Sampa

QUESTION: So, how was it?

ANSWER: Well, I’ll give you the speech I always give people. There are a few things everyone should know. First of all, Rio is one of the greatest cities in the world. I’ve never been to a place like it before, and even though I still haven’t been to Europe or Asia or Africa, I can’t imagine seeing a place like it again. The people fly around like birds and have a sort of chirp when they talk, and instead of going to parks they go to the beach. It’s more than beautiful, it’s simply a special, unmatched place. São Paulo is surprisingly pretty because of the parkland, but it’s an enormous city that can be intimidating at first. I didn’t feel truly comfortable until about a week or two after arriving and then got to explore the full scale of the city. But I ended up loving it there, too. 

Q: So you liked Rio more?

A: Of course I did. But I’d rather live in São Paulo if I were able to make a choice—it’s more appropriate for what I want to do with my life. 

There are a few other things you should know. First of all, I’ve taken two common hand gestures in Brazil and incorporated them into my own body language vocabulary. This one (slapping tops of fingers against bottoms of fingers in a rapid, alternating motion) just means “eh, who cares.” You’d probably use it if you were trying to describe to a foreigner how Americans think of Canadians. The other is just waving the index finger back and forth to indicate something is wrong. You click your tongue to signal disapproval. 

Q: Were you held at gunpoint? Did you get mugged? 

A: Of course not. I’m here talking to you about how much I loved Brazil. You know how we’re paranoid, mostly irrationally, about terrorism on airplanes? That doesn’t happen in Brazil. But some people are afraid to walk out of their homes because they’re paranoid in the same way about street crime. Barbed wire and tall gates encircle high rise apartments. Some of it is warranted; a war between the military police and a prison gang flared up for about a week and led to bus burnings and MP assassinations in São Paulo while I was in town. Kids can be kidnapped for ransom. Not long after I got back, an 11-year-old girl was killed by a lost bullet fired from a MP’s machine gun in Rio. 

It’s easy to be paranoid when those are the most common news items. Sometimes, I put things in perspective, though. Example: I plan to move to Chicago after I graduate. The crime rate there, especially with all of the gun crime this summer, is about the same as São Paulo’s. But no one flinches when I say I’m moving to Chicago, nor did anyone flinch when I talked about working in Philadelphia last summer. Americans are statistically safer and generally feel safer than Brazilians do, but bad things happen in Chicago, New York and Philadelphia just like bad things happen in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Salvador. I didn’t see nearly enough of the country, but I feel like that’s a fair assessment. 

Q: What surprised you? 

A: Being there and actually experiencing what I’ve studied for years was definitely the most surreal part of the trip. Last semester I wrote a final paper about how the largest television network in the country was able to help support the military dictatorship and influence the results of an election because of the power of telenovelas. People still love telenovelas, but the outrageous influence has died down. Soccer fans told me they decided to watch Bandeirantes Network instead of Globo Network because Globo’s reporters were partial to the Brazilian equivalent of the Yankees during the lead-up to a major soccer final. 

There’s more political diversity than I had expected. One of my friends complained about how all of her friends were out to kill her when she wore a red star to support the Worker’s Party on the day their candidate won the presidency in 2002. But another friend complained that things were more peaceful and robberies or corruption didn’t happen during the dictatorship.

Q: (Sighs a little bit.) Really?

A. Yeah, I know. It’s heavy. But I definitely feel like after coming back, my economic views have been completely confirmed. I’m a capitalist. Being there, seeing the growth and development of a city like São Paulo under the watch of a left-wing government that practices a form of responsible capitalism felt like a bizarre mixture of all of the potentials and failures of the system. 

The level of poverty there is astounding, and sometimes I feel like we’re privileged to be complaining about an 8 percent unemployment rate. But there’s a true sense of optimism among most people I met because the middle class is growing. Many feel that life is getting better and Brazil is a better place to live. I wish we had that optimism here. 

Q: That’s one of the smartest things I’ve ever heard you say.

A: Thank you. But seriously, I own all three major Apple products, so this capitalism talk shouldn’t be surprising. 

I’m not exaggerating when I say that briefly living the daily life in an “emerging economy” was the most eye-opening experience I’ve ever had. I wish I could throw out my freshman year C in Econ 101 and go back to learn everything about the economics between hybridization and globalization that I’ve missed for the last four years, but I’ll just have to resort to my local library. 

