OXYGEN N. 23 – Brazil. A challenge right across the field

23 06.2014

oxygen | 23 — 06.2014

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editorial board Enrico Alleva (president) Giulio Ballio Roberto Cingolani Derrick De Kerckhove Niles Eldredge Paola Girdinio Patrizia Grieco Helga Nowotny Telmo Pievani Francesco Profumo Carlo Rizzuto Francesco Starace Robert Stavins Umberto Veronesi

Oxygen is online oxygen.enel.com

editor in chief Gianluca Comin editorial director Vittorio Bo

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publishing coordination Pino Buongiorno Luca Di Nardo Paolo Iammatteo Stefano Milano Anastasia Milazzo Dina Zanieri managing editor Cecilia Toso editing Cristina Gallotti editorial team Simone Arcagni Elisa Barberis Silvia Ceriani Davide Coero Borga Andrea De Benedetti Luis De Carvalho Emanuela Donetti Paolo Ferrari Michele Fossi João Gonçalves Daniela Mecenate Raffaele Oriani Donato Speroni Erwin van Tuijl Jan van der Borg Alessandra Viola Maria Chiara Voci

translations Laura Culver Francesca Mormandi Alessandra Recchiuti Joan Rundo

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summary

10 ˜ editorial

Brazil A challenge right across the field

The strength of Brazil

by Francesco Starace

12 ˜ scenarios And yet it moves!

The giant is back in motion

by George Vidor

It is on everybody’s lips and in everybody’s minds: Brazil has been the star country in the past few months. Venue for the 2014 World Cup, it is in the sights of half the world, and not only for reasons connected with soccer. After having been envied for its economic development over the past few years – whilst the crisis hung over the West –, today its explosion is experiencing a moment of adjustment, generating concern, hypotheses, and expectations everywhere, in particular because it coincides with two events of global importance: the World Cup and the Olympics.

Oxygen tells the story of the present of this country with its huge contrasts, a place of immense wealth possibly at risk, which exports everything and has to import a great deal, which is growing and stopping, which is celebrating and protesting. It is a nation of which everyone has a strong image, but which few really know well. The country of excesses and great passions, like that of world soccer which has returned to Brazil after 64 years.

With its huge territory, wealth, variety of resources and an unequalled population density, Brazil has an enormous potential. However, having to cope with delicate balances and fight against its limits, in recent years it has alternated moments of growth and adjustment. But the prospects look brighter than cloudier.

18 ˜ passepartout A country at work

20 ˜ scenarios The future of Brazil has already been written

by Roberto Da Rin Policies against hunger, in favor of consumption and investments: since Lula, things have begun to take a different turn, creating a new middle-class. To a great extent, the current President Dilma Rousseff has followed in the footsteps of her predecessor. This way, Brazil has begin to breathe again, leaving behind it the difficulties of the past.

× A challenge right across the field ×

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26 ˜ contexts The Doctor and the President A Story of political friendship

by Marco Mathieu Football is not only a sport. In Brasil matches are played on the pitch that go far beyond the goals scored.

Like the ones when the captain was Sócrates, the soccer champion in the 1970s and a great friend of Lula’s, with whom he shared a passion for the Corinthians and who, like the ex President, for many Brazilians pointed the way towards social redemption.

30 ˜ contexts

52 ˜ interview with

Pernambuco: the new locomotive of the North-East

by Chico Santos

The Italy that is in Brazil

by Daniela Mecenate

raffaele trombetta

The North-East of Brazil, one of the poorest parts of the country, has an exception within its borders, the state of Pernambuco. Thanks to a strategy to attract foreign investments and the management of Eduardo Campos, it has been able to revive its economy.

A journey through the green and gold country, on days of international excitement and a few months before the appointment at the polling stations. Our guide will be the Italian Ambassador, who tells the story of a country with a thousand faces and many contrasts.

