Cristiano Mascaro (courtesy of Monumenta) Olinda, Pernambuco
Brazil not only attracts people, it possesses them: 92% of visitors told tourist board pollsters that they hoped to return. Millions of people gravitate to Brazilian culture wherever they can find it. Bossa nova, capoeira, caipirinhas, string bikinis, all-you-can-eat steakhouses, hammocks, and those pervasive nightly soap operas have all found their global niches. Gaudily and scantily clad dancers parade through California streets in Rio-style “samba schools.” Social theorist Gregory Ulmer detects a new preeminent cultural axis in the Americas - one extending from Florida to Brazil.
Even macho and matter-of-fact Theodore Roosevelt slipped into the lyrical in his 1914 account “Through the Brazilian Wilderness.” Here we catch up with him in the Pantanal, the world’s largest wetlands: “The splendor of the sunset I never saw surpassed... The river ran, a broad highway of molten gold, into the flaming sky; the far-off mountains loomed purple across the marshes; belts of rich green, the river banks stood out on either side against the rose-hues of the rippling water; in front, as we forged steadily onward, hung the tropic night, dim and vast.”
The lyrical came naturally to Elizabeth Bishop, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New England poet who arrived in Brazil a half-century later. Of melancholy disposition, Bishop had a peculiar take. “There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams/hurry too rapidly down to the sea,” she wrote. Heck, she even hated Rio de Janeiro. Yet she fell in love with the country’s orchids, hummingbirds and droll bumperstickers favored by truckdrivers. A stay that was supposed to last a few weeks ran on for years.
A place that can captivate people as different as Roosevelt and Bishop must have something special about it. Yet Latin America’s largest nation allowed little Central American countries to beat it into the specialized tourism game. It allowed South American neighbors Ecuador and Peru, each with its little sliver of the Amazon, to take the lead on jungle lodges. The region's most bioregionally and culturally diverse nation – big enough to encompass four Mexicos - sat on its beaches waiting for the gringos. Many came, especially to Rio de Janeiro. But the untapped potential stung like a bad sunburn. In the mid-90s, only 50,000 tourists a year made the Brazilian Amazon their destination of choice.
That’s all changing. In the 10-year period leading up to 2001, foreign arrivals jumped almost five-fold to 5.5 million. With a boost from the Interamerican Development Bank, public officials are investing in tourism infrastructure. One example: famous for its colonial towns, Minas Gerais state is developing a series of theme-based itineraries that feature magnificent caverns, an old gold mining trail and a “wine country” style tour of distilleries that produce the local spirit cachaça. Previously inaccessible destinations like the Pantanal are becoming popular. The base city for wetlands explorers, Bonito is experiencing 20-30% annual growth in its tourism trade.
Tourism can offer much needed employment. With a population of less than 20,000, Bonito already counts on some 2,000 jobs in the sector. In the state of São Paulo, ecotourism and rural tourism now employ 600,000 - outranking the sugar industry, a traditional stronghold.
Despite its sundry attractions, Brazil can be a difficult country for many foreigners. The skewed income distribution, with its inescapable poverty at the low end, can be disconcerting and disheartening. One sharp economist christened Brazil “Belindia” – a cross between the comfort of Belgium and the deprivation associated with India. Some would trace the growing crime and violence to that very phenomenon. Whatever the sociological explanation, security precautions are in order – just as they would be in New York or Los Angeles.
Some foreigners adapt quickly to Brazil, but many never fully adjust to the absence of clear standards of conduct, either legally or informally. "The gray zone for Americans is smaller," remarked Brazilian businessman Sérgio Haberfeld. Many laws on the books are ignored or selectively enforced. Some believe this to be a bureaucratic tactic to make things difficult so that a regulator can "sell" an easier way around.
Elizabeth Bishop would hardly approve. But as the poet herself recognized, Brazil raises the expectations of its guests. In her poem “Arrival at Santos,” she describes the port town unflatteringly but goes on to ask herself: “Oh tourist/is this how this country is going to answer you/and your immodest demands for a different world/and a better life, and complete comprehension?”
The Land
Three-quarters of foreign visitors ranked Brazil’s natural attractions as a decisive factor in convincing them to come to the country, says a survey by tourism officials. No surprise. Brazil is thought to detain the world's greatest biodiversity. The country is home to 15-20% of the species already identified around the globe - not to mention untold more yet to be classified. Whether they’re bird watchers keen to spy an endangered hyacinth macaw in the Pantanal or “catch and release” sports fishers after peacock bass in the Amazon, tourists can readily enjoy the environment and its abundant wildlife.
