Selva de Pedra aka Sao Paulo

So I finally spent some time in Sao Paulo. The first time I came, I only went to the government palace, so I didn’t get a good sense of what the city was like. This weekend, Priscila and I stayed with Rafael, the ex-boyfriend of a friend of a friend of Priscila’s (literally). Brazilians are so hospitable and friendly to foreigners that I haven’t spent a single cent on accommodations. How sweet it is. Rafael is a really nice guy and his family is inexplicably generous. We got lucky, for sure. The weather in the city was terrible! It was the coldest it has been since I’ve been here, and dark storm clouds and rain do not suit the city. Everything just appeared so gray and cold, even in comparison to New York. Maybe all the glass on the buildings in NYC give it a luster that makes it seem slightly more alive, but even considering how it may look in the sun, São Paulo did not make a great impression on me. It is easily the most populous city in the Americas, and although it has a decent public transport system, most of it is not walkable. Places like Avenida Paulista have wide sidewalks and kids on the streets dressed like clowns, giving away free hugs, while people are selling all sorts of stuff on blankets. It looked a lot like New York. It is also the place for all sorts of cultural institutions, and I will definitely visit some museums and a film festival on my next visit, when it will probably be much warmer. It was also a lot like New York because it sucked my pockets dry of money, even though I brought a limited amount to prevent that. The city is known for its smog and dirty rivers, which they have been trying to improve for such a long time. Okay, maybe I’m describing it so terribly because part of me is still in Rio, but there is more to do here if you are the yuppie type or have business in the city

The day before Sao Paulo was Priscila’s birthday, and we went to a capoeira roda in the center of São José. It was really cool and we were just fooling around, so I had a lot of fun. However, I couldn’t help but notice that I was such the minority there. I had been more and more conscious of the fact, and I don’t think it bothered me until that moment when people were saying and doing things that I hadn’t experienced for such a long time. This man, who is supposed to be some sort of respected capoeira maestre, actually insisted that I eat scorpions and dogs at my grandmother’s house. Then, right as I was entering the circle for the jogo, the other guy pulled his eyes to the side to make them “asian” and laughed in this maniacal way. In retrospect, it wasn’t that bad, and I should have just let it go, but I had this overwhelming emotion of solitude. I thought, “This is so unfair! I come to foreign country, completely open-minded, wanting to learn about and appreciate another culture, and I am greeted with disrespect and ridicule about my ethnicity, my appearance, and my culture.” All of a sudden, my face was flooded with tears. My capoeira teacher tried to console me with some irrelevant story, but ended up saying that the people in this neighborhood were not educated and cultured. That doesn’t exactly make me feel better, considering most of Brazil lives this way. I think the reason I was so upset was because I had just had an adrenaline rush from doing capoeira and practicing on the side, but

Back in São Paulo, we went to this market on 25 de Marzo that was Canal St./Chinatown transplanted in Brazil. Everyone was Chinese, selling counterfeit designer bags, watches, perfume, socks, belts, t-whirts, Lacoste shirts, etc. Someone thought that I was Chinese (a first in Brazil) and thought that Priscila and I were speaking in Chinese (also a first, and probably the last). Brazilian Portuguese with a Chinese accent is so cool. I wondered whether it was more difficult for a Chinese person to learn English over Portuguese. I know that Chinese migration to Brazil is a fairly new phenomenon, but I wonder whether it is more accessible to migrate to South America over North America.



Friday night we went outside of the city to this quasi-suburb called Alphaville. Some friends of Rafael’s friend were having a churrasco at some kid’s grandparents’ house. The house was really nice and located in the most secure gated community I have seen – we had to keep a tag on the dashboard of the car to indicate that we had the right to be there. Most of the people at the churrasco were in college and about the same age as me, and they were just really friendly and fun. I had plenty of salty grilled meat and we had a good time just being goofy. They reminded me of PDS friends – I miss you guys!

By the way, in case you were wondering, they use Helvetica in the subways of both Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Actually São Paulo's subway has pretty interesting art integrated in its structure, and they also have vending machines selling books...citywide literacy campaign?

Cariocas!

I apologize for neglecting my blog for an entire month, and a lot has happened since then. The most constant thing in my life here is my capoeira class. My capoeira teacher’s name is Teófilo. He acts like a father figure to everyone and he lives and breathes capoeira. He took Priscila and me to the opening celebration of his friend’s capoeira school, which is located in the southern part of São José dos Campos. This area was a lot more like the Brasil that I imagined...by that, I mean the way things look, the way people look, the way buildings are built. It looked more “3rd world,” and I don’t mean that in any condescending way. What I really mean is that this area looked very different from what I’m use to seeing in the U.S. whereas Vila Ema (where my host family lives), looks and feels like…well, Princeton.

The capoeira inauguration was really cool because it was my first real (and very authentic) capoeira roda. Teófilo made Priscila get into the circle and join the fight, and she took off her shoes and went for it, which was very ballsy of her. I got it all on video – like a baby’s first steps. Some of the little kids were ridiculously good and showing off their flips, aerial twists, and flexibility. It was just a fun and colorful event with music, people clapping and singing along to the music, and playful fighting. Needless to say, my capoeira teacher started drinking beer at 10 AM and didn’t stop until we got home, so he was all sorts of craziness - for example, playing his tambourine in the car and distributing bits of wisdom about life and respect.

The following day I went to see another of the NGO’s projects in São Luiz do Paraitinga, which is a small country village one hour outside of São José. Actually drove on a tiny dirt road and arrived at a very small, colorful church located amidst pure farmland and cow pastures. The project is to teach arts and crafts to women who live in this rural area as an occupation that brings in income for their families. The day I went, there was a knitting class, so I finally learned how to knit. It was a group of 10-15 women sitting around a table together, knitting and chatting, with their children running around the courtyard. Since the women’s only exposure to American culture is through movies, they asked if I’d ever met Brad Pitt and a number of other famous actors. It smelled like cow, and stray dogs were everywhere, looking very flea-infested and lazy. Two men from the corporate sponsor, Votorantim, were there to snap a few photos, say a few words, and go back to their fancy offices. I must say, I really enjoy being out there because the women chat a lot and they make the most of fundamental things.


The reason the project got started is that the area used to be very agricultural, but currently, there isn’t much farming going on, at least none that I have seen. My guess is that these small farmers could not compete with large agribusinesses. Most of the land serves as cow pastures, and the women are really left with no occupations. Arts and crafts gives them a way to produce some sort of income, and it also returns them to more traditional days when the rural folk made their living off of artisan items. Their hope is to open specialty stores in the city, and I might possible serve as their point person in the US to contact stores that might be interested in imported Brazilian arts. They call it Artesanato do mato, which means “Arts of the countryside.”

I spent a week in Rio de Janeiro, and I am convinced that I have to live there for some part of my life. The city has everything I would want to be in a single location: a busy center, decent public transportation, outdoor markets, beautiful natural landscapes, mountains, distinct neighborhoods, forests, beaches, and nice weather. We did most of the tourist stuff, and we also went out at night in Lapa, where transsexual prostitutes make the night just that much more interesting. We rode an old school trolley, or bonde, up to Santa Teresa, which is a really cute and brightly painted neighborhood. Priscila and I have already picked out some potential houses there. The view from the sculpture of Christ the Redeemer is indescribable. I stayed with a student from ITA, which is the school where the students helped organize my trip here. He offered his house never having met me, which turns out to be a very Brazilian thing to do. They are amazingly hospitable. He lives in a gated community in Barra da Tijuca, so I got a sense of what a privileged life in Brasil is like…like living in suburb, walled-off from the “dangers” outside.

People are so paranoid and suspicious here, and it started to affect me when I went to different areas of the city. I felt like I had to watch my back, when there was really nothing to be afraid of. It’s like a mentality that perpetuates more fear, and hence, more misunderstanding, and more crime. Whenever we said we wanted to go to a different neighborhood, people would say, “Não! É muito perigoso!...No!, it’s so dangerous!” But when we got there, it really wasn’t that bad, and nothing happened that would even make me feel endangered. This mentality really explains why people only go places by car and live inside fortressed buildings and homes, reinforced with electric fences and barbed wire, or makeshift defense structures (i.e. broken bottles with their sharp edges protruding from the tops of the walls).

The favelas (slums) in Rio are everywhere you look. Rocinha, the largest favela in South America, supposedly has 400,000 people living there, and is so developed, that there are multiple-story structures and businesses. It is sprawled across the side of a mountain, and functions like a city within a city. Apparently the organized crime within the favela keeps down crime levels and violence among the favela dwellers. The real violence that everyone fears so much occurs when the police interferes with the organized criminal activity. Hopefully I can go back and get a tour of the neighborhood and a stronger sense of the community. Some tourists we met there said that they went on a favela tour and that the money benefited a community school there. Seems to me like a tourist spectacle and an inauthentic experience.