34 ˜ in-depth

56 ˜ in-depth

A flag amongst the stars

by Stefano Milano

Room for new markets

by Angela Zoppo

36 ˜ interview with

The figures on energy in Latin America are today far greater than those on Europe. The wealth of resources, the growing demand for energy and the boom of a middle class asking for services make this market very interesting for the sector’s operators.

natalia viana

Occupy Brazil

by Raffaele Oriani Assigned during a period of economic growth, the World Cup and the Olympics are being held in a country which is today experiencing a slowdown in its development. This is why the huge investments to support them are no longer looked on very favorably by a population in difficulty.

42 ˜ data visualization The cost of affluence

44 ˜ in-depth The snap of energy

by Rocco Cotroneo A country that has everything and in large amounts, natural resources to produce energy, land for biofuels and large reserves of water. With economic development though, consumption has also increased and Brazil is still forced to import fuel. This problem is linked to many factors, including a certain amount of climatic bad luck, which seems to be plaguing the country exactly when the eyes of the whole world are on it.

50 ˜ passepartout Energy infrastructures

60 ˜ interview with

maurício tolmasquim

Alternative visions

by João Gonçalves Third in the world for its hydroelectric potential, Brazil has an important history in the production of renewable energies, thanks in particular to the water assets in the Amazon region. The country today is looking further ahead: the sun and wind, timber and sugar cane will contribute to diversifying sources.

64 ˜ contexts Wind at 20 knots

by Ben Backwell In the past decade, the wind has been at the centre of the thoughts of many Brazilian policy-makers and entrepreneurs who, at times with a certain reticence, have been able to understand their value and lay the structural and legislative foundations to take greatest advantage of wind energy. The article takes stock of how things have gone and will go, to understand which way the wind will be blowing in the next ten years.

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68 ˜ in-depth

88 ˜ opinions

Stories of entrepreneurial ferment

by Elisa Barberis

Creative matrix

by Domenico De Masi

74 ˜ interview with

ermínia maricato

The marvelous city: a legacy at risk

by Maria Chiara Voci As for all major events, public opinion is divided over the World Cup and the Olympics, especially as regards the management of funds.

Town-planners, architects and professors discuss them and some of them their concern that the double event may leave a legacy that is neither important nor positive for the city and the economy.

78 ˜ enel foundation special Rio de Janeiro: the social dimension of energy

by Luis de Carvalho, Jan van der Borg and Erwin van Tuijl The large Brazilian cities, the land of waste and irregularity in energy consumption, represent a problem for the distribution of energy: they, and Rio in particular, are the starting point for the study by Euricur and Enel Foundation, which analyses the social behavior related to energy consumption to define new models addressing citizens and businesses.

82 ˜ scenarios Curitiba A fast and smart tortoise

by Alessandra Viola A smart city for more than forty years, the success of Curitiba is based on concepts, solutions and theories, those of the former mayor Jaime Lerner, which have made this city a magnificent subject of reflection for town-planners all over the world. The ‘smart’ city is one where life, work, leisure and nature are not separate but contaminate one another – like the tortoise that spends its whole life under the same shell.

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Native roots, contamination of Portuguese and African cultures, and immigration from all over the world. The country at the centre of international economic and media attention has forged its strength out of its diversity

92 ˜ data visualization A land of wealth

94 ˜ contexts A test run for innovation

by Cesar Baima Not only an exotic tourist destination or a reserve of great resources: its recent economic stability has allowed Brazil to invest in research to emerge from the tail-end positions it occupied in the past on a global scale. A challenge that is already showing its fruits.

98 ˜ data visualization A country of records

100 ˜ opinions 2014: the year of the World Cup redemption

by Darwin Pastorin In 1950, the dream of a nation was almost a certainty: to win the World Cup, but the match, which should have been a formality, did not go as expected. This year, the World Cup is back in Brazil and the desire for redemption is great.

