Rio Gringa

Required Reading

I've put together a bunch of articles from the past couple weeks about Brazil in the news. Sometimes I wish I were a college professor. I'm getting a little ahead of myself, I know. Anyhow, here are a few very interesting pieces about the Olympics, the economy, democracy, and social change. Oh, and a tasty little morsel at the end about Maradona.

Latin America's worst wage gap for women and minorities? Powerhouse Brazil. [Christian Science Monitor]

Excerpt: "Mention Brazil today and adulation follows. Its fight against poverty, its growing middle class, and its emergence as an economic powerhouse are all being studied as models to be applied elsewhere...

Men earn 30 percent more than women of the same age and education level in Brazil. In Bolivia and Guatemala, that gap is essentially zero. Compared to Mexico, the other economic engine of the region, Brazil also stands out: Men in Mexico earn just 7 percent more than their female peers. The same gaping divide appears in Brazil when comparing wages for whites and minorities – a blow to a nation where half the population considers itself black or mixed race and prizes itself on being 'color blind.'"

The Olympic Games: Rio's sporting carnival [The Economist]

Excerpt: "The pro-Olympics lobby tends to downplay the disadvantages. Building in the host city may push up wages and prices and crowd out investment elsewhere. Hurrying up building projects raises costs. What suits the games may not be best for the city afterwards. Not every visitor during the games is an extra one; tourists may time long-wished-for trips to watch the sport. Crowds or inflated hotel prices may deter others from coming."

Salvador Journal: Musician Changes Tone of Impoverished Village [New York Times]

Excerpt: "'Poverty is not an excuse for anything,' Mr. Brown, 46, said on a recent gray afternoon here, his eyes shielded by a pair of oversize sunglasses. 'Poverty is an opportunity.'

Mr. Brown — a singer, songwriter and percussionist who is one of Brazil’s best-known artists — once made music banging on the water barrels that he used to carry home to his mother, who earned a living washing clothes. Back then, his neighborhood, Candeal Pequeno, or Little Candeal, had so many fruit trees that a kid would go hungry only if he could not climb."

Brazil and the Olympics: Rio's expensive new rings [The Economist]

Excerpt: "Holding the games will require effort and expense on a scale that Rio, a problem-studded metropolis of 12m (half of whom live in the city itself), has never seen. Apart from new stadiums and other sports facilities of all kinds, the plans call for new bridges and roads, and a doubling in the number of hotel rooms. To revamp a chaotic transport system, engineers will blast through granite mountains to extend the metro from Ipanema to Barra da Tijuca, 13.5km (8.4 miles) away. Tens of thousands of athletes must be squired to scattered events through some of the worst traffic in the Americas."

In Democracy, Brazil still a low-achieving student [Brazzil]

Excerpt: "When the matter is democracy, Brazil is not on the top of the class in Latin America, it's barely a C student. And it's well below countries like Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay, according to the just-released annual report Latin America Democratic Development Index IDD-Lat 2009."

For Argentines, a Coach is a Legend and a Letdown [New York Times]

Excerpt: "This decade, Argentina has suffered through its worst financial crisis in a century, and more recently it has been plagued by incessant strikes by farm groups. The government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has scared away foreign investors with untrustworthy economic figures and heavy subsidies for food and fuel, and it has moved to exercise more control over the media. Then there is the nagging sense that neighboring Brazil, which has discovered vast oil deposits and won the 2016 Summer Olympics, is becoming an ever more important global player while Argentina is lagging behind, political analysts and sociologists said."

Riogringa Reads: Immigration Tales

I've always loved stories about people moving to other countries, and I certainly appreciate those stories much more now. Here are some books I've read recently that I highly recommend.

Waiting for Snow in Havana: The best out of all of these, this is the memoir of a Cuban man who came to the US right after the Revolution, starting from his romanticized childhood as an upper class city boy to a penniless immigrant in Miami and Chicago. Though the story is absolutely fascinating, the writing is also amazing.

Shanghai Girls: I never really appreciated how much Asian immigrants have struggled in the US, and this book really opened my eyes. It tells the tale of two Chinese sisters who flee their upper-crust lives in Shanghai during World War II and end up in a slum in California in arranged marriages. 

Strength in What Remains: Though I think Tracy Kidder is incredibly overrated as a writer, he is a good storyteller, and this tells the story of a refugee from Burundi who escaped genocide in Rwanda and in his country. It also tells the story of his troubled, impoverished childhood and the horrors of war, and his miraculous adventure of an immigrant in New York.

No exilio: Written by Clarice Lispector's sister, Elisa, this is her heart-breaking memoir of escaping the pogroms in the Ukraine and ending up as a Jewish refugee in Brazil. The book focuses on the struggles of her family and of the Jews, though the overall theme is the universality of human suffering.

De Oiapoque a Chui: I actually read this awhile ago and probably wrote about it already, but it's my favorite book about Brazilians in the US. It's dozens of short stories about Brazilians living in New York City, from supermodels to illegal laborers. The author also happens to be a lovely Jewish Brazilian journalist who's lived here for awhile, and the book is a great read.

