Brasil Observer #38 - EN

LONDON EDITION

www.brasilobserver.co.uk

ISSN 2055-4826

MAY/2016

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MAY AFTERNOON Carlos Drummond de Andrade C O N T E N T S

Like primitive men who devoutly hold on to the lower jawbone of their dead, so I hold you, May afternoon, when fires were redly consuming the earth and a far more devastating, unseen flame raged quietly under my comic features and left all across the burning ground, disjecta membra, my soul’s condemned, still throbbing pieces, which never before or after revealed such fruitless nobility.

But primitive men appeal to their relic for health and rain, a good harvest, the enemy’s defeat, this or that miracle.

All I ask of you, May afternoon, is that you endure, irreversible, in time and outside it, a mark of defeat that slowly wears down to become a beauty mark on the very face that turns away from me, and passes …

Autumn is the season when such crises occur, and in May very often we die.

To be reborn, I know, in a fictitious spring, already ghostly under our velvety husk, carrying in our shadow the stubbornly sticking resins used to anoint our corpses, and in our clothes the dust of the hearse, May afternoon when we perished without anyone paying heed, love included.

And those who happened to be there couldn’t say if it was a mournful procession, plodding and dusty, or a carnival parade.

There were no witnesses.

There are never any witnesses. There are oblivious or curious bystanders.

Who recognizes drama when it leaps into being, without masks?

If I die of love, no one notices or admits it. My very love dismisses and mistreats itself.

It goes into hiding, like hunted prey, uncertain of really being love, so long ago did it wash from memory the impurities of earth and vegetation in which it lay.

And what remains, adrift in the air, a better medium to preserve it, is a singular sadness, which stamps its seal on the clouds.

Carlos Drummond de Andrade (October 31, 1902 – August 17, 1987) was a Brazilian poet and writer, considered by some as the greatest Portuguese language poet of all time. Translated

by Richard Zenith.

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OBSERVATIONS Chatting with Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party London Eye turns into Brazilian colours: green, yellow and blue

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GUEST COLUMNISTS James N. Green and Renan Quinalha on Brazil’s impeachment game Sérgio Amadeu da Silveira on freedom and privacy on the internet Guilherme Johnson on Brazil, the UK and the future cities

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INTERVIEW Alan Charlton, former British ambassador to Brazil

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REPORT Brazilian economy is still suffering, but there are good news

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RIO 2016 With less than three months to go, the Games raise divided feelings

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CONECTANDO Meet the “For More Turbans on the Streets” project

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LONDON EDITION Is a montlhy publication of ANAGU UK UM LIMITED founded by

Ana Toledo Operational Director ana@brasilobserver.co.uk Guilherme Reis Editorial Director guilherme@brasilobserver.co.uk Roberta Schwambach Financial Director roberta@brasilobserver.co.uk English Editor Shaun Cumming shaun@investwrite.co.uk Layout and Graphic Design Jean Peixe ultrapeixe@gmail.com Contributors Aquiles Reis Franko Figueiredo Gabriela Lobianco Rosa Bittencourt Wagner de Alcântara Aragão Printer St Clements press (1988 ) Ltd, Stratford, London mohammed.faqir@stclementspress.com 10.000 copies Distribution Emblem Group Ltd. To advertise comercial@brasilobserver.co.uk 020 3015 5043

CULT Summer is coming, and with it a lot of Brazilian concerts

To subscribe contato@brasiloberver.co.uk

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To suggest an article and contribute editor@brasilobserver.co.uk

CULTURAL TIPS Theatre, photography, literature…

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COLUNISTAS Franko Figueiredo on people’s blindness Aquiles Reis on Ivan Lins’ new collection

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LONDON BY Heloisa Righetto takes you to a journey around Greenwich

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BR TRIP Shaun Alexander explores the Vidigal, in Rio de Janeiro

Online 074 92 65 31 32 brasilobserver.co.uk issuu.com/brasilobserver facebook.com/brasilobserver twitter.com/brasilobserver Brasil Observer is a monthly publication of the ANAGU UK MARKETING E JORNAIS UN LIMITED (company number: 08621487) and is not responsible for the concepts expressed in signed articles. People who do not appear in this expedient are not authorized to speak on behalf of this publication. The contents published in this newspaper may be reproduced if properly credited to the author and to the Brasil Observer.

brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

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Cover Art Rimon Guimarães www.rimondo.tumblr.com

Rimon Guimarães was born in Curitiba in 1988.

Self-taught, the artist develops his research in the context of the cities where he works. The stress in the metropolis and his dissatisfaction about the actual situation in the world inspire him to make a statement against mass politics and capitalist publicity which promote their greedy politics without truly caring about the people. Rimon wants to take people away from their monotonous daily routines and provoke them to see the street as a place where they can exchange experiences instead of seeing it only as a pass-through. His work combines design, performing art, video and music.

Mariana Alves

SUPPORT:

The cover art for this edition was produced by Rimon Guimarães for the Mostra BO project developed by the BrasilObserverinpartnershipwithPigmentandwithinstitutionalsupportfromtheEmbassyofBrazilinLondon.

Eachofthe11editionsofthisnewspaperin2016isfeaturingartonitscoverproducedbyBrazilianartistsselected through open call. In December, all of the pieces with be displayed at the Embassy’s Sala Brasil exhibition.

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brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

Observations

Jeremy Corbyn gives a speech in a Latino event in London and chats with group of Brazilians

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By Guilherme Reis

Ana Toledo

On 30 April, the leader of Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn participated in a Latin American community event in London, at the El Vergel restaurant, in Southwark. After a 25 minute speech, he talked for almost half an hour with a group of Brazilian activists who have organized demonstrations against the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff.

The event was organized by Momentum Latino, one of the 120 Momentum groups created in the UK in the wake of Jeremy Corbyn campaign for leadership of the Labour Party last year. In addition to the participation of Corbyn, the event had musical performances and speeches by activists from Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador and the UK. In a familiar environment full of children, it was pretty clear the affection of all who were there by Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour leader is married to a Mexican woman, Laura Alvarez, and speaks Spanish. And he has always maintained ties with Latin American exiles, including having actively participated in the episode that led to the arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in London on 16 October 1998.

At the high point of his speech, Jeremy Corbyn said: “When you offer people an opportunity of hope; when you offer people an opportunity of coming together, of a world based on justice and fairness rather than injustice, inequality and personal achievements on the expenses of the community, people begin to forget their differences and come together in a sense of unity. Times are changing. I want to approach next four years with a spirit of internationalism, with a spirit of bringing people together and a spirit of solidarity with those around the world who are going through very difficult times, being in Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina and many parts of Africa. That’s how we make a difference.”

Then Corbyn praised the Latin American community: “That’s what so great about the Latin American community in London, it’s hard working, often exploited by employers and incredibly it stays together to support each other. That’s an example of what people can achieve together”.

After his speech, the leader of the Labour Party sat at the table with a group of Brazilian activists to talk about the current situation of Brazil. Victor Fraga led the conversation, beside Nara Filippon, Anna Maria Forsberg, Luciana Pontual, Michelle Portela e Carolina Paes.

Corbyn said he is not on top of everything that is happening in Brazil, but has been concerned about some issues he reads about the country. “One is the levels of injustice and corruption in Brazil; second is the power of media and the way President Dilma Rousseff has been crucified.”

With a little notebook in hand and writing down what he heard, Corbyn made a commitment to give a statement on the impeachment process in Brazil after he can gather more information about it, specially the legal aspect. This was the main request of the group of Brazilian activists.

During the conversation, the labour leader said the first time he visited Brazil was in 1969, during the military dictatorship. “In São Paulo, when the military regime was doing manoeuvres against the people, I was there on the demonstrations, I was there on the marches, and I knew what was going on. But first I went to Belém [in the Northern state of Pará]; from there I went to Brasília by road, then Rio, São Paulo, Campo Grande and further and further until Paraguay. It was a long time ago, I know, but I was mostly shocked by the beauty and the injustice”.

Corbyn also said that he returned to Brazil other times and recognizes the country’s problems, including the political forces that acted alongside the military regime – and still are in the national political scenario.

brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

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Marcos VinĂ­cius Bessa/Embassy of Brazil in London

LONDON EYE TUPINIQUIM On 27 April, exactly one hundred days before the opening of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, one of London postcards turned green, yellow and blue. A light drizzle was falling on the city, which has not yet decided whether to embrace the summer or remain cool like winter. And to think that, in Brazil, people wear scarfs when the thermometer shows 18 degrees Celsius. Can you believe that? Anyway, we hope that the London Eye in the Tupiniquim style bring a little warmth to the land of the Queen.

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brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

Guest

Brazil’s impeachment game Why has President Dilma Rousseff lost all of her political support and is now being removed from the presidency?

By James N. Green and Renan Quinalha g

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James N. Green is Professor of Brazilian History and Culture at Brown University and the director of Brown’s Brazil Initiative. Renan Quinalha is a doctoral candidate in International Relations at the University of São Paulo, with a B.A. and M.A. in law from the University of São Paulo. g

A president elected by 54 million Brazilians, against whom there are no charges of corruption, has become the target of impeachment proceedings. The main reasons for her trial relate to supplemental budget decrees and delays in federal fund transfers to public banks in order to maintain social programs, a procedure known as “pedaladas fiscais” (tax pedaling). The country’s largest media conglomerates have relentlessly pushed for her ouster.

Large corporate interests have sponsored mobilizations against the government, deepening the political crisis, in an effort to make the impeachment a fait accompli.

Ironically, Eduardo Cunha, the President of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies who presided over the impeachment process in the lower house of Congress, is being accused of corruption and money laundering. If convicted, he faces up to 180 years of imprisonment. Recently new charges were levelled against him.

Cunha has used his power to obstruct investigations against his own malfeasance, including manipulating the Chamber’s Ethics Committee. After more than four months, the Supreme Court hasn’t decided on the request for his removal from office, nor has the Ethics Committee judged him after considering the case for half a year. Yet, he pushed through the impeachment proceedings in the Chamber of Deputies in record time.