106 ˜ in-depth The science in soccer

by Davide Coero Borga An alien would describe it as a primitive form of religiousness, but for those who grew up with soccer, it is quite simply extraordinary. Science also comes into play to explain the impossible trajectories by Roberto Carlos, Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Andrea Pirlo.

110 ˜ future tech Social-World Cup

by Simone Arcagni

112 ˜ portfolio

130 ˜ interview with

andréa del fuego

Dizzying literature

by Cecilia Toso

118 ˜ interview with

Brazilian literature which finds readers, publishers and passionate audiences at book fairs, owes in part its renaissance to the regained national well-being. There is no shortage of supply, with new titles and experimentations, but also with traditions such as that of renewed magic realism.

Brasilia, a capital of contrasts

by Michele Fossi

134 ˜ contexts

Street Art Urban Narrations

rainer hehl

A very young city born at the drawing table at the end of the 1950s, Brasilia is the architectural meeting place between the democratic vocation of the project by Lúcio Costa and the social inequalities of the nation, brought together in the favelas and slums which grew up spontaneously around the city.

122 ˜ in-depth The tree of wealth

by Donato Speroni The awareness that preserving natural wealth can drive the economy often arrives late: this is the case of the Amazon region, in the past over-exploited and subjected to environmental stress. But in the past few years has recorded an inversion of the trend.

124 ˜ contexts Tropicália, the permanent revolution

by Paolo Ferrari Its seeds had been sown in the 1930s, but it was in the two hot years of 1967 and 1968 that Tropicália exploded in Brazilian popular music thanks to the young musicians Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso. Capable of going beyond the traditional dichotomies, it had an enormous impact and influence.

128 ˜ oxygen without borders Half Africa and half New World

by Emanuela Donetti

Behind the Carnival

by Alberto Riva Once a popular and democratic celebration which joyfully paraded through the streets and glittered in the Sambadrome, the Brazilian carnival is very different today. The brightly colored costumes, the glitter and feathers are a spectacle of light and color that is more for the tourists than for locals, and which moves money from half around the world.

138 ˜ in-depth Inhotim: nature saved by art

by Maria Cristina Didero Between the rainforest and the Brazilian savannah, in an area with one of the highest biodiversities on the planet, there stands a centre for contemporary art which is also a botanical park and home to over 800 works of art and almost 5000 varieties of plants. It offers a real treasure for the eyes.

142 ˜ in-depth Agribusiness: a market with roots in the forest

by Silvia Ceriani Behaving well in the field of energy, privileging clean resources, is not enough for Brazil to be considered out of danger at environmental level. The good example that the country has been giving for a few years has to find an ally in less invasive agricultural and food policies that aim to preserve resources.

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Industry, agriculture, art, design, engineering, fashion, food, science, filmmaking, sport.

There’s no field where Italy hasn’t been outstanding.

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LET’S LOOK FORWARD Let’s build, write, invent, produce. Let’s do something new we can be proud of now. Not through nostalgia for our past glories. But through all the energy we now have inside us. Together with the energy of a leading, integrated player in electricity and gas. A group that started in Italy and today provides power to 60 million customers in Europe and Latin America.

Together with

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contributors

Contributors to this number 01

02 04

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03 05

07 09

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01˜ Ben

02˜ Cesar

03˜ Rocco

04˜ Roberto

05˜ Andréa

Backwell

Baima

Cotroneo

Da Rin

Del Fuego

Chief Editor of Recharge, the renewable energy industry magazine and portal, he has worked as a foreign correspondent in Latin America and is the author of Wind = Power, the Struggle for a New Global Industry, soon to be published.

He is a journalist, and the editor of O Globo where he writes about science, health, and the environment. He has worked for the newspaper Jornal do Brasil, the magazine Veja and Globo TV, dealing with different areas.

After the degree in International Affairs in New York, since 1987 he has been working for the newspaper Corriere della Sera and since 1998, has been living in Rio de Janeiro, covering all of Latin America for the newspaper.

A journalist for the newspaper Sole 24 Ore, he writes about economics and international politics. For many years, he lived in Buenos Aires, where he was a correspondent from Latin America. He holds a degree in Economics.

She is a Brazilian writer who has experimented with various forms of storytelling, from children’s books to short stories and blogging. In 2011, she won the Jose Saramago Prize for her debut novel Os Malaquías, published in many countries.

06˜ Domenico

07˜ Maria Cristina

08˜ Paolo

09˜ Rainer

10˜ Ermínia

De Masi

Didero

Ferrari

Hehl

Maricato

An Italian sociologist, he is Professor Emeritus of Sociology of Work at the University of Rome. He founded S3-Studium, an organizational consulting company and is also the author of several books.

An independent curator and freelance journalist, she has written for magazines such as Domus, Vogue, Officiel Hommes and has worked for over ten years with the Vitra Design Museum. In 2011, she was appointed Director of the Bisazza Foundation.

A music critic, he writes for La Stampa, Torino Sette, Rumore, and Il Manifesto. He has been the author and presenter of various programs for Radio Rai 2, including Planet Rock, Stereo Night, Sound and Ultrasound, and Boogie Nights.

An architect and urban planner, he directed the Master of Urban Design program at ETH in Zurich and is a guest professor at the TU in Berlin. A curator of exhibitions, he has also worked in the Paraisópolis favela.

Professor of architecture in São Paulo, she was the author of the proposals for the urban area in Lula’s candidacy, the executive secretary of the Ministry of the cities, and a consultant for UN-Habitat, the program for human settlements.

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15

16

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11˜ Marco

12˜ Darwin

13˜ Alberto

14˜ Chico

15˜ Francesco

Mathieu

Pastorin

Riva

Santos

Starace

A journalist for la Repubblica, he interviewed Lula last March, and as a special correspondent for GQ in 2004, he interviewed Sócrates, about whom he wrote the documentary Sócrates, one of us, directed by Mimmo Calopresti.

Born in Brazil to parents from Verona, he has directed sports newspapers and TV channels, including Tele+, La7Sport, and Sky Sports. He currently directs Quartarete TV and is editorial director of the Juventus Channel.

He lived in Brazil for many years, where he worked for the news agency TMNews. He is the author of Follow the parrots to the end and the novel Sete (Thirst). He writes for the weekly supplement Il Venerdì and has a blog, L’Osservatore Carioca.

He graduated in journalism from the Fluminense Federal University, specializing in energy and macroeconomics. He covered the privatization of 1990 for Folha de São Paulo, and he has done important reporting for Valor Econômico.

Enel Chief Executive Officer and General Manager since May 2014, he had been the CEO of Enel Green Power. With a degree in Nuclear Engineering from Milan Polytechnic, he held positions in the companies of the GE and the ABB Groups, before joining Enel.

16˜ Maurício

17˜ Raffaele

18˜ Natalia

19˜ George

20˜ Angela

Tolmasquim

Trombetta

Viana

Vidor

Zoppo

President of Energy Research Enterprise, he specialized at the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro and holds a degree in Economics of social development from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

Italian Ambassador to Brazil since 2013, he began his diplomatic career in 1985 and since then has held various positions of prestige. In 2011, he was became a Commander of the Order of Merit of the Republic.

Brazilian independent journalist, she has worked with the BBC, The Guardian, The Independent and founded the agency Pública, which deals with politics, environment, and human rights and the preparations for the World Cup.

An economics graduate, he devoted himself to journalism, mostly addressing financial issues.

A commentator for the TV channel GloboNews and a columnist for O Globo, where he writes a weekly column, he is also a university professor.

Journalist, she holds a degree in Law. After gaining experience at RAI and in economic publications, she is currently department editor of MF-Milano Finanza and writes about energy, defense and transport.

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editorial

The strength of Brazil

by Francesco Starace Enel Chief Executive Officier and General Manager

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he World Cup is just one more reason to keep the spotlight on Brazil. Economy, environment, energy, and regional and global policy: the ‘B factor’ of the new geo-strategic dynamics, now that even the acronym BRICS seems to belong to the recent past, is essential for anyone who takes on the global market as the horizon of their activities. This special issue is dedicated to highlighting the interest and potential of a country in which Enel sees an opportunity also to engage in ‘profound’ strategic growth, intended on the one hand to last – for the weight and dimensions of the factors involved – and on the other, to influence the mode, time, and quality of its presence in South America.

Soccer and Brazil have always been synonymous. However, the truth is that this World Cup is not only an event to win at all costs, but the showcase for presenting itself to the world. In fact, along with the 2016 Olympics, it takes on a strong geopolitical

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significance for Brazil, which has strongly affirmed its identity and its role at the international level.

Brazil wants to prove that its model of ‘development and inclusion’, despite recent criticality, is still, the leverage for boosting growth and the key to becoming a major international player. The policies implemented over the last 20 years by Presidents Cardoso, Lula, and Rousseff have made it the seventh world power in terms of GDP, while at the same time ensuring high rates of growth, attracting foreign investment, bringing unemployment to below 6% and raising about 40 million people out of poverty. These results have been obtained in a context of political and legal-regulatory stability that has fostered a climate of confidence expanding both inside and outside the country.

However, despite the Rousseff government’s efforts to continue along this path, since 2011, the Brazilian economy has been

facing a slowdown compared to previous years, with an estimated growth for 2014 of around 1.8%.

The causes are due not so much to the economic and financial crisis, which has had a marginal effect on Brazil, as to a number of structural problems that ultimately triggered the protests last summer, the main demonstration of the ‘crisis of expectations’ of the Brazilian middle class, as Moisés Naím said. This is a segment of the population that has grown significantly in recent years and now accounts for 53% of the total population, amounting to more than 100 million citizens, who enjoy greater well-being due to the recent growth, and today are asking not only for jobs, but also for new civil and social rights, transparency, efficient services, and to fight against corruption.

These demonstrations, however, are also a sign of the vitality and the irreversibility of the socio-economic process underway in the country. All this is a challenge, but at the same time an incredible opportunity which, if faced with the systemic approach adopted in recent decades, will allow Brazil to return to being the country of ‘development and inclusion’. A sign to that effect is the Piano Brazil Maior (Bigger Brazil Plan) whose motto ‘Innovate to compete, compete to grow’ effectively renders the sense of the course oriented toward growth, innovation, and development that the Brazilian government intends to follow.

The conditions for this to happen are all there: wealth of natural resources, energy, and untapped potential make Brazil the third country in the world as to foreign investments, behind only the United States and China. This is also an opportunity for Enel, considering that, according to estimates by the World Energy Outlook in 2013, the demand for electricity will continue to increase at an average of 4% per year, amounting to a necessity of around 4.3 Gigawatts (GW) of new generation capacity. The growing demand for energy will make it necessary to maintain high levels of investment in order to develop new generation capacity, to expand its presence in the distribution, and improve the quality of electricity infrastructures; also taking into consideration certain climate trends (especially related to rainfall in strategic areas) that are beginning to be present in the planning by the authorities and large public companies in the country.

On the side of new generation capacity, renewables are likely to play an important role because they are a sustainable response to the increase in energy consumption determined by the rapid economic and population growth. Today, Brazil is already one of the ‘greenest’ countries in the world, with over 70% of its energy produced from hydroelectric sources and this source, the exploitation of which has currently met with obstacles due to the lack of infrastructures in the territory – transmission lines in particular – and in recent years it has added the contribution of others, such as solar energy, but above all, wind energy, which fully competes with the traditional sources in Brazil.

Investments in the sector have also been fostered by the presence of a reliable regulatory framework, characterized by an efficient mechanism of competitive public tenders that for the first time, unequivocally revealed to the world the extreme competitiveness of renewable energy sources. This is an opportunity that Enel, with Enel Green Power, has been able to seize by winning contracts for the supply of energy produced through the development of 510 Megawatts (MW) of new capacity, including wind, hydro, and solar power that will be added to the 266 MW of renewable capacity already installed.

This is just a beginning for our Group. Renewable energy sources, energy efficiency, and innovation are the drivers of development in a country that wants to grow in a sustainable manner. For this reason, our challenge is to bring not only investments to Brazil, but also the know-how, skills, and technologies that make us world leaders, as in the case of smart grids.

Búzios, the first smart city in Latin America, constitutes the first example of this commitment to combine economic growth with a full compliance with the new environmental and social sensitivity. This is a commitment that Enel also promotes through its policies of Corporate Social Responsibility, such as the Ecoelce project and the Barefoot College, the training plan for technical-entrepreneurial women which is part of Enabling Electricity, the program that Enel has undertaken under the auspices of the United Nations that aims to guarantee the right to energy even for those who live in the poorest areas.

Brazil wants to prove that its model of ‘development and inclusion’, despite recent criticality, is still, the leverage for boosting growth and the key to becoming a major international player

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scenarios

And yet it moves!

The giant is back in motion

by George Vidor Economics journalist

With its huge territory, wealth, variety of resources and an unequalled population density, Brazil has an enormous potential. However, having to cope with delicate balances and fight against its limits, in recent years it has alternated moments of growth and adjustment. What is certain is that the giant has not fallen asleep and that the prospects look brighter than cloudier.

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Sailors arriving in Rio de Janeiro had the impression, from a distance, of seeing the silhouette of a giant lying down, due to the profile of the mountains near the coast. This impression of a sleeping giant has been a symbol of the Brazilian economy for decades, or even centuries.

Brazil itself is almost a continent (8.5 million square miles), one of the five largest countries in the world as to territory and one of the most populous, with about 200 million people, and a coastline that measures 13.5 thousand kilometers.

The Brazilian economy was a sleeping giant because it depended on only a few products: initially, pernambuco wood, then sugar, gold, cotton, rubber, and coffee. In the early Seventies, coffee sales still accounted for more than 40% of Brazilian exports.

Most of its economic activity has remained concentrated in a stretch extending only as far as 200 kilometers from the coast. The expansion into the interior, in fact, had had a stimulus only in the middle of the last century, aided by the transfer of the federal capital from Rio (which had maintained that status for over two hundred years) to Brasilia, a city built from scratch in the middle of a vast cerrado, the vast tropical savanna ecoregion of Brazil in the Planalto Central or Brazilian highlands.

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Without transport and energy, the Brazilian economy was hesitant, feeding the unconventionality of our popular imagination: “Brazil has not developed because they do not let it do so …”, as if the rest of the world were conspiring against us, frightened by the potential of the country. This archaic nationalist sentiment still stands in some currents of opinion with sufficient political influence to curb (regardless of the source of capital) private investments that would able to arouse the sleeping giant.

Meanwhile, in Galileo’s words, “and yet it moves!” Even with all these obstacles, the country has moved on and, in the balance of positive and negative points, the economy of Brazil is more promising than nebulous, despite the fact that low growth in recent years has caused bitterness and pessimism among the entrepreneurial classes.

The problems that need to be addressed are not insolvable and could be overcome in a relatively short period.

Brazil has gone through a very rapid demographic transition. Over the next two decades, the country, in absolute terms, will have the largest number of people who will be simultaneously producing, consuming, saving, and investing. Instead of a pyramid, Brazil’s demographic profile is more like a vase, with a base that is shrink-

‘PLAYING’ CAPOEIRA A national Brazilian sport since 1974, Capoeira has its roots in the rituals of African slaves brought to the country by the Portuguese. Often mistaken for a dance due to the fluidity of the movements and the presence of music, it is actually a martial art with different styles according to the rhythm being played.

and yet it moves! the giant is back in motion

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ing gradually. Never again will Brazil have as many young people between the ages of 20 and 30 as there were in 2010. Henceforth, this age group will shrink, both in relative terms and in absolute numbers.

This is an opportunity to invest in professional qualifications, in labor productivity and in the various stages of education. In the Nineties, the challenge was to universalize education, a goal that was achieved almost entirely; now we must ensure that children and young people learn more. We can say that, in the case of public education, the changes were perceived from the time when children entered school a year earlier (and the so-called pre-schooling also increased). In various regions, about 60% of the children reached their fourth year of compulsory education as functionally illiterate, without sufficient mastery of the Portuguese language.

Today, by entering a year earlier, at the end of the second year in states such as Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, SĂŁo Paulo, and also in the less developed regions (CearĂĄ e PiauĂ­), more than 70% of children are proficient in the language.

From a rural and illiterate country until the mid-twentieth century, Brazilian

Brazil has gone through a very rapid demographic transition. Over the next two decades, the country will have the largest number of people who will all be simultaneously producing, consuming, saving, and investing

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society has become an urban one. More than 84% of Brazilians live in cities. Half of the population is concentrated in just 100 cities, although Brazil has more than 5,000 municipalities. The increased size of the metropolitan regions, which has caused so many problems, has luckily been checked: this leaves the space needed for the big cities to examine the challenge of public safety and overcome the deficiencies in transport infrastructures, housing, health, basic sanitation, etc ...

However, if the economy does not expand, or rather, does not create profits, Brazil will not be able to support many of the achievements, particularly social ones, starting from its monetary stabilization program and the launch of the real in 1994.

The Brazilian economy has structural deficiencies, including a domestic savings rate that is inadequate for financing the investments the country needs to increase its productive capacity in order to be competitive. The public sector is the one that contributes the least to such a savings rate. Instead, the nominal deficit has been significantly reduced, remaining so long enough to be able to arouse envy in the creators of the Maastricht Treaty, which created the euro. However, given the direct responsibility that the public sector has with regard to infrastructures, such difficulty in saving prevents investments from being carried out in their respective segment at the pace that the country needs. Even with an economy that is growing very little, the pentup demand for infrastructures is such that it would be possible to proceed in this area even in the case in which all the others would be halted.

Although it took quite a while to wake up, the government has finally realized that it is much better to share these investments through the concessions of public services, whether they be transport, energy, telecommunications, or sanitation. Brazil has a number of investments in progress or about to start in these sectors, because it has begun to attract private investors (institutional, financial, corporate) for concessions or collaborations. And there is still a lot of space that can be occupied by such a model, which will be able 016

Even with all these obstacles, the country has moved on and, in the balance of positive and negative points, the economy of Brazil is more promising than nebulous

and yet it moves! the giant is back in motion

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to progress more quickly if the regulatory limits are improved in a realistic way.

In addition to infrastructures, the Brazilian economy has other levers capable of “catapulting it toward success”, to use a current expression very much in vogue among South American neighbors. Most of them involve the exploitation of the pre-salt layer in the seabed off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Espírito Santo. The reserves of oil and gas discovered in the pre-salt stratum will triple the Brazilian reserves: the wells already in production have an unparalleled productivity (one well alone is capable of producing the equivalent of 36,000 barrels of oil per day). This is a huge challenge, because the deposits are between 100 and 300 kilometers from the coast. The sea depth is approximately two thousand meters and the reserves are located five meters below the sea floor. It was estimated that the recently auctioned off Libra deposit may hold the equivalent of 12 billion barrels of oil. In comparison, the current reserves of Petrobras amount to 16 billion barrels.

The second lever is the ‘pre-salt’ layers in hinterland, thus food. The Central West region of Brazil has unbeatable production costs, but conquering more markets depends on an improvement of the infrastructures. Nevertheless, Brazil is now the second largest exporter of soybeans and the first for beef, just to give an example.

The third lever is mining.

Iron is the most abundant mineral found on the face of the earth, but the one found in Brazil is of a quality that the steel industry dreams of.

Brazil is a country with no enemies. Argentina maintains its principal weapon of defense, a submarine, at the Naval Arsenal in Rio de Janeiro. For many years, the Brazilian naval pilots were trained there, and likewise the best troops of the Argentinean army did their training in the Brazilian forest. Chile is buying submarines that will be built in Itaguaí in Rio de Janeiro. It is an important issue for those who look to Brazil with a long-term vision, without only worrying about the cyclical problems.

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A country at work

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infographic by Centimetri

After rising in the world rankings of GDP, and settling in sixth position in 2011 (even overtaking a country such as Britain), the Brazilian economy has come to a standstill in recent years, but without abandoning its path of development. Brazil knows what to focus on: 67.5% of its GDP is generated by the service sector, which provides employment – considering only trade, transport, and financial services – to more than fifteen million people. The foreign and domestic companies which hold the economic power of the country are not numerous, and the first five of Brazilian property are responsible alone for over two hundred billion dollars in revenue. A similar figure is generated by the export market: this is where agriculture plays an important role with products such as meat (beef and poultry), sugar cane, soybeans, and fruit juices. And then it holds the card of the World Cup, which will bring more than half a million tourists, resulting in an expected income of more twenty billion euro.

And in two years, there will be the appointment with the Olympics Games, which confirms the impression that Brazil has no intention of stopping.

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Brazil is one of the leaders in the global aerospace industry. Embraer, an aircraft manufacturer, is third in the world for its workforce, with nearly 17,000 employees. It is now planning the country‘s first geostationary satellite.

The sector will grow by 9.5% this year.

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scenarios

The future of Brazil has already been written

by Roberto Da Rin Journalist, correspondent from South America

Policies against hunger, in favor of consumption and investments: since Lula, things have begun to take a different turn, creating a new middleclass. To a great extent, the current President Dilma Rousseff has followed in the footsteps of her predecessor. This way, Brazil has begin to breathe again, leaving behind it the difficulties of the past and it will be a stronger country that turns out to vote in October’s presidential elections.

Starting afresh by consumption and reviving the economy as a whole. Consumption and investments, actually. This was the choice of the economic policy of Brazil under Luiz Inácio da Silva, known as Lula, and then Dilma Rousseff, the current President, who is standing for re-election next October.

And to think that on the eve of his first victory in the presidential elections 12 years ago, Lula was feared by the markets, hated by entrepreneurs, and opposed by the middle class. A few years later, as leader of the country, his approval rating soared to around 80%: an absolute record. According to political analysts and economists, there is an explanation: economic growth coupled with active policies of solidarity for the poor.

The Brazilian economy has racked up many points in its favor in recent years, including that of having been able to withstand the financial crisis that has hit the world’s largest economies. There has been some backlash, of course, but the country has held up, and how!

It is difficult to predict what will happen in 020

the next few years; recently, on the occasion of the World Federation of Investors Corporations, a team of analysts from HSBC Brazil said that “Brazil has never been better equipped to deal with a crisis”. Just over twenty years ago, the country was in the throes of problems of inflation, balance of payments, and the excessive weight of the state in the economy. Fernando Henrique Cardoso initiated a reorganization, and then Lula was able to focus on the domestic demand, and the growth of consumption and investments. And lastly, Rousseff has followed the economic policies of Lula, although with slight variations.

Brazil is a huge country, 27 times larger than Italy, inhabited by 190 million people, with enormous areas of poverty: it is worth looking at its extraordinary development and the factors that have allowed this.

Consumption and investments, in fact. The Brazilian middle class is one of the most studied in the world, due to its strength and its potential. According to the Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV), 52% of households

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now have incomes of between $600 and $2,500. Eight percentage points higher than in 2002. According to Marcelo Blacks, an economist at FGV, “The data clearly shows a historic change in Brazilian society that, paradoxically, has overturