Brasil Observer #29 - English Version

LONDON EDITION

ISSN 2055-4826

WWW.BRASILOBSERVER.CO.UK

B R A S I L O B S E R V E R JULY/2015

# 0 0 2 9

CRÂNIO (WWW.CRANIOARTES.COM)

2

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

SUMMARY 4 6 8 10 14 16 18 20 23 26 28 30

IN FOCUS Wooing Uncle Sam: Dilma Rousseff goes to the United States

LONDON EDITION

GUEST COLUMNIST João Antonio Felício writes on future of work on the BRICS Is a montlhy publication of ANAGU UK UM LIMITED funded by

PROFILE Marcus Vinícius Faustini, the creator of Youth Agency Networks GLOBAL BRAZIL The right is pop: the new face of Latin-Americans conservatives

ANA TOLEDO Operational Director ana@brasilobserver.co.uk

BR-UK CONNECTION From stigma to esteem: meet the project Eyes of the Street

GUILHERME REIS Editorial Director guilherme@brasilobserver.co.uk

BRASILIANCE New project wants to change the pre-salt oil exploration in Brazil BRASILIANCE Tax burden in Brazil are much more unequal than actually high The reduction of legal age in Brazil is just the tip of the iceberg

ROBERTA SCHWAMBACH Financial Director roberta@brasilobserver.co.uk

CONECTANDO Art week change the routine of a small city in Brazil’s countryside

ENGLISH EDITOR Shaun Cumming shaun@investwrite.co.uk

GUIDE Baila Brazil: Balé de Rua’s dance show arrives in London

LAYOUT AND GRAPHIC DESIGN Jean Peixe peixe@brasilobserver.co.uk

CULTURAL TIPS Criolo and Dona Onete bring Brazilian flavour to Womad Festival Brazilian Bilingual Book Club: ‘The Sad End of Policarpo Quaresma’

CONTRIBUTORS Alicia Bastos, Ana Beatriz Freccia Rosa, Aquiles Rique Reis, Franko Figueiredo, Gabriela Lobianco, Ricardo Somera, Wagner de Alcântara Aragão

COLUMNISTS Franko Figueiredo on ‘The cost of making theatre’ Aquiles Reis on ‘When the body is music’ Ricardo Somera on ‘Collaborative spirit’

PRINTER St Clements press (1988 ) Ltd, Stratford, London mohammed.faqir@stclementspress.com 10.000 copies

TRAVEL Foz do Iguaçu, the paradise of waters

DISTRIBUTION Emblem Group Ltd. COVER ART

Ananda Nahu | anahu.com Brazilian urban artist, from Bahia, rooted in Rio de Janeiro, graduated at the School of Fine Arts at the Federal University of Bahia. The mixture of styles, colours, visual aspects, paintings techniques and diversity in the use of materials is a striking feature of her work. She also does complex and colourful murals enriched with intricate patterns and featuring powerful women as centrepiece. In June Ananda was in the UK to attend the festival Vamos!, in Newcastle. In London, she also left their mark on walls in the east of the city – as the Broadway Market canal – and participated in the launch of the new label of Cachaça Abelha, which is signed by Ananda Nahu.

TO ADVERTISE comercial@brasilobserver.co.uk 020 3015 5043 TO SUBSCRIBE contato@brasiloberver.co.uk TO SUGGEST AN ARTICLE AND CONTRIBUTE editor@brasilobserver.co.uk ONLINE brasilobserver.co.uk issuu.com/brasilobserver facebook.com/brasilobserver twitter.com/brasilobserver

brazil

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

8

day

Trafalgar Square August 2015, Saturday 1pm - 8pm FREE ADMISSION

3

4

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

IN FOCUS

FRIENDS AGAIN?

COUNTRIES SIGN DEAL TO REGULATE BRICS BANK

ROBERTO STUCKERT FILHO/PR

D

Dilma Rousseff ’s visit to the United States was hailed by both countries and by many international analysts as marking a new chapter in bilateral relations between the two largest democracies in the Western Hemisphere – strained since 2013, when Rousseff discovered she was being spied by US government and decided to cancel a scheduled trip to the country.

“Our focus is on the future,” said President Barack Obama, in an interview alongside Rousseff at the White House. “I believe this visit marks another step in a new and more ambitious chapter in the relationship between our countries.”

The Brazilian president went in the same direction. “We relaunched the relationship with the United States in a major future and present possibilities level,” she said.

In the same week of the meeting, WikiLeaks revealed details about NSA spying on Brazil. Calls from 29 Brazilian government offices have been intercepted, including the Presidency, the Ministry of Finance, the Central Bank and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

This time, the Secretariat of Social Communication (Secom) of the Presidency issued a statement saying that President Dilma Rousseff trust in US President Barack Obama, and his commitment that there will be no espionage against Brazil and Brazilian companies. The minister of Secom, Edinho Silva, had said that the government considers the episode overcome and that the revealed wiretaps are from 2011. “The president just returned from a productive trip and several agreements were closed.

The focus now is to maintain good relations with the US and future investments,” argued the minister.

In the midst of a political and economic crisis, a corruption scandal involving government allies and approval ratings below two digits, Rousseff sees the external front as a hope to generate good news.

Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff during press statement with the United States President, Barack Obama

Thus, the trip was dominated by trade issues. In New York, Rousseff sought to entice investors with concessions in infrastructure valued at US$ 64 billion and, in Silicon Valley she sought advice on innovation with entrepreneurs from the technology sector. The Americans promised to lift the ban on imports of Brazilian beef, ending a negotiation that has lasted nearly 15 years. It is also possible that, in 2016, the two countries sign an agreement to reduce non-tariff barriers and harmonization of customs procedures, which should end up facilitating the entry of Brazilian products in the United States, the first ranking country purchasing industrial products from Brazil.

With US$ 9.7 billion from January to May 2015, the United States is currently the second largest buyer of Brazilian products (counting no industrialized as well), behind China, which imported from Brazil US$ 13.7 billion this year. Brazilian exports to the US, however, fell about 8% over the same period of 2014, when it reached US$ 10.5 billion.

In the first five months of this year the trade balance between the two countries was unfavourable to Brazil at US$ 2 billion. Last year, trade in goods and services between the two countries reached US$ 110 billion and the intention is to double this amount in ten years.

Brazil and the United States also pledged to increase the share of renewable sources in their energy mix.

The goal is for this index, not including the generation of hydroelectric power, to reach over 20% by 2030.

According to the latest data, from 2012, currently this share is 12.9% in the US and 7.8% in Brazil, not including hydropower.

With scepticism on both sides – those who expected a more effective response to Barack Obama regarding the spying allegations as those who consider the actions of Dilma Rousseff still quite shy – the success of the trip will depend on what happens going forward.

The heads of the central banks from the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – ratified on 7 July an agreement regulating the injection of capital into the New Development Bank (NDB), also known as BRICS bank. The deal was signed in Moscow, where a gathering of the group was taking place.

The so-called Inter-Central Bank Agreement (ICBA) lays down the procedures and obligations to be observed by the central banks under BRICS. It

also establishes how each country is to contribute for the new financial institution’s authorized capital of US$ 100 billion, of which US$ 50 billion will be set as initial capital and should be available as soon as the institution becomes operational. Each of the member states will contribute with part of the international pool by means of swap operations to be carried out by the central banks.

In July last year, at the BRICS meeting in the Brazilian city of Fortaleza,

bloc members signed the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), aimed at determining the individual contributions. Of the authorized US$ 100 billion, China will chip in US$ 41 billion. Brazil, Russia, and India are to put in US$ 18 billion each; and South Africa, US$5 billion. The new bank is expected to fund infrastructure projects in member countries, but operations can also reach developing countries that might wish to borrow from the institution.

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

Are you considering doing business in Brazil?

The world has finally discovered the potential of this great country and how it plays a leading role in Latin America.

However, what does it take to succeed in this complex market?

How to deal with local challenges which can constitute real obstacles to companies?

That is where we come in: developing and implementing strategic plans for the international expansion of our clients.

Learn more about our company at www.suriana.com.br

www.suriana.com.br

5

6

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

GUEST COLUMNIST

THE FUTURE OF WORK AT THE The group needs to create alternatives and not to keep its countries as financial market hostages

By João Antonio Felício g

João Antonio Felício is president of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), member of the CUT National Executive Direction and the Reflection Group on International Relations/GR-RI; This article was originally published in brasilnomundo.org.br g

T

BRICS

The BRICS are no longer a complete novelty in international relations. Since its emergence as an acronym formulated by the financial markets to the strategic creation of its Development Bank and a Contingent Reserves Agreement, this block has been consolidated progressively as an inevitable political reference in the current world order. It is increasingly important to know what they think and what they want for the BRICS. There is a great expectation around the next Presidential Summit of the block, which this year was scheduled for 10 July in Ufa, Russia.

Despite the heterogeneity of its members and the difficulties inherent to the construction of any intergovernmental mechanism, the BRICS have begun to position themselves together in multilateral forums as they did recently in the International Labour Organization (ILO), defending that they have a leadership role in setting goals, targets and indicators related to decent work in the negotiations of the UN Post-2015 Development Agenda – and it can be said that the mere creation of the block has been the impetus to bilateral negotiations between member countries, although the higher flow remains everyone with China and vice versa.

Much is spoken on the weight of BRICS in relation to the size of its population (about 40% of all mankind) and the share of world GDP is produced in these five countries (around 25%). However, the employment situation in the countries of BRICS has received little attention from analysts and specialized media.

The economically active population of the BRICS represents an enormous productive potential, which today accounts for more than 1.5 billion working men and women on active duty, with relatively low average age. Except for South Africa (25.1%), unemployment levels in these countries are low by international standards, staying below 7% in all of them.

The design and implementation of public policies on education, employment and income that actually improve the labour market situation especially for young people, women and blacks, represent an important economic boost for each of the BRICS countries. Hence the immense importance of closer and more intense coordination between the labour ministries of the five countries, which allow advances in the field of labour rights and new opportunities for cooperation. The institutionalization of the BRICS Trade Union Forum as an official space of the BRICS, as is already the Business Forum, is of utmost importance and would be a sign of national governments that seeks to build a better model of labour integration in the bloc.

Unfortunately, in countries like Brazil, we have seen exactly the opposite: pressuring for higher profit margins, the private sector has been lobbying hard in Congress to approve a bill that, on the pretext of regulating 12 million outsourcing workers, intends to precarious the more than 40 million workers that currently have their rights guaranteed by the Consolidation of Labour Laws.

The Brazilian government itself has sent to Congress provisional measures that hinder the access of workers to benefit of unemployment insurance and other rights. It is clear that the formal and supported employment on a guaranteed labour rights ratio in the Constitution is one of the fundamental pillars of social development of a nation. When walking towards the expansion of outsourced labour market, Brazil goes against developed economies and international conventions of the ILO. In fact, a number of ILO conventions has not been ratified by all the BRICS countries. Some of them are essential to the organization of workers and the guarantee of their rights, such as Convention 29 on abolition of forced or compulsory labour (China does not ratify) and Convention 87 on Freedom of Association and protect the right of association (Brazil, China and India do not ratify).

Overall, the expansion of informality and outsourcing needs to be tackled not only in Brazil but also in other member countries of the BRICS, especially in India and South Africa. The adoption of a social protection floor is urgent and place the work at the heart of development projects means fostering social well-being against the big capital well-being – which at least since the 2008 crisis has been constantly saved with public resources of the States. It also means prioritizing the real economy at the expense of neoliberal rentist casino that imprisons macroeconomic policies to the tripod of high interest rates, with low inflation and growth. Little will advance the creation of the Development Bank and the Reserve Agreement if the economic, employment and income of the BRICS remain hostages of the financial market.

In addition, these two newly created instruments should abolish once and for all, draconian practices such as cross-conditionality embedded in loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, cruelly imposed on governments in liquidity difficulties or seeking investments. Only through a distinct political and economic practice is that the BRICS have standing to dispute the hegemony of international politics with the now dominant nations.

What is at stake with the existence of the BRICS is the possibility of building a more autonomous path of national development and international integration, which is distinct from what is already in place, for example, in the G20, the OECD or the WTO. For this to be true, there’s a need to somehow rethink the current development model, not only in the field of economy and finance, but also in industry, technology, agriculture, energy, and the environment. Without that, the future of work at the BRICS will be privatized, outsourced and precarious.

Above all, we must recover the value of the rights, of what are public and the search for a collective project of society that promotes the agenda of decent work and not the rentist interests. In the current dispute in international relations, who different to BRICS to do it?

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

Discover a way to send money fast and simple to your loved ones

Use code

BRASILWROB

and send money

- Bank deposit

FREE*

*Valid to send money from United Kingdom to Spain and Latin America from the 8th July to the 31 December 2015.

www.worldremit.com

7

8

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

PROFILE ANA TOLEDO

In his tenth visit to London, Marcus Faustini, founder of Youth Agency Networks in Rio de Janeiro speaks to Brasil Observer about his new project – an adaptation of ‘City of God’ for theatre – and the country that he helps to build: “I do not want the common, I want to be different”

By Ana Toledo

F

Marcus Faustini, with the co-director Andre Piza ahead, directs the three selected actors for the play ‘City of God’

Founder of Agência de Redes Para Juventude (Youth Agency Networks, in English), columnist of O Globo newspaper, cultural producer, theatre director and, as he defines himself, “realizer”. In his tenth visit to London, this time for two months, Marcus Vinicius Faustini is working on the adaptation of the novel ‘City of God’, by Paulo Lins, for theater.

Directing three actors selected in Royal Stratford East Theatre, between a break and another during rehearsals, Faustini gave this interview about his latest project, revealing his ideas about the Brazil he is used to testify.

In the first time he was in London, Faustini came to observe, as he wishes to remember. “I came to learn about theatre projects, went to Manches-

ter to meet people working with youth, culture, homeless. I made an intensive fortnight journey, meeting and listening.” From that experience, after the identification of common points with projects developed in Brazil and a strong connection established in the UK by the People’s Palace Project, coordinated by Paul Heritage, Faustini bequeathed The Agency UK, inspired by the same model developed Brazil, whose methodology is designed to turn young people’s ideas into real projects that impact their communities.

Time passed and Faustini today certainly does not feel a stranger in English lands – if one day he really felt that way. In any case, the keyword here is “connection”, as a way to create new dialogues.

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

CITY OF GOD The decision to work the emblematic text of ‘City of God’ in the theatre is not unusual, since the adaptation of the same to the cinema popularized the work, which won over 50 international awards, including the British BAFTA award. However, Faustini goes further.

“The film is better known than the book, but the book has a very diverse imagery that shows the favela with a great diversity. The narrator character’s stream of consciousness interests me a lot and the English audience consider it exciting,” he explains. In addition, the director has a close relationship with the Cidade de Deus, neighborhood in the west of Rio de Janeiro. “I ended up spending many Sundays, weekends there. It has much to do with my story.”

The selection for adaptation, in fact, surprised Faustini, as more than 300 actors applied. When asked about the difficulties of working with actors from different backgrounds and geographically distant from the slum where the story takes place, the director says that it is not a difficulty, but a first step “to establish a direct communication, overcoming and using all the cultures.” “What separates us unites at the same time. This is the approaching power of theatre”, he adds.

With the same logic, Faustini remembers other experience developed since 2012 in Rio and the UK, the Home Theatre Festival – methodology that takes theatre into people’s homes and has already schedule editions in the United States and South Africa this year.

Marcus Faustini’s ‘City of God’ will have six sessions in July for an audience of guests and, in 2016, will be transformed into something bigger, as Faustini said to Brasil Observer without giving details.

CULTURE OF THE PERIPHERY With a long history in the cultural area and with the Youth Agency Networks, Faustini treats culture as a crucial factor for social change. He points out, however, that he is not inventing anything as he has on his trajectory participation in Brazilian schools that “have always thought the reality not only to translate it, but to act within it.”

“Making art for me is a way of doing politics. Art is not a teaching tool, it invents worlds, ways of seeing life, ways of being in life,” says Faustini, stressing that his generation has contributed to people of popular origin are represented by themselves, not by middle class. “The world has always been narrated in Brazil by the middle class, but there is a generation of popular origin inventing ways of narrating the world, sensible worlds from our point of view”, he argues.

Faustini also points out the importance of digital culture for the movement that created what is called the culture of the periphery. He recalls that “Eliane Costa and Heloisa de Holanda analyse the periphery only won this figure because of digital culture”, which

allowed the networking and the possibility of expression, exemplified with the “boom” of Funk. “Funk is not just a musical genre, is a visual phenomenon, made possible by the digital culture language,” he says. “The digital culture is closely linked with life. And art in the periphery is also a relationship to life, to express one’s life with art. I think it was central to this movement, and I do not say that generated emancipation, but a place of voice and visibility. Digital culture enables us to create language where there was just life.”

This whole scenario, according to Faustini, needs new critical and aesthetic categories for analysis. “Analyse the periphery and its production only as a sociological phenomenon is a place of power, it is to keep it in the place of commodity. You must analyse as art.”

      ’ g n i re k a atht

dney) ut, Sy

O (Time

ss) Expre (Daily

‘b

ua R e d é Bal

SPACES OF DIALOGUE Asked about the situation Brazil is experiencing today, in the face of evidence that intolerance and conservatism seem to be advancing or attaining more prominence because of the traditional media and social networks – while at the same time, several youth empowerment forms, social movements and entrepreneurs are occupying leadership posts in Brazilian society – Faustini analyses that “with the Workers Party governments began a change, but they were not able to continue it.” And he points out that the current project is on the limit. “Being on the limit is different from being over; I think there is still potential for generating things. The project cannot see ahead, but why? It is not lack of ideas, is lack of social base. The PT did not incorporate the social bases that it captivated.”

“It failed to not bet on the role of the poor people as business owners, producers, intellectuals – not only as suppliers of life stories, as classically happens – and it makes you lose the power of imagination that Brazil has.

Brazil is a popular country; it can provide an interesting way for the world.

And we, having this role, will do well for everyone. That, perhaps, is what Brazil needs to understand”.

“The dices are in the air and everyone wants to pick them up, some to hold the powers and others to pick up again and lead to another place,” Faustini argues, stressing the need for creation of a national project of hegemony, which passes by entrepreneurs, people of culture, new intellectuals, and small businessmen. “These people are inventing this new Brazil. You have to create dialog places that take the conflict as production and not like confrontation and separation. It is a necessity that goes through State to equalize the distribution of resources, democratic participation. I believe in the public dimension, I do not believe the size of the ordinary. I do not want what is common, in the community what I want is the difference.”

an)

cotsm

(The S

5

015 2 T S UGU A 5 1 –

nce e i r e p Ex ua, R e d Balé n by see ,000 00 over 5 e in 13 peopl tries coun

ATE M I T L D THE U MUSIC AN IAN L I TION Z A A R R B B CELE E C o.uk N c . e DA r t kcen n a b h sout

Southbank Centre presents Baila Brazil by Balé de Rua in association with Thierry Suc and Pierre Morand

9

10

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

GLOBAL BRAZIL FERNANDO CONRADO

Conservative network from the United States finances young Latin Americans to fight leftist governments from Venezuela to Brazil and defends old flags with a new language

By Mariana Amaral – from Agência Pública

Gloria Alvarez, Latin American new right’s star

T

“

“The body is the first private property we have; it is up to each of us to decide what to do with it,” calls out in Spanish the blonde with a firm voice, while moving gracefully on stage at the Liberty Forum (Fórum da Liberdade, in Portuguese), adorned with the logos of the official sponsors – Souza Cruz, Gerdau, Ipiranga and RBS (affiliate of Rede Globo, Brazil’s biggest television network). The auditorium with 2,000 seats of PUC University in Porto Alegre, capital of Brazil’s Southern State of Rio Grande do Sul, is completely packed, and bursts into laughter and applause for the Guatemalan Gloria Alvarez, 30, daughter of Cuban father and descendant of Hungarian mother.

Gloria or @crazyglorita (55,000 followers on Twitter and 120,000 on her Facebook fanpage) rose to stardom between the Latin American right youth at the end of last year when a video in which she attacks the “populism” in Latin America during the Ibero-American Youth Parliament in Zaragoza (Spain) went viral on the Internet. In the main forum of the Brazilian right, Gloria and the former Republican governor of South Carolina David Bensley are the only ones among the 22 speakers, Brazilians and foreigners, scaled to the keynote – this year three days-event was baptized “Paths to Freedom”.

A radio broadcaster for ten years, today with a TV program, Gloria is a captivating woman. She easily leads the audience mostly made up of students from PUC, one of the best and most expensive Brazilian universities. “Those who are liberal or libertarian raise your hands,” she

asks the audience, which responds with raised hands. “Oh, okay”, Her mission is to teach her ideological peers how to “seduce the leftists” and win over those “bearded ones with Che’s hat”, explains the young leader of the National Civic Movement (Movimiento Cívico Nacional or MCN, in Spanish), a small political organization that emerged in 2009 in Guatemala during the development of the movements that demanded – unsuccessfully – the impeachment of social-democratic President Álvaro Colom.

The first lesson is to use the hashtag created by her, “república x populismo” (republic x populism) to overcome “the obsolete division between right and left.”

“An intellectually honest leftist must recognize that the only way out is employment, and the right-wing of the 21st century, who has been modernized, has to recognize that sexuality, morality, drugs are a problem of each individual; they are not the moral authority of the universe,” she continues, under a rain of applauses.

No guilt, nor moral or social, she teaches.

The message is individual freedom, “empowerment” of youth, low taxes, and minimal state – the platform of the liberal right (in economic terms) worldwide: “Wealth cannot be transferred, gentlemen, wealth can only be created from the little head of each of you,” she says.

Similarly, Gloria rebuffed social assistance programs for the poor, policy of quotas for women, blacks, disabled and even the existence of minorities: “There aren’t minorities, the smallest minority is the individual, and what best serves them is meritocracy.”

“There is a truth that every human being should attain to have peace if one does not want to live as a hypocrite. We all, seven and a half billion human beings who inhabit this planet, are selfish. That is the truth, my dear friends in Brazil, we are all selfish. And is that bad? Is that good?

No, it’s just the reality,” she says. “There are people who do not accept this truth and go with the wonderful idea: ‘No [imitating the voice of a man], I’ll make the first unselfish society’. Take care, Brazilians; take care of yourself, Latin America! These wise guys are like Stalin in the Soviet Union, as Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un in North Korea, Fidel Castro in Cuba, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.” And “why we follow like little sheep” behind those “hypocrites”?

Because [grimacing and speaking like an old lady] they “teach us it is ugly to be selfish and to think of ourselves in sin. How many of you have not seen someone say ‘ah, we need a good man who does not think only of himself,’” she says, curving up as she talk to then recover the proud posture: “Look, unless you are a Martian, this man does not exist, never existed or ever will exist.” Applauses.

But, she explains, the “defenders of freedom” also have their share of responsibility. They don’t know how to communicate their ideas, use technology to “empower citizens” and “liberate” Latin America. “If we discuss macroeconomics, GDP etc., we will lose the battle. We have to learn from populists to say what people understand,” she says. “And here I will give you more advice because they say we, liberals, we are explorers,” she quips. “I found a very beautiful way to

define the concept of private property.

And with this concept of private property leftists go ‘ooooooh!’”. Private property, she says, is what we accumulated in a lifetime, from our first property: body and mind. The past, she continues, is not the same for anyone, it is personal. “It humanizes us; it gives a little heart to us, liberals”. More applauses.

“There are people who want the right to health, education, work, housing.

The UN now wants the universal right to internet”, she disdains, though she has just said that technology is the key to changing the world. “Imagine that in this auditorium, some want the right to education, the other the right to health, the other the right to housing. So if I give you education, everyone here will pay for it, and you will be VIP, and they secondclass citizens. If I give you health, everyone in this auditorium will pay for their health, and you will be VIP. This is not social justice, it is inequality before the law,” she concludes, again accompanied with laughter and applauses.

“If everyone in Latin America is entitled to life, liberty and private property, then each of you go behind the education you want, the health you want, the house wherever you want to live without superChavez, super-Morales, super-Correa”.

Ovation. Whistles. Before closing 40 minutes of exposure, Gloria invites those present to counteract the worldview that “victimizes Latin Americans”, “blames the Yankees”, undermines “self-esteem” and the courage to take risks requiring entrepreneurial spirit. The audience applauds, standing.

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

11

Gloria Alvarez does not represent anything really new. The big difference is the language. The MCN (movement to which she belongs) received “funds from some of the largest companies in traditional business elite,” says investigative journalist Martín Rodríguez Pellecer, director of the Guatemalan website Nómada. “I found from close sources that one of the industries that supports them for mass campaigns and lobby in Congress is Azucar of Guatemala, the powerful cartel of thirteen companies (Guatemala is the fourth largest exporter of sugar); and the Guatemalan plants have investments in plants in Brazil as well.”

The same can be said about their ideas. Despite the attractive title, the libertarians “are a minority segment within the political tendencies that gained influence in the post-war period to oppose the interventionist policies of Keynesian inspiration,” explains the economist Luiz Carlos Prado, of the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro.

From the oil crisis of the 1970s, pro -market economists as the Austrian Friedrich Hayek (Nobel Prize in 1974), monetarists from the Chicago School of Milton Friedman (Nobel Prize in 1976) and the new-classics associated to Robert Lucas (Nobel Prize in 1995) have come to dominate the global economic thought and became known to the general public under a single label: “neoliberal”. Their concepts were brought to Latin America by the most conservative sector of United States, represented mainly by think tanks linked to Ronald Reagan, who after losing the Republican Party primary in 1968 and 1976 was elected president in 1980 with Friedman as principal adviser. These neoliberal ideas also prevailed in the government of Margaret Thatcher (1979-1991) in the UK. “The defenders of classical liberalism were also advocates of political freedom, but the current called ‘neoliberal’ essentially advocated non -intervention in the economy without a particular concern with the issue of political freedom, reaching in some cases, to support dictatorships without such constraints like Pinochet in Chile,” says Luiz Carlos Prado.

Gloria Alvarez is a good example of how libertarians’ ideas are translated in Latin America. In 1971 “a very representative part of the Guatemalan economic elite assumed as political project the rightwing libertarianism, when they founded the Francisco Marroquín University (UFM, in Spanish),” says the journalist Martín Rodríguez Pellecer.

“The founder of the university, Manuel Ayau, known as El Muso, referring to Mussolini, joined the fascist and anti-Communist project of the National Liberation Movement (Movimiento de Liberación Nacional or MLN, in Spanish). Since then, the UFM has been forming political and academic leaders

to discredit the State and social justice and convert Guatemala in the country that collects less tax in Latin America (11% of the GDP) and that least redistributes,” he explains. It was in this university that Gloria studied and “became a libertarian much less conservative than their teachers, a mixture of neoliberals and Opus Dei. Alvarez is declared atheist and supports the decriminalization of abortion and, though she has become a star in the Latin American right, in Guatemala she is a minor reference to the right, has no political base and will not be a candidate.

I see her more as an enfant terrible libertarian,” says Martín.

The libertarians resurfaced with force in the United States after the 2008 crisis – and the subsequent clamour for market regulation – and as a result of the Democrat Barack Obama’s rise to power. They preach the predominance of the individual over the State, the absolute freedom of the market, the unrestricted defence of private property. They claim the economic crisis that threw 50 million people in poverty was not due to lack of financial market regulation, but because of the government protection to some sectors of the economy.

And emphatically reject the social programs of the Obama administration.

However, a significant proportion of libertarians has distanced from the traditionalism of the right in behaviour matters, defending positions normally associated with the left, like drug legalization and tolerance to homosexuals in the name of individual freedom. Republican Senator Rand Paul, pre-candidate for president in the US, is one of their best-known representatives.

“The libertarians who are with the conservatives in the Tea Party (the right-wing radical current in the Republican Party) are in think tanks like the Cato Institute and comprise the postmodern right, represented, for example, by Cameron in England, who modernized the agenda of reducing the state’s welfare,” says Luiz Carlos Prado.

He laughs when I speak about Brazilian libertarians, followers of the economics Austrian school of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. “The Austrian school is a minority tendency even in the academy,” he says. “Who are these libertarians? What we have in Brazil are sophisticated economists who follow tendencies like the new-classics of Nobel Prize Robert Lucas and others, right-wing politicians like the little developed Ronaldo Caiado (Senator of Brazil’s Democrats Party) and the conservative middle class that reads Rodrigo Constantino in Veja magazine.”

Caiado and Constantino are veterans’ participants of the Liberty Forum in Porto Alegre. The novelty is the Tea Party libertarians have been able to present themselves as the inviting face of the right for the Brazilian youth.

FELIPE GAIESKI

NEOLIBERALS AND LIBERTARIANS

Rodrigo Constantino autographs books

TO THE STREETS

On the eve of the Forum, on 12 April, Gloria Alvarez spoke against the “evil populism” dressed in a sequined shirt forming the flag of Brazil to around 100,000 people in the Paulista Avenue in São Paulo, in the second round of demonstrations against the government of Brazil’s incumbent president Dilma Rousseff (Workers Party). From the top of the Vem pra Rua (Come to the Streets, roughly translating) truck, the leader of the movement, Rogerio Chequer introduced her to the crowd as “one of the greatest representatives of the battle against populism of the São Paulo Forum” and remained all the time at her side. Gloria, who had announced in advance their presence in the protests in an interview to Danilo Gentili on SBT television, had given a lecture at the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Institute, assisted by the former social-democrat Brazil’s president himself three days earlier.

Among those who led the protests in March and April against Rousseff’s government, the movement of Chequer was one of the last to take the impeachment flag.

The Free Brazil Movement (Movimento Brasil Livre or MBL, in Portuguese), known mainly through the figure of Kim Kataguiri, had taken from the beginning the impeachment flag and publicly broke with Chequer, publishing pictures of him next to the Senator José Serra (Brazilian Social Democracy Party) in Aécio Neves campaign for presidency last year – branded as “traitor” by hesitation in asking for the impeachment of the elected president. They reunited after the commission of senators led by Neves and Ronaldo Caiado made its controversial expedition to Caracas.

Caiado was on the opening debate of Liberty Forum this year. Without the grace of Glorita, the conservative senator linked to the biggest farmers in Brazil drew applause from the audience with phrases against the corruption scandals that have the Workers Party at the centre, references to the São Paulo Forum, request of Dilma

12

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

REPRODUÇÃO/FACEBOOK

Rousseff “resignation” and attacks to the BNDES (Brazilian Development Bank).

Interestingly, the accusations of Caiado were made under the logos of Gerdau and Ipiranga – of the group Ultra – which are among the largest borrowers of BNDES loans according to data collected by Folha de S. Paulo newspaper. Both individually obtained more than one billion reais from the bank between 2008 and 2010.

The businessman from Rio Grande do Sul Jorge Gerdau is one of the creators of the Liberty Forum, which began in 1988 with the intention of promoting debates between various schools of thought. In its first editions, the Forum included the former president Lula, the former minister José Dirceu and the former governor Leonel Brizola (all of them considered leftists) among the panelists, without jeopardizing its identity as the primary conservative forum of the country.

It was there that, in 2006, the main think tank of the right in Brazil, the Millenium Institute, launched. Arminio Fraga (chosen to be finance minister of Aécio Neves if he won the election) is its best-known figure in the economic field. Its supporters are Gerdau, the publisher Abril and the Pottencial Seguradora, one of the companies of Salim Mattar, owner of the rental company Localiza. Suzano, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and the Evora group (of the Ling brothers) are also partners. William Ling participated in the foundation of the Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies (Instituto de Estudos Empresariais or IEE, in Portuguese) in 1984, which, made up of young business leaders, organizes the Forum since the first edition; his brother, Winston Ling, is the founder of the Liberty Institute of Rio Grande do Sul (Instituto Liberdade, in Portuguese); his son, Anthony Ling, is connected to the group Students for Liberty, who created the Free Brazil Movement. The manager of the Ultra group, Helio Beltrao, is also among the founders of the Millenium, although he has his own institute: Mises Brasil.

The network of liberals and libertarians think tanks in Brazil is completed with two entities: the Instituto Ordem Livre (roughly translating means Free Order Institute) – which holds seminars for the youth – and the Centro Interdisciplinar de Ética e Economia Personalista (or Interdisciplinary Centre of Ethics and Economics), from Rio de Janeiro, linked to Opus Dei. The jurist Ives Gandra, author of the controversial opinion on the existence of legal basis for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, is part of its council.

Like the Millenium, the vast majority of these institutes were recently created.

The original seed was the Liberal Institute (Instituto Liberal, in Portuguese), created in 1983 by the civil engineer Donald Stewart Jr., who died in 1999. According to the doctoral thesis of historian Pedro Henrique Pedreira Campos, from the Fluminense Federal University, the Ecisa, Stewart Jr. company was one of the largest contractors during Brazil’s military dictatorship and Stewart Jr. joined the American Leo A. Daly to build Schools in the Northeast region of the country. The participation of US companies in the works was requirement of funding from USAID - the American development agency that

functioned as the CIA arm during the Latin American dictatorships.

Donald Stewart Jr. also was an old friend of a crucial character in this story, the Argentine settled in the US Alejandro Chafuen, 61; both were members of the Mont Pelèrin Society, founded by Hayek himself in 1947 in Switzerland and headquartered in the United States, which brings together the most faithful libertarians. El Muso, the founder of the university where Gloria Alvarez studied, was the first Latin American to chair the Mont Pelèrin, and its current rector, Gabriel Calzada, is part of the board with Brazilian Margaret Tse, CEO of the Liberty Institute, the ideological support IEE. The current president of the Mont Pelèrin Society is the Spanish Pedro Schwartz Girón, sewer of think tanks linked to the FAES, the foundation of the Popular Party (PP) led

by José María Aznar, who promoted the Ibero-American Youth Parliament, where Gloria Alvarez was catapulted to fame. Pedro Schwartz, Alejandro Chafuen and the Colombian Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, co -author of the book “Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot”, a hit for the rightwing youth, attended the “Latin America” panel at the Liberty Forum. Chafuen also participated discreetly of the protests on 12 April in Porto Alegre. He did not resist, however, to post on Facebook a photo in which he appears dressed in the Seleção shirt embraced with the young political scientist Fábio Ostermann, from the coordination of Free Brazil Movement – name that assumed on the streets the Brazilian arm of the Students for Liberty group.

Ostermann, Juliano Torres and Anthony Ling are founders of the Estudantes pela Liberdade, the local version of the Students for Liberty, a key organization linking conservative American think tanks – especially those who define themselves as libertarians – and the “anti-populist” youth in Latin America. Chafuen, president of Atlas Network since 1991, is its mentor.

The Atlas Network (fantasy name of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation since 2013) is a kind of metathink tank, specialized in promoting the creation of other libertarians organizations in the world, with resources obtained from partner foundations in the United States and/or channelled from local business think tanks for training of young leaders, particularly in Latin America and Eastern Europe. According to the 990 form, which all charities are required to submit to the IRS (US Internal Revenue Service) Atlas’s revenue in 2013 was US$ 11.4 million. The resources allocated to activities outside the US were US$ 6.1 million: of which US$ 2.8 million for Central America and US$ 595 thousand to South America.

Apart of the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Institute, all organizations mentioned so far make up the Atlas Network connections in Brazil, including Gloria Alvarez’s MCN, Francisco Marroquín University and the Brazilian Students for Liberty, an organization that was born within Atlas in 2012. As we will see, besides the mentioned resources are much more sizeable projects funded by other foundations and executed by Atlas.

Alejandro Chafuen, from Atlas with Fabio Ostermann, from Movimento Brasil Livre during demonstration

FREE BRAZIL MOVEMENT Juliano Torres, executive director of Brazil’s Students for Liberty (or EPL, in Portuguese), was clear about the connection between the EPL and the Free Brazil Movement (MBL), a brand created by the EPL to participate in street demonstrations without compromising American organizations that are prevented from donating funds to political activists by the laws of the American revenues service. “When the protests in 2013 by the Free Pass Movement happened, several members of EPL wanted to participate, but as we receive resources from organizations such as Atlas and Students for Liberty, due to the income tax there, they cannot develop political activities.

Then we said: ‘The members of the EPL may participate as individuals, but not as an organization to avoid problems’. So we decided to create a brand, not an organization, it was just a brand for us to sell in the demonstrations as Free Brazil Movement. So Fabio [Ostermann], Felipe França and I joined, plus a four, five people, and created the logo, the Facebook campaign. And then the demonstrations happened, as well as the project.

Thus we started looking for someone to take over; it had more than 10,000 likes on the page, pamphlets. Then we found Kim [Kataguiri] and Renan [Haas], who after all gave an incredible shift in the movement with marches against Dilma Rousseff and things like that. Kim is a member of EPL, so he was trained by the EPL as well. And many of the local organizers are members of the EPL. They act as the Free Brazil Movement members, but were trained by our people in leadership courses. Kim will participate now in a charity poker tournament organized by the Students for Liberty in New York to raise funds. He will be a speaker. And also at the international conference in February, he will be a speaker,” Torres said in a telephone interview.

Paid for his position in EPL, Juliano explians that he has two online meetings per week with American headquarters and that he and other Brazilians participate annually in an international conference, with expenses paid, and a

meeting of leaders in Washington. The budget of the Students for Liberty in Brazil should reach 300 thousand reais this year. “The first year, we had about eight thousand reais, the second was 20 thousand reais. We get money from other external organizations too, such as Atlas. Atlas, along with the Students for Liberty, is between our main donors. In Brazil, the main donor organizations are the Friederich Naumann, who is a German organization, which are not allowed to donate money, but pay expenses for us. Then there was a meeting in the South and Southeast, in Porto Alegre and Belo Horizonte. They rented the hotel, accommodation, paid to the event room, lunch and dinner.

And it has some individual donors who make donations to us.”

The foundation of the EPL in Brazil came after Juliano took part in a summer workshop for thirty students sponsored by Atlas in Petropolis, in 2012.

“Right there we did a draft, a plan and then, later, we contacted the Students for Liberty to officially join the network,” he says.

After that, he went through almost every type of training in the Atlas.

“There’s what they call a MBA, training in New York and also online training.

We recommend to all people who work in positions of more responsibility to pass through the Atlas training as well.”

The results obtained by Brazilians have impressed the US headquarters.

“In 2004, 2005 there were around ten people in Brazil who identified with the libertarian movement. Today, within the global network of Students for Liberty, the results that we have are very good. One way to measure the performance of regions is the number of local coordinators. In all regions, counting North America, Africa, Europe, we have more coordinators than any region separately. In the United States, the organization has existed for eight years; in Europe, four; here three. So, we are having more results in very little time.”

There are two Brazilians in the International Board of the Students for Liberty

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

13

FERNANDO CONRADO

FERNANDO CONRADO

Marcel Van Hattem, deputy of Progressive Party

The “hero” of the Forum, Kim Kataguiri, with the major sponsor of the debates held in Porto Alegre, Jorge Gerdau

(out of ten members), and this year’s report devotes a page specifically to MBL outbreaks in Brazil. The Brazilian Elisa Martins, graduated in Economics at the University of Santa Maria, in Rio Grande do Sul, is responsible for the international programs for scholarships and training of young leaders in the Atlas Network.

The programs are carried out in partnership with other foundations, especially the Cato Institute, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and the Institute of Human Studies – foundations linked to Koch family, one of the richest in the world. Together, the 11 foundations of the Koch poured US$ 800 million in the last two decades in American conservative foundations network. Another important partner is the John Templeton Foundation, of another American billionaire. These foundations have much larger budgets than the Atlas and develop fellowships programs that come with money and Atlas, with the execution. An example of these projects is financing the expansion of Students

for Liberty Network with funding from the John Templeton, closed in 2014 with more than US$ 1 million budget.

So even though it appears in third place among the funders of Students for Liberty, Atlas raises a much larger volume of funds for the organization through its partners. All major donors of Students for Liberty are also donors to Atlas. It is not always possible to know the origin of the money, despite the legal obligation to publish the 990 forms – delivered to the IRS. Conservative US foundations drain money by a large multiplicity of channels, which makes impossible to know what the original source of the money that reaches each of the receivers.

In addition, concerned about the surveillance they have on these projects as the Transparency Conservative and press, which have revealed a series of scandals involving the use of these resources for lobbying in Congress and state governments, as well as controversial causes such as the denial of global warming, in 1999 the foundations crea-

ted two philanthropic investment funds – Donors Trust and Donors Capital Management – which do not require donors to have the name up on 990 forms. The Donors Trust is the largest donor to Donors Capital Management (and vice versa). The first is among the largest donors of Atlas, and the second is the largest donor of Students for Liberty. The Koch foundations are the biggest suspected of pouring money into these funds.

The 2014-2015 report of Students for Liberty shows an impressive collection of funds: US$ 3.1 million compared to only US$ 35,768 obtained in 2008 when the organization was founded. Of these, US$ 1.7 million came from foundations, according to the report that does not detail the amount donated by each institution. The Charles Koch Institute was in the report of Students for Liberty, but according to the form, it gives grants only to American students, while the Charles Koch Foundation, which gives grants to students in a number of foundations, is not mentioned in the

report. The Institute of Human Studies (IHS) – another Koch Family Foundation – is a major contributor to the fellowship programs for students. Only in 2012 were distributed US$ 900 thousands in donations in accordance with the form submitted to the IRS. Atlas is a major partner of the IHS. Fabio Ostermann, for example, coordinator of the MBL, says he was Koch Summer Fellow at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. Ostermann is advisor to the deputy Marcel van Hattem (Brazil’s Progressive Party), pointed out by Kim Kataguiri as the only politician to fully embrace the MBL’s convictions. The young deputy, who was elected with grants from the Gerdau and Évora – of the father of Anthony Ling, founder of the EPL – has also attended courses at the Acton Institute University, the most religious of libertarians’ foundations that make up Atlas fellowship network and Koch Foundation. Among its principles is in the “sin”, for example, related in a unique way with the need to reduce the state.

youth. We have to stop this image that those who defend the free market are that older ones defending the military regime.

The opposition is us. We want to privatize Petrobras. We want the minimal state.

Brasília will not abide the people. It is the people who will guide Brasilia”.

Three days after the Forum, Kim Kataguiri started his March for Liberty toward Brasilia, with dwindling membership, while Gloria Alvarez undertook a tour that would take her from Argentina to Venezuela reported effusively in their social networks. In Argentina, she went through Buenos Aires and the city of Azul, invited by the Rural Society of Argentina. In Tucumán, her lectures at the National University were organized by Fundación Libertad y Federalism, which has in its international council Atlas Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, the Hispanic American Center for Economic Research, the CEDICE Libertad (Venezuela) and the Instituto Ecuatoriano de Economía Política (Ecuador).

All of these organizations are part of the Atlas Network, as well as other foundations that ordered the Glorita ride: Estudiantes pela Libertad (Bolivia and Ecuador), the CEDICE in Venezuela and the Fundación para El Progresso in Chile.

The most interesting episode of her trip, however, was not registered in her social networks, not even in Chilean newspapers. On 23 April, she and the Cuban blogger Yaoni Sanchez met with former conservative President Sebastián Piñera after they held talks at the Universidad Adolfo Ibañez in Viña del Mar. The meeting with the former president – who is also the only picture they appearing together – was reported by twitter of the economist Cristián Larroulet, former Minister of Piñera with the caption “President Piñera with Yoani Sánchez and Gloria Alvarez, two examples of Latin American women fighting for freedom.” Larroulet is founder of the think tank Libertad y Desarrollo, obviously a partner of Atlas Network.

THE FEAST OF MATE The Liberty Forum, after all, ended as street demonstrations that preceded it: with shouts of “Dilma Out”, “Workers Party Out”. Marcel van Hattem made an exalted presentation, after thanking the forum for his mandate – “If I am deputy today, I owe to the Liberty Forum” – and made an interesting distinction between the manifestations of 2013 – multi-party and disorganized – and this year – “when we had an agenda”.

The program has been modified with the arrival of Kim Kataguiri, who did not appear as a speaker. He was embraced by sponsors such as Jorge Gerdau and Helio Beltrao, posed for pictures with several fans and, with his friend Bene Barbosa, who was launching a book for the liberation of firearms for every citizen, he went to the auditorium, again full of students.

Seated on the couch, Kim waited for Van Hattem to shred the usual accusations – against the Foro de São Paulo, the totalitarian power of the Workers Party and “the biggest corruption scandal of

the universe” – tearing applause at every catchphrase. He also aroused enthusiasm showing his identification with the audience: “The avant-garde today is not leftist, it is liberal. The well-informed young hit the streets and ask for less Marx, more Mises. Enjoys Hayek, not Lenin.”

So Van Hattem left the pulpit and, walking across the stage, headed toward Kim. “The next step is up to you, but it’s hard. The Brazilian system is refractory to new ideas. Today, Kim, the communist deputy Juliano Roso called you a fascist,” he said. And finally: “I just want to conclude by saying that the streets are saying: ‘Workers Party Out’.” Applauses, screams. The audience sings in chorus: “ole, ole, ole, ole, we are on the street just to overthrow PT (Workers Party).”

It was the cue for Kim entry. Walking across the stage, Kim urged liberal institutes and said “let’s get out of our liberal bubble, our libertarian bubble, our conservative bubble and take the country.” “It’s time for us to take the left monopoly of the

14

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

BR-UK CONNECTION

FROM STIGMA TO ESTEEM Bottom-up, social change plans driven through critical thinking development and image making skills for poor children around the world

T

By Alicia Bastos g

LINA BO BARDI FELLOWSHIP

JUANA CARVALHO

These days we are so used to taking pictures and looking at them online, but can we remember when we first discovered a camera and how that changed our lives?

Disadvantaged children all over the globe, particularly in urban areas, are neglected by society, discriminated and have very limited opportunities to develop skills to succeed in life. Inequality is a world growing issue, and in Brazil, despite the past economic boom and the poverty numbers that were 10% of the population in 2013 (World Bank data), poverty is still widespread in urban and rural areas. Even if numbers have decreased over the past decade, in 2014 the government announced that extreme poverty numbers grew from 10.08 million in 2012 to 10.45 million in 2013, while the population climbed from 195 million in 2010 to 203 million in 2015.

While nurseries, schools and jobs have been the focus of the government plans to fight poverty, young people and kids lack practical and useful skills that can engage them in technical training and professional opportunities.

The Brazilian anthropologist and filmmaker Giselle Oliveira founded Eyes of the Street, together with Brazilian journalist Daniel Meirinho PHD, who is a specialist on youth culture and digital media with a social focus, are embarking on a mission to transform how poor children in Brazil and all over the globe learn about photographic and filming skills, as well as developing critical thinking. On top of the local project, the objective is to create an online platform where the children can share their stories.

“Poverty and inequality may be concepts of our time. But so are creativity and innovation. We believe that everyone is capable of creating change, when empowered from tools that enhance their voices and nurture their human potential,” says Giselle Oliveira.

The plan begins with a documen-

The plan begins with a documentary about training kids in a poor community in Recife, in the northeast of Brazil

g

Alicia Bastos is founder of Braziliarty (www.braziliarty.org)

tary of the first training kids in a poor community in Recife, a critical area in the northeast of Brazil, and then uses this documentary to gain attention and funds to travel the world, training children in other disadvantaged communities.

Projects like these have been done before, the model is tested and it works.

A good example is the memorable Oscar winning documentary Born Into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids (2004) or in Brazil the project Videos nas Aldeias (Videos in the Villages) that forms indigenous photographers and filmmakers such as Takumã Kuikuro, who was recently in London filming his most recent project.

Outcomes of social enterprises such as those could be miraculous, not only it will give children a skill that could later be developed into a professional activity, but also given them the opportunity to share their stories with people who have no idea about the difficult life they have, and hopefully this can be a solid step against inequality, working compassion and awareness, deep roots of social change.

“We believe the way to tackle urban poverty sustainably is to empower communities to enable locally-led transformation,” explains Giselle.

Another key mission of Eyes of the Street is the development of critical thinking and creativity together, turning

poor communities into hubs of creativity and innovation. These children won’t have the chance to progress skills like these on basic schools. Image making skills are essential to be part of a virtual world that has changed the way we communicate, the access to the globe as an audience can be really important to mobilise bottom-up strategies for social changes.

Applications are now open for the third round of the Lina Bo Bardi Fellowship.

The Fellowship, a four-year programme supporting architects and designers interested in exploring the work of Lina Bo Bardi in Brazil, seeks to raise awareness and understanding of Lina Bo Bardi’s important contribution to architecture, culture and society; to widen and deepen the understanding of Bo Bardi’s work internationally; and to create long-term

connections between the UK and Brazil, and between British and Brazilian architects, designers and artists.

For this round, UK-based practitioners working in fields other than Architecture and Design are also invited to apply (e.g. dance, performance or choreography; history, social sciences or philosophy).

Fellows are supported with a travel grant and accommodation for a 4-6 week trip to Brazil, as well as mentoring, advice and contacts from

Lina Bo Bardi scholars, the British Council and Brazilian partners. In a second phase, the Fellow may be awarded seed-funding to pursue a project in the UK that builds on their research in Brazil.

The Lina Bo Bardi Fellowship is organised by the British Council, and supported by SESC SP and Instituto Lina Bo e P.M. Bardi.

Eyes of the Street is doing a crowdfunding campaign to produce the documentary in 2015. The documentary is expected to be launched in Recife, capital of Pernambuco, London and international festivals and official launch in 2016. To support, access http://bit.ly/1HGROM7.

For more information visit http://goo.gl/53ymvb

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

ꌀ㄀ 匀琀愀渀搀愀爀搀 ꌀ㠀 匀琀甀搀攀渀琀猀

䴀䄀刀䌀䔀䰀伀 䄀一䐀刀䄀䐀䔀 吀栀攀 䘀漀爀最攀 ㈀㔀琀栀 䨀唀䰀夀 㜀瀀洀

㌀ⴀ㜀 䐀攀氀愀渀挀攀礀 匀琀爀攀攀琀Ⰰ

䌀愀洀搀攀渀 一圀㄀ 㜀一䰀

眀眀眀⸀挀氀甀戀攀搀漀挀栀漀爀漀⸀挀漀⸀甀欀

15

16

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

BRASILIANCE

BRAZILIAN OIL ON TARGET

Among the many controversial projects implemented by Congress in the current legislature, one changes the rules of pre-salt exploration. It is accused of being “submissive” and is firmly on the Senate’s agenda

I

By Wagner de Alcântara Aragão

In the last six months, week after week the Brazilian society has been surprised by the current legislature of the Congress with initiatives that represent steps back in many areas of national life. At the turn of June to July, shocks came from both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, confirming what the Parliamentary Advisory Inter-Union Department had predicted: the current Congress is the most conservative since the democratization of the country, in 1985.

In the Chamber, after a new manoeuvre of the President of the House, Eduardo Cunha (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party), parliamentarians approved a constitutional amendment that reduces the legal age of responsibility in Brazil from 18 to 16 years. While 16 is the legal age across much of the developed world, Brazil doesn’t have appropriate measures or infrastructure in place to rehabilitate young offenders.

In the Senate, meanwhile, the senators were discussing another project that generated a lot of controversy: the end of Petrobras’ mandatory presence in the exploitation of oil reserves in the pre-salt layer.

Reducing the legal age has yet to be considered by the Senate, and there is no provision for this to occur. In addition, parliamentarians announced they would appeal to the Supreme Court (STF), claiming the unconstitutionality of the proposal and the voting process (read more on page 19).

Regarding the pre-salt issue, this was expected to be considered by senators between 30 June and 2 July, but the vote was postponed without a new date set. It may be under discussion while this edition of Brasil Observer Brazil circulates.

THE CHANGE The matter on debate is a Senate Bill authored by Senator José Serra (Brazilian Social Democracy Party), former mayor and governor of São Paulo and who twice ran for Presi-

dency (2002 and 2010). Like the proposal that reduces the criminal age of responsibility, the project has yielded heated debate, although it has not achieved great impact on public opinion.

Serra’s project changes the federal law that deals with the rules for the operation and production of oil from the pre-salt reserves, discovered in 2006. The current law was proposed by former president Lula administration and was approved by Congress five years ago. The text creates specifically for the pre-salt, the so-called sharing basis, as opposed to the concession regime, which continues to apply to oil exploration in conventional areas (post-salt layers).

Among other rules, the current legislation does not obligate the Union to conduct bids for the pre-salt oil fields, allowing it to automatically engage Petrobras in the process. Or, in cases where the government sees fit to bid for exploration areas, the law establishes that Petrobras should have a minimum 30% stake in the venture.

The PSDB senator project repeals this mandatory participation of Petrobras in exploration consortia, opening the possibility for pre-salt fields to be operated solely by private corporations, including foreign.

WIKILEAKS Not only by the nature of the project, José Serra’s initiative sounded strange because the senator is involved in an episode revealed by Wikileaks – an organization that published a series of messages related to international economic and political interests – denoting a certain political agreement with American oil companies. The episode came to light in December 2010, just over a month after the second round of the presidential election, in which Serra ran for president and was defeated by Dilma Rousseff (Workers Party).

According Folha de S. Paulo newspaper, the then candidate José Serra exchanged messages with Patricia Pradal, a Business Development and

Government Relations Director of the US oil company Chevron. He said, according to the article: “Let these guys [Workers Party] do what they want.

The bidding rounds will not happen, and then we will show everyone that the old model worked out well... And we’ll change back.” The US oil companies opposed the participation of Petrobras in exploration and production of pre-salt.

In a thematic session on the bill conducted by the Senate on 30 June, José Serra rejected accusations that he was defending the interest of large international corporations. Serra said his project was a “patriotic measure”, for allowing Petrobras to be relieved of bearing a 30% cost of all investments in exploration and production of pre-salt layer oil in time of “difficulties” crossed by the state company.

For the senator, the project does not “discredit” Petrobras, only detracts from any obligatory “burden”.

CRITICS It is not what would happen in practice if the project is approved, in the view of many Serra colleagues in the Senate, experts and movements representing the workers of the sector. “It’s absurd. It is to give our wealth to the seven sisters [multinationals of the industry]. I cannot understand how they want to give away national control of such an important resource such as oil. It is a crime against national sovereignty, this project,” said Senator Roberto Requiao (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party), who has led criticism in Congress.

Professor Ildo Sauer, director of the Institute of Electrical and Energy (IEE) at the University of São Paulo (USP) is contrary to changes, also considering that the Brazilian government would give up its control of a strategic wealth for economic and social development. A speaker on the thematic session in Senate, Sauer warned the potential of pre-salt reserves are not completely known.

That is, the amount of oil that would be exploited by foreign com-

panies if the new rules are approved may be much higher. “The current model is the most efficient, and lets you take advantage of two major comparative advantages of Brazil: the technological capacity of Petrobras, despite the problems that afflict the company, and the sheer volume of oil in pre-salt, not yet fully established.”

Legislative consultant Paulo César Ribeiro Lima, gas and oil expert and author of “Pre-salt: the new legal framework and the capitalization of Petrobras”, also draws attention to the existence of still immeasurable reserves, echoing Ildo Sauer in the thematic session in the Senate, defending the current model. “To prevent private interests outweigh the interests of the majority of the population, it is essential Petrobras leads the production of pre-salt.”

Paulo Lima also noted that since the start of oil extraction in pre-salt, in 2009, Petrobras has been breaking production records. This shows that the company, despite turbulence regarding deviations investigated by Lava Jato Operation, maintains its technical and economic capacity to be a leader in activities. “Petrobras is the most experienced company in the world in deep water. The efficiency is proven by the very high exploration success rate and high productivity, much higher than world averages.

Pre-salt is a real treasure and should be exploited to the maximum participation of Petrobras to ensure higher return for the country.”

SUPPLIERS Believing that ending Petrobras participation of at least 30% in the projects of exploitation of pre-salt means attracting more investors, supplier industry representatives of the oil production chain defends the changes contained in the José Serra project. In the thematic session in the Senate, the executive director of the Brazilian Association of Machinery and Equipment, Alberto Machado, said that such flexibility can provide to the national mechanical capital

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

17

DIVULGATION

Senator José Serra speaks at the 2015 edition of Brazil Offshore, the largest oil and gas conference in the country, held in June in the city of Macae, State of Rio de Janeiro

goods more technical exchange with the industry. According to the line of reasoning of the business leader, there would be a wider range of customers with whom the industry would be in partnership.

The President of the Brazilian Institute of Oil and Gas, Jorge Marques de Toledo Camargo, also cited the possible increase in customers, reduces the risk of investment by the supply chain. The director of the Brazilian Infrastructure Centre, Adriano Pires, said that the difficulties faced

by Petrobras must reduce the company’s investments.

The latter argument was rebutted

by Paulo Lima, for whom companies such as Petrobras have “peculiarities” that are not always captured by risk agencies or financial analysts.

“Petrobras has an excellent financial, economic and operational situation with a highly promising future. The narrow visions of ratings agencies and some analysts that do not know the reality of the company may lead people to believe that Petrobras is going through a situation that is not real.”

NEW PLAN Petrobras will invest less in the coming years. The Business and Management Plan from 2015-2019 provides US$ 130.3 billion in investments – 37% reduction compared to the previous plan, from 2014 to 2018.

The new business plan was approved on 26 June. The company announced on the occasion that the plan aims to “create value for shareholders” and also the “company’s deleveraging”.

To improve the state of the company’s accounts, beyond reducing investments, Petrobras plans to sell goods and other assets. The sales amount for this and next year amounts to US$ 15.1 billion.

According to Federal Police information, the hole in the state oil company’s cash caused by the corruption scandal being investigated by the Lava Jato Operation has already reached 19 billion reais.

NEW BIDDING AND LOCAL CONTENT

The federal government has not signalled if it will open bidding to explore new fields of pre-salt soon. Since the sharing scheme was set up in 2010, there was only one competition in 2012 for the field of Libra, in the Campos Basin. The winning consortium has a 40% stake in Petrobras – 60% is distributed between Dutch Shell (20%), French Total (20%) and Chinese NSCLC and (10%) and CNOOC (10%).

But a new round of bidding for oil exploration in conventional fields (post-salt) was confirmed. The round – the 13th since 1997, when the law established the concession regime in oil exploration in Brazil – is scheduled for 7 and 8 October. According to the National Petroleum Agency it will be auctioned 266 exploration blocks.

President Lula’s campaign banner since his first election in 2002, and also of the current president Dilma Rousseff, the local content policy of the Brazilian government for the oil and gas industry should not be stirred. At least that’s what safeguards the federal government, although recent statements by the Minister of Mines and Energy, Eduardo Braga, have passed the impression that the government would consider easing such requirements, to attract more investors.

The priority of local content has been practiced both by Petrobras and featured in the clauses of the concession contracts for exploration of oil fields by private companies. The local content in purchases and contracted services varies, but has reached up to 80% in some cases.

Fixing this market reserve, the government seeks to increase the participation of domestic capital goods industry in providing the oil production chain. The local content policy was responsible, above all, by the recovery of the Brazilian naval industry, which almost became extinct in the 1990s.

“The redeployment of the shipbuilding industry in Brazil led us to incorporate technology, make amends the training of our employees and enable us to create employments and income. What we want is to produce in Brazil which can be produced in Brazil,” said Dilma Rousseff during delivery of an oil tanker to Transpetro (Petrobras subsidiary), at the complex of Suape in May.

18

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

INEQUALITY TRANSLATED INTO TAXES The tax burden in Brazil is much more unequal than actually high, if compared to other countries

By Anna Beatriz Anjos e Glauco Faria g

D

During the demonstrations against the government of Dilma Rousseff held in March and April this year, several messages on banners and posters drew attention. Some called for military intervention; other, the end of “indoctrination” by Karl Marx or even Paulo Freire. Some of the more inconsistent, however, referred to taxes in Brazil. Some said that “evasion is not corruption”, others wanted an “end of the taxes”.

In Brazil, the prevailing idea is that the tax burden is too high and that governments do not give enough return in terms of services. Professor at Economics Institute of the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) Marcio Pochmann disputes this: “Paying taxes is an act of citizenship – there is no full citizenship without paying taxes. Unfortunately, we are not a country of full citizenship, our country is underdeveloped and our tax system is derived from this condition.” The statement was made at the seminar “Which tax reform does Brazil need?” held by the Bank Workers Union of São Paulo.

On the occasion, the tax auditor Marcelo Lettieri Siqueira made reference to another economist, the South Korean Professor Ha-Joon Chang, author of the book Kicking Away the Ladder, to remember that the existing cries against taxes, which is part of neoliberal ideology contradicts the policies and institutions adopted by rich countries. The recommendations today regarding developed nations give to developing countries are made as if they reinvented their stories to “kick the ladder” and do not allow others to go up to their level. “Countries with high per capita GDP have high tax burden. No country has developed reducing the tax burden,” Lettieri said.

On the alleged State inefficiency in providing services that correspond to the amount of proceeds of taxes, the economist João Sicsú asked: “And what is the way out? Reduce the tax burden and derail what exists today?” “No! We should rather improve the quality of spending and prevent misappropriation of resources, we must combat any act of corruption, no matter how small. But we have to understand that with this tax burden must overcome difficulties that the advanced countries dealt with over decades. The British public health system for instance is nearly 70 years old,” he said.

TAX BURDEN

This article was originally published in Revista Forum magazine (www. revistaforum.com.br), and translated by Brasil Observer g

Given that taxes are necessary for the state to function and operate its most basic functions, part up to the next discussion: in Brazil, do we pay high taxes?

“The Brazilian tax burden is very low.

You may wonder, because they say it is too high, but it is very low on equity, wealth and income. And it’s very high on consumption, that’s the problem,”

said Dão Real Pereira dos Santos, Director of Institutional Relations of the Tax Justice Institute.

Concrete data give basis to the argument. According to the Federal Revenue, in 2012 the tax burden in Brazil – the amount of all taxes paid by citizens and businesses in relation to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – was 35.86%. We are close or behind countries considered developed, such as the UK (35.2%), Germany (37.6%), Sweden (44.3%), France (45.3%) and Denmark (48%). In 2013, the last measurement available, the ratio reached the level of 35.95%, but there are no updated figures of other nations to make comparison.

In the description of the Treasury, in 2013 taxes on goods and services – the so-called “indirect” taxes, embedded in the final price and passed on to the consumer – accounted for 51.2% of the total value. Income taxes amounted to only 18.1%; on payroll, 24.98%; and on property, only 3.93%.

On indirect taxation, the lower the consumer’s income, the more penalized it comes out because larger portion of its earnings will be consumed, as amount to be paid is the same for everyone. According to a study by the Applied Economic Research Institute (Ipea, in Portuguese), the poorest 10% of the population pay 32% of their income in taxes, while the richest 10% spend just 21%.

Auditor Clair Hickmann, who directed the Financial Institutions Special Police (Deinf, in Portuguese) of the Federal Revenue, explained why this should not occur. “There are some basic principles of fair taxation that are in the Constitution, but are not observed by infra-constitutional legislation,” she said. “One of the principles recognized is the ability to pay - that is, every citizen has to contribute according to their purchasing and economic power – but it does not happen in Brazil. The other principle that I find very important is the progressiveness, fundamental to distribution of income”, she alleged. “Progressiveness means: the higher the income, the higher the tax rate.”

Although it is calculated based on progressive scale, the income tax for individuals not fully complies with this principle. “We need to discuss a new table of Income Tax, one which contains actually more rates. We cannot have here the same rate for those who earn 5,000 reais and those who earn 50,000. We have to think a proposal that does justice to the taxation on income,” noted economist João Sicsú, professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).

TAXES ON WEALTH Just to modify this unequal picture is emerging proposals for taxing large fortunes. And it is noteworthy that a higher tax on goods and properties is not exactly an agenda of the “left”. “I know that many

complain about taxes in Brazil, but they are actually low compared to the US, UK or Germany – and these are not very leftist countries. [Angela] Merkel and [David] Cameron are not leftist governments. No one within the other parties in these countries calls for taxes to lower.

Why is that? Are they ‘crazy leftists’? No,” said the economist Thomas Piketty, author of The Capital in the XXI century, to Revista Forum magazine.

“In many extremely rich countries the tax on wealth is higher than the tax on consumption, and they are capitalist countries that are more competitive than Brazil. I believe there are many bad excuses for the elite not accepting this, but from the economic and practical point of view, I do not think they’re right,” he added.

In this context, a demand is that the rate of inheritance tax, collected by the states and which is currently 8% maximum (4% in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo), is high and charged progressively for large amounts. Today, those who receive a small inheritance paid the same as those who receive a large fortune. In the US, there are states that charge 18%, such as Nebraska; in England, this rate can reach 40% and in France, 60%.

“Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are great inheritance tax advocates not because they are Social Democrats. Warren says it’s an important tax because there is no guarantee that the ideal athlete to compete in the Olympics is the grandson of those who played 40 years ago. That is, for him, the money has to follow a stream. Among liberals there is a very clear justification, the inheritance tax is to make capitalism continue working,” explained economist of Ipea José Aparecido Carlos Ribeiro.

The Brazilian Constitution provides for the establishment of taxes on large fortunes through a complementary law.

Currently, they precede through the Congress through several proposals. One of them, the supplementary bill 277, is authored by former presidential candidate by PSOL (Socialism and Freedom Party), Luciana Genro. Even former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Brazilians Social Democracy Party), as a senator, in 1989, created the project to regulate the tax. Since 2000 the proposal is to be voted.

Analyzes and data available show how essential it is that we discuss a tax reform to reduce inequality to conduct tax justice in Brazil. However, as has happened to political reform simulacrum voted in the Chamber of Deputies, this is another set of measures that can be disfigured and become even worse than it already is.

The president of the Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Cunha has announced that after the vote on proposed amendments to the federal agreement amending the sharing of resources between the federal, states and municipalities shall direct the discussion on tax reform.

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

19

FABIO RODRIGUES POZZEBOM/AGÊNCIA BRASIL

Activists commemorated the rejection of the Constitutional Amendment in the vote on 30 June

A DEMONSTRATION OF FORCE AND CONFLICT The vote on the reduction of the legal age is a metaphor for how political conflicts are in Brazil

By Dennis de Oliveira g

Dennis de Oliveira is a professor at the School of Communications and Arts at University of Sao Paulo; this article was originally published in Revista Forum magazine (www. revistaforum.com.br), and translated

by Brasil Observer g

The vote of the Constitutional Amendment (PEC) 171 which reduces the legal age for 16 years brought many lessons and concerns. The first, most obvious, it is that the mobilization of social movements is strong. Thanks to the PEC being defeated in the vote on 30 June. The other is that the right is also strong. Soon after the defeat, right-wing deputies took advantage of the regimental manoeuvre of the Chamber of Deputies’ President, Eduardo Cunha (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party) to vote a proposal almost identical to that was defeated and managed to reverse the result – this time with a small presence of representatives of social movements, because many of them had left Brasilia and also by authoritarian decision of Cunha who banned people in the galleries of the House.

The discussion of lowering the penal age is just the tip of the iceberg.

DataFolha Research shows that 90% of the population supports the measure.

“Journalistic” TV programs specialized in police news have been doing a real subtle campaign for the reduction. They feature the crimes and offenses committed by minors, giving the impression that most of the violence is practiced by them (when, in fact, only 1% of heinous crimes are committed by persons below 18 years in Brazil). What’s more, not covering and charging authorities disrespect the rules of the Statute of Children and Adolescents, generate the feeling that this law is ineffective, or worse, ensures impunity of children and adolescents offenders.

Thus, it created what the American thinker Walter Lippmann called “pseudo environment”. According Lippmann citizens act on an imagined reality and, therefore, the public opinion is the product of certain structures. The 90% of the population who advocate the reduction of legal age will certainly consider that violence is a product of impunity, which it is practiced mostly by minors and that existing laws do not punish

enough to resolve crimes. Hence, the easiest solution is to intensify the penalties and defend violent practices.

Much of those who hold such positions are people living in the periphery who are the most affected by police violence and the worsening of the law, since, as the data indicate, there is a selectivity of race and class in punishment (witness the social profile of incarcerated or victims of police violence).

The black movement has strengthened for the struggle against genocide of black youth. And not without confusion, particularly because in recent years moved up significantly in the development of public policies to combat racism. Quotas, Law 10639, Statute of Racial Equality, secretaries... Nevertheless, extermination of blacks and black youths in the suburbs continues, drawing attention even Amnesty International.

Then the dilemma comes. This apparent contradiction stems precisely from a gap in the political project of the progressive parties that has ruled the country since 2003: it is not enough to include by the consumption (which is important) if not a political project of rupture with one patrimonial, classist, racist order that was built from the 19th century with the unfinished abolition of slavery, eugenics project of the Nation and the positivist conception of the Republic. Since then, what we see is a capitalist society that is based on the tripod of restricted citizenship and not universal; concentration of property and wealth and violence as systemic political practice.

Each advance of the subordinate segments, the right rearticulates and gives it a kickback. The action of Eduardo Cunha during the vote on lowering the penal age is a metaphor of how political conflicts are in Brazil. The mistake of part of the left is not realizing this process of struggle and making no signal for deep reform actions and re-foundation of the Brazilian state.

20

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

CONECTANDO

G SÃO JOÃO DA BOA VISTA

WHEN ART CHANGES THE ROUTINE Fernando Furlanetto Week lasted ten days, but traces remain in the small city of São Paulo State’s countryside

By Willian Pereira – from São João da Boa Vista g

g

Willian Pereira is Journalism student at the University Centre of the Associated Colleges (UNIFAE) of São João da Boa Vista and wrote the article for the CONECTANDO Project, developed by Brasil Observer (For more information access brasilobserver.co.uk/about-conectando)

Graffiti and exhibition banners scattered throughout the city. Wherever you walk in São João da Boa Vista, a city of about 100,000 inhabitants in the state of São Paulo, 218 km from the capital, you’ll see signs left by the 10th Fernando Furlanetto Week, held between 5 and 14 June this year.

If the intention was to leave the culture more accessible, the goal was met. There were 10 days of cultural interventions, artistic works and attractions at every corner. The difference of the traditional event was the breakup of the attractions in order to reach all audiences and prove that culture, although free, can offer very rich and rare content.

For the curator of the edition, Eduardo Menezes, the proposal from the beginning, was to get “high quality art” for the centre and the periphery. The week had to be, however, far more than just “events”.

“They [events] are great; they are necessary but are ephemeral in its format. Once over, it is only in memory. The theme of the 10th Fernando Furlanetto Week was ‘The Permanence of the Ephemeral’, I mean, we were concerned about leaving a legacy. So we opted for graffiti, sculpture, photography, which, by their nature, are arts that last,” said the curator.

A NEW CITY Of all the attractions, the famous graffiti caused major impacts. And for the good of the organization, the impressions were positive by the population.

“We believe that the objectives of the Week will be completed over the years, inspiring new generations of artists to produce in our city. São João became a cooler town, more colourful and cheerful,” said Menezes.

Recently, the city was called the ‘Capital of Graffiti’ by the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo. There are several paintings of graffiti artists from all over the country and abroad, both in public and private places. In the programme, bars and squares served as stage – everything to make culture and art as accessible as possible.

“We did not imagine that the Week could get where it is. The entire population will receive the legacy of the arts produced,” Menezes pointed out. “When we think of a city, we think of symbols that make up this urban area. We left more than 50 new symbols that will become, over time, new touristic sights.

You can feel the city being transformed,” he added.

FERNANDO FURLANETTO Born in São João da Boa Vista in 1897, Fernando Furlanetto was a Brazilian sculptor. He made his sculpture, architecture, design and

anatomy studies in the town of Pietra Santa, in Italy.

Back in Brazil, it was in São João da Boa Vista that he developed and produced all his sculptural works that enrich the city and region with an immense artistic heritage located mainly in the cathedral and the city’s cemetery.

Few are his own ornamental works or for collectors. His sculptures are mostly sacred figures ordered to be placed on altars and, according to customs of the time, in tombs, which turned the cemetery of São João da Boa Vista in a huge and beautiful open air museum.

THE WEEK The Fernando Furlanetto Week was created after an exhibition in 1997 to commemorate the centenary of the artist. He had as curator Antonio Carlos Rodrigues Lorette. At the time, it was visited by more than eight thousand people, an impressive number for a city that then had about 80,000 inhabitants.

In 1998, a contemporary profile was applied to the event by Samantha Moreira. Held at the then almost abandoned Municipal Theatre, one of the postcards of the city and cultural symbol of the region, the week had works exhibited by various local artists.

The host of the event was changed in 2000 when the curator Flavia Almeida Noronha Carioca led exposures to an old warehouse restored in the city railway station.

Changes in the schedule began to take place in 2001. In the theme “Transformation of Art”, it was already clear that the impact on society and the interaction with the public would be higher. The aim of the week, which had as curator Vania Palomo, was focusing on sculpture, redesigning its trajectory through time. Parallel to the exhibition, there were lectures and workshops.

In 2008, curated by Cristiano Censoni, the 9th Week Fernando Furlanetto was the first event held in the city with funds raised through federal laws to encourage culture.

Under the theme “The exposed individual”, the exhibition showcased a mix of established artists’ work, young prospects and street artists.

“Many artists developed their works on site, so the population was able to follow and interact with the development of the works. Some schools took children and had lectures in the space under construction,” remembered Censoni.

For him, from 2008 the Fernando Furlanetto Week took a no return path with the occupation of urban spaces, not being conformed to stick to only a select portion of the population, thereby changing the routine of the small town of São João da Boa Vista.

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

21

EDUARDO ZAPIA

Images show works done during the 10th Fernando Furlanetto Week; all pieces of graffiti created were curated by Pigment (for more information visit pigmentlondon.co.uk)

22

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

23

B R A S I L O B S E R V E R

AZIL R B A L I A B TS THE N E S E R HALL P L A Y V N I A T S P E M F O L OYA NCE C R A T D A A 5 1 U R T S E U AUG BALE D O T 5 M O R F DON, N O L N I W SHO

>> PAGES 24 & 25

DIVULGATION

M H T Y H R S ’ T E E STR

24

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

GUIDE

BALÉ DE RUA

BRINGS ITS MUSICAL JOURNEY

By Gabriela Lobianco

Balé de Rua Dance Company is on international tour with Baila Brazil, a mixture involving the musical beat of drums, African rhythms and street dance, straight from the slums of Uberlândia, a city in the State of Minas Gerais, south-eastern Brazil, to the world.

The attraction was highly praised for its debut in Australia with good acceptance of both critics and the public, with sold out presentations at the Sydney Opera House. “It is a play with a vision of our land, but with no stereotypes,” says the director of the company, Fernando Narduchi to Brasil Observer. For him, the sensuality of our people will always exist. However, he continues, “first of all the dancers enact for the art, focusing on our roots and culture with exuberance.”

The group performs in London from 5 to 15 August, on the main stage of the Southbank Centre, the Royal Festival Hall as part of the Festival of Love. The call came just after the performances in Australia and, although it is not the first time that the artists are in the British capital, there are always expectations a new performance will be shown. “We hope the audience likes this show,” adds Narduchi.

With unique choreography by Marco Antonio Garcia representing classics of MPB, samba, hip hop, break and contemporary dance, the troupe has 14 professionals among dancers (samba dancers, b-boys and capoeiristas) and musicians (percussionists and a set with keyboard, bass and cavaquinho), as well as the singer Alexia Falcão. “The difference this time is that we have a live band, with much more than drums,” says Narduchi.

The eight-hour daily rehearsals are intense and require a lot of dedication – the result is a 1h20 long performance. The principal attraction, however, is the interaction with the audience, invited to dance.

Narduchi says he is not intimidated by the interpretation that Europeans can do to the work. “The interpretation is subjective, but we are artists.” According to him, the presentation of another show in Lyon, men dancers at one point came on the scene with dresses, undressing on the way. “I was amazed that no one interpreted it as something erotic but as something integral and sensitive part of the show,” he says.

DIVULGAÇÃO

“It’s a play with a vision of our land, but with no stereotypes,” says director Fernando Narduchi

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

The show brings together 14 professional dancers and musicians, as well as the singer Alexia Falcão

25

Balé de Rua was born in 1992 with a proposal to create art as an act of courage and independently HISTORY With over 20 years of experience, the artists combine in their performances the street dance language with the modern ballet. “Balé de Rua was born in 1992 with a proposal to create art as an act of courage and independently” explains Narduchi.

In 2007, the director and founder of the company created the Cultural Centre Balé de Rua, a leader of teaching and inclusion of children and adolescents, with more than 200 students from various districts of Uberlândia trained in free classes. Due to lack of resources, the centre closed in 2014, but the dance company remains firm.

From this project, others emerged as the Comunidade Ativa, which emerged from the Novos Talentos, developed by Balé de Rua. Thus, the outskirts of Uberlândia invade urban centers and provide a new direction in the life of young artists.

The repertoire is quite varied, and so the company has in the curriculum 13 countries and 45 Brazilian cities visited.

Fernando Narduchi recalls he was in the Fringe, in Edinburgh. “We were there in 2008 and spent one month. Beautiful city and beautiful festival.”

Finally, the director asks me how was the weather in London: “Is it too cold?”. The disappointment was great when he discovered that on the day of our interview, via Skype, I was in Brazil. “You live there and are already used to it, but I think I’d better take warm clothes. The evening certainly cools, from what I remember,” he laughs relaxed. The London summer is relatively soft for sure but the temperature is going to rise with Baila Brazil.

BAILA BRAZIL When 5 to 15 August Where Royal Festival Hall Tickets £38 £28 £15 Info www.southbankcentre.co.uk

26

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

CULTURAL TIPS

MUSIC CRIOLO AND DONA ONETE PLAY AT WOMAD FESTIVAL WOMAD FESTIVAL

When: 24 to 26 July Where: Chalrton Park, Malmesbury Entrance: £165 for the weekend Info: www.womad.co.uk

DIVULGAÇÃO

For those who want to enjoy a music festival with Brazilian flavour this summer, the 2015 edition of the Womad Festival, between 24 and 26 July, will include singers Criolo and Dona Onete in the line-up.

Three years after shaking the Brazilian music scene with the album Nó Na Orelha (Knot In The Ear), Brazilian rapper Criolo brings to the UK, for the second time, the Convoque Seu Buda (Convoke Your Buddha) concert, his third studio record.

It is not, however, strictly a rap album. Of course, the singer’s original genre is represented there, in songs such as “Convoque Seu Buda”, “Esquiva da Esgrima”, “Plano de Voo” and “Duas de Cinco”. But there are lots of other styles such as samba, reggae and forró, which form the general framework of an album that embraces the versatility of Brazilian popular music and the singer himself, who moves easily along these diverse paths.

“I believe that when the music is made with pure sincerity of your heart, no matter how elaborate or innocent it is, it will reach another heart and it nourishes the others with hope. From then what happens escapes our control”, Criolo said in an interview to Brasil Observer before this presentation in London earlier this year. On the occasion, he stressed that “these invitations are rare and special, and it is not always so easy to move. There have been situations where we could not go. So it’s always great when we have everything right. So we try to make the most of these opportunities to try to build a new audience, show our work and make the best of this exchange.”

The late-blooming Brazilian singer Dona Onete only recorded her debut album (Feitiço Caboclo, with Mais Um Discos) once she’d passed her 73rd birthday. To be fair, she’d been busy, devoting her life to being a history professor in her Amazonian hometown. But now, with no more lectures to give or essays to mark, her second career is well underway, that voice allowed her to fly free, to soar and seduce. And that long-awaited debut was well worth the wait, a record that showcased a lively performer on the brass-heavy numbers and a singer of depth and restraint on the more contemplative material. Hers is an irresistible story.

Paula Henderson, the Artist Booker at Womad Festival, said to Brasil Observer that “both Criolo and Dona Onete have been on my list for a couple of years.

With Dona Onete she is bringing together the tradition and heart of Brazilian music but when she sings she puts everything into her performance, so even though she is now in her 70’s, she has a spark that makes her a true Diva. Criolo has taken Brazilian sounds and infused this with rap and soul so it is completely unique, in his music that means there is no doubt of his heritage”.

BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB

When: 16 July, 6.30pm Where: Embassy of Brazil (14-16 Cockspur Street) Entrance: Free Info: www.culturalbrazil.org

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

27

Hair & beauty

The book for the July Brazilian Bilingual Book Club meeting is O Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma (1911), also as The Sad End of Policarpo Quaresma (2014), written by Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto (1881 – 1922).

Lima Barreto was a novelist, journalist, short story writer and a social activist. He caricatured various aspects of the city of Rio de Janeiro, the Federal capital of Brazil at the time, and its society and government particularly from 1890s to the first decade of the 20th century becoming famous for his sharp-witted and ironic critique of the Brazilian society. Fiercely opposed to racism, he identified himself as black (he was mulatto) and remains highly regarded

by Afro-Brazilian writers.

His social critique extended from excessive urban development and mechanization, militarism, civil and public servants, deception to the funding of football. In 1902, He started writing for various newspapers and magazines – Correio da Manhã, Jornal do Commercio, Gazeta da Tarde and Correio da Noite often signing under various pen names (Rui de Pina, Dr. Bogoloff, S. Holmes and Phileas Fogg).

In 1909, he published the first part of his auto-biographical novel Recordações do Escrivão Isaías Caminha (Memoirs of the Notary Public Isaiah Caminha) in the literary magazine Floreal (4 issues only) that he launched with friends. Two years later he published his main novel Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma in feuilleton format in Jornal do Commercio. This novel is regarded as a key pre-modernist work in Brazil.

His other novels Numa e a Ninfa (1915; Numa and the Nymph), and Vida e Morte de M.J. Gonzaga de Sá (1919; Life and Death of M.J. Gonzaga de Sá) and Clara dos Anjos (1904, published posthumously) and Aventuras do Dr. Bogoloff (1912, The Adventures of Dr Bogoloff, published posthumously). In the short story O Homem que sabia Javanês (The man that knew Javanese) and Aventuras do Dr. Bogoloff focuses on deception. The latter depicts a fake doctor from the Old Russian Empire. In addition, Lima Barreto would write articles and columns that were read by a large number of readers throughout Brazil during his life-time. It is worth noting that the first translation of Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma appears in 1974 (Czech) and 1978 into English (The Patriot).

He would often be taken in for treatment for alcohol abuse losing his life in the very year of the Week of Modern Art. Nadia Kerecuk is Convenor of the Brazilian Bilingual Book Club of the Embassy of Brazil in London g

Hair Modern Cuts Dye Hairstyles for brides

Keratin Color Deep conditioning Capillary cauterization Definitive smoothing process Progressive brush and relaxers

ondre s

Nail Care Eyebrow Make up

4 ano s em L

By Nadia Kerecu k g

Beauty

SP e 1

BOOK CLUB: THE SAD END OF POLICARPO QUARESMA

unisex

15 an os de exper iência em

LITERATURE

2d0iscount %

Call us to schedule a FREE consultaaon

020 7622 2231 facebook.com/tony.voyage | www.tonyvoyage.com

1 Union Rd, Greater London SW4 6JH, UNNearby: Stockwell | Clapham North

28

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

COLUMNISTS

FRANKO FIGUEIREDO

THE COST OF MAKING THEATRE It doesn’t surprise me that theatre may be seen as an elitist art, because theatre tickets, if not subsidised, can prevent many from going to see plays

Making theatre is an expensive affair wherever you are. There are so many costs a theatre maker needs to consider that the business of producing a theatre play can be extremely daunting, even if you are working in small-scale venues.

It doesn’t surprise me that theatre may be seen as an elitist art, because theatre tickets, if not subsidised, can prevent many from going to see plays.

When producing a play, your budget needs to consider the hire of rehearsal space, actors and the technical & creative team (set, sound and lighting designer, stage manager, set builder) wages, props and set materials, costumes, transport and the hiring of the theatre venue. Not to mention all the work involved with publicity, marketing, advertising and getting the press to come and review your show. You’ll be spending a minimum of 20 thousand pounds, and that is if you are not paying your team minimum wages and have enough contacts to get in-kind support.

I have been working in theatre as a director and producer for the past 25 years and at the start of my career I mostly worked on an expenses only basis, sometimes if I really loved the project, I donated my time to it. Only in the past 14 years I was actually able to live off my profession. But even still, there have been times when I’d have to inject my own money if I wanted to make the production happen.

Interestingly, the most financially successful shows are not necessarily the most artistically successful. If I don’t have government subsidy, the chances are that it will be very hard to get the project off the ground. This is often the case when you are trying to produce work that is challenging, political, culturally diverse, or introduce unknown international work to new audiences.

Against all odds, though, I continue to produce this type of work with a level of accessibility, meaning, with ticket prices that don’t cost an arm and a leg. I am able to do it, mostly thanks to private donors, small trusts and foundations that believe theatre is a tool for education and a platform for dialogue and social development.

Most recently, I co-directed and co -produced Skin in Flames at the Park Theatre. Anyone could see the show on particular days on a “pay what you can” basis and we ran a number of special offers to attract those who would not be in a position to afford the full price. Although this added a considerable constraint to the production budget, as the project was not subsidised, we still went ahead with it. Skin in Flames was only

made possible because of Bots&Barrals, the company who shared the productions costs with StoneCrabs Theatre Company, and many other partners who provided us with in-kind support.

Major organizational bodies such as government councils and embassies need the will and budgets to fund more small-scale theatre projects that benefit more local communities. More risk-taking is also needed, otherwise we will end up with the same old wonderful glitzy musicals, comedies and pop shows that are, don’t get me wrong, wonderful, but don’t give us an option for something that provokes and challenges us.

Artistically, Skin in Flames was a very successful show: we received excellent reviews both from critics and the general public; we were not able, however, to bring in the subsidy for this production. Was Skin in Flames, a political thriller, which criticized the attitude of politicians and how they used art as marketing, just too risky? It seems so. As a result, we were fully dependent on our box-office figures to cover all budgeted costs: in this case 28 thousand pounds.

Despite that, we still managed to sustain a minimum level of accessibility, offering a number of more affordable tickets.

Recently Peter Bazalgette (chair of the Arts Council of England) admitted he was relieved that the arts was only to be cut about 1.2 million pounds in 2015/16, and other British and Brazilian governmental organizations voiced their preference in supporting safer activities like music and visual arts to theatre. Is that because they create less debate whilst theatre is more direct and controversial?

If theatre tickets were to reflect the real producing costs of the shows in London and UK-wide, like they do in America, prices would soar up to 80 pounds and over, but contrary to that, we can go to the theatre here in the UK for prices ranging anything from five pounds onwards, some of the current West End shows can be seen at a mere ten or 15 pounds. I just booked myself a ticket for the Oresteia at the Almeida Theatre for a mere ten pounds.

The price of the ticket will hardly cover all the company’s expenses but will go a long way towards ensuring that we continue to have independent theatre being made from small to medium scale.

I know I am biased, but I couldn’t possibly live without theatre, theatre for me is food for my soul.

Franko Figueiredo is artistic director and associate producer of StoneCrabs Theatre Company (stonecrabs.co.uk)

g

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

AQUILES RIQUE REIS

WHEN THE BODY IS MUSIC Adults understand, but only children really feel. This is where the hope to only reach good things lies

RICARDO SOMERA

COLLABORATIVE SPIRIT The idea that “there is not space for everyone” is outdated. The crowd can create amazing things

29

The body percussion band Barbatuques launched Tum Pá (with support from the São Paulo State Secretary of Culture), the third album since the beginning of its activities sixteen years ago, but the first made especially for children.

Do you know what Barbatuques is?/ It’s a band that plays from head to feet/ Chest, snap, palm, snap/ Paunch, thigh and feet/ Hand on mouth, hand on cheek/ All together at once. With this verses of ‘Que Som?’, roughly translated from Portuguese, João Simão defines the group.

Under the leadership of musician Fernando Barba, Barbatuques is André Hosoi, Bruno Buarque, Marcelo Pretto, André Venegas, Dani Zulu, Flavia Maia, Giba Alves, João Simão, Lu Horta, Helo Ribeiro, Mairah Rocha, Maurício Maas, Renato Epstein and Charles Raszl.

The more hands and feet, the more sounds are made, more noise become music, more rhythms speak to the soul, more voices sing songs and more ears feel the strength of the noise becoming symphony, becoming drumming, becoming dance, turning into clouds, rolling into smoke, remaking the sing, reborning into music.

Tum Pá has fourteen tracks very well mixed. Some are typical of Brazilian children’s repertoire; others were made to increase this universe. Some works stand out, but all have the same aesthetic and musical sense: sound from a concept wisely predefined. This, in addition to facilitating body design, makes it more exciting.

On the album there are two choirs of children (one from São Paulo, another from Cariri,

Ceará) that have significant participation in some tracks, especially in the first, ‘Tanto Tom’ (Helo Ribeiro), and ‘Tum Pá’ (Lu Horta), that gives title to the CD. ‘Samba Lelê’, ‘Escravos de Jó’, ‘Borboletinha’, ‘Marcha Soldado’, ‘Peixinhos do Mar’, ‘Marinheiro Só’, although very well know in Brazil, they have arrangements that turn them into delicious novelties, especially when they unite ‘Borboletinha’ and ‘Marcha Soldado’. The instruments are being presented: first three percussions, then the bass, the guitars one, two and three, violin, viola and trumpet, and the singers try to imitate each of the sounds. Formed the body orchestra, children’s choir sings ‘Borboletinha’ and soon after, ‘Marcha Soldado’. Finally, they sing two songs at the same time. Very cool.

Whenever I heard the Barbatuques, I thought of them as curious children who seek to discover the mysterious, indecipherable limits on the body. Therefore the album for children is the natural extension of a trajectory that would get it sooner or later. Because who, if not the small ones, to feel music as a music that does not seem like music, but only a simple palm slap on the cheek, taking a funny sound?

Adults understand, but only children feel.

And now Barbatuques plays their world, where lives the hope to only have good and new things. Without strings attached to them that prevent their inventiveness, surprise being the dominant tonic: for them, the body is music.

It is increasingly evident that the model of competitive life we have been taught from childhood does not meet our needs. Courses and more courses were – and still are – passed with a simple warning: “Be the best as there is not space for everyone”.

With this inner voice challenging us every day, a feature we were taken from us without we realize it: collaboration. But with help of the internet – and without it – the world is trying to rescue this most communitarian side.

Gradually, we are proving that this is not just a philosophy of the past but also the present and the future. The internet connected us and sharing our knowledge has reached a point that we could never have imagined – for good to the evil, it’s true. The fact is that from there arises what today is at the mouth of individuals, associations, schools and businesses: a collaborative economy.

The crowd can share their knowledge to build social and business solutions with free software; finance high impact projects with crowd funding tools; and create one of the most ambitious dreams, that of building the largest free encyclopaedia in the world, Wikipedia, feasible only with the collaboration of thousands of people.

In one of the speeches of the event Fronteiras do Pensamento (which means Boarders of Thinking) held in São Paulo and Porto Alegre, the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, told a curious audience some interesting facts about the sixth largest website today on the world.

Founded in 2001, Wikipedia has over 32

million articles in over 280 languages (876,000 in Portuguese), more than 70,000 contributors, mostly men (87%) with a mean age of 26 years. All this is made possible by collaboration.

And it’s not just Wikipedia that shows this phenomenon. Waze, Airbnb, Quirky, among hundreds of projects are made possible by the collaboration of network generating not only economic value, but also social.

Wales came into my list of “great heroes” with his contemporary progressive ideas, and also for his collaborative and inspiring spirit, and is a staunch supporter of net neutrality.

While not a billionaire like many of his friends who “founded” the internet, he says he is happy with his sons and his wife, Kate Garvey (former secretary of Tony Blair). And he nudges his colleagues saying that he knows many billionaires that are bored.

Today we see several collaborative projects that promise to revolutionize the way thinking globally, acting locally and thinking about the future in order to rescue the feelings with others. Every day we are bombarded with negative information and evidence that the line between progress and retrogression is pretty thin, but we must also see what works, what good is being done! I trust a more collaborative world is being made.

What about you?

g

Aquiles Rique Reis is musician, vocalist of MPB4

Ricardo Somera is an advertising professional and you can find him on Twitter @souricardo and Instagram @outrosouricardo g

30

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

TRAVEL ZIG KOCH

, U ร A U IG O D Z O F F O S M R A THE CH

S R E T A W E TH

E S I D A R A P OF

The city of Iguaรงu Falls is surrounded by rivers and has in its subsoil is the second largest aquifer in the world Foz do Iguaรงu, in the triple border between Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, it is a privileged city by the waters that surround it and are also abundant in its subsoil. It is in this territory that the second longest river in South America, Paranรก, receives the Iguaรงu waters shortly after it formed the wonderful Falls, a phenomenon that nature has created millions of years ago.

In its basement is the Guarani Aquifer, the second largest underground water reserve in the world, which is distributed by parts of Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay. And there is the Itaipu reservoir, a huge lake of 1,350 square kilometres, artificially created in the Parana River to allow the operation of the hydroelectric plant built by Brazilian and Paraguayan on the border of the two countries.

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

31

FALLS The Iguaçu River, which rises in the region of Curitiba, capital of Paraná, runs through the entire state and, in the last kilometres, in the section on which borders Argentina, after a curve and a rapid, form 272 rapids, with an average drop of 72 meters. The Iguaçu Falls see the world’s largest decreases in volume of water – in normal times, the flow rate is 1 million and 450 thousand litters per second.

The heels are presented in a semicircle resembling a horseshoe and extend over 2,700 meters of which 1,900 meters are on the Argentine side and 800 meters in Brazil. To see the falls in their full glory, one must see the two sides. On the Brazilian side, you can even take a boat ride under them, complete with a “bath”, while on the Argentine side is the size, view from above, from the grandeur of the Devil’s Throat, the most impressive jump.

All this exuberance assured the Iguaçu Falls, in 2011, the title of one of the new seven wonders of nature. The award, sponsored by the Swiss foundation New Seven Wonders was voted by worldwide Internet users.

PARKS In both Brazil and Argentina, the Iguaçu Falls are surrounded by national parks. Brazil and Argentina maintain in total more than 600,000 hectares of protected areas and another 400 hectares of still primeval forests, home to endangered species, flora and fauna.

It is estimated that there are on the woods 800 species of butterflies, and 45 mammals, 12 amphibians, 41 snakes and 200 species of birds. Thanks to this rich biodiversity, coupled with the scenic beauty of Iguaçu Falls, the Iguaçu National Park in Brazil, and the Iguazú National Park in Argentina have been declared World Natural Heritage by UNESCO.

HOT WATER Surrounded by rivers, Foz do Iguaçu does not use the resources of the Guarani Aquifer for water supply of the population. But a few luxury resorts offer as attraction thermal pools, which come from underground to temperatures around 37 degrees.

The thermal water, which remains naturally warm all year, also has medicinal properties, allowing baths at any time of day and in any season.

ITAIPU Accounting for 16% of the electricity consumed in Brazil and 79% of Paraguay’s electricity consumption, Itaipu plant is the second most visited attraction of Foz do Iguaçu, visited annually by over 800,000 people. The plant, which in 1995 was voted one of the wonders of modern engineering by the American Society of Engineering offers a number of tours, including the reservoir, aboard a luxury boat with capacity for 200 people.

Gigantic in every way, Itaipu arouses interest not only for its physical structure, but for his work on environmental preservation of all its surroundings. Since the creation of the reservoir in 1982, Itaipu has planted over 44 million trees on the banks of the reservoir.

Its main environmental program, Cultivating Good Water, won the United Nations this year the world’s best practice award in management of water resources.

But it’s with the numbers that the plant impresses. Its dam is almost 8 kilometres long a with a maximum height of 196 meters, equivalent to a building of 65 floors; iron and steel used in the construction of Itaipu allow building 380 towers similar to Eiffel Tower.

Its spillway, whose function is to drain the water not used for generation, is able to shed 62,200 m³/s, 40 times more than the average flow of the Iguaçu Falls.

TOURS Since it was opened to visitors in 1977, while still under construction, the Itaipu Dam has received about 20 million visitors by the Brazilian and Paraguayan banks. Today, visitors have three types of tours: the Special Tour, which allows the visit to the interior of the dam; the Panoramic Visit, with strategic stops; and the electric vehicle test drive, where visitors drive an electric car assembled in the plant itself, accompanied by a monitor.

Other attractions are the Itaipu Dam Lighting, where the plant is illuminated gradually, with a special soundtrack; the Eco-museum, which brings details and curiosities of the region where the plant was built; the Bela Vista Biological Refuge, where you meet up close examples of regional flora and fauna; and the Port Kattamaram, from where you can go out to sail on a boat 200 seats at the Itaipu Lake.

BIRD PARK

This content was sponsered by Itaipu Binacional

Another must-see attraction of Foz do Iguaçu is the Bird Park, home to over a thousand birds of 150 different species, some endangered. With 16.5 acres of lush Atlantic Forest, is the largest bird park in Latin America. But, contrary to the name, the park not only houses birds: there is also the paradise of reptiles of Brazilian fauna, like the python, iguana, alligator and the dreaded anaconda; and graceful butterflies, some rare in nature.

For the estimated 500,000 visitors that the Bird Park receives annually, the biggest charm is able to stay very close to the animals.

32

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

Subscribe now and get it in your doorstep!

12 editions

More information: contato@brasilobserver.co.uk

Payment forms: Bank Deposit or Paypal

6 editions

brasilobserver.co.uk | July 2015

BRUNO DI AS /

LONDON ESTÚDIO

RUFUS (W

EDITION

ION

Brazilian

LONDON

rapper ta

DECEMBE

R|JANUA

WW.RUFU S.A

DIVULGAT

CRIOLO IN

B R A S I L O B S E R V E R

lks exclusi

RT.BR)

RY

WWW.BR

ASILOBSE

RVER.CO.U

K

ISSN 2055

# 0 0 2 3

-4826

NEW YEAR... …AND W

vely to Bra

sil Observ

er

HAT’S IN

Who isn’t

dreaming

STORE FO

of a holid

R BRAZIL

HIDDEN P

ay in the

ARADISES

Brazilian

sunshine?

IN 2015 DIVULGAT

ION

33