Vice President Michel Temer, who belongs to the same party as Cunha, is openly organizing a new government, even before the successful impeachment of the current president. He has disclosed names he would nominate as ministers and suggested new government projects with the participation of opposition groups defeated in the 2014 election. Given the nature of coalition governments in Brazil, the vice president is elected along with the president according

to the program presented by the head of the ticket. The vice president doesn’t run on his or her own program. However, instead of implementing the program he defended in the 2014 elections, which was registered in the Electoral Court, Temer has established a new programmatic agenda that prioritizes the demands of the most conservative sectors of Brazilian society. It includes reducing guaranteed minimum spending for social security and education, imposing greater restrictions on welfare policies, using the military in rural conflicts, overturning gun control measures, approving a conservative family law, and embracing other projects previously shelved because of popular opposition.

Many observers consider these measures to constitute a parliamentary coup (golpe) against a government that has lost majority support, faces an economic crisis, and is widely unpopular. The second term of the Rousseff government, which in fact has only just begun, is in a fragile state and seems to be already over.

Unfortunately, what matters least in the impeachment discussion today is the law.

Impeachment is a political trial, no doubt, but there is a legal framework that is being pushed to the background. This was made clear in the report of the rapporteur in the Chamber and the pitiful justifications for votes given by Congressional representatives few weeks ago. While charged with “pedaladas fiscais,” Dilma Rousseff opponents in Congress focused on corruption and the economic crisis. The legal basis for her removal from office has become secondary to the political conflicts that have produced this crisis.

Why has President Dilma Rousseff lost all of her political support and now is being removed from the presidency through an impeachment process conducted by her former coalition allies

brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

José Cruz/Agência Brasil

Keeping the enemy closer: Dilma Rousseff receives the presidential sash during her inauguration ceremony on January 2015; next to her, the Vice President Michel Temer and his wife.

when she had a 59% approval rating in her first term, which was even higher than that of her predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva?

In the Brazilian model of coalitional presidentialism, with more than thirty political parties, the party that elects the president usually doesn’t have a majority to govern on its own. In order to pass legislation, it needs to establish a broad agreement with other parties. The Workers’ Party (PT) has not escaped this rule. When Lula came to power in 2003, he needed to negotiate the support of several small parties. This led to the 2005 vote-buying corruption scandal, known as mensalão, because of the monthly payments given to coalition partners. In order to retain Congressional support, PT then opted for a more permanent alliance with the PMDB, and this party indicated Michel Temer as the PT’s coalition candidate for vice president in the 2010 election.

Soon after her inauguration in 2011, Dilma Rousseff began her first term with a “housecleaning” (faxina) after it was revealed that members of her coalition government were involved in corruption. She deposed the board of Furnas, a government controlled power utility, and dismantled a widespread corruption scheme within the Ministry of Transportation. Within a few months, seven ministers were dismissed on corruption charges, most of them members of allied parties.

At the same time, Rousseff ’s government encouraged the creation of new small parties and fostered internal division within the PMDB to preserve the PT’s congressional hegemony. For example, in 2011, it helped to create the PSD led by Gilberto Kassab, and in 2013 Cid Gomes’ PROS. Although Dilma removed Romero Jucá from the government leadership in 2012, she unsuccessfully

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bet on Eduardo Braga against Renan Calheiros in the dispute for the presidency of the Senate and suffered a defeat with Eduardo Cunha’s election to the presidency of the Chamber.

Rousseff ’s firm style of governance did not rely on dialogue with her coalition partners. This, coupled with a tendency to rule by decree, increased discontent among members of Congress.

They demanded more government posts and budget allocations in exchange for coalition loyalty. Vice President Michel Temer even became responsible for government policy coordination.

But the fundamental turning point that led to the President’s fall from grace was not the 2014 elections. It was the June 2013 protests. Starting with an agenda for lower fares and better public transportation, the mobilizations mushroomed into demands for social rights, less corruption, and more political participation. More than merely dissatisfaction with the government or PT, it was against the political system as a whole and the lack of representation felt by different sectors of Brazilian society. The government didn’t know how to respond appropriately and failed to take advantage of the moment to initiate political reforms. After announcing some timid measures, Rousseff increasingly surrendered to PMDB pressures and to the political establishment, ignoring the demands of the streets and dismissing the protests of June 2013 as a “conservative” movement.

In the 2014 elections, these sentiments articulated and the 2013 protests reappeared. Rousseff ’s campaign tried to respond to these demands and managed a narrow victory precisely by trying to incorporate some items into her government’s program. But after the victory, she failed to fulfil her electoral promises.

The opposition questioned the results

of the elections and unsuccessfully asked for a recount. Soon thereafter, a sharp drop in commodity prices and a rise in the price of electricity and gasoline engendered popular discontent. The economic crisis worsened with a decline in the GDP, rising inflation, and increased unemployment.

Conservative fiscal adjustment measures exacerbated the situation. The investigations of “money changers” (doleiros) in Curitiba exposed a widespread corruption system for financing election campaigns through Petrobras, the state oil company.

This operation, called Lava Jato (“Car Wash”), took on a clearly anti-government character, with a series of excesses and arbitrary procedures that jeopardized justice and the rule of law.

On March 8, 2015, as Dilma Rousseff spoke on national television, protesters beat pots and pans in the first panelaço.

On the 18th of the same month, the first major mass mobilization against the government occurred. The government’s disapproval rate reached 62%. Since then, panelaços and demonstrations have recurred. Public opinion, promoted by the media, by sectors of the business community, and by selective leaks of the judiciary of corruption investigations, has turned the presidential impeachment into a magic solution to the crisis.

Between a rock and a hard place, and under pressure from conservatives, Rousseff continued giving even more space to the PMDB in successive ministerial reforms. This immobilized her government and her popularity collapsed. The side effect of this rearrangement, which at first glance seemed to ward off the threat of impeachment, was clear: the government had come undone and surrendered to conservative forces. It was unable to engage and mobilize the social bases that elected it and deliver what it had promised

in the campaign. In spite of following the rules of the game, Rousseff and PT could not guarantee and sustain power. Unable to dialogue or bargain with her coalition partners and incapable of abandoning age-old clientelistic practices, the government’s crisis deepened.

It is clear that “Lulism” - a concept coined by André Singer - is exhausted.

According to Singer, Lulism is a “weak reformist” project that succeeded in large part due to a favourable boom in commodity prices. This in turn allowed for more social programs that modestly redistributed wealth. It required a broad agreement among diverse interests. Advanced social policies were approved, however, through the worst wheeling and dealing practices of the political establishment, which was how Lula neutralized many conflicts.

When, in June 2013, the mobilizations challenged the political system, the government chose to preserve itself by resorting the politics as usual.

In many ways, the crisis of Dilma Rousseff’s government is a manifestation of a broader crisis of the political system, which has been unable to respond to society’s demands for more democracy and rights.

It relies on conservative approaches to governance, often through super-majorities in the Chamber of Deputies and Senate and behind the scenes deals to gain support.

Thus, it is no wonder that the population is sick of politicians and does not trust political institutions. According to research conducted by Datafolha in March 2016, the percentage of the population that defends the impeachment of Rousseff and Temer is the same: 60%. The public also mistrusts Congress. Thus, it is clear that the impeachment will not solve Brazil’s current crisis. It will only reinforce an old tradition of coups and institutional ruptures against democracy and the rule of law.

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brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

Internet under threat in Brazil Proposals being discussed in Congress hurt the fundamental rights of freedom and privacy online

By Sérgio Amadeu da Silveira g

also allows the criminalization of P2P network users who share videos or music copied from a DVD purchased legally, but having security mechanism prohibiting copies to “avoid not legitimate third part access.” The proposal made in the final report of the CPI provides elasticity to characterize offense incompatible with criminal law.

They could press criminal charges, for example, to security companies that develop testing tools for network and computer systems.

Thus, the Cybercrime CPI revamps proposals that criminalize daily practices of millions of people. The CPI ignores that 51% of Brazilians connected to the Internet download music and that 67% of them share multimedia content, according to a survey conducted by the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee, held in 2014 in 33,000 households.

Transforming millions of people into potential criminals does not seem to be a contribution to public safety. With such breadth, the law could be applied selectively, which offends the law itself and the ideals of justice.

Among the many troubling points, the CPI wants to change the Marco Civil to “enable the blockage of Internet content or applications by court order.” In one of the articles of this proposition, the CPI wants “the Brazilian judiciary to determine technical measures for connection providers to block traffic.”

This measure would give a judge the power to block the access of Brazilians to an application or a technology of the Internet, such as Telegram, WhatsApp or BitTorrent, for example. Preventing the use of a network technology is the same as criminalizing the future, the innovation and the people who use Internet legally. It is an obscure measure with negative consequences for the creative development of the network.

To make things worse, while the CPI takes place in the Lower House, a bill in the Senate wants to expand the potential of surveillance on the Internet. The Law Project 730/2015,

Edilson Rodrigues/Agência Senado

The Brazilian Civil Rights Framework for the Internet, a law known as Marco Civil that ensures the rights and guarantees for the use of digital networks in Brazil is running the risk of being profoundly altered as a result of the Cybercrime Parliamentary Commission of Investigation (CPI, in Portuguese), installed by the president of the Chamber of Deputies, the Lower House of Congress Eduardo Cunha. The proposals of the commission, dubbed as Digital AI-5 (in reference to the Institutional Act No. 5 of the military dictatorship), aim to increase the surveillance on the Internet and reduce its freedom.

In all, eight bills were presented for approval of the House.

