few months. China’s year-on-year GDP growth was 7.7% in the third quarter of 2009, compared to 7.1% in the second quarter—the fastest growth since the financial crisis hit the market last year, reports Kong Yu, director in Hong Kong for global construction-cost consulting firm Rider Levett Bucknall. Construction activity in most major cities has continued to be strong, resulting in some mild upward cost movement. Tender prices are expected to continue a mild upward trend.

In Hong Kong, bid prices have stabilized after declining for three consecutive quarters since the third quarter of 2008, reports Rider Levett. Bidding levels have increased since midyear, and market outlooks are improved, particularly with large infrastructure projects on the horizon and talk of an imminent resumption of construction on the neighboring island of Macau. Bid tender prices in Hong Kong are reversing a downward trend and will rise mildly in the next few months, with more significant increases by mid-2010, according to Yu.

On the mainland, inflationary pressures might push the Chinese government to revaluate its currency, the renminbi. Since “China’s economy is growing much faster than anyone else’s…its currency ought to be rising, not falling,” says one economic journal in China. Some observers are predicting that, by mid-2010, the government will need to limit stimulus spending or increase the currency value to counter inflation.

As for future cost predictions, some look to Vice Minister Peng’s commitment to enable market-determined prices for such resources as water, electricity and natural gas. One initiative includes plans to open 20% of the power market and allow direct price negotiation with China’s two state power monopolies.

Published in the Winter Cost Report of the Engineering News-Record, 12/16/09.

I am in Pelourinho, the bohemian quarter in Salvador, in northeastern Brazil’s Bahia state. Like much religious Ibero-American architecture, the convent’s exterior is unadorned and stern, a bastion of discipline and order, exactly as intended by the Carmelite friars who began construction in 1586.

Inside, the fortress becomes airy and delicate: blue-and-white azulejos (traditional Portuguese ceramic tiles) garnish the serene walkways edging three internal squares. The exterior reflects sunlight, tiles retain little warmth and a breeze blows through the space, so guests, like the friars before them, are cooled from the humidity and heat.

Tropical trees include the original banana, coconut and bamboo, though ascetics may frown on the fountain in the third and final square, converted into a swimming pool.

There are festivals year-round in this neighbourhood. Though it is said there are enough churches for every day of the year, all-out parties, Afro-Brazilian dancing and religious celebrations are what make this city the nation’s second most visited by foreigners.

From its headquarters on Rua Gregorio de Mattos 22, just blocks away, Grupo Olodum, a social-action musical youth group, which provided percussion for Paul Simon’s album, Rhythm of the Saints, begins parading its open-air rehearsals. Smells of moqueca, a coconut milk-based seafood stew that resulted from West African, Portuguese and Brazilian traditions, waft from restaurants.

For a contemporary spin, taste the inventive European cooking influenced by local flavours at the chic but hidden Maria Mata Mouro, on Rua 3A Ordem de Sao Francisco. Ask for a seat in the back garden below hanging philodendrons while savouring a filet mignon with cassis sauce and grilled figs.

There’s plenty inside Pestana Convento do Carmo to keep history buffs entertained as well. Builders in colonial Brazil reserved extravagant decoration for church interiors, and here is no different.

The Carmo’s museum gathers more than 1500 pieces of art, some of them, such as a set of chairs, linked to Dom Joao VI, the monarch of Portugal in 1822 when Brazil claimed independence and declared Salvador as the country’s capital. Up to 10 can dine privately in the Nonciate Chapel, where a floor-to-ceiling tiled mosaic has been preserved, at the same jacaranda wood table where the Dutch passed the city’s deeds to Portuguese hands in 1623. Everything has been carefully restored to honour the convent’s past. The bar mixes royal blues and purples with modernist furniture and art collected by the owner of Pestana hotel group, Dionisio Pestana, at auctions in Denmark.

Hallways are paved with wine-red rugs and bordered by bare white walls; forest-green doors lead into tasteful rooms. Most of the modern bathrooms required raising the floors for piping, but otherwise, most details have been retained, including the fofocadeiras, or gossipers, which are windowside seating nooks from which friars prayed or, likelier, chatted with neighbours.

Rooms 203 and 205 look into the cloisters, while 236 peers over Pelourinho and snatches a shot of the ocean beyond the city roofs.

Pestana Convento do Carmo encapsulates Bahia’s magical combination of old world wonder and New World commotion.

Manuela S. Zoninsein

Pestana Convento do Carmo, Rua do Carmo 1, Pelourinho, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil; www.pestana.com. The property is a member of the Leading Small Hotels of the World. More: (02) 9377 8400; www.lhw.com.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/

Newsweek Web Exclusive

American fears of China’s growing global influence sharpened this spring as Beijing set its sights on the Americas. Leaders of China and Brazil began speaking openly about the possible end of the dollar’s reign as the global reserve currency. China surpassed the United States as Brazil’s leading trade partner, and Brazil’s energy giant, Petrobras, took a $10 billion loan from the China Development Bank designed to finance oil deals without using the dollar. Petrobras president and CEO José Sergio Gabrielli de Azevedo flew to Beijing with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to finalize the deal. He spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Manuela Zoninsein about the budding relationship with China. Excerpts:

How has the financial crisis strengthened the Brazil-China relationship, and has it done so to the detriment of Brazil-U.S. ties?
The global economic crisis caused the debt markets to become more selective, restricting access to credit and to sources of funding, particularly in the U.S., where the subprime crisis surfaced. Meanwhile, China became a major financial center, interested in funding projects in several countries around the world.

China and Brazil are competitors in some areas.
On one hand, Brazil can help supply China’s energy needs. On the other, China can be a great funder for Brazilian projects and a good and service provider for the energy-productive chain in Brazil. It’s a very good deal: China needs oil and has money; we need money and have oil. It’s a win-win type of deal.

Where can the two giants work together?
In the development of technologies. In Brazil, we have advanced technological segments, such as the aviation industry. We have made great developments in the biofuels area, in addition to the progress we have made at Petrobras with our expertise in developing deepwater exploration technologies.

China and Brazil are discussing how to use their own currencies in future trade deals. What does this mean for the dollar’s hegemony in Latin America?
Petrobras negotiates using U.S. dollars as reference. But I believe it could be positive for Brazil and for China to use their national currencies in the purchase and sale operations. It could increase the trade flow between the two countries.

Ten years from now, what will people remember that today’s crisis changed in international politics and trade patterns?
The global GDP growth pace will depend more on developing countries than it did in the past, and this will be reflected in the financial architecture. The relative importance of the G20 compared to the G8 will grow.

Can you explain the terms of the Sinopec deal? Petrobras supplies 150,000 barrels of oil a day for the first year, rising to 200,000 barrels a day for nine more years, for which it gets a $10 billion loan?
The exports agreement with Sinopec and the funding provided by the China Development Bank are two different agreements. The loan taken out from the CDB will be paid in cash, not oil. Exports to Sinopec are a guarantee for the loan, but they will be negotiated in commercial terms for each delivery. The agreement does not provide for a mandatory sale volume, nor does it set prices.

Where will oil prices stabilize?
Our projects are sustainable based on an oil price ranging from $37 to $45 per barrel. The international oil price is not necessarily relevant for trade and future investment decisions since there are great fluctuations in the price of the barrel. But I see an increase in the oil price.

The Brazilian government owns 40 percent of the stock and 58 percent of the voting shares of Petrobras. Did Brasília push this deal?
This fundraising opportunity resulted from cooperation between our countries. As the company’s majority stakeholder, the Brazilian government acts as a great driver for Petrobras’s trade relations with companies from other countries.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/201728

NEWSWEEK

Poor nations are now starting to shake off the old ‘Frankenfood’ taboo.

By Manuela Zoninsein

Posted Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2008, at 1:54 PM ET

Monteiro Lobato is a household name in his native Brazil, best-known for “Sítio do Picapau Amarelo” (“Yellow Woodpecker’s Ranch”), a series of children’s books that has been adapted for television on several occasions. He was an active businessman and libertarian and is considered the founder of Brazil’s publishing industry, but his 1926 science-fiction novel, O Presidente Negro (The Black President)—which foresaw technological, geopolitical, and environmental transformations—is attracting the most interest this year, since it anticipated a political landscape in which gender and race would determine the outcome of a U.S. presidential election.

O Presidente Negro envisions the 2228 U.S. presidential election. In that race, the white male incumbent, President Kerlog, finds himself running against Evelyn Astor, a white feminist, and James Roy Wilde, the cultivated and brilliant leader of the Black Association, “a man who is more than just a single man … what we call a leader of the masses.”

You may notice some similarities to the John McCain-Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama face-off; and so did Editora Globo, the publisher of O Presidente Negro, which reissued the novel during the Democratic primaries in a stroke of marketing genius. Prior to Obama’s rise, O Presidente Negro was best-known as an odd sci-fi work, predicting the U.S. government’s use of eugenics, a racist ideology that had attracted a following in Brazil at the time Lobato was writing (and, later, in Germany). As a result of this association, more often than not, bookstores hid the novel at the bottom of a stack of titles in the Brazilian-literature section. (Today’s Brazil is increasingly concerned with civil rights, as indicated by recent experiments with affirmative action in education and government.)

Of course, there are several differences between Lobato’s story and the circumstances surrounding the 2008 election. In Lobato’s fictional world, the United States prohibited the mixing of races—believing it would lead to “disintegration” or “denaturalization”—and thereby conserved white and black races in “a state of relative purity.” Lobato also failed to predict the civil rights movement, which undid his predictions of an extreme version of “separate but equal.” Unlike Roy, born in a supposed age of “pure races,” Obama, born of a white mother and black father, witnessed America’s social revolution.

In the 2228 of the novel, the white women’s party, the Sabinas (a reference to the Roman legend of the rape of the Sabine women), has apparently reached feminism’s pinnacle: Women are no longer considered equal to men—they are simply different and entirely independent. Homo, the ruling white men’s party, and the Sabinas each command 51 million voters.

In previous elections, voters sided with their gender, with no regard to race. But with the creation of the Black Association, black men and women unite to create the largest political party, giving Roy 54 million supporters. Kerlog is forced to broker an alliance with Roy: black votes in exchange for easing the “Código da Raça” (“Race Code”), which set limits on the growth of the black population through selective breeding and genetic manipulation. To Kerlog’s frustration, when the time comes to cast ballots, citizens loyally vote with their identity group, and the black man wins the presidency.

In response, Kerlog threatens race war. He persuades Astor to protect the interests of the white race and encourages an alliance. Lobato, at his most sexist, writes that Astor accepts this proposal on the grounds that man “is woman’s husband for thousands of reasons … long live man!” With hardly a second thought, she shepherds the 51 million female voters to the cause of the Homo Party. Kerlog demonstrates to a despairing Roy that his race will never assume control, and on the morning Roy is set to assume the presidency, he is found dead in his office. (Lobato hints at murder.) Kerlog calls for a re-election and emerges victorious. White leaders then mastermind the end of the black race in America, using a senseless and tragic sterilization technique, and Roy’s dream of serving as the first black man in the nation’s most powerful post is left by the wayside.

Long considered a historical relic, O Presidente Negro’s popularity had dwindled so much that Editora Globo let it fall out of print, but 6,000 copies have been sold since a March 2008 rerelease. Brazil’s intellectuals, bookworms, and bloggers are now madly debating Lobato’s racist proposition and gasping at the prescience of one of their country’s most quixotic personalities.

Now that McCain has selected Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate—hoping, some critics say, that women will vote as a gender bloc, transferring loyalties to whichever party has a woman on the ticket—perhaps the publishing house can expect yet another sales bump. Only if Obama makes it to the White House would Lobato’s prescience fall short. If that happens, maybe Editora Globo’s sales streak will come to an end.

Manuela Zoninsein reports for Newsweek’s Beijing bureau and is Food Editor at Time Out Beijing.

http://www.slate.com/id/2200417/

Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

Clémence Jouët-Pastré and Leticia J. Braga, editors, Becoming Brazuca: Brazilian Immigration to the United States. David Rockefeller Center Series on Latin American Studies, Harvard University Press, 2008.

A Review by Manuela Zoninsein

Trying to define the community of Brazilian descendants who studied at Harvard University between 2001 and 2005, when I attended the college, was a maddening exercise. Some Crimson Brazucas—or Brazilian immigrants in the United States—affiliated with the broader community of Latino immigrants and participated in Concílio Latino or the annual pan-Latin cultural show, Presencia Latina (which I co-founded in 2002); some linked into the community of foreign students (often from upper classes) and hung out with the “debonair” European crowd or the cosmopolitan Middle Easterners. Afro-Brazilians were drawn to one of the African-American communities; others simply ignored their South American roots. The Unofficial Guide to Life at Harvard listed ten groups that directly addressed Latino concerns. If there is one thing to be said with certainty, it is that the Brazilian students floated unidentifiably in the periphery of those options.

Only upon reading Becoming Brazuca did I learn that this issue—“of community among Brazilian immigrants and community-based institutions or rather the lack thereof” [my stress]—now has an academic label: “Brasphobia,” as identified in 2003 and subsequently described by Maxine Margolis in the book’s final chapter. Not surprisingly, many Brazilians living in the United States deny their South American identity. Margolis tells one story, of an immigrant living in South Florida, who told an interviewing anthropologist, “I was Brazilian.”

Had Becoming Brazuca existed when I first conducted ethnographic fieldwork among the community of Brazilian immigrants—often undocumented— in nearby East Cambridge, and then for my Social Studies thesis focusing on the performance of national identity during Carnaval, I would not have felt so alone in my research and so lost in my methodology. For Brazilianists, this collection of essays illuminates the myriad methodological issues involved with studying Brazilians, drawing across a range of subject matters. The book examines its respondents from their roots—going back to Brazil, where a sending community, Governador Valdares, is explored—and continues through to second-generation immigrants in the United States, with stops along the path of migration and acculturation.

As the series of essays rightly points out, the question of U.S.-based Brazilians is given short shrift in immigration studies: it is seen as a small and unique group, especially since large-scale migration from Brazil to the United States is a fairly recent phenomenon. Some might believe that research on this topic does not advance broader questions regarding more populous cultural groups. However, this edited volume convincingly argues the contrary. For one, Brazilian immigration has been on the rise: in the past five years, Brazil has joined the top ten source countries for unauthorized immigration. Figures for this population have long been inaccurate and, many believe, short of the reality. Though the 2000 U.S. census counted only 212,000 Brazilian-born or Brazilian-descendant immigrants living in the States, and the 2004 American Community Survey identified about 282,000, it has been estimated that in 2001, 800,000 to 1.1 million resided here, according to Eduardo Salgado as cited by Margolis.

More than just the fact that Brazilians are a booming minority group, the other important argument for studying the Brazuca experience is that anyone focusing on immigration can learn broadly from the particular quality which makes researching Brazilian immigration so challenging: since they can be identified according to so many categories, their experiences extend to other groups of immigrants to the United States. The interdisciplinary approach presented in this series of essays is one that applies beyond one sub-culture. Becoming Brazuca offers methodologies and theories that illuminate immigration on a global scale, where single identifiers are inadequate for the real-world complexities we face.

It is in its ability to incorporate an interdisciplinary approach, and then to make those strategies accessible to readers, that the book most excels. Becoming Brazuca is approachable from the first page: it goes so far as to define important identifiers that might leave newcomers or outsiders to the field in confusion (it even defines “Latino”).

Readers learn about the contemporary academic concerns regarding Brazucas, offering perspectives on the past, present, and future of Brazilian immigration to the United States. Clearly, editors Leticia J. Braga and Clémence Jouët-Pastré are not only pushing the dialogue further—they are also fomenting a retrospective concern with which to contextualize the work of the 24 contributors. As Carola Suárez-Orozco wrote in the prologue,  “These chapters represent emerging scholarship of the most eminent Brazilian and American researchers of the Brazilian diasporic experience. The book provides a much needed view into the richness and complexity of the Brazilian-North American community.”

Many of the chapters address methodological and theoretical gaps in research on Brazilian immigration as well as the broader questions of immigration research that Suárez-Orozco asserts:

“The variety of issues affecting Brazilian immigrants suggests that there are different perspectives to be considered and, therefore, there is a need for a national view of Brazilian immigration that encompasses interdisciplinary research.”

For a taste of the interdisciplinary nature of the compendium, consider the work of Else R. P. Vieira, of Ana Cristina Braga Martes, and of Kátia Maria Santos Mota. The former focuses on Brazilian media, first as television imported from abroad and then in print publications, and how these are utilized as a means by which identity and community are formed and negotiated. The second uses a “microeconomic issues development approach based on a non-representative but in-depth sample from Boston and from Governador Valadares,” the Brazilian city with the largest number of émigrés to the United States. The third is a linguistic approach and traces aspects of language behavior in a bilingual situation, where the immigrant must navigate between their Portuguese-speaking families and the larger, English-speaking world.

Becoming Brazuca succeeds, moreover, in its detailing of the distinctive challenges which face anyone undertaking research on Brazilians U.S. residents. Many of the authors agree that “to date, far too little systematic work has been done on the Brazilian immigrant experience.” One important reason for this neglect is detailed in the prologue:

“Research on immigrant origin groups tend to be focused on so called ‘problem populations’ or on ‘model minorities’ (Lee, 1996). Yet groups that tend neither to overachieve nor to dramatically underachieve are often under-researched—no doubt contributing to the woeful understudy of Brazilians.”

The dearth of reliable data was referenced on numerous occasions. Estimates for numbers of Brazilian immigrants residing in the United States today vary widely, in part because many undocumented Brazucas are not counted, but also due to an evolution of categorization systems over the course of more than twenty years since Brazilians began immigrating in mass numbers to the United States. Other changes that the census must consider include “changes in immigrants’ demographic profile, projects of return, and methods of entry.” To understand how much the immigrant identity has changed, consider that  “in the 1980s, the majority of Brazilians tended to be young, male, middle or lower-middle class, more light-skinned, and more educated than the average population in Brazil…This depiction of Brazilian immigrants, for the most part, does not hold true anymore” we learn in the Introduction.

As C. Eduardo Siqueira and Tiago Jansen detail in their chapter, census data collection and analysis have done little to describe this new and under-represented group, as the census lacks an appreciation of distinctive socio-cultural and economic categories. For example, Brazilians consider race and nationality differently from most Latinos. “Unlike most immigrant groups from Latin America, Brazilians…come from higher socioeconomic classes, and have an ethnic and racial self-identification that does not easily fall into the American “Hispanic” or “Black” categories in which they are often placed.” As a result, many reject this designation. Any system for recording immigrants must adapt to appreciate foreign identity distinguishers.

Of course, one crucial element of studying the Brazilian immigrant population is having Portuguese-language abilities; perhaps even more difficult to articulate but no less important is the need for researchers who straddle both a U.S. and Brazilian culture (if not a third culture as well, that of being neither and both Brazilian and American). Writing on health issues, Clémence Jouët-Pastré, Branca Telles Ribeiro, Márcia Guimarães and Solange de Azambuja Lira elucidate their commitment to avoiding any a priori expectations, which demonstrates a clear understanding of the need to let the respondents indicate their most important narratives—rather than enforcing an agenda from either a Brazilian- or U.S.-oriented perspective. Joshua Kirschner spoke about ways Boston-based labor unions are recruiting Brazilian immigrants and describes the efforts, since 2000, of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) to reach out to immigrant workers in a changing global economy.

That Becoming Brazuca provides a background on what’s been done, what’s being done, and what has yet to be done in research focusing on the Brazilian immigrant experience indicates that a certain amount has been accomplished already. It is a groundswell allowing a moment to look around from atop the hill just climbed. A thorough, thoughtful compendium whose lessons extend beyond its particular respondent set, and as Braga and Jouët-Pastré assert, one whose “methodological and theoretical perspectives…are applicable to the greater study of immigration as a global phenomenon.”

Manuela Zoninsein reports for the Beijing bureau of Newsweek magazine, where she writes about culture, the environment, technology and the media, and Sino-Latin American relations. Her writing can be viewed on manuelaswebsite.com.

www.drclas.harvard.edu/revista/articles/view/1120

Conflations and inversions of gender and identity, local and international, myth and reality, fiction and truth abound during Rio de Janeiro’s Carnaval festivities in the streets to the point where I can no longer keep track or make sense of them. As opposed to the institutionalized, expensive and elitist samba school parades that are televised nationally and internationally from Rio, the Carnaval de Rua or street Carnaval is an exercise in individual interpretation and creativity—a veritable circus of color, costume, cacophony and chaos. I no longer care to stare, instead concentrate on ducking past confetti to keep up with André, the photographer with whom I’m working on a magazine article. We weave through the playing and prancing partygoers in Praça XV, the historic district of downtown Rio. Thousands throng around the bandstand.

This past Carnaval, I experienced the newly resurgent Carnaval de Rua, a celebration that attracted people from all social groups —a conscious attempt to revitalize the city’s celebratory traditions and inject them once again with a democratic and open-minded spirit. The street party that I witnessed was organized around O Bloco do Boitatá, known for diligently promoting the most popular and well-known marchinhas, traditional, tried-and-true samba marches. All attendees could sing along and participate, rather than simply view the day’s events.

Blocos are local bands which parade and play regularly, either in a specific locale or along known routes, their music and character often identified by the neighborhood (and thus audience) where they perform. Each bloco has a unique “brand”: Bola Preta, or “black ball,” for example, has the oldest history and invites participants to interpret the black-and-white polka-dot theme as they desire, resulting in rainbows, color inversions and rebellious monotones. The Suvaco de Cristo bloco winds through the Jardím Botánico neighborhood, conveniently located below the Christ the Redeemer statue’s left armpit (hence the name “Christ’s Armpit”), and draws progressive yuppies and a large homosexual contingent.

Blocos play all varieties of samba, including some Northeastern axé and pagode, and even an occasional rendition of rock, parading through Rio’s plazas and streets, primarily during Carnaval but increasingly throughout the summer months, December through February.  In response to price-inflating tourism (sexual, festival, outdoor, cultural and otherwise) and the classist impetus to exclude, the growing popularity of the bloco tradition among all cariocas and the concomitant propagation of such bands attest to the recovered popularity of the Carnaval de Rua, and a decidedly activist and participatory political ideology.

Are we thus witnessing a return to the more democratic—and spontaneous and chaotic—street celebration, which first propelled Rio into the world’s imagination in the 1930s and 40s? In 2005, when the bloco craze was just beginning, the official municipal records office listed 88 bands; in 2007, that number increased to 107; from the 51 blocos listed for 2001, that’s a 209% increase. Pop- and funk-inflected Monobloco, one of the newer but certainly most popular of the blocos, attracted nearly 60,000 to each parade it led in 2006; for the last five years, it has maintained a weekly house-capacity audience at Rio’s famed Circo Voador performance space (where Gilberto Gil and renowned international acts perform).

Historian Jeff Lesser (1999) wondered: “What does it mean to be a public ‘Brazilian,’ and how is ‘Brazilian-ness’ contested?” I would further query, “What does it mean to be a public ‘Brazilian’ if that identity is considered irrelevant by citizens?” or “What does it mean to be a public ‘Brazilian’ if no one participates in the so-called public events?” The notion that a single dance and festival could represent a nation is an overgeneralization that “leaves behind”—as Culture Minister (and famed musician) Gilberto Gil declared during his visit to Harvard in Spring 2005—many other cultural expressions that are valued by Brazilians, including, but not limited to, such dance forms as forró, maracutu and capoeira or other celebrated Carnavals such as those of Salvador da Bahía and Recife-Olinda in Pernambuco state.

The historian Darién Davis (1999) believes that “[t]he commodification of popular forms such as the samba allowed the creation of a national culture.” However, I think that as long as the majority of Brazilians feel excluded or detached from such a  nationalist framework, this constructed identity will fail to unite the country. What is a national identity and community if many Brazilians feel disconnected from their so-called national cultural expression? And what is the potential for improvement to democracy and civil society? I am particularly intrigued by this new popular exuberance because it contrasts so dramatically with the content of the interviews I conducted with cariocas in 2005. Popular engagement with Rio’s Carnaval was the focus of my Harvard undergraduate Social Studies senior thesis, an ethnographic study grounded in the first-hand experiences of a cross-section of cariocas concerning the contemporary cultural and social value of Carnaval. “Rio’s Carnaval: A Paradox of Non-participation” was the none-too-subtle title of my final paper, which chronicled an overwhelming individual dissociation from what had once been Brazil’s premier public party as a result of heightened institutionalization and commercialization.

“Samba is Brazil’s ‘national rhythm,’” wrote Hermano Vianna in 1994. Echoing the sentiment of many scholars of Brazilian culture and national identity, Vianna affirmed: “It is the foremost symbol of its culture and nationhood.” He claimed that all perceive that “Samba and the famous pre-Lenten carnival of which it is the centerpiece…symbolizes the racial and cultural mixture that…most Brazilians have come to believe defines their unique national identity.”

Similarly, Alma Guillermoprieto (1991) characterized “Samba—the whole broad genre of highly ornamented two-by-four rhythms…as Brazil’s national music”; Barbara Browning (1999) observed that samba is known as Brazil’s national dance; and Bryan McCann (2004) asserted that samba is Brazil’s “widely recognized symbol of national identity.” Browning (1995), author of the incisive ethnography, Samba: Resistance in Motion, writes that historically, samba is “known as the Brazilian national dance [and] has contributed to a world image of Brazil as a country of exaggerated elation.”

Yet, of the 42 people I interviewed in Rio de Janeiro in 2005, only seven respondents said they actually knew how to dance samba. The respondents varied in age, gender, race, educational background, profession, and class, and represented a wide range of perspectives.  Their overwhelming reactions to Carnaval approached lack of involvement and interest in the so-called shared identity-forming quintessential Brazilian experience.

My research challenge was twofold: first, to question the notion that samba is the Brazilian national dance form; and second, to explore how Brazilians living outside the circumscribed world of samba practitioners, beyond the widely publicized “production of narratives and spectacles of nationhood,” actually think about and relate to Carnaval and its accompanying dance form. Precisely because, as Vianna (1994) points out in the introduction to his own work on samba music and dance, “the transformation of samba into Brazil’s national music [is] a process that centered on Rio de Janeiro,” I chose the Cidade Maravilhosa as the site of my study. “The city of Rio has long been—and perhaps remains—utterly central to representations of Brazilian national unity,” he wrote; and so it is widely recognized that samba’s origins are rooted here. The promulgation of the cultural expressions of samba and Carnaval as central elements in the composition of the nation’s identity were initiated and publicized from Rio.

One respondent, a law student whom I will call Isabel (I have changed names to protect the identities of my respondents), thoughtfully addressed my inquiries about Carnaval’s growing global popularity and simultaneous identification as a central icon of Brazilian culture by responding that it was more a question of international marketing: “what makes it over there is what’s made to make it over there.” As she saw it, the current world image of Brazil—sun, sea, samba, soccer and sex—is the result of the huge amount of money spent advertising Carnaval “to attract gringos…Japanese, Germans, the whole world capturing the spectacle on video tape. It’s no longer a festa popular…it’s made to have a global resonance. It’s sold as this…this was the image that was selected and which subsequently arrives abroad.”

The festa popular to which she refers is a party that is public, welcoming, and popular, in the Brazilian Portuguese sense of the word. The adjective “popular” is also used to define something that is accessible to all people, regardless of social class or purchasing power, as opposed to those products that only the elite or those with financial means can access.  The question now is whether Carnaval is once again returning to its roots.

Any current reference to foreigners of Rio de Janeiro’s pre-Lenten ambience will generally elicit stereotypical images of scantily-clad, feathered and sequined mulatas dancing atop parade floats; Afro-Brazilian men playing a “contagious” rhythm with drums or batería; and older black women in their baiana outfits, large swirling embroidered white skirts and shirts, whose heads are festooned with small Carmen Miranda-style wraps. Most likely, they are imagined parading down an overflowing Avenida Sapucaí, otherwise known as Rio’s Sambódromo, the actual stage for Rio’s Carnaval parades.

Built in 1984, the Sambódromo, or Sambadrome, occupies the Avenida Sapucaí and serves as the official parade grounds for the Escolas de Samba during Rio’s Carnaval. As a result, some of Rio’s wealthiest and most influential citizens, along with wide-eyed first-world travelers, are amongst the few who gain entrance. The Sambódromo was seen by those whom I interviewed as taking the samba schools out of the streets, away from ardent supporters and the public at large, transposing Carnaval de Rua or “street Carnaval” into a private (and costly) theatrical spectacle. For example, 52-year-old Maria Luisa, a mixed-race security guard at my grandmother’s residential apartment building, remembers when she didn’t have to pay to participate in the celebrations of Viradouro, one of the most popular samba schools. “You could go out with them, dance in the streets.” Now, even the most simple costumes range in price between R$300 and R$1,000, about $150 to $500 U.S. dollars in 2005 (Época, 5/1/2007). Considering that a maid working for a middle-class family in Rio earns between R$60-100 per day, with the average approximately R$80 per day, it would cost her four days’ pay to parade in a samba school.

Both Glaucia, a 29-year-old black woman who works as a housekeeper for a family friend of mine, and Edivaldo, a lower-class 54-year-old carpenter who moved from the Northeast of Brazil as a child, live in the favela affiliated with Beija Flor, the neighborhood that gave birth to one of the most famous of samba schools of the same name. Neither is a particularly enthusiastic fan of Carnaval or the school, nor could recall how the neighborhood reacted to “their” school’s Sapucaí 2004 victory—the Olympic gold for any samba school, awarded by a panel of judges. They admitted that their community did not reap any benefits, financial or otherwise, from the escola victory. Cecilia, a white, middle-class university professor in her 50’s, argued that the “packaging” of Carnaval “ultimately distanced the celebration from the communities.”

Now, two years later, people from all walks of life seem to be taking back their craft and traditions through blocos. Rallying against commodification and exclusion, the carioca public seems to be beginning to translate its yearning for a more democratic and participatory Carnaval into a more localized samba beat.  Imagine my pleasure upon reading Época publicly wonder, “Quem quer saber de sair na Sapucaí?” In our words, “Who cares about parading in Sapucaí?”

Manuela Zoninsein just completed an internship at the Council on Foreign Relations in the Latin America Studies department. She’s spending the year leading up to the Olympics in Beijing, teaching at the China Foreign Affairs University through Princeton-in-Asia and working as an international correspondent. Her senior thesis research was made possible thanks to grants from the Harvard College Research Program and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.

Citation: ReVista, Harvard Review of Latin America, Volume VII, No. 1, Fall 2007, p. 77-79.

www.drclas.harvard.edu/revista/articles/view/1010

Brazil

Despite Rio’s proximity to the sea, its sushi pales in comparison with São Paulo’s dynamic Japanese food scene. Enter Nakombi, a restaurant that already has three popular outposts in SP. Its extensive menu includes fantastically fresh sushi and sashimi as well as sea bass ceviche with pineapple and curry, and whitefish carpaccio in ponzu and balsamic sauce. The Rio location features work by renowned graffiti-art team Os Gêmeos and a wall studded with 500 mini Buddhas. Gilded lyrics from Vinícius de Moraes’s “A Rosa de Hiroshima” line the roof, which retracts to reveal the stars as the scene picks up at night (183 Rua María Angélica; 55-21-22-461-518; entrées $7-$33).