Robert M. Levine - Brazilian Legacies

BRAZILIAN
LEGACIES

Perspectives on Latin America and the Caribbean

THE CHAINS OF INTERDEPENDENCE
U.S. POLICY TOWARD CENTRAL AMERICA, 19451954
Michael L. Krenn

A HOLY ALLIANCE?
THE CHURCH AND THE LEFT IN COSTA RICA, 19321948
Eugene D. Miller

QUISQUEYA LA BELLA
THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC IN HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
Alan Cambeira

BRAZILIAN LEGACIES
Robert M. Levine

THE HAUNTING PAST
POLITICS, ECONOMICS AND RACE IN CARIBBEAN LIFE
Alvin O. Thompson

BRAZILIAN
LEGACIES

Robert M. Levine

First published 1997 by M.E. Sharpe

Published 2015 by Routledge

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Levine, Robert M., 1941

Brazilian legacies / Robert M. Levine.

p. cm. (Perspectives on Latin America and the Caribbean)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-7656-0008-0 (alk. paper).

ISBN 0-7656-0009-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. BrazilCivilization20th century.

2. BrazilSocial conditions.

3. BrazilSocial life and customs.

4. Life skillsBrazil.

I. Title.

II. Series.

F2537.L4721997

981.06dc20

96-38568

CIP

ISBN 13: 9780765600097 (pbk)

ISBN 13: 9780765600080 (hbk)

For Joey
b. So Paulo, 24 May 1985

Contents

Research for this project was funded by a grant from the NorthSouth Center of the University of Miami, Coral Gables, and from the annual stipend for Brazilian studies provided by the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce in Miami. I am grateful to Davi Camargo Bom Meihy, Jeff Lesser, Cristina Mehrtens, Qulia Quaresma, Peter M. Beattie, E. Richard Downes, and, as always, Jos Carlos Sebe Bom Meihy, for their help, suggestions, and comments. Responsibility, of course, falls entirely to me, especially since many of the observations in this book are based on my long personal experience in Brazil, starting in early 1961 when I spent a week in Rio de Janeiro while returning from a semesters overseas undergraduate study program in Argentina, and recurring on a regular basis subsequently.

BRAZILIAN
LEGACIES

Brazil, the largest and most populous country in Latin America, has long fascinated outsiders, although often for inaccurate reasons. Until recently, foreigners often saw Brazil as a land of coffee and parrots, Carnival and the Amazon, the samba-land of Hollywoods 1930s Flying Down to Rio. Waldo Frank, a well-meaning writer who traveled through South America in 1942, maintained that Brazil was a nation of archetypal forest-dwellers, since 85 percent of Brazils people had African blood, and out of the Brazilian forest a new world culture was emerging.

The real Brazil is far different, of course, although to be sure it has produced an original and vibrant culture of its own. It is a manufacturing giant; food production is dominated by large agro-industrial businesses; and it boasts one of the most sophisticated cultural environments in the world. Brazil is a country of not only rain forests but concrete jungles teeming with energy and choked with traffic, as well as population blends of rich and poor, immigrant and migrant, old and young.

Its diverse population includes more persons of African descent than any country except Nigeria, and more Japanese than anywhere outside of Japan. More descendants of Arab peoples live in Brazil than anywhere outside the Middle East. Large numbers of Brazilians have ancestors from places as disparate as Italy, Jamaica, Poland, Germany, Switzerland, Korea, and the Confederate States of America. The largest Roman Catholic nation on earth, Brazil is also home to millions of evangelical Protestants as well as Buddhists, Muslims, Mormons, European spiritists, Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews, and followers of a pantheon of animist religions brought to Brazil on the slave ships from Africa but still very much alive today.

Its successes range from its relaxed racial ambience to the quiet professionalism of its international diplomats. Brazils exuberant soccer team won the worlds imagination as it marched in 1994 to the tetra, the unprecedented fourth-time capture of the World Cup. Brazil has become known for its exports of its music, orange juice, shoes, and textiles, although fewer know that Brazil has also become a world leader in the sale of soybeans, passenger airplanes, minerals, and armaments. When frosts damaged Brazilian coffee plantations in 1994, world prices rose immediately. Outsiders also now know about the plight of Brazils native peoples and abandoned street children. News about angry urban violence halved the annual number of international tourists to Rio de Janeiro since 1989 from 400,000 to 200,000, although tourism has picked up in other parts of the country, especially to the beautiful beaches of the northeastern coast.

Brazilians have reversed their former isolation. Mercosul, the Southern Cones Common Market, has opened borders and spurred tourism, stimulating commerce as well. More than ever, Brazilians have become world travelers. An estimated 60,000 Brazilians visit Orlando each year; thousands more go to Western Europe, the Middle East, the rest of the United States, and Asia. Brazil exports not only soccer stars but musicians, dance groups, automobile racers, and soap operas; it also sends abroad university-educated men and womenobtaining entry into foreign countries by any means at their disposalseeking to accumulate enough capital to return home with an economic stake for their families. There are Brazilian colonies in Tokyo, Riyadh, Los Angeles, Middleton (Wisconsin), Miami, Toronto, Paris, and scores of cities elsewhere. Brazil has forged two-way links with the world.

Brazilian Legacies is an interpretive essay that explains the historical reasons for the countrys present-day condition. Given that Brazil is a vast country whose regions are as different from one another as far-flung regions in Russia, Canada, and the pre-interstate-highway United States, some of the discussion about Brazilian culture or Brazilian life may not apply universally. As a national entity, however, Brazil dominates its subcontinent, extending to the borders of nine Latin American neighbors. As such, common themes that make Brazil what it is today merit analysis.