In the late 1990s, the federal government launched a comprehensive study of potential ecotourism destinations, identifying 88 clusters for special attention. "Today there is hardly a mayor around who doesn't talk about his city as the ecotourism capital," said João Meirelles Filho, president of the Peabiru Ecotourism Institute.
Pre-History
Partly thanks to the work of archaeologist Anna Roosevelt, the Amazon’s human pre-history can now be dated much further back than once thought – up to as many as 11,000 years ago. Other archaeological finds, notably one in the state of Piauí in the northeast, provide additional evidence of inhabitants on the continent for well over 12,000 years. Piecing together that history is complicated by a hot and humid climate that destroys much archaeological evidence. New discoveries in the areas of historical ecology, ethnobotany, and linguistics are helping scientists identify many ancient human behaviors.
Government and Economy
After the end of the divisive and often brutal military dictatorship, Brazil reestablished democracy in 1985. It also moved into a period of severe macroeconomic instability. The inflation rate reached 2,700% in 1993. Under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, an internationally respected scholar, Brazil tackled hyperinflation. In October 2002, Brazilians elected a former labor leader, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as president. The program of Lula and his leftist Workers Party (PT) aims to pay off Brazil’s “social debt” of poverty, hunger, skewed income distribution, substandard education and poor health care.
Despite widespread poverty, Brazil is hardly a banana republic. It ranks among the world’s top dozen economies: 6th in population, 5th in geographical area, and among the top five recipients of direct investment by foreign companies. Brazil produces much of its own capital goods and is a major exporter of manufactured products. It is a leading producer of agricultural products, pulp and paper, steel, aircraft, and automobiles. The government is beginning a drive to invest in biotechnology.
The People
Brazilian society evolved from successive waves of migration from Europe and Africa. Immigration from Europe reached a peak between 1880 and 1930 and that from Africa between 1790 and 1850. Many natives were killed or died of disease. Some 200,000 pure blood Indians remain. Brazil is home to the largest contingent of ethnic Japanese outside of Japan.
Interbreeding has always been common. In the 1970s, the official statistical institute compiled a list of 134 terms that Brazilians used to describe their skin color to census takers. Intermingling gave rise to a scholarly theory that depicted Brazil as a racial democracy. This idea is generally dismissed today as a myth.
Regional and class divisions loom at least as large as racial ones. Immigrants from the parched and economically backward northeast have descended on southern cities, especially São Paulo, in recent decades. Akin to the Okies who escaped to California in the Dust Bowl era in the United States, they often confront discrimination independent of their racial background. Since the middle of the 20th century, Brazil transformed itself from a predominately rural country to a mostly urban one.
Recreational and Other Activities
Except skiing and snowboarding, Brazil pretty much has it all. The 2002 Adventure Sports Fair in São Paulo included a parallel congress that featured nearly 40 lectures by experts specialized in diverse outdoors activities. All of the following activities can be practiced with adequate infrastructure at numerous places in Brazil: canoeing, canyoning, horseback riding, caving, rock climbing, scuba diving, mountain biking, rafting, rappel, trekking, hang-gliding, paragliding, photography safaris, surfing, whale watching, bird watching, wildlife spotting, cross-country bicycling, rowing, golf, swimming and fishing. (I’m sure I’ve left something out, but you get the idea.)
Capoeira, an acrobatic, dance-like martial art invented by Brazilian slaves, can be learned or witnessed all over the country.
Brazil’s only popular spectator sport is soccer. Taking in an important game at one of the major stadiums is a real thrill.
Arts & Entertainment
Just as many visitors seek out Brazil for its natural attributes, others come for the music and/or Carnival.
Brazil is a cauldron of musical creativity rivaled, perhaps, only by the United States and Cuba. Most foreigners are familiar with Tom Jobim and bossa nova. But jazz-tinged sophisticated samba hardly scratches the surface. An example from another extreme: Brazil’s best known musicians among young foreigners are the members of Sepultura, a gnarly heavy metal band from Belo Horizonte.
A catchall category called Brazilian Popular Music can be heard everywhere. Demonstrating too much good taste and originality to be called pop, its best-known exponents among foreign audiences might be Grammy winners Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. Distinctive regional sounds abound: samba taps deep roots in Salvador and Rio de Janeiro; the upbeat accordion music forró comes from the northeastern backlands; the effervescent axé is pervasive in Bahia; Maranhão is the capital of Brazilian reggae; Recife earned the nickname “Seattle of Brazil” for propagating rock bands that incorporate traditional regional sounds; the melancholy milonga brings tears to the eyes of gaúchos in the south. The list goes on.
Brazilian contemporary art remains heavily influenced by a concept coined by poet Oswald de Andrade in his 1928 “Manifesto Antropófago” [Cannibalist Manifesto]. Evoking the occasional dietary habits of native South Americans, Andrade urged Brazilian artists to devour multiform influences from around the world and transform them into unique works rooted solidly at home. Antropofagia presaged multiculturalism by explicitly recognizing the value of ethnic manifestations beyond the country’s predominant one. Not only does the concept bless the appropriation of foreign influences, it encourages artists of all backgrounds to explore elements of Native, European, African and Asian cultures in Brazil.
A spirit rather than a style, inclusive and absorbing rather than sectarian, antropofagia never suffered a generational backlash.
Carnival may be a holiday throughout Brazil, but its most interesting manifestations are identified with particular cities like Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and Olinda. São João is a popular mid-winter festival throughout the northeast and indeed most of the country; Caruaru and Campina Grande host the most important celebrations. The post-Christmas Wise Men festival is especially popular in Minas Gerais. The Carnivalesque Parintins bumba-meu-boi festival is found only in the Amazon. Maranhão boasts an equally fascinating, but distinct, bumba-meu-boi celebration.
The Regions
Brazil is customarily divided into five regions. The country’s near-continental expanse has led to regional cultural variations that rival those of Russia. Idealized “gaúcho” cowboys reign in the agricultural south just as in neighboring Argentina. Bustling, cosmopolitan urban centers like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro dominate the industrialized southeast. Ranchers and cowhands coexist with subsistence fishermen in the wide-open central plains, home of the Pantanal. The northeast features archaic traditions like “repente” – a verbal “dueling banjos” in verse that dates to the troubadours of the Iberian peninsula; it also offers Bahia, arguably the strongest center of African culture outside the old continent. With its culinary flair and relaxed lifestyle, native culture seems to permeate the humid air of the Amazonian north. All these folks speak Portuguese, but accents and local slang can vary as much as English can between Maine and Louisiana. The five regions “have been likened to islands in a huge archipelago, spread across a sea of geographic diversity,” wrote Robert M. Levine and John J. Crocitti in their introduction to “The Brazil Reader.”
The world’s largest rainforest holds a special place in everyone’s imagination. Partly as a result, some head there for the wrong reasons, in search of something they’ll never find. Inevitably these folks come away disappointed.
There are good jungle lodges and tours that offer quality “nature” experiences. However, if people want to spot wildlife, they should pass on the Amazon and head directly for the Pantanal. In the Amazon, only the fairly remote Mamirauá reserve can match the Pantanal on this score.
But for those who insist on the Amazon, I can recommend several lodges beyond Mamirauá – from the bare-bones Pedras Negras near the Bolivian border to the luxurious Ariaú Amazon Towers, where Mick Jagger hangs out.
The region’s two urban centers and gateways, Belém and Manaus, deserve special attention. So do the beaches, surfing, buffaloes, and natural beauty of the world’s largest riverine island, Marajó. The region’s distinct culinary offerings, based on indigenous traditions and best sampled in Belem, also deserve honorable mention.
It has been said that seasonal variations in the Amazon range from “when it rains everyday to when it rains all day.” While not too much of an exaggeration, it isn’t as bad as all that.
The highlight of this region is the Pantanal - Brazil’s best untold story, at least abroad. Domestic tourism is way up. Foreigners can’t be far behind.
Known as the "Serengeti of South America," the Pantanal is a patchwork of low-lying forests and marshes and dry, upland savannas. It is home to jaguars, giant anteaters, marsh deer and giant otters. In the rainy season rivers and streams overflow their banks and flood 80 percent of the Pantanal, covering an area more than ten times the size of the Florida Everglades. Lagoons swell with water lilies, while cattail sprout from marshes and palm trees grow along rivers. A variety of grasses feed wildlife and cattle, which have been raised in the region for more than 200 years. Some North American migratory birds including the Upland Sandpiper, American Golden Plover and Black-necked Stilt also rely on the Pantanal for seasonal respite.
Next door in Goiás, the state government has been investing to expand and improve airports that serve important tourist destinations. Attractions include: Caldas Novas, one of the world's most important hot springs; Chapada dos Veadeiros, with its natural beauty and abundance of quartz (thus its attraction for adepts of esotericism from the world over); and historical cities like Perenopolis and Goiás.
Surrounded by Goiás state is the federal district, the capital city of Brasília. Built literally in the middle of nowhere, the city is a monument to megalomania and misdirected social engineering. “One’s overall feeling – confirmed by every Brazilian I met – is of immense empty spaces in which the individual feels lost, as alone as a man on the moon,” wrote social critic Marshall Berman. Yet architecture buffs will surely want to see the icons of modernism that mark its landscape.
The northeast is probably my favorite part of Brazil. Compared to the United States, think of the South – particularly the Mississippi Delta, New Orleans, the Bayou, and Highway 61. Poor to the point of destitute, dominated by local strongmen called “colonels,” the region nonetheless has managed to develop a roots culture – especially a musical one – that rivals the birthplace of jazz and blues. Seminal musicians like Luiz Gonzaga, Jackson do Pandeiro, João Gilberto and Dorival Caymmi all hail from this region. Today Lenine and Zeca Baleiro carry their torches. Repente, the verbal dueling banjos in verse accompanied by acoustic guitar, is from the northeast.
The region has its Faulkners and Rauschenbergs, too. Ariano Suassuna ranks as perhaps Brazil’s best storyteller. The recently departed novelist Jorge Amado and poet João Cabral both hailed from this region. The etchings of Gilvan Samico use advanced techniques but appropriate the style and themes of cordel – collections of popular verse sold as pamphlets, their covers adorned with woodblock prints. The son of craftspeople in the northeast, Efrain Almeida has built upon his parents’ expertise to earn a spot among Brazil’s leading contemporary artists.
As southerners in the US emigrated to Chicago and elsewhere, Brazilian northeasterners flow into São Paulo and other cities, fueling creativity in the metropolis.
Not surprising, the northeast holds some of the country’s best folk festivals. The street Carnivals of Salvador and Olinda are legendary, as are the São João commemorations in Campina Grande and Caruaru. The Bumba-meu-boi festival in São Luiz, Maranhão, is unsurpassed.
Bahia deserves special attention: colonial capital Salvador and its concentration of Afro-Brazilian culture; the Chapada de Dinamantina, an oasis surrounded by scrubland; Canudos, the site of a 19th century messianic rebellion that defeated successive waves army troops before finally succumbing; Abrolhos, home of whale watching and spectacular coral formations; Itacaré, an old cocoa growing region with dense primary rainforest that is now betting on ecotourism.
I could go on and on about places in Pernambuco (including Fernando de Noronha Island), Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Ceará, and elsewhere. But I’ll end with one highlight: Lençóis National Park. Thousands of rain-formed lakes, crystal clear but multi-colored, dot hundreds of kilometers of sandy dunes. They call it the Brazilian Sahara, but rainfall is 300 times more than in northern Africa. The Amazon begins just to the south, and what they call a “pre-Amazonian” forest abuts the expansive dunes. The region can be explored by boat, traveling along a river that cuts through it, or the energetic can trek through.
The south is the place for cowboy culture, rural tourism, horseback riding, immigrant culture, surfing, whale watching, wine tours, Jesuit Missions, urban rationality, crisp mountain air, and the “can’t miss” Iguaçu Falls.
If you’re a meat-eater who needs to put on weight, Brazil’s southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul, is the place to go. This is the home of the perfect barbecue, served in traditional all-you-can-eat “rodízio” style. Successive waves of waiters bring different cuts to your table. Staying in the gastronomic vein, Italian immigrants made Bento Gonçalves the nation’s top wine producing region.
Across the border in Santa Catarina state, Blumenau offers the most extravagant Oktoberfest outside of Bavaria. Surfers worldwide swear by the waves of southern Santa Catarina, where whales are known to appear just behind them. The area around capital city Florianópolis is permeated by the culture of immigrants from Portugal’s Azores Islands.
Besides the impressive Iguaçu Falls and the nearby Itaipú Dam, Paraná state is best known for the urban planning success of its capital, Curitiba.
Here’s Rio de Janeiro. Also São Paulo, the country’s business capital and, in many ways, its de facto political center. Both the current president and his predecessor call São Paulo home, as does the runner-up in the 2002 election. Minas Gerais state ranks right up there with its neighbors, both economically and politically.
Given flight options, most visitors end up in either Rio or São Paulo whether they like it or not. Though the numbers are taking a hit, Rio remains by far the most popular destination for foreign tourists. Meanwhile, over half of international visitors touch down in São Paulo. Business people on extended stays in São Paulo are keen to identify leisure activities in and around the city.
Northern Minas Gerais is the setting for classic novel “The Devil to Pay in the Backlands” by João Guimarães Rosa. Nearby is Maquiné, a fantastic cavern. A bit further north, in a two-street town called Alto Belo, homeboy composer Teo Azevedo holds an excellent roots music festival. Side trips can be made to Salinas, home of the $100-a-bottle cachaça, and the paddlewheel steamboat that once ran the Mississippi.