Welcome to the United States of America

On Tuesday, a letter came from the USCIS, the immigration bureau. I handed it to Eli and he carefully opened it. I peered over his shoulder, and knowing the nature of American correspondence, skimmed to the top where I spotted the word "approved" and started jumping up and down and shrieking before he had figured out why.

It was a single piece of paper, with the title "Welcome to the United States of America." The first two lines read:

"This is to notify you that your application for permanent residence has been approved. It is with great pleasure that we welcome you to permanent resident status in the United States."

It's hard to explain how gratifying it is not only for Eli to get his residency, but also to see words like "pleasure" and "welcome" coming from the US government during the immigration process. It's not a fun process, and really puts you through the ringer to make sure you are very serious about what you're doing every step of the way. We started last December and nearly a year later, he's finally done it. The letter was also a welcome surprise, considering it only took about two and a half months to process his residency application, which I would say is pretty record time (we were expecting 3-4 months).

But like everything in immigration, just when we feel like we've finally finished and we finally can relax, it's not over yet. His residency is conditional, which means that in two years we will have to apply yet again to change his status, and then go to an immigration center and prove (with documents, photos, and what have you) we are still married in order for his permanent permanent residency to go through. Also, if he ever wants to leave the country before then, he'll have to apply for a special travel waiver.

Since he's not going anywhere for now, and since two years is a ways away, we're both just really happy and relieved that we can relax, at least about immigration. Ate que enfim.

Olympics Watchdog: Part II

Today, I'm going to focus on one particular issue from the Olympics debate: communities under threat from being destroyed.

Though I haven't seen much in the media about the government's plans to raze several favelas to make room for Olympic venues, there has been lots of talk about turning all of the city's favelas into "real" neighborhoods. There's also a little story about how the Rio city mayor wants to construct sound barriers on two of the major highways in the city, including the one that goes to the airport, which happens to be lined by some of the city's worst slums. The structure of the story was interesting, describing how favela residents who live along the highways are up in arms and against the measure, while the city government is arguing that it has to do with actually trapping sound from the highway (they do it in Europe! they said), but the last two paragraphs of the story described how an American athlete who came to Rio for the PanAm Games in 2007 wrote on her blog that it was "the poorest city she'd ever seen." Interesting.

The one story I did actually find about communities under threat was a poorly written tale stuck in the sports section, about favelas which will be destroyed to make room for a new stadium. The residents will be moved to brand new housing, the city claims, where they will be able to pay for their homes in small increments through a new government program. The story makes it seem like everyone is happy about this, since they will become a "model community," despite the fact that the 40 year-old fishing community's few infrastructure achievements, like a park and a soccer field, will be destroyed, along with all of their homes. But since I can't find much more information on it, I'm not really sure how accurate anything is.

Enter CatComm, a highly-respected NGO in Brazil and the US, which has a new project underway to make sure favela residents are heard. (Incidentally, one of their main projects is sharing community-based solutions from around the world, which was a project I'd been thinking about for a new blog, but when I discovered them I realized it's already being done! Anyway..)

The project, which is being featured on IdeaBlob, needs funding to get underway, and you can help with a single click by voting for the project. It's the last day for voting, so please do the quick sign-up to cast your vote (it's free and very easy). Here's the plan for the project:

If we win the $10k, in 2010 Catalytic Communities (CatComm) will train 200 community organizers across Rio's favelas to use online networking tools including Twitter, Facebook and WiserEarth, to ensure their voices are heard by authorities and the global community in the years leading up to 2016.

An online community will be formed in each of these online spaces where the general public can "hear" what leaders from the favelas have to say, support them, and follow their work. Links will be made with the press and the mayor's office.

We will then develop an online training program and continue face-to-face capacity-building in 2011 and beyond.

In other words, CatComm, which has been working with poor communities in Rio since 2000, will link up with favela leaders (that is, civic leaders, not drug traffickers) to make sure that they take a stand that is not just heard in Rio, but around the world, and is heard by decision-makers, as well. (On a side note, I'm not happy I just found out about CatComm just now, and not two years ago.)

If you have any information on other plans to raze favelas, or on other projects that involve working with these communities during the Olympics preparations, please leave a comment or email riogringaconsult at gmail dot com.

Silver Lining

It's hard not to get down with the economy and the challenges I'm facing, the same ones a lot of friends and peers are dealing with, too. For a long time, I was all *headdesk* *facepalm* lie-in-bed-eating-candy corn-and-watching-all-three-seasons-of-Arrested-Development down.

But now that I started temping, I realize that there's a definite silver lining to the job market fiasco, at least for me. After being out of the country for two years and doing very different jobs than I was used to, I'm using this time to get back into the groove of the American workplace and the office, which is enormously helpful to me. It's things like dusting off skills with certain computer programs, or something as simple as re-learning how to sit in an office chair for eight hours. Plus, I'm getting new and extremely valuable experience that's hopefully going to make me more valuable as I continue to look for full-time jobs. I'm learning new programs and skills, which is fun and incredibly useful.