One sought to ensure the withdrawal, without a court order, of content that allegedly attacked the honour of someone. Websites, social networks and blogs would be liable for content posted by third parts on their pages if they were not removed in a maximum of 48 hours after notification by the offended party. Imagine the amount of empty complaints that would be promoted by politicians or companies to avoid criticism. By removing the requirement of a court order, there is no filter of a third part capable of analysing if a criticism to a member of parliament, for example, is defamatory or not. Politicians could use this to lock everyone who criticizes them, even if a post or comment does not defame them. The enormous pressure of civil society in defence of freedom of expression made the bill rapporteur to withdraw the proposal.

Other projects, however, were kept in the final report of the commission, and are extremely worrying for online freedom and privacy. One of the most serious wants to criminalize “improper and unauthorized” access to a computerized systems. According to the definition of the bill, this system can be a website, a network or even a simple CD protected by DRM (Digital Rights Management). The overly broad wording

by senator Otto Alencar, gives police chiefs or prosecutors the right to request information from Internet service providers, without a warrant, when there is a suspicion of unlawful acts on the computer network. A police chief investigating a suspicion, with legal basis or not, world have access to registration data linked to an IP address.

Thus, the navigation data of people on the internet would be available without being fulfilled due legal process.

This project destroys the mechanism of the Marco Civil that gave citizens the minimum safeguards against the abuse of state authorities. Politicians and businessmen who use their great influence to obtain benefits from authorities might have access to sensitive data of citizens. Such a measure is equivalent to the police entering into g

a residence without a warrant or the occurrence of a crime.

With the election of an ultra-conservative Congress and the growth of benches related to the police forces and religious fundamentalist groups, Brazil is going through a wave of fundamental rights destruction. The Internet, a free communication network is under attack os a magnitude never seen before in Brazil. Civil society must react to these attacks or our society will live a dangerous authoritarian period. Journalists who denounce death squads would have their emails raided; environmental activists working with indigenous leaders would have their IP address mapped; victims of violence would suffer even more at the hands of police friends of the attackers. Finally, authoritarianism gradually destroys democracy.

Sérgio Amadeu da Silveira is a political scientist, professor of the Federal University of ABC and researcher of digital networks

brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

Rafael Neddermeyer/Fotos Públicas

Collaborations with future cities Despite the current crisis, Brazilian smart cities sector continues to produce very interesting and innovative ideas

By Guilherme Johnson g

The future is urban, without a doubt. For the first time in history, more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas. Cities are drivers of economic growth. They are also at the forefront of tackling international crises that national governments struggle to deal with, such as climate change.

With around 85% of their populations living in cities, Brazil and the UK face similar challenges to make their cities a better place to live, work, and foster innovation.

With that in mind, a delegation of 11 UK companies – mainly SMEs - participated in a Mission to Brazil at the beginning of April. The trip was organised in a partnership between UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) and Future Cities Catapult – the UK’s smart city centre of excellence. Sir David King – Chair of the Future Cities Catapult and also UK Envoy for Climate Change - was the Mission leader. The Mission received support from the UK’s Prosperity Fund, which aims to promote sustainable global growth. Future Cities Catapult has been present in Brazil since last year, supporting the city of Belo Horizonte to develop smart infrastructure policies, mainly related to urban mobility.

Companies taking part in the mission ranged from a variety of smart city-related sectors such as security, intelligent transport systems, and smart data. Six of the participating companies were UK small and medium enterprises whose participation was supported after they won a competition run by Future Cities Catapult. For most of the participant companies’ representatives, it was their first trip to Brazil.

Mission participants first had the opportunity to visit Curitiba, which is internationally recognised as a progressive, and in many ways, sustainable, city.

Curitiba was the first city in the world to implement a Rapid Bus System (BRT) back in 1974 when prioritising public

transport was considered as radical.

Nowadays, more than 100 cities around the world such as Bogota in Colombia and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil followed Curitiba’s example. The city is also known for its environment policies and it was a pioneer in Brazil on waste recycling. Currently, more than 70% of the waste produced in the city is recycled.

In Curitiba, Mission delegates had the opportunity to take part in the Smart Cities Business Americas summit. The event gathered around 900 delegates from the public and private sector from 9 different countries. It was a great moment to exchange information and expertise with the Brazilian smart cities sector, which, despite the current political and economic crisis, continues to produce very interesting and innovative ideas. UK and Brazilian companies met at dedicated one-to-one sessions, and partnerships are being established from it. UKcreated expertise such as supporting the police to use technology intelligence on crime prevention was very well regarded

by Brazilians. In turn, apps created by Brazilian companies to engage citizens on reporting city infrastructure problems to the local authority were equally seen as very interesting by UK visitors.

During the visit to Curitiba, Future Cities Catapult’s Chair, Sir David King, met with Curitiba’s Mayor Gustavo Fruet to discuss innovative solutions for urban challenges and also with former Curitiba Mayor and internationally recognised urbanist Jaime Lerner. The former Mayor and Sir David agreed that innovation plays a major role in improving the quality of life in cities. Furthermore, behavioural change is also critical and should be promoted alongside courageous public policies such as the introduction of the congestion charge in London, which reduced the number of cars in the city centre. According to Jaime Lerner “cars always ask for

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Under Fernando Haddad’s administration São Paulo went through major changes such as an extensive network of cycle lanes

more infrastructure”. Jaime Lerner added by saying that “people should be encouraged to live closer to work”. For Sir David King “European cities have the advantage of being built at medieval times where all amenities needed to be reachable at walking distance. Right now there is a renaissance of the idea to live in a compact city”.

After spending 3 days in Curitiba, mission delegates went to São Paulo.

Brazil’s first-time visitors were amazed by the magnitude of the city which was confirmed by a rather frightening landing at Sao Paulo’s central airport (Congonhas) amid a very low flight over a forest of giant skyscrapers followed by a very short runway to land. As the largest and richest city in Brazil, Saão Paulo is also known for recently developing new and innovative public policies such as opening its transport data to allow mobile app designers to create applications to improve users’ experience of public transport. As a result of that, citizens may now using their phone to see exactly when their next bus will arrive.

This may seem nothing new for London, but in São Paulo people are used to going to the stops without any idea of if and when a bus would come. The amount of time and stress saved by this new technology is enormous.

In São Paulo, the delegation took part in a workshop at the UK’s Consulate General to interact with representatives from the local and state governments and other cities such as Campinas and Sorocaba.

With a great number of high tech industries and research centres, Campinas region is often referred as Brazil’s Silicon Valley. With a clear vision to become a reference for innovation and hosting one of the largest technology parks in Brazil, Sorocaba is equally a very open city to test innovative technologies. Mission delegates were again impressed by how advanced and open these Brazilian cities were.

There are definitely opportunities to be explored.

An important highlight of the visit to São Paulo was Sir David King’s meeting with City Mayor Fernando Haddad. Under Haddad’s administration the city went through major changes such as the creation of an extensive network of cycle lanes and exclusive bus lanes. These policies have been heavily criticized by the local elite, which has seen individual transport as the only and best socially accepted means of transport for years.

According to Haddad, “in addition to improve public transport and encourage the use of bikes it is also necessary to change the mentality of people who still sees public transport as a mean of transport of the poor and unsuccessful”. The UK has equally gone through a similar situation, as Margaret Thatcher is reputed to have said in 1986: “A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure”. Currently in the UK, although the car still has fans, in cities such as London have become very expensive to own, which has contributed to a change in mentality.

For the mission companies, the last day was dedicated to meetings with possible local partners and also other government departments from São Paulo City and State. It was also time to return to London after a very intense and productive week. It became clear that Brazil and UK have many similarities on the challenges its cities face to became more sustainable and smart, and much to learn from each other. The Rio Olympics, which will follow the successful London games will also represent an opportunity to strengthen this partnership further. g

Guilherme Johnson is International Partnerships and Projects Manager at Future Cities Catapult

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brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

Interview

Stories of an ambassador Alan Charlton, who served in Brazil from 2008 to 2013, shares his memories in a recently launched book. What does he say about Brazil?

By Ana Toledo

Personal archive

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4pm sharp on a Tuesday in April, I saw Alan Charlton, former British ambassador to Brazil, entering the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery in London. Wearing suit and backpack, he seemed unmistakable – I had never met him before, so I followed what I had seen in photos and videos on the internet. The assurance came when I noticed his tie, designed by Romero Britto. Charlton is a fan of his designs and makes it clear: that’s just one of the pieces of his collection of ties signed by the renowned Brazilian artist.

That was a small indication of Charlton’s admiration for Brazil – his last post before retiring after 35 years of diplomatic career. With four and a half years living in Brasilia and several trips across the country, Charlton sounds like a Brazilian that divides life experiences based on football matches. “I left just after Brazil

had won the Confederation Cup against Spain, a year before the World Cup”. Who knows what could have happened against Germany if he had remained in post.

With Earl Grey’ tea on the table, we began the interview, talking firstly abut the recently launched book Shaking My Briefcase. The book provides an overview of Charlton’s career, gathering stories about his passages through the Middle East – where he learned Arabic and was in different conflict zones – Germany – where he witnessed important historical events as the fall of the Berlin Wall –, London, Washington, and finally Brazil.

“I saved up some ideas over the years, wrote down a few pieces not to forget. When I left Brazil in July 2013, after a little while I thought it was time to pool them together, do more hard thinking and researching to what I did before I forget everything.”

From there came the motivation to write a book. “I’d like to bring it all together in a way that is easy to ready.

It isn’t a story from the beginning to end. It’s a number of separate stories written in a way that I hope can interest people who are interested in diplomacy, big issues of our time. People just like good stories. It’s made to be fairly general, not just for experts.”

The conversation about the book adhered to the last chapter, referring to Charlton’s period in Brazil between 2008 and 2013. As ambassador, Charlton was responsible for receiving illustrious British personalities in Brazil, such as former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the current one, David Cameron, and members of the royal family, princes Charles and Harry. “I was fortunate because there was an effort by the British Government, both the labour government and the coalition government, to have a close relationship with Brazil.”

The first story in the book is about the visit of Prince Charles to Brazil in 2009. “When he [Prince Charles] arrived in Brasília, for some reason the airplane wasn’t allowed to land for a while, so he was late. The first thing on the program was going to Congress. When he arrived there were hundreds of people there and when we left we were even later. And the next event was a reception at the British Embassy, where there were a lot of people waiting. And the meeting after that was a meeting with President Lula and I was afraid because we were an hour late. Then I heard we had a phone call from Planalto [the president’s house] asking us not to come quite yet. We just understood why when we had another telephone call; they had no electricity in the Planalto. It was perfect because we had long enough at the reception. It is a funny story; our program was saved by the lights not going on.”

On that same trip, Prince Charles visited Manaus, which yielded other story for the book. At one point, the host of an event at the Amazonas Theatre said the prince was not bad for a 60 year old man. Charlton declined to translate the phrase for the prince.

I took the opportunity to question what had been the most difficult time of his service in Brazil, and Charlton highlighted two situations. One related to the Falklands: “It was hard because on one hand I needed to do what I could to influence the Brazilian Government and on other hand I had to try to influence the British government not to overreact. It wasn’t big, but it was difficult at that time.” And another on the extradition of Michael Eugene Misick, former Prime Minister of the Turks and Caicos Islands, British archipelago located in the Caribbean: “The decision was made to send him back. For me it was huge progress.”

As we entered the topic Argentina, I raised the question of the trade agreement between the European Union

and Mercosur, whose negotiations have lasted for over 20 years. “Other countries wanted the agreement, the European Union was interested but Argentina didn’t want it. Brazil wasn’t ready that time to have an agreement itself. For the EU it would be fine just to have an agreement with Brazil, but of course Mercosur is a group and Brazil felt they have to stay in the group. Now we have a new Argentinean president [Mauricio Macri] but it doesn’t mean Argentina will be easy, but he is more internationalist and is going to be more open for that.

But the problem now is also on the EU side, and I think sadly it is more difficult, five years ago was fine but now there is so much pressure on the EU for other reasons such as the refugee crises for example.”

Another point of discussion was the Olympics. Charlton was in Brazil in 2012, so he had direct contact with the exchange of experiences established between London and Rio de Janeiro.

“The cooperation was tremendous. People who are responsible to deliver the Games have a lot of contact with the people responsible for London.” Charlton continued optimistically: “this is the first Olympic Games in South America and I think the Olympic Games in Brazil will be great and the world will watch. Of course there will be a lot of people writing in the media about the problem of the economy, about the political crisis. I don’t think this will affect the Olympic Games. There are some challenges still, particularly with transport in Rio. Maybe not everything will be 100% ready, but it will be mostly.

Brazil is showing that they can organise these big events very well.”

Charlton also commented the current situation of Brazil. “I wrote my book last year, when it was becoming clear that Brazil was moving toward a deeper problem, both economic and political. But I am optimistic about the future. It can be a long process, may be several months or several years, may be a large and difficult problem. But in the long term, Brazil will be strong. I am very confident.”

Alan Charlton currently works with strategic advice on different areas of business, and as a consultant continues to believe in Brazil’s potential for investment. “Clearly people need to think about the risk at the moment, the difficult situation Brazil has, but they also need to think in a few years time things can start move up again. So basically I try to encourage them to keep looking to Brazil.

And I do think companies do see in that way, those who are interested in a long term. The question is always when is the right moment to invest.

Right now is difficult.”

After an hour of conversation and empty cups, we said goodbye, heading toward the still chilly breeze of London’s spring. Some nostalgia for Brazil returned after so many memories – if not for Alan Charlton, certainly for me.

brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

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brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

REPORT Port of Santos registered record participation in the trade balance of Brazil, with a percentage of 30.8% in March

Resilience test on economy Positive trade balance and ability to attract foreign investment bring encouragement to Brazil in times of recession

I

In a period of intense political and economic instability, Brazil has shown that it is still able to offer good news.

The ability to attract foreign investment and the positive results of the trade balance due to the devaluation of the real against the dollar show that there is light at the end of the tunnel for the recovery of economic growth.

The entry of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Brazil increased from 13.1 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2015 to 17 billion dollars in the first quarter of this year. Market analysts begin to consider conservative the estimate of the Central Bank that total FDI for 2016 would be around 60 billion dollars - a 20% drop compared to last year.

According to the Central Bank, in the 12 months from April 2015 to March 2016, the FDI inflows in the country totalled 78.8 billion dollars, more than the 75.1 billion dollars added to the end of 2015.

Speaking to the press, the head of the Economic Department of the Central Bank, Tulio Maciel, said “direct investment flow has been very resilient in any period of uncertainty.” For him, the size of the Brazilian consumer market is still getting attention of foreign investors even in a period of recession. “This

By Wagner de Alcântara Aragão

is an important point in direct investment analysis.

The exchange rate fluctuation and situation of economic activity have also become the most attractive assets for foreign investors.”

Two examples come from the segment of decorative panels for furniture and decoration sectors. Two German multinationals – Interprint and Schattdecor – started working in Brazil with greater operational capacity in 2016. In late 2015, interprint opened a factory in São José dos Pinhais, southern state of Paraná, a project that cost about 30 million euros. Also in São José dos Pinhais, Schattdecor modernized its production with the installation of a new line of impregnation. The Brazilian unit should receive a considerable part of the 44 million euros that the company intends to invest in its subsidiaries worldwide in 2016.

TRADE BALANCE Besides stimulating the inflow of foreign investments, the devaluation of the real against the dollar helps to stabilize the trade balance, as it stimulates exports and reduces imports.

Brazil recorded a surplus record of 4.435 billion dollars in the trade balance in March this year, the highest result ever recorded for the month, according to the Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade. The result reflects 15.994 billion dollars in exports and 11.559 billion dollars in imports.

In the first three months of the year, the country accumulated trade surplus of 8.4 billion dollars, the highest for the period since 2007. The good performance should lead the government to increase its estimate of the positive balance of 35 billion dollars planned for 2016. In the same period last year the balance recorded a deficit of 5.5 billion dollars.

Highlights in exports were in soy, corn, meat, cotton, planes, ethanol, cars and gold. In the year, exports sum 40.6 billion dollars. Imports sum 32.2 billion dollars due to purchase drop of fuel, raw materials, machinery and equipment.

With foreign direct investment at high levels and the trade surplus rising, there may be an increase in international reserves of Brazil, which gives the country credibility in foreign markets. Currently, the reserves are above 370 billion dollars. “There is already a

brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

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strong adjustment of our external accounts. The trade balance climbed. Our current account deficit fell. The volume of foreign direct investment will be more than sufficient to finance our deficit,” said Finance Minister Nelson Barbosa.

INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION The expensive dollar may be showing the first results for production. In the series without seasonal influences, industrial production grew 0.4% in January compared to December 2015, interrupting a period of seven months retraction, with an accumulated loss of 8.7%.

The number, however, is still bitter compared to January 2015: decrease of 13.8%, according to IBGE data. It cannot be stated that it is a recovery. It’s just the end of the downward trend. The projections for the economy in 2016 indicate a very worrying retraction of almost 4%.

In an interview with Carta Capital magazine, Rafael Cagnin, chief economist at the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development (Iedi), stressed that the improvement of industrial production is still punctual. “There are small subtleties from one month to the other that

do not indicate a trend. However, if any trend reversal starts to appear, it appears first in these variations.”

Regarding the trade balance, the data can be more encouraging because there is a drop in imports over the months. The economist cites the clothing and footwear sector, penalized over the past decade with the entry of imported products at low prices.

“They are less complex sectors, with production capacity, and the reaction to this new exchange rate may come faster. These sectors were punished by an exchange rate out of place in the past years. When you have an exchange rate a little better you can already draw strategies request the lost market. “ Regarding exports, it is betting a lot on high dollar, but there is no forecast. “I have doubts about it because there is no miracle,” Cagnin said. For him, the Brazilian economy is still relatively closed, with its production mainly oriented to the domestic market.

Exports alone will not be able to pull the entire Brazilian industry. “Without a recovery in domestic demand is really very difficult to reverse the current situation,” he pointed out. The global economy situation doesn’t help Brazil as well.

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The challenges to deal with Whatever the outcome of President Dilma Rousseff ’s impeachment process, the federal government faces major challenges in the economic area. The goal is to prevent a third year of recession, and improve indicators that directly affect the population, such as unemployment and income rates.

One of the greatest urgencies is to reverse the fiscal gap, which could reach 120 billion reais next year. With revenue down, the government intended to create a new (old) tax, the CPMF, to reduce the deficit. But despite the 2016 budget counts with 10 billion reais from tax, there is no support in Congress to approve its recreation.

With no surplus to pay the public debt, the ratio of gross debt to GDP is expected to maintain the upward trend, rising from 73.7% in 2015 to 91.7% in 2021, according to data released by the IMF. There was a jump of 10.4 percentage points between 2014 and 2015.

Analysts agree that the fiscal situation is critical and that the trajectory of debt is not sustainable, but the proposed solutions vary. In general, liberal economists complain of budget rigidity and enlargement of public administration, advocating austerity measures, while developmentalists support a tax reform that would tax the rich more, and in some cases even the review of public debt, through an audition, in order to verify the legality of the charges.

There are two other reforms considered urgent, the state pensions – which consume more than half of public spending – and labour – to simplify the system of taxes and increase productivity. Again, there is great divergence of opinions regarding these two topics.

Regaining trust is also essential for the economy to grow again and receive investments from the private sector. In 2015, household consumption decreased by 4% and business investment by 14%. The confidence index of industrial entrepreneurs, measured by the National Confederation of Industry (CNI), fell 1.2 point in April this year compared to the previous month, reaching 36.2 points in a total of 100. The closer to zero it is, the greater the pessimism.

Another challenge is to reduce inflation to the centre of the target set by the Central Bank of 4.5% per year, and reduce the Selic interest rate, which is among the highest in the world and makes it even harder to pay the interest on public debt. The National Consumer Price Index (IPCA) in the 12 months to March is 9.39% and the Selic rate is 14.25%.

As a result of the economic recession, employment, income and formalization of work rates have been affected. The average unemployment rate in the country in 2015 reached 8.5% and was the highest ever recorded by IBGE since 2012.

The average rate in 2014 was 6,8%. The average real income was 1,944 reais in 2015 – in 2014 was 1,947 reais. The number of registered workers fell from 36.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2014 to 35.4 million in the same period of 2015.

In 2015, GDP shrank 3.8% – the largest downturn since 1990, when the economy fell 4.35%. Focus Bulletin – weekly survey from financial institutions – estimates a 3.88% decline in the economy in 2016. For 2017, so far, a slight improvement is expected: 0.3% growth.

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brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

SPECIAL

Countdown to Rio Roberto Castro/ME

Everything will be ready for the first Olympics in South America. But the mood in the city is not the best just yet

By Rosa Bittencourt – from Rio de Janeiro

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Olympic Flame Ceremony in Panathinaiko stadium in Athens on April 27, one hundred days to go for the Rio 2016 Games

Within less than three months to go for the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, the last details are being settled for the greatest sports event on earth, which on 5 August lands in South American for the first time in history. The mood, however, is not the best. Almost all sports facilities where 15,000 athletes will compete are ready, but a long list of problems, let alone the political and economic instability, brings a divided feeling.

Concerns range from health risks related to zika virus to the chaotic traffic of the city, passing through security issues.

Rio expects to receive 800,000 tourists during the Olympic (5-21 August) and Paralympic Games (7-18 September). With representatives from over 200 countries, the city could be the target of terrorist attacks. The political and economic crisis could also generate protests against the Games. For this, more than 67,000 police, including nearly all the state force, the special Battalion for Major Events, the Federal Police and the Army, will be allocated.

Regarding urban mobility, two major projects have not yet been delivered: the rapid bus system to the Olympic Park and the metro line 4, which will connect the tourist area of ​​the city to Barra da Tijuca, the main stage of the competition. There is much work to be done, but both the Rio local government (responsible for the rapid bus system) and the state authority (responsible for underground transport) say the two new services will be ready in July – something that worries experts because there will be little time to perform the necessary tests.

Another unfinished project is the long awaited cleaning of Guanabara Bay (site of the sailing competitions) and Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon (rowing).

It’s a huge frustration for environmentalists, athletes, locals and tourists who waited for the depollution of these two areas as an Olympic legacy.

In addition, two recent episodes made everything worse. A part of the Tim Maia cycleway built over the sea and promoted as part of the Olympic legacy collapsed after the impact of a giant wave. At least two people died, highlighting the neglect of a construction company that manages other Olympic venues. Indeed, it was confirmed that nine people died during the construction work for the Games – and the main reason pointed out by local authorities is the rush in the execution of these works.

During the World Cup, held in 12 host cities, eight workers died, while during the preparation of the London Olympic Games there were no deaths at all.

Criticisms about the works go beyond. It goes to a gentrification policy, as in the area where the Porto Maravilha, which has become a postcard after the revitalization works of the Museum of Tomorrow and the Art Museum.

There, many residents were removed to distant regions. The same happened to residents of Vila Autodromo, next to the Olympic Park.

ON PARTY TIME The expectation of the organizers is that when the Olympic flame is lit, the problems will be left behind so to the locals, next to Brazilian and foreign tourists, will have an unforgettable experience – as happened in

the World Cup, despite the 7x1 defeat to Germany. And even though less than half of the tickets have been sold so far.

The tourist stepping in Rio de Janeiro during the Games will find, for sure, a city that is a gift for the eyes. The beaches – some polluted (Flamengo, Botafogo, Urca, São Conrado, Rocinha), other isolated, clean and paradisiacal (Grumari, Prainha) – impress any mortal. And there are many other mandatory tourist attractions: the Corcovado Mountain where reigns the Christ the Redeemer with open arms over the Guanabara Bay, Sugar Loaf, Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon, the Botanical Garden, Two Brothers Mountain, Forest of Tijuca...

Who wants to go beyond these, the centre of Rio offers museums and cultural spaces in old mansions of the colonial, imperial and republican periods. It is worth spending two to five days to know the history of the city, which last year celebrated 450 years of age. It is also in the central region that runs the VLT (light train), which will transport people from the Santos Dumont Airport to Novo Rio Coach Station, passing through the famous Avenida Rio Branco, partially transformed into a promenade with gardens, bypassing the Museum of Tomorrow and the Art Museum. Near the centre, in Lapa, it is the bohemian part of the city. There you find a bar stuck on the other, where musicians and dancers make the joy of tourists from all over the world.

It is likely that, just as happened in the World Cup in 2014, the world will be enchanted with Brazil during the Rio 2016 Games. It will sure be a great Carnival, this time an Olympic one. After that we will know if it was all a great illusion or not.

brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

Cidade Olímpica/PCRJ

Tennis Olympic Centre

Aquatic Sports Olympic Centre

Ivo Lima/ME

Ivo Lima/ME

Arena of the Future, which will host handball games

New Mauá Square, where the Museum of Tomorrow is

Beth Santos/PMRJ

Britain house will be at Lage Park Divulgação

Lage Park

One of the most interesting aspects of the Olympic Games are the homes of the participating countries, which act as a meeting place for athletes and fans of all nationalities. A tradition in the Games, it’s in these houses the athletes celebrate their victories, besides offering various cultural attractions during the competition.

In London 2012, Brazil occupied Somerset House, which received several exhibitions and music concerts. In 2016, Britain will occupy the Lage Park, located at the foot of the Corcovado Mountain.

At the same time Britain House will be a second home for Team GB athletes, their friends and family, it will also promote the country as a world leader in business and innovation, offering a program of sports, culture, education, and B2B events.

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brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

CONECTANDO

Aracajú, Sergipe

Turbans that empower Project ‘For More Turbans on the Streets’ generates reflections on self-esteem and identity of black culture

By Rita Romão and Rouseanny Bomfim – from Aracajú, Sergipe g

W

When we go to the city centre to buy fabrics, when we enter the bus heading to the schools or when we arrive to give workshops, it is always a mixture of expressions: “are you from Bahia? Are you from Africa?

Can I touch your hair? What’s that on your head? Why are you here?”

We look each other, laugh, answer the questions patiently and let them touch our hair if necessary. We do everything with joy, with love. In these two years it’s been worth every minute we set in our project, or as we call it: our child #PorMaisTurbantesNasRuas, which means For More Turbans on the Streets.

The project #PorMaisTurbantesNasRuas was born very naturally. We were g

two friends who liked to talk about hair, and who were assuming their curls and learning how to do turbans in tutorials on YouTube. We wore the accessory without any special intention until one day everything changed: a teacher who wanted to do something different invited us to talk about hair and self-esteem for the girls in her classroom. Everything went well so far, we thought. But how could an apprentice of marketing and an almost graduated sociology professor provide inspiring words for those girls aged 13-14 years old? That was the question that echoed in our minds and left our hearts nervous and anxious for the experience that was to come.

We accepted the challenge. It was mid-2014. So we got our humble fabrics,

chose some videos and photos and prepared ourselves for that afternoon that marked the beginning of our story. In a crowded auditorium there were excited girls and we, with a giant will to do it all over again. And it happened again, again, again and again, to date.

We understand the #PorMaisTurbantesNasRuas as an educational project that promotes reflections on self-esteem, valorisation and identity of black culture, and the turbans workshop as a dialogue bridge that presents itself as the “practical part” of all the initial debate.

To talk at schools about the plurality and the black identity of Brazilian people is essential, since this space

Rita Santos Romão and Rouseanny Luiza dos Santos Bomfim are partners, friends and crazy for turbans. Rita is studying Marketing at the Federal University of Sergipe. Rouseanny holds a degree in Sociology from the same university.

brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

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Rouseanny Bomfim (left) and Rita Romão

should help students to understand cultural diversity and thus create bridges for their personal growth. We believe that the school is a social space to exchange values, formation of identities and social integration, and one of the greatest challenges in these environments is the reproduction of inequality ruled on racial discrimination, a cultural invisibly issue in our society by the assimilation of a hegemonic and Eurocentric culture.

So the #PorMaisTurbantesNasRuas aims to bring a small contribution to the intervention of this reality by instigating a new decolonized look on the black culture, approaching the African-Brazilianess to students in public and private schools in Sergipe, North-eastern Brazil.

So thinking about the construction of black identity the schools should promote actions that seek to question and break with ideas that support racist attitudes.

Visits in schools are always striking and unique, whether it is a talk with children or adolescents, each is a great experience for us and we are keen to keep them in the heart. Our workshops are not only in schools, we often receive invitations to events, meetings and activities in communities which, within our available time, we always try to participate.

The #PorMaisTurbantesNasRuas already has many stories to tell, but we still want to do more. From the memories we are carrying for life is a day with three workshops and

lectures that took place in the month of Black Consciousness. Our work in the project is voluntary, we were without any job and almost zero money for transport – one of us had no money to return home. But still we went and gave the first workshop in the morning, eat on the street and went to the second workshop. We gave the lecture and got the money for transport with the sale of the turbans and the school coordination also offered a tasty snack and a ride to the third workshop. We arrive at our homes almost 10pm. Busy day, and yet rewarding.

We always say and like to repeat: we do #PorMaisTurbantesNasRuas with love. A love that is from family

and friends who always help us when we need: Jonatas Damaceno (Jones/ Jon), Rayanni Bomfim (Ray), Wanessa Barreto, Edilma Oliveira, Rosineide Santos, Marilia Teles and Raabe Noa; and also our partners: Amanda Cardoso, Thaty Menezes, Rayanne Rocha and Izabella Portella.

We are #PorMaisTurbantesNasRuas because a lot of people believe in us and love our project as much as they love us, and along with all these people there are almost six thousand people who support us and follow us on social networks.

If you want to know more contact us on our fanpage (facebook.com/pormaisturbantesnasruas). We are also a small shop of turbans, we would love to talk to you.

CONECTANDO is a project developed by Brasil Observer aiming to enhance experiences of ‘glocal’ communication. With universities and social movements, our goal is to bring local content for a global audience. To participate, write to contato@brasilobserver.co.uk

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brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

British summer with Brazilian sounds

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From a Brazilian perspective, the British summer is not something that truly deserves to be called summer. After all, the summer here is equivalent to Brazilian winter on some occasions. But there is another truth: when the freezing winds of winter start to dissipate and spring arrives, Brazilians in the UK feel like God is sending a message, “you have overcame your test, now enjoy yourself ”.

OK. This was just a bad joke. But bear in mind that the British spring-summer season will be more Brazilian than ever! Unfortunately not because of the weather, but thanks to great artists from Brazil heading to the UK to fill our hearts with good music and all that warmness feeling.

Everything started last month, when Céu, Banda Black Rio and Criolo made great concerts in London, bringing together Brazilian and British audiences to enjoy themselves in unique tropical-mood environments. On 4 May, just one day before this edition went to print, the legends Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil had put the Barbican to its knees praising for that incredible reunion of two of the most admirable Brazilian artists of all time. So pay attention: here you find the greatest list of Brazilian concerts coming to the UK (that we know so far, because British summer, as you know, can be almost as unpredictable as Brazilian punctuality).

By the way, Ana Carolina and Seu Jorge’s concert at the Barbican Hall on 23 July was already sold out before this edition went to print.

O RAPPA, POWER CHORDS OF RAP-ROCK After the enormous success of last year’s show in the English capital, Brazilian band O Rappa is coming back to London. The band will return to play more songs of their latest album Nunca Tem Fim. The show will also feature classic hits that have defined their 20 years as a band, like: “Me Deixa”, “Pescador de Ilusões”, “Mar de Gente”, “Boa Noite Xangô”, and others. The band will also play four unreleased tracks of the group’s last DVD filmed live in 2015, in Recife in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil.

When: 13 August Where: Electric Brixton (Town Hall Parade, London SW2 1RJ) Entrance: £25 plus booking fee Info: www.electricbrixton.uk.com

KAROL CONKA, THE HIP HOP QUEEN Get ready for a slice of Brazilian Bass in East London with the Queen of Brazilian Hip Hop. Originally from Curitiba, Karoline dos Santos de Oliveira, aka Karol Conka, is fast becoming one of the most distinctive voices of the modern Brazilian hip hop scene. Karol gained national recognition with a nomination at the 2011 Brazilian MTV Awards as well as performing internationally with Brazil’s hip hop legend, Marcelo D2. She went on to release her debut album Batuk Freak on Mr Bongo.

In 2014, she said in an interview with the Brasil Observer: “My ideology is to encourage people to smile. Be what you want to be. Tell yourself and others that ‘I am who I am and you must accept me so’”.

When: 19 May Where: Wringer + Mangle (London Fields, E8 3SD) Entrance: £5 Early Bird, £8 2nd Release, £10 Final Release Info: www.movimientos.org.uk

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brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

OS MUTANTES, PSYCHEDELIC ROCK

ELIANE ELIAS, THE PURE BRAZILIAN JAZZ PIANIST

Those who have never heard the music of Os Mutantes undoubtedly have tried their influence. Sound collages and their tendency for cultural irony are now a prevalent aesthetic in modern music. The unique sound of Os Mutantes was forged in a time of political and social turmoil, the Brazilian dictatorship (1964-1985). Two teenagers, Arnaldo Batista and Rita Lee Jones, joined Arnaldo’s brother, Sergio Dias, and formed what would become Os Mutantes. Soon the band, along with other musicians, writers and artists, was participating in discussions that would eventually evolve into a defining Brazilian cultural movement, the Tropicalia.

Leading the band is the singer, composer and guitarist Sergio Dias (photo), the only remnant of the original formation. He said to Brasil Observer last year, before a concert at Village Underground: “Each Os Mutantes show is unpredictable.

The main thing is the audience, so it’s up to them. The songs are so strong that we can start the show with ‘Minha Menina’ and end with ‘Dia 36’ that would give greater standing.”

Os Mutantes concert this month is part of the Frontera Festival.

Brazilian pianist Eliane Elias plays at Ronnie Scott’s with the band Steps Ahead, featuring the great musicians Mike Mainieri (vibraphone), Donny McCaslin (saxophone), Marc Johnson (bass) and Billy Kilson (drums).

The band’s debut double live album, entitled Smokin’ In The Pit was first released in 1978 by Nippon Columbia in Japan and went “Gold” in three months. In 1980, there was a change in the line up when legendary drummer, Peter Erskine left Weather Report and replaced Steve Gadd at the drums. A year later, Steps, renamed Steps Ahead, recorded its first release on a major label, Electra Records, and introduced the amazing twenty-one year old Brazilian pianist Eliane Elias.

What followed in the next 35 years is legendary, as the group’s evolution under Mainieri’s leadership has maintained a high level of musicianship and innovation.

Eliane Elias told Brasil Observer last year when launching a new album, Made in Brasil: “Many of my albums include Brazilian music. Our music is part of my DNA. No matter where I am, my roots remain.”

When: 28 May Where: Studio338 (North Greenwich Station, SE10 0PF) Entrance: £35 Info: www.fronterafestival.com

When: 4-6 July Where: Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club (47 Frith Street, London W1D 4HT) Entrance: £35-55 Info: www.ronniescotts.co.uk

BIXIGA 70, INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC TO DANCE Following their sold out UK debut at Rich Mix in January, Bixiga 70 make a swift return to London with a ground-breaking fusion of African and South American rhythms and sounds. The São Paulo based ten-piece combo is one of the guiding voices of Brazil’s contemporary instrumental music scene. Taking Fela Kuti’s Afrika 70 band as a launch pad both in name and spirit, Bixiga 70 is a breathtaking rhythmic storm where inspired solos, harmony and dynamics, beats and improvisation all mesh together.

Keyboardist and guitarist Mauricio Fleury defined their music to the Brasil Observer in December 2015: “Brazilian instrumental music to dance”.

When: 23 June Where: Scala (275 Pentonville Rd, London N1 9NL) Entrance: £15 advance Info: www.scala.co.uk

ROBERTA SÁ, A BEAUTIFUL VOICE OF SAMBA Brazilian chanteuse Roberta Sá hails from Rio de Janeiro with her beautiful samba voice. Her debut album Braseiro featured Ney Matogrosso and MPB4.

2007′s follow up album Que Belo Estranho Dia Pra Se Ter Alegria won two Latin Grammy’s for Best Album and Best New Artist. In 2010, she joined the Trio Madeira Brasil (Marcello Gonçalves, Zé Paulo Becker and Ronaldo’s Mandolin) and recorded Quando o Canto é Reza, homage to the Bahian composer Roque Ferreira. In late 2011, Roberta Sá surpassed the mark of 200,000 records sold.

Roberta won the award for Best MPB singer in Brazilian Music Award for her album Segunda Pele. 2015′s Delírio album by Roberta Sá features Chico Buarque, Martinho da Vila and Antonio Zambujo. It’s definitely a concert no to be missed.

When: 26 June Where: Under the Bridge (Fulham Road, London SW6 1HS) Entrance: £25 Info: www.underthebridge.co.uk

MARTINHO DA VILA, AN OLD-SCHOOL ‘SAMBISTA’

HERMETO PASCOAL, HALLUCINATORY CREATIVITY Composer, bandleader, multi-instrumentalist and improviser Hermeto Pascoal is a towering figure in Brazilian music. For this concert, he performs with his all-star British ensemble conducted by Jovino Santos Neto in celebration of his 80th birthday year. With an enormous musical imagination, Pascoal has no sense of musical barriers. His genre-hopping performances see him embrace orchestral music, Latin jazz, Brazilian music, rock and free improvisation – often within the same piece. And he changes instruments just as much, jumping between keyboard, accordion and saxophone. But his eccentric musicianship doesn’t limit him to conventional instruments – previous performances have seen him make music out of everything from a kettle, pints of beer and even a live pig.

When: 9 July Where: Barbican Hall (Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS) Entrance: £15-35 plus booking fee Info: www.barbican.org.uk

DOM LA NENA, A DELICATE INTENSITY

Brazil’s samba revivalist and his full band of authentic samba musicians performs music from a career spanning 50 years, covering traditional samba and contemporary pop fusions. Responsible for some of Brazil’s best loved samba, Martinho da Vila’s music embodies the spirit of the country, moving from off-beat chilled out rhythms to rousing carnival soundtracks, embracing sounds from a melting pot of cultures. Taking his name from the Vila Isabel samba school, which he is instrumental in maintaining, da Vila is an advocate for afro-Brazilian music and history, doing humanitarian work and political activism in Brazil and Africa.

Brazilian singer-songwriter Dom La Nena has broken international ground with her exciting multi-lingual new album Soyo, released in the UK in 2015. At just 25, Dom has proved herself a versatile musician with the ethereal melodies centred on folk rhythms with melancholic undertones, while dipping into indie rock and Latin dance forms. The album sees Dom singing in four languages: Portuguese, Spanish, French and English.

She told the Brasil Observer last year: “In comparison to the first album, Soyo is much more festive. I had a very strong desire to work the rhythm, the feeling of the songs. It’s a more assertive album”.

Her next concert in the UK is part of Womed Festival (28-31 July).

When: 28 June Where: Barbican Hall (Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS) Entrance: £25-45 plus booking fee Info: www.barbican.org.uk

When: To be confirmed Where: Womad Festival, Charlton Park Entrance: £175 weekend ticket Info: www.womad.co.uk

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brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

TIPS

THEATRE

PHOTOGRAPHY

Gaël Le Cornec presents ‘The Other’

Wembley to Soweto to Brazil

French-Brazilian actress, writer and director based in London, Gaël Le Cornec, Argus Angel award winner with ‘Frida Kahlo Viva La Vida!’ returns with a new show based on real life stories of refugees in immigration removal centres.

Meet young Mana from the war-torn Red-Yellow planet. Can she survive a dangerous journey to the beautiful Blue planet? Join her in an upside-down, coming-of-age, darkly-comic, fairy-tale adventure-thriller, full of poetry, shadow creatures and pumpkin-headed soldiers.

In 2014 Wembley to Soweto worked with young people from the favelas of Sao Paulo to document the effect of the FIFA World Cup on their community. Two former trainee photographers, one from the South Africa 2010 course and one from the London 2012 course, became mentors.

In 2016, the charity returned to Brazil to work with another group of young people who, this time, came from the favelas of Rio. Ahead of the Olympic Games and for one week the young learners were taught how to photograph at The Street Child Games – an event for which children from across the world were brought to Rio for a week-long event involving Olympic-themed sports, a festival of arts and a congress for street children’s rights. Joining them was a former student from Sao Paulo.

This exhibition celebrates the work of the young photographers from both of these courses and whets people’s appetite for the return to the Turano favela to work with a new group of learners at the 2016 Olympic Games.

When: 21, 22, 28, 29 May Where: The Marlborough Theatre (4 Princes Street, Brighton BN2 1RD) Entrance: £10/£8.5 Info: www.marlboroughtheatre.org.uk Divulgation

LITERATURE A view of García Márquez and Vargas Llosa

When: 6-13 May Where: Emabassy of Brazil (14-16 Cockspur Street, London SW1Y 5BL) Entrance: Free Info: info.london@itamaraty.gov.br

‘The Last Hunters’, by Domenico Pugliesi

Gerald Martin delivers the inaugural Canning House – Instituto Cervantes Cultural Address, focusing on two of Latin America’s most renowned literary figures, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa through the unique perspective of Martin, their biographer. Both García Márquez and Vargas Llosa were major figures in the “Latin American Boom” of the 1960s and 70s; García Márquez’ notable works are One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, and Vargas Llosa’s include Conversation in the Cathedral and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter.

Gerald Martin is Professor Emeritus of Modern Languages in the University of Pittsburgh. He is a literary critic and historian. His favourite activities are reading, writing and travelling and he has visited all the countries of Latin America.

He has lived in Mexico, Bolivia and Colombia.

‘The Last Hunters’ sensitively documents the life of the indigenous Awá-Guajá, the first nomadic tribe to be found living in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. A cultural, humanitarian and environmental project, Domenico Pugliese’s visual record functions as an important contemporary archive.

The goal of the photographic project, which began in 2008, is to bring to light the day-to-day life and culture of the Amazon’s last surviving hunter-gatherer tribe. Having been taken in by the community, to live amongst them, Pugliese has had the unique opportunity to capture their nomadic way of life – from navigating through the jungle and putting up temporary settlements to the integral role that each tribe member plays in the community. His work enlightens us on the fragility of the Awá’s continued existence and underscores the urgency of action against the illegal logging and farming that threaten the rainforest and its inhabitants.

Domenico Pugliese is an Italian photojournalist born in 1967 and currently based in London, whose images have been featured in British broadsheet media and published extensively within the international press.

When: 26 May Where: Canning House (14/15 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8PS) Entrance: Free Info: www.canninghouse.org

When: 20 May-14 June Where: Emabassy of Brazil (14-16 Cockspur Street, London SW1Y 5BL) Entrance: Free Info: info.london@itamaraty.gov.br

brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

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brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

Columnists Reproduction

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Franko Figueiredo is artistic director and associate producer of StoneCrabs Theatre Company

FRANKO FIGUEIREDO

Blind by choice Like in José Saramago’s Blindness, what I see in Brazil is that the things that made us human are gone

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“The difficult thing isn’t living with other people, it’s understanding them,” writes José Saramago in his novel Blindness, which tells the story of a mysterious plague that makes nearly all the population of an unidentified city go blind and the consequences that this epidemic bears on their lives.

Spreading fast, this collective blindness starts to fright the authorities: a large group of blind people and infected ones are placed in quarantine. Living conditions get worse, as the isolated population grows bigger. Little by little, we see the disintegration of whole society.

Excrement covers street pavements; dogs eat human corpses; the blind die in shops and supermarkets after failed attempts to find food. Even the saints in the churches are blinded. The world is a bleak picture; life has no value.

But what is the blindness? What does it stand for? What is it nature? What exactly is it we should see? What does Saramago (a writer who lived through dictatorship and revolution) fear we cannot see?

As I read this I was taken back to my home country where the media and those in power are succeeding in blinding many of the country’s population. They’ve manufactured the easy “us against them” divide.

Brazil is a young democracy learning to let go of militarism. To be a true democracy, citizens and leaders need to take action to create a harmonious society, based on equality and respect.

There is no religion, no philosophy that will grant harmony if we chose to act disrespectfully. No equality will be achieved if we decide to take and not to give. The citizens of a democracy need to work hard to uphold ethical values; only then, the leaders can be a reflection of the country’s principles.

Few weeks ago I was listening to Brazilian songs from the 70s and 80s and if I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought that those artists were singing about the current issues. Brazil has only come out of a dictatorship on paper; in reality, militarism is still there, ingrained in the daily actions of its people, making them

blind: blind towards the others, blind towards our true selves. The blindness was always there but not seen before because we do not care. We surrendered to fear, greed, contempt, selfishness and our love for power, possessions and money. We don’t understand the meaning of words like compassion anymore.

I am a child of the dictatorship, I was born in 1967 in Brazil and I came to the UK at the end of the military regime.

I wasn’t planning to stay in the UK. However, when I arrived here, I realised that the British were more tolerant, respectful and many strived for equality.

As a young gay man in the UK, I was not fully embraced, I was an immigrant after all. Nevertheless, my personal choices were respected. I came to see that, whilst living in Brazil, I had been under the constant censorship of a very intolerant society, a society that did not respect my individuality, my humanity. Unfortunately, the attitude of many Brazilians remains the same: the filthy mouths, the name-calling, the segregation, and the elitism. And you

don’t have to go to the streets, you see it blatantly displayed in the behaviour of politicians in Congress. There has been some progress, but many of us are still in blindness.

Like in Blindness, what I see in Brazil is that the things that made us human are gone. Shame and modesty are gone.

Government is useless. Morals seem obsolete. Ethics are non-existent. Empathy is gone. Whatever happened to charity? What about kindness?

There is no cynicism and there are no conclusions in Blindness, just a compassionate nod to things as they are.

This is Saramago’s great wisdom. In the last pages of the book, as the blindness finally subsides, the doctor’s wife, whose eyes have borne all the burden of witnessing what the others were spared, seems to find an answer: “Why did we become blind, I don’t know, perhaps one day we’ll find out. Do you want me to tell you what I think, yes, do; I don’t think we did go blind, I think we are blind. Blind but seeing, blind people who can see, but do not see.”

brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

Divulgation

AQUILES REIS

Ivan Lins for collection Remastered, the albums Modo Livre and Chama Acesa bring a vision of the past, a historical update Those who are familiar with Ivan Lins, his fans or his colleagues, know that he is the creator of melodies and harmonies of the finest quality and treated as a genius by important names in international music. Sarah Vaughan, Quincy Jones and Ella Fitzgerald, among others, for example, recorded his compositions.

Musicians and fans, here and there, see Ivan as someone who deals with music masterfully. A great person, one of the most celebrated contemporary composers.

Since the beginning of his career, in the mid-1960s, Ivan enchanted the audiences in music festivals. That was when Elis Regina recorded “Madalena”, Ivan’s composition with Ronaldo Monteiro de Souza. The song soon became a big hit, which led to others: “Somos Todos Iguais Essa Noite”, “Começar de Novo”, “Dinorah, Dinorah”, “Bandeira do Divino”, “Bilhete”, “Desesperar, Jamais”, “Cartomante”, “Aos Nossos Filhos”, “Lembra de mim”, “Depende de nós”, “Novo Tempo” and many others. Most of the time Ivan creates accompanied by partners, from the most faithful, Vitor Martins, to others, like Ronaldo Monteiro, Aldir Blanc, Paulo César Pinheiro, Celso Viáfora and Abel Silva.

In 1991, Ivan founded with Vitor Martins the label Velas. Being a fully national and independent label, Velas marked time in Brazilian discography to record important works and launch new artists like Guinga, Chico Cesar and Lenine.

In 2015, Ivan celebrated 50 years of career, 40 years of partnership with g

Vitor Martins and 70 years old. And what a life! What career! What partnership! Thanks God! And to liven up the party even more, the label Kuarup remastered and re-released two of his most celebrated works. Thus, we have Modo Livre (1974), the fourth album of his career, which has Arthur Verocai arrangements and begins with “Abre Alas”, his first collaboration with Vitor Martins, and Chama Acesa (1975), his fifth album, with arrangements from Ivan himself and Modo Livre, his band at the time.

Great emphasis on the competence of the musicians who play in Modo Livre, such as Wagner Tiso, Robertinho Silva, Laércio de Freitas and Sidney Mattos, and in Chama Acesa – Gilson Peranzzetta, João Cortês, Ricardo Ribeiro and Fred Barbosa.

The repertoire of the two albums is impressive. Ivan and his partners created from subtle criticism to the dictatorship to passionate love songs. Produced by Raimundo Bittencourt, the albums are a vision of the past, a historical update. Listening to them, one has the impression that a veil is being pulled, baring the soul of the authors – what brings longing for hard times when some lyrics denounced abuses of a time that there is no return.

Altogether there are 24 songs on two CDs, totalling exactly 72 minutes and 33 seconds of pure delight. I swear, if I could, I would give MPB (Brazilian Popular Music) lovers the right to listen to a thousand times and fall in love again with the ancient and great music of Ivan Lins.

Aquiles Reis is a musician, vocalist of the iconic Brazilian band MPB4

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brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

LONDON BY

Beyond the meridian

Heloisa Righetto writes on the beauties of Greenwich

Heloisa Righetto has lived in London (in Greenwich!) since 2008. She is the author of a London travel guide for Brazilians (Guia de Londres Para Iniciantes e Iniciados), which she published independently on her blogs www.aprendizdeviajante.com www.helorighetto.com The guide is available for delivery in Brazil and all over the world. It’s ideal for first time visitors as well as for those who have been in London before. More information here: bit.ly/guia-londres.

(Instagram/Twitter: @helorighetto).

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You may have never heard of Greenwich, but you are certainly acquainted with the Greenwich Meridian. The imaginary line that divides the globe in east and west got the name from the neighbourhood where it starts, but Greenwich is one of the most interesting areas of the city, and has dozens of attractions that go way beyond than stepping one foot in the east and one in the west.

I ended up living in Greenwich by destiny. I needed a place that I could easily reach from the Docklands area, and Greenwich was one of the options. A well-connected neighbourhood with great transport links – DLR, train, pier and buses – and a lively town centre full of shops, cafes and restaurants, as well as quiet streets that make you think you live in a typical British village. And of course, the cherry on the cake: the park, that locals use as their backyards, and tourists that come all the way from London also get to enjoy.

A perfect day in Greenwich starts with a boat trip along the Thames.

Take the Thames Clipper from the Embankment pier in the heart of London. The trip to Greenwich takes around 45 minutes, as the boat makes a few stops along the way and there is also a speed limit. The highlight of the trip is passing underneath Tower Bridge, which offers a unique opportunity to photograph this London icon in a completely new angle.

From the boat you will spot one of Greenwich’s most recent tourist attractions, the Cutty Sark, a sail ship that was used to transport tea and woll

Royal Naval College

all over the world and became the fastest one in its time, but lost space to steam boats afterwards. Today, Cutty Sark stands permanently in Greenwich and works as a museum, where visitors can find more about the boat itself (a lot of its original structure was preserved) as well as history of tea and tea transportation. It’s a great place to visit from families and also offers great views of Canary Wharf (also, the café serves a delicious afternoon tea!).

A stone’s throw from Cutty Sark you will find Greenwich Market, a food and artisan indoors market that was recently revamped and it’s now even better. The market opens every day, but the best days, of course, are the weekends, when all shops and stalls are open. It’s the perfect place to buy an authentic souvenir from a local maker. And also, a great place to have lunch. You can travel the culinary world, there’s something from all over the globe. On a sunny day, grab your food and take it to the park or the green area at the Old Royal Naval College (a few steps away) for an authentic Londoner experience: a picnic!

Don’t leave the Old Royal Naval College without visiting the Painted Hall, which is exactly what the name says: a huge room covered in afresco paintings, all created by Sir James Thornhill between 1708 and 1727. I think that the Painted Hall is to Greenwich what the Sistine Chapel is to the Vatican. Once you visit it, you will agree. Entrance to the Painted Hall is free to the public, but you may consider leaving a small donation, as the paintings need urgent repair.

If everyone helps, this masterpiece can live on and be appreciated by generations to come.

The Old Royal Naval College is also home to the University of Greenwich, and the music course takes place in one of the buildings near to the Painted Hall. So, if you are lucky, you might hear the classes and rehearsals. Students might even be doing an opera piece!

The last stop of the day is Greenwich Park, one of London’s eight Royal Parks. It’s there that you will find the National Maritime Museum and the Observatory, from where you will have a great view of the city’s skyline. It’s also where the Greenwich Meridian starts.

When you walk into the park, follow the crowds uphill, and make the most of this beautiful green area locals love so much. And, in case you stay till night falls, you will be able to see the Meridian line for real. A green laser is projected from the Observatory into the night sky, crossing the city and officially dividing the world in two halves. This is one of London’s best-kept secrets, as many Londoners don’t take the time to visit Greenwich.

You can’t leave Greenwich without going to one of the charming pubs around the neighbourhood. My suggestion: Cutty Sark Tavern, which sits by the river and is a 10-minute walk from the town centre (and most tourists never go there!). Walk along the Thames passing in front of the Old Royal Naval College and Greenwich Power Station. Get you pint of Meantime (a local beer) and wrap up the day outdoors, like Londoners love!

brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

Felipe Xavier

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Felipe Xavier

Felipe Xavier

View from the Observatory

Cutty Sark

Greenwich Park

Greenwich Market

Garry Knight

Painted Hall

M. Cheung

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brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

BR TRIP Personal archive

Exploring Vidigal Shaun Alexander’s latest Brazil adventures saw him scale the heights of Rio’s most up-and-coming favela

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You can find Shaun Alexander at www.goneshaun.com

brasilobserver.co.uk | May 2016

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You know those favela tours that take busloads of weird, binocular-wielding tourists around Rio’s favelas? I’ve always been clear that they should be avoided. I agree with critics who say that partaking in what amounts to going on a human-safari is disrespectful to those who live in these communities.

Nevertheless, I’ve always been fascinated with favelas. I wanted to get to know them, meet the smiling people who live in them, taste their food and see their views. On a recent trip to Rio, I had an unlikely chance.

I was in the Olympic city to show my parents around, but was stuck to find somewhere good to eat. I posted on Twitter for help. I got a reply from a gringo friend: “Go to Vidigal Favela and look for Bar Lacubaco! It’s totally safe, cheap and the food is great,” he assured.

I had my doubts. Despite my curiosity with favelas, I was still somewhat afraid to go into one.

Not necessarily for my own safety as I’m more than streetwise in Brazil, but my parents stood out as tourists from a mile away. They agreed to go.

First problem: getting there. 5 or 6 taxis refused our fare, citing danger. Really, I thought. Really? Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea after all. The 7th driver accepted our fare, but what about the things the other reluctance taxi drivers said. Is it really that dangerous, I asked the driver. “Well, it’s a favela, isn’t it?” he replied. “Things happen, but also, some taxi drivers don’t like it because the streets are bet narrow for them to navigate.”

If that’s the real reason, I felt better about our expedition.

Bar Lacubaco was about half way up Vidigal’s main avenue. We got out the taxi, paid our fare and took a few minutes to look around. It was strange, because I’d often passed by the entrance of the favela on the shore side road wondering what it was like inside. Immediately, I had the feeling we’d left Rio and entered into another city entirely. It was buzzing: bars, shops of every description, a bank and a supermarket. Basically, everything a community needs to survive. The streets were full of people walking up and down the steep hill. There were kids going to school,

workman building things and fixing overhead wires, and hundreds of motorbike-taxis zooming up and down. The views were spectacular but the ocean was blocked from where we stood.

The whole favela was beaming with bright and beautiful colours of street artists, which clearly thrive in Vidigal. I’ve never seen such large scale, beautiful street art anywhere.

Bar Lacubaco is a small but colourful restaurant, the walls painted brightly, with loads of pictures of positive reviews it has received from many of Brazil’s major news outlets. We all decided to eat the chef ’s special for the day: picanha with broccoli rice, beans and fries.

This is traditional Brazilian food. Food of the people. It was amazing. Simple, filling (good portions) and tasty. What’s more, it was by far the cheapest meal we’d had during our Rio stay.

I can’t recommend the place highly enough.

One tip though: If you’re coming for lunch, arrive early. After we arrived, the place packed out quickly, both with locals and tourists. It’s clearly popular and deservedly so.

We spent the afternoon on the nearby Barra beach, but something about Vidigal was bugging us all: we hadn’t seen enough. We decided to go back at sunset, but this time to the top. We learned about a bar/nightclub at the very top of the favela called Bar da Laje. The drive there was an incredible experience, climbing 20 minutes to the heights of the favela through some really interesting places. All those bars and shops at the bottom became more rustic the higher we climbed. To be honest, if you lived in Vidigal you wouldn’t particularly need to leave ever.

Bar da Laje was something of a gringo trap; a hip club at the top of the favela where celebrities hang out. The views were absolutely spectacular.

Looking over to the left is Ipanema beach, directly in front is the full view of the Atlantic Ocean.

Behind is mountains and rainforest. It was sensational. We drank a few cocktails, admired the view and talked to some locals outside the bar. Kids were playing football, while older men watched football at bars. Police officers patrolled, talking to residents as they walked through, always smiling.

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We got talking to a local driver who agreed to take us back down the hill in his car. It was dark by then and we didn’t fancy the walk, which I estimate would take about 45 minutes or more. It’s a big place! The guy asked us if we wanted a little tour.

We looked at each other, nervously agreed and set off through the middle of the favela by foot. What followed next was an amazing, intimate tour if the favela by someone who has lived there his whole life.

His passion for his community shined through his eyes as he told us about his community with pure pride. He explained everything about the place. He took us into his house to show us some the amazing view from his rooftop, introduced us to his awesome neighbours (some of which were also gringos) and family, and showed us some of his favourite bars.

We talked about taxi drivers refusing to take us into the favela. The man’s reply was that much of Brazil’s middle-class, including taxi drivers, are prejudice about favelas and those who live there. Indeed, the majority of people who visit favelas are gringos because Brazilians simply don’t like the idea. But, he added, that was slowly changing.

What impressed me most was his story about pacification. The police/government pacification of favelas has been widely criticised and rightly so, but not here, the man told us. The police came to Vidigal in a respectful way, working with the community to make it safer for everyone. Now, he said, anyone can walk through the favela day or night and it’s 100% secure. Before pacification, you couldn’t even drive through the favela without authorization from drug traffickers. Today, Vidigal is a thriving and properly policed, safe favela.

It’s a strong, tight-nit community where people look out for each other and where people are happy to live. In some senses it’s a victim of its own success, because as interest peaked around the World Cup, rumours that David Beckham purchased a house and countless gringos buying properties and businesses, there has been rapid gentrification. But, our driver said, you can’t put a price on the state of Vidigal today. If there’s a model of how pacification should have worked with real community ownership, this is the place to build a citywide model for the rest of Rio.

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