But walking through São Paulo or driving around and seeing some of the more economically-humble areas of the country made me realize that if Lula had made a hard-left turn in 2003, the over-socialization could have brought the economy to its knees. I don’t think anyone needs to be a degree-holding economist to believe that. Privatization works in some places, nationalization works in others. It’s all about grey areas. The war between socialism and capitalism left some nasty scars in Latin America—especially in Chile and Brazil—but being there made me wonder why it even happened in the first place when it’s obvious that each economic problem requires an individual, prescribed solution instead of ideological praise or condemnation.

People here, especially the Occupy folks, regularly refer to the “end of capitalism” in their rhetoric. That will never, ever happen. Never. There has never been enough worldwide consensus in that worldview, however idealistic it may be, for it to become successful. I’m not saying we should all pick up Atlas Shrugged and worry only about ourselves, I’m saying that it’s ridiculous to suggest that capitalism has failed because of what happened in the United States. The form of capitalism we employed failed and could fail again because of our fetish for individualism. Inequality is rising here, and the cries for reform seems to fall on deaf ears. But it’s been a major concern in Brazil for decades, and since Brazil is a less individualistic country, they seem to have found a way to make things work. Call it “compassionate capitalism.” 

Q. Sounds like you had a great trip. Want a beer?

A. Yeah, grab me a Spotted Cow if you can. It feels good to be back in Wisconsin.

And thanks for listening, too. 

“My daughter studied abroad in Argentina and loved it. As a parent I loved it too; everyone there is white so it’s probably the safest Spanish-speaking country.”

Hearing a blonde-haired, middle-aged parent on a student tour say that to me in summer 2010 was the exact moment I decided to abandon my plans to study in Buenos Aires and start learning Portuguese. Other factors contributed to the decision, but I realized then that studying in Argentina was, for me, equivalent to studying in a European country. It wouldn’t have been a challenge; it would have been a way for me to only experience the world inside of my own comfort zone. 

So I made the unwise decision to drop all Spanish courses, continue learning Arabic and take UW’s intensive Portuguese class. By the end of the semester my final oral presentation for Arabic was about Brazilian history and politics, and Arabic and Spanish seeped into my Portuguese. I was living through a confusing period of change, and I realized that I could only choose one country for my time abroad. And it had to be the most interesting and challenging one.

Not even the Arab Spring made me regret dropping Arabic to focus on Brazil. All of the aspects of Brazilian society that I’ve described in throughout the last several weeks—the openness, the diversity, the geniality, the natural beauty of the country and the Portuguese language—attracted me from the moment I first began to truly learn about Brazil’s complexity and similarities to my own nation. But my understanding was limited to the ivory tower, and I could never truly claim to be a student of Brazil until I had actually experienced the country.

Five weeks has not been long enough for me to experience Brazil and all of its intricacies. São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are first-world cities in a deeply diverse society with inequalities and injustices just like the ones I witness in the United States regularly. I would have loved to have visited Bahia, Brasilia, Santa Catarina or Amazonas. But I am leaving Brazil with the knowledge that I will move heaven and Earth to return, and with a clear direction for my future and the future of my international travel. 

And Brazil was a challenge that met my expectations. I won’t have the opportunity to explore Argentina and compare it because of an unfortunate airline liquidation. But the last five weeks began as an intense and lonely step into a different world and have ended as a whirlwind of new friendships that now are being partially interrupted by my departure.

For as stereotypical as it might be, I’m reminded of E.M. Forster’s legendary suggestion that we “only connect.” The passage from Howard’s End has been the subject of countless scholarship essays and is a popular choice for the famous quotes section of enlightened Facebook users, but I can now say I truly understand what Forster meant, even without reading any of his work.

The connections came to me in all locations, at all hours.

The first came with the father and son from Minas Gerais sitting next to me on the long flight from New York to São Paulo, who welcomed me to Brazil as soon as the cabin door closed with a two-hour conversation about my expectations and their views of their journeys to the United States. 

Countless taxi drivers noticed my foreign accent, complimented me on my Portuguese and interviewed me about my impressions of Brazil, why I have decided to come here, and what suggestions I have for change. 

My hosts immediately welcomed me and noticed my interest in journalism and politics and indulged me in conversations about some of the deepest aspects of Brazilian life. I stayed quiet if I disagreed. 

A group of Italians and Brazilians demonstrated the true excitement of international soccer, complete with couch-jumping moments during penalty kicks, swearing during missed chances and screaming out a window into a city trembling with the sound of celebratory fireworks and horn honking. 

Professors at my university immediately connected as friends—including early on the political incorrectness and joking that comes with knowing a person personally. 

Karaoke DJs eager to listen to an excited Brazilian crowd cheer on the gringos at the bar bought me free songs. 

A samba singer impressed with one of my happy-footed friends invited him to join the party onstage. 

The people I love most stayed connected despite a 5000 mile difference. 

A good friend was so hospitable that she responded in English to questions asked in Portuguese. And she somehow managed to forgive me for mistakenly saying my flight to Brazil would arrive a day before it actually did. 

And a national symbol welcomed me with the most appropriate gesture for Brazil: wide open arms ready to be embraced. 

I will miss Brazil and the Brazilians whose friendships I have learned to value immensely in such a short period of time.

But if I only connect, I can make the world as large or as small as I want it to be. 

I’ve gotten lucky not to have any negative run-ins (insha’allah) so far in Brazil. But something, well, odd happened today.

As I walked to class outside of my university’s grounds I noticed a man approaching me that looked like he could have been a hippie version of me. He had a red beard, reddish-brown hair and was so pale that I couldn’t tell if he was Brazilian.

He wasn’t.

The man started talking to me in perfect California English. Since this is Brazil, I pretended I didn’t speak English and looked at him quizzically before walking through the gate to my school. He must have sensed the gringo in me. (This would be a good opportunity for me to brag that on this trip, people have assumed I am either Argentinian, Portuguese, Spanish, English, Irish or, most rewardingly, Brazilian). 

Still, between the red beard and the obvious American background, I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell this guy had done to end up on the streets of São Paulo. Must be quite a story. 

For a country that prides itself on the social and economic advancements happening within its borders every day, Brazilians hold onto their traditions remarkably well. American traditions (rock’n’roll, hip-hop) are relatively new and change with each generation. But I’ve learned that even for young people, samba, telenovelas, capoeira and obviously soccer are national traditions that millions embrace.

Since I’m in the J-school, I’ve made a point of watching telenovelas to better understand media structures here. It only took a week for me to become a soccer fanatic, and I’ve been listening to samba (but still trying to learn how to dance) for as long as I can remember. But capoeira has always been the most prominent Brazilian tradition that eluded me, until tonight.

Most of that is just because I never really understood capoeira. To me it was just a hybrid between a dance and martial art whose cultural and historical significance was obvious but, for a gringo from Wisconsin, didn’t seem as addicting as soccer or lovable as samba. I also am regularly ridiculed for not being flexible, quiet or graceful at all. So I was a little skeptical of the excursion. 

That was unnecessary. The capoeira experience felt nothing like either the multiple embarrassing experiences I’ve had in organized classes or impromptu dance lessons at parties, and it wasn’t as intense as the three YMCA karate classes I took when I was six (That experience obviously still haunts me today.)

Instead, the entire experience felt unusually liberating considering I was wearing jeans and a soccer jersey. The teachers barely spoke, they accepted mistakes but were thorough in correcting them. And most importantly, by the time I left the school I at least felt like I hadn’t embarrassed myself, and that maybe it was something worth researching as a way to blow off steam when I enter the crucible of stress of being the Herald’s editor-in-chief.

This is the only picture where I actually look like I’m doing something right.

Of course, one of the curses of being a writer and journalist-in-training is looking for the wider significance or symbolism in simple actions. The curse followed me all the way to the capoeira roda. 

While I was in Rio de Janeiro, I made a remark about how Brazil is a peace-loving country. Their army hasn’t fought a war since World War II, and the government’s foreign policy is decidedly pragmatic and anti-agression. But a Norwegian tourist on our trip decided to chime in with some brash analysis I should have seen coming: “True, but they’re all killing each other.”

That’s overstating it in the most offensive way possible. But it is true that unlike my proudly violent country, Brazil is a reluctantly violent place. Capoeira is a reluctantly violent art. All of this country’s most important pastimes involve some sort of grace or celebration, and capoeira includes both. But it also includes a hybrid of African and Indigenous traditions that makes it especially representative of the Brazilian experience. And all of those factors—the almost-but-not-really violence, the historic background, the celebratory feeling—made it the most capital-‘B’ Brazilian thing I’ve done here. 

After all of the warnings, hyperbole and worrying for my safety I encountered before going to Rio de Janeiro for the first time, I can now say that I’ve returned in one piece, without suffering a robbery or witnessing any violence. 

“Be careful in Rio!” is a phrase I’ve heard too often throughout my time in Brazil so far. I’ve described Brazilians’ unique formula for paranoia before, but folks from São Paulo get especially paranoid when Rio is introduced into a conversation. One Brazilian I’ve met told me he felt the most fear he had ever experienced in his own country while driving down the Linha Amarela (Yellow Line), a highway so famous for its shootouts and carjackings that it has gained the nickname “Gaza Strip.” Another person told me her mother once witnessed a bus robbery in her tranquil neighborhood and instinctively hid under a bus. And a Chinese man I met at my school complained about how the city’s natural beauty was tarnished by a robbery he witnessed in broad daylight.

That’s almost too much for a foreigner who lives in one of the USA’s safest cities to swallow. I’ve accepted my study abroad trip here as a challenge partly because I knew it would test the limits of how secure I feel in a place whose reputation abroad largely rests with the state of an ongoing war between criminals and the military police. If Rio de Janeiro was the most difficult problem on that test, I’ll confidently say that I’m going to pass. 

Rio is, put simply, one of the most spectacular cities I have ever visited, and not just because of the natural beauty. The change in atmosphere from São Paulo became obvious immediately after walking out of baggage claim. Rio’s residents, called cariocas, have an attitude toward life I have never seen in another city. 

Most cities have populations that enjoy leisure time, but none of them have the luxury of sitting on some of the most beautiful beachfronts known to the world. Cariocas work (not as hard as Paulistanos) and spend their evenings and weekends on the beach making out, playing soccer or grabbing a beer on the beach. It’s a beach culture that even non-beachy people like me can appreciate.

In fact, Rio feels deceivingly tranquil. I was too tired on Friday night to spend the night out in Lapa, one of the city’s main nightlife destinations, but my Saturday night at a club in Ipanema was surprisingly calm and without incident. Maybe it was because of the two caipirinhas and a Stella, but the 3 a.m. (accompanied by several people) walk back from the club went by peacefully and did not make me nervous—with the minor exception of seeing a Military Police (PMs here are armed with intimidating handheld machine guns) cruiser pull someone over. 

But seeing a city blessed with such natural beauty and experiencing another country’s national symbolism made the short stay worthwhile. I vividly remember being a five-year-old and walking up an escalator of the Smithsonian Metro station with my grandmother, soon shaking with excitement after realizing I was between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. When I saw a five-year old at Corcovado scream “Cristo Redentor! Cristo Redentor!” as he frantically pointed to the iconic statue, I realized that I was at a place just as important to Brazilians as the Statue of Liberty or Lincoln Memorial is to Americans. And suddenly I felt like the short trip to Cristo was the official confirmation that I was truly embracing Brazil—that it loved me and I loved it back. 

Possibly because of the approaching international events, the city’s south zone feels exclusively constructed for international tourists and rich folks, but without the kitsch of Times Square or Navy Pier. The view from Corcovado shows a much larger, sprawling city full of life and begging to be explored, but I only had three days. Even Rocinha, the famous and enormous shantytown near Leblon and Ipanema that houses 70,000 cariocas on a mountaintop, looks beautiful for the mass of humanity, community and organic architecture held in such a small, crowded space. 

I’ve had about a week to absorb my trip to Rio and think of how the city compares to other placed I’ve visited. My passport is disappointingly empty compared to other people who speak the languages I do, and airlines still taunt me with airfare sales to take my first trip Europe, Africa or East Asia. But Rio de Janeiro might be more than the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen. It is one of the greatest cities in the world, and just as Brazilians told me I would, I plan to return very soon. On the flight back to São Paulo, I didn’t feel like I had conquered or survived Rio. In spite of all of its flaws and its reputation, I had fallen in love with it. 

This weekend I participated in two of the most stereotypically Brazilian activities: spending a day on the beach and watching a professional soccer game. 

The weekend felt like a microcosm of the Brazil that Americans know well and, in some cases, the Brazil Americans are still beginning to learn. My two-hour trek to the beach took me through the most important financial district in Latin America, a ring of favelas five-miles deep surrounding São Paulo, a mostly-pristine rainforest in mountains 3000-feet-high, the busiest port in Latin America and the industrial zone surrounding it, another ring of favelas and, finally, one of Brazil’s most acclaimed beaches. 

Brazil’s beach-going ritual, at least for middle and upper-class Paulistas, felt eerily similar to my regular two-hour trips from the Philadelphia area to Maryland’s beaches every summer. There are specific beach highways and anyone lucky enough to have the money has a beach house. 

But the similarities end there. As soon as we parked in a municipal lot, a fast-talking man came up and asked everyone getting out of the bus what soccer team they support. A professor later explained to me that even though we parked in a public lot, some folks try to swindle 10 reais out of drivers since they point to open spots. 

Since it’s currently winter here, the beach was mostly deserted despite a high of 75F. I decided to make the afternoon even more Brazilian, so I went to the nearest sports store and bought a soccer ball. My friends from the program and I played for about 30 minutes, making it obvious to all Brazilians, even a local cop, that we were not Brazilians.

A close friend in Madison of mine warned me that the beach was the most likely location for me to get robbed, mostly because of the kids who ride their bikes or play soccer in the sand. But I had nothing but a positive experience—it was the first time I felt like I was fitting in with the Brazilian joie de vivre that is so well-known throughout the world.

The same went for my trip to a soccer game between Palmeiras, one of the most popular teams in São Paulo, and a team from Florianópolis. Since everyone was saving up for a ticket to the much more important Copa do Brasil match that’s this week, the stadium barely had 2,000 spectators. But wow, did they make noise. Brazilian soccer is a completely different experience than any other American sporting event. Except for the upcoming World Cup, the sale of beer is prohibited in Brazilian football stadiums. Instead of tailgating, fanatic supporters set of fireworks to prepare for games. 

Those firecrackers are the reason I’m awake right now, at almost 4 a.m. Since Corinthians (aka “The People’s Team) just won their first Copa Libertadores in the 100-year history of the team, the entire city is jammed full of people setting off firecrackers and honking their horns four hours after the game has ended.

Spending Independence Day away from the United States has inevitably made me rethink my concept of patriotism. The Palmeiras game was my first time singing a national anthem that wasn’t my own in a public setting.

My host’s father, a conservative man who harbors some nostalgia for the days when Brazil’s streets were safer during a darker military regime, once told me he loved American football and movies about the military because of how they exhibit American patriotism. 

“Brazil doesn’t have that anymore,” he shouted at me as we passed by an apartment building hanging a Corinthians flag. “See that flag? That’s all people care about here. The only time Brazilians band together is during the World Cup, and aside from that we just break down into our own football teams. Every elected official in the US understands that their opposition is a patriot. They’re not patriots here.”

Of course, that description of the United States is inaccurate—possibly because he’s never visited my country. Liberals and conservatives fight over patriotism on a daily basis. Liberals are branded as anti-Americans, conservatives called the same for not supporting or opposing the political flavor of the day. 

But after digesting that comment for a few weeks as I’ve also digested the good and bad of Brazilian society, I realized that before coming here, my concept of Brazil wasn’t too different from his idea of the United States.

My recent disappointment with my own country, compounded by the social and political breakdown I witnessed in Wisconsin over a period of more than one year, made me think that Brazil was outperforming us. After all, their most recent ex-president left office with an approval rating above 70 percent and their economy was the only one in the West not suffering from the financial crisis. And I have always wanted Americans to get as excited and patriotic during international soccer matches as the rest of the world does. It’s good for the soul.

Coming here has confirmed so much of what I expected to love after I began learning about Brazil—the people, the enthusiasm for life, the soccer, the music, the obsession with telenovelas, the fascinating history and politics. That said, I’ve also realized that my place in the world as an American is something to strongly embrace. When taxi drivers try to guess my nationality and assume I’m European (one even thought I was Portuguese!), I pat myself on the back. But that’s all a linguistic game. Being an American who’s willing to meet and understand other cultures is a badge of honor. 

So on this 4th of July, I’ve learned that patriotism and national pride aren’t concrete, tangible phenomena. National symbols like tacky Stars & Stripes polos are trivial compared to a personal recognition that regardless of the ugly history or current state of your country, a love for the place you call home is comforting and necessary to live in a changing world. And in my case, I’m lucky to receive compliments for living in a country that is, according to Brazilians, more organized than their own. That may be true, but they’re catching up to us.

Some folks go abroad and return to the United States with an intense guilt for being American. Some come back thanking God they weren’t born in another country. I’ll return with a deep, intense love for Brazil and desire to return, but with the obvious recognition that I will always hold onto my American identity. 

For as much as I’d love to convince myself otherwise, I’m an amateur international traveler. The last fourteen days mark the first time I’ve been outside of the United States for more than a week, and about a week ago I began to feel a sense of helplessness and saudade that a good friend of mine very-accurately referred to as “The Six-Day Blues.”

Everything is fine now, and I feel very comfortable here, though still not as comfortable as I do in the USA. But evidently I’m not the first American study abroad student to feel homesick. To make matters worse for me last week, the homesickness was compounded by a complete breakdown in confidence in my ability to speak Portuguese that affected my communication. 

From the second I stepped on the 777 to come here, I was absolutely positive of my ability to speak Portuguese. The Brazilian father-son pair that sat next to me for the flight’s ten-hour duration were impressed by my ability to speak, as was the talkative and friendly taxi driver who took me from the airport, and even bought me a coffee and newspaper on the way!

But then I started to order things off of menus or call cabs and quickly realized that I was in a place where the crude mix of European and Brazilian Portuguese I had been learning for two years was going to be in overdrive for the duration of the trip. I started to pretend I was nearly deaf when ordering things at restaurants. I would retreat to The New York Times and Facebook to give me a needed daily dose of English like it was a sort of linguistic morphine. 

And my brain started working again. I visited one of the most supported soccer clubs in the country, met the manager of the 2002 World Cup team and began to actually talk to cabbies for practice and realized that learning a language or a culture means checking your ego at the door of the overnight flight and being willing to learn.

By the time I leave—and I’m almost halfway through the program already—I’m going to miss more than I would have expected before arriving. I’ll miss the sharply-produced and actually compelling telenovelas, and I’ll miss the way it feels when the city turns into one gigantic arena of cheering Corinthians fans when their team scores or, in other cases, when Palmeiras and São Paulo fans scream their schaudenfruede when Corinthians’ opponent scores. I’ll miss the four-cheese pizzas with catupiry eaten with fork and knife. 

But I shouldn’t get too sentimental. I’m not leaving yet, and there’s no way I’m not coming back to cover the World Cup. 

I can remember the first time I learned about two things that defined my understanding of Brazil before learning Portuguese or coming to São Paulo. 

In 2005, when I was just beginning to learn Spanish, I also was beginning my long love affair with Wikipedia. While browsing through a list of the world’s largest cities, I was surprised to find one I didn’t recognize: São Paulo. So I clicked on the article page and began discovering this city, a ten-mile by ten-mile square filled to the brim with people living in an endless sea of high-rises and lines of traffic two miles long in every direction.

I expected to arrive in São Paulo overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the city. But aside from the white-knuckle driving and over-filled buses, there’s a certain quietness to life here that I hadn’t expected. In 2006, the city banned display advertising on billboards and buildings, and the entire city is less overwhelming because of it. Avenida Paulista, the Brazilian equivalent to Wall Street, feels quaint compared to the chaos in Chicago’s Loop or even smaller cities like Philadelphia.

I have an affinity for advertising because of my background in mass communication, so I do miss billboards to a small extent. But when you forget all of the distractions that advertising can create, it’s easy to find that there’s a sense of community in São Paulo; people have to pay attention to each other here.

Let me amend that statement. That sense of community only exists within classes, not as nation or a large city. When I lived in Philadelphia last year, I witnessed this problem firsthand when huge groups poor kids from North Philly began attacking residents of some of the rich neighborhoods in Center City. Imagine those class divisions in Philadelphia or Chicago, multiply them by ten and you have the type of division that Brazilians witness every day. My neighborhood could fit in any luxurious city anywhere else in the world, but a twenty-minute drive in any direction will reveal abject poverty. 

In Rio de Janeiro, this is even more of a problem than it is in São Paulo. Here, the rich-poor dynamic is similar to Paris or London, where the poor and many ethnic minorities live on the periphery while the rich live in the inner city. In Rio, favelas lay alongside the some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the Western Hemisphere.

But despite the more familiar situation in São Paulo, there still are intense political divisions that I hadn’t anticipated encountering before coming here. Most of the people reading this already know about my idealism and admiration for Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president for 8 years. Lula was a poor, mostly-uneducated autoworker who became president after leading the metalworker’s union for years. He was a vocal opponent of the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 until 1985. And, as it happens, some of the people I’ve met here really hate him.

Most of those folks belong to the upper-middle class. They blame Lula for expelling them from the middle class to create a new middle class of formerly poor Brazilians—most of whom lived in favelas. They also blame him for creating a welfare program, Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) that they think does nothing to improve the country’s economic inequality. And most of all, they blame him for rampant corruption, a common critique of Brazilian politicians of all ideologies and possibly their one claim that is supported by fact.

All of this should sound familiar to anyone who has listened to people complain about President Obama. But I’ve also heard complaints that the lack of a strong military government and the tyranny of the (mostly poor) majority has wrought disorder and ineffective governance on a country that prides itself on its national motto: “Order and Progress.”

Of course, I don’t agree with this. I think that democracy and effective economic policies from Lula and his more neo-liberal predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, have brought Brazil to its exalted status. But I’m not Brazilian, and I wouldn’t be an effective journalist if I didn’t point out that Brazil’s new role as the world’s favorite “emerging country” has angered some for creating perceptions of a class war between the new consumer class and the old one. 

Wikipedia’s page about favelas was the second page, after São Paulo, that opened my eyes to the realities of Brazil. If China has political oppression, India has oppressive poverty and Russia has an oppressive history, Brazil is the BRIC country that has oppressive class divisions. It’s a beautiful place with wonderful people and a unique approach to life, but I’m beginning to witness its flaws. I’m glad I’ve come across that element of Brazil, though. It’s more eye-opening than meeting only people who adore Lula and Dilma. 

I’m in a major city where low-flying airplanes clip by tall buildings, the privileged commute by helicopter, and loud explosions rock the downtown area every five minutes. But no one here cares, and no one gets hurt. 

Some of the noises you hear in São Paulo would cause panic and an evacuation in New York or Chicago. But here, it’s just soccer fans launching huge fireworks celebrating that Corinthians, one of the most popular soccer teams in the world, is going to the final of the Liberators’ Cup, one of the most prestigious tournaments for club soccer in South America.

I only was startled by the fireworks once earlier this week, and now they’ve become just another part of the urban noise here. Like so many other things, this is just part of the Brazilian daily life that feels so different, while the rest of the country feels so familiar.

It happens every day; São Paulo does not follow the common United States perception of what a Latin American city feels like. There are televisions on city buses. The government produces glimmering public service announcements that sing the praises of their new public programs, and every Brazilian seems to have an obsession with two things: the “new Brazil” and the growing economy or the intense, paranoid security that is the other side of Brazil’s international reputation.

Walking to get dinner tonight was an experience in both of those obsessions. To exit my apartment building, which is a 25-story high-rise in a wealthy part of town, I pass through two gates controlled by a 24-hour guard, and walk three blocks to the nearest shopping, a small mall on Avenida Paulista that has a couple of good restaurants. 

The shopping is the “new Brazil” everyone in the United States loves to mention. Everyone here tells me that American companies like Wal Mart or McDonalds are frequented more by the middle class, but it’s obvious that rich Paulistas also are learning how to consume luxury products like someone from New York or Tokyo.

This is a fantastic, vibrant city—the only one I’ve ever visited that truly mixes North American, Latin American and Western European traditions. And for as gigantic as it might be, São Paulo has the feel of a city with a heart, full of good-natured and friendly citizens rarely found in a city this size. The rest of the world should learn to love it just as much as Rio de Janeiro. 

I love looking for the details in cities. The sensation that comes with being in a truly great American city is both the result of a standard character in every city, but also an exhilaratingly unique fabric that gives a metropolis that magical “sense of place” that everyone fears we’re losing because of the “Information Age.”

And it’s true, we’ve begun to lose some of the idiosyncrasies that make urban life special. Office parks that draw jobs away from downtowns are heartless, uniform places that most people have abandoned. The same goes for malls and rows of townhouses and two-acre lots that extend for forty miles outside of a major city center.

But that’s all that I’ve ever experienced. I’ve never truly experienced a city outside of the standards that have been my bread and butter for years—places like Madison, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington. Each is a stunning place that I love dearly, but each also possess all of the qualities listed above. They’re very American.

And that’s why I’m going to Brazil. Most people don’t realize this, but the United States might have more in common with Brazil than any other major country—at least historically and demographically. Both grew after a colonial influx of seafaring imperialists; both have an ugly history of racism, slavery and bloody expansion at the cost of the indigenous population; both are renowned worldwide for their expansiveness and geographic diversity; both are the recipients of international finger-wagging for crime and income disparity; both have two major cities—one that serves as a capital of entertainment and leisure and another that attracts finance and media.

But that’s all I’ve ever learned. I’ve never truly experienced Brazilian culture and what makes it different from the American lifestyle I’ve known for 21 years. I can only make comparisons based on what I’ve learned in a square mile in Wisconsin for about two years.

And that’s why I’m going to Brazil.

This blog will be a collection of my experiences and thoughts as I spend five weeks studying in São Paulo (I’ll also be in Rio de Janeiro for a 3-day weekend) and a week thereafter in Buenos Aires and Montevideo. This is the trip I’ve dreamed of taking since I first learned the word porteño in Catherine Hoffman’s second year Spanish class in 2006.

Since this is such a new experience for me, allow me to air some of the things that excite me, and those that make me nervous.

EXCITING

Being in a city larger than New York

New York has forever been my gold standard of “big cities,” but both Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo are bigger. To some this would be intimidating enough to deter even a visit to SP, which is notorious for its endless expanse of skyscrapers, but something about getting to say that I lived in the second-largest city in the Western Hemisphere is too exciting and adventurous not to go.

Practicing Portuguese and Spanish without any assistance

My one-week trip to Costa Rica in high school gave me the opportunity to do this to a very, very small extent, but this is the first time I will really get to use what I’ve been learning. I began learning Spanish eight years ago—Portuguese two years ago, and at this point I’m at about equal fluency because of the similarities between the two languages.

Journalistic opportunities

Aside from this blog, I’m hoping that the trip will give me an opportunity to dip my toes, albeit very briefly since I don’t have too much time to put together a detailed project. In particular, I’m very interested in poverty and income inequality, the way the federal and municipal governments handle growth while promoting economic equality.

Being a “Brazilianist” before it’s cool to be one

I’ll let you in on a little secret. The IOC selected London to host this year’s Olympics to give Western Europe and the USA a breather between two revolutionary cities hosting the Games. Americans are still experiencing the afterglow of the Beijing event. This is understandable, especially given that the Opening Ceremonies in 2008 were possibly the most important thing the world stage of the Olympics had ever done for one single nation. I suspect the 2016 Games in Rio will be just as exciting and exhilarating as those four years ago.

But there’s one difference. Brazil is a flourishing democracy. China certainly is not. Americans might be raging with Sinophilia today, but after Jesse Eisenberg’s voice stars in a sequel to Rio and our increasingly-soccer crazy country falls in love with Brazil after the World Cup, things will change. Trust me.

Americans will begin to realize that Brazil’s history, as I described above, is not too different from its own. And even though Brazilians recently have developed a reputation for electing leftists that would make some conservative Americans cringe, my money is that we will want to align ourselves with the BRIC country with a “melting pot” population and a democratic tradition that is similar to our own.

NERVE-WRACKING

Being away from loved ones

This is the most obvious drawback. I can remember a time when studying abroad felt like an opportunity to free myself from my social obligations here and meet new people who would become lifelong friends. But that’s already happened. This, of course, is particularly difficult for my girlfriend and me. Between her graduation and job search and my decision to study abroad, this summer will be difficult for two people who value their time together as much as we do. I’m only worried about the sensation of missing her, which, well, sucks.

Crime

Another obvious one. Brazil is notorious for its high violent crime rate in its large cities. This is much more of a problem in Recife, Salvador and Rio de Janeiro than it is in São Paulo, which evidently has the lowest homicide rate of all Brazilian capital cities. But even though I’m staying in an affluent area and will be in one of the richest cities in the Western Hemisphere, I still worry for my safety. I’m only worried about strong-arm robbery, which is a common worry even in Madison. But something tells me I’ll have at least one thing stolen from me during the trip. I just hope it isn’t my passport or phone.

Commitments at home

I have to remotely supervise the production of a two-section issue of The Badger Herald while I’m thousands of miles away. This shouldn’t be too daunting since I’ve got wireless Internet in the apartment, but still. Hopefully there are no communication breakdowns.

To all who plan to read this on a regular basis, thank you. I’ll leave you with a line from São Paulo’s own version of “New York, New York,” a little ditty called “Sampa” by the irreplaceable Caetano Veloso. It’s the namesake of this blog. Hopefully I grow as fond of the city as Caetano before I leave. Google Translate might be helpful here. 

Alguma coisa acontece no meu coração

Que só quando cruzo a Ipiranga e a Avenida São João

É que quando cheguei por aqui, eu nada entendi

Da poesia concreta de tuas esquinas

Da deselegância discreta das tuas meninas

Ainda não havia para mim Rita Lee ,

A tua mais completa tradução

Alguma coisa acontece no meu coração

Que só quando cruzo a Ipiranga e a Avenida São Jõao.