Eli, for his part, got his employment authorization very quickly (thank you USCIS!) and started working as a bartender, since he'd taken a course this summer. While he eventually wants to work in something like marketing or business, he was well aware of the job market and on top of that, the reality of being a new immigrant, and he really did the right thing, considering how fast he managed to find a job. He's working really hard, about 45 hours a week. And even though it's not always rainbows and sunshine there (to put it mildly), he's getting New York experience, learning new skills and seeing how the industry works.

The point is that while it's really difficult not to get blue, especially if you're completely unemployed, this terrible time is in its own way giving us opportunities--or rather, forcing us--to do something different. Whether it's traveling, or volunteering, or trying out a part-time or temp job in something you might not have otherwise considered, it's all going to work out in the long run, and we might as well take advantage of this strange time to get something out of it.

Olympics Watchdog: Part I

I've been ruminating on this Olympics business ever since the IOC announced that Rio would be the host of the 2016 Games, but I'm glad I waited to get this off my chest to put it into better perspective. One thing that helped a lot was seeing Capitalism: A Love Story, which was interesting but really bugged me in that there were so many problems presented with essentially no solutions. This, to me, amounts to complaining, and I much prefer to see things from a perspective that involves a problem and a solution.

So there's no sense in bemoaning the fact that Rio got the Olympics, because what's done is done, but what would be helpful is to take a look at some of the things that could potentially happen that we should all watch out for, in the hopes that they can be prevented from happening. So, in a sense, for all of us who care about Brazil to act as watchdogs in the coming years to make sure that the most positive outcome will come to fruition.

I thought I'd start with some of the more general points today.

• The IOC doesn't care about Brazil, nor Brazilians, nor Rio, nor Cariocas, nor the country's most pressing problems nor human rights (case in point: the 1936 and 2008 Games). What it cares about is itself, making money, and making sure the Games go as smoothly as possible. The IOC only cares about the host country's problems to the extent that they interfere with the games, and as long as they don't, it could care less. This does not bode well for any Olympics city, and means that it is up to the country's citizens to ensure that the government acts responsibly and not at the total behest of the IOC. For this reason, I think a watchdog group (a more formal one than on this blog) is completely necessary to ensure that the Olympics don't get in the way of democracy.

• Brazil, and Rio in particular, are the home of bread and circuses (more so circuses, though you could interpret Bolsa Familia as bread), where the government helps fund major public festivities like Carnival and New Year's Eve. Carnival, which has been historically used as a social pressure valve, is an excellent tool to keep the country's poorest citizens happy, distracted and placated. This isn't to say that Carnival alone is responsible for keeping Brazil revolution-free, but it is a powerful tool, along with other "circuses" (holidays, Globo, soccer) that helps distract the population from serious problems or events. With the World Cup and Olympics practically back to back, there is plenty of opportunity to keep people's attention diverted while the government gets away with things it shouldn't. It's essential to make sure people are in the loop and on their toes despite these major distractions, and the media has a big responsibility in this area.

• Unfortunately, some things in Brazil, including the World Cup and Olympics, are events that don't necessarily reflect reality but are intended to put up a facade for the sake of outsiders; as the Brazilians say, "só para inglês ver" or "just for the Englishmen to see." The origin of this expression comes from mining towns in Minas Gerais, where the locals would hide or obscure certain things from the British bosses to keep them appeased. In the same way, "fixing" Rio up for the Olympics could potentially be to put a pretty face on the city, mainly the parts that the tourists and athletes will see, and let the rest of the city, which is already a mess, slide deeper into decay. The same goes for the the problems that plague Rio: violent crime, theft, drug trafficking, organized crime, and gut-wrenching poverty and inequality. While the focus of preparations might be entirely on aesthetics (especially in Barra, Ipanema, and Copacabana) and getting cops into the streets only when the events begin, these problems could stay the same or even worsen. Therefore, it's in everyone's best interest to make sure Rio's most vulnerable citizens, including those in the neighborhoods largely untouched by Olympic venues and those who could have their communities destroyed by the venues, make sure their voices are heard loud and clear over the next seven years, to make sure that the preparations for the games are for todo brasileiro ver. One project intended to do just this is already underway, which I'll talk more about in the next Olympics post.

To be continued...

Linkage

I started temping this week, and my brain is a little fried, so I'm going to put off the Olympics post until Monday, since I want to spend some time on it.

In the meantime, here are some links to check out, including a brand new post:

• I wrote a little Top Ten list for Blogs.com (at their request) this week, which is called "Top Ten Blogs for Understanding the Real Brazil." Check it out here.
• Gilberto over at "No Imperio" wrote a wonderfully flattering post about this blog last week. See here to read it (in Portuguese).
• I found an excellent short documentary about Curitiba and how urban planning made it the city with the highest quality of life in Brazil, and posted it over on Portuguese Blog, where I write for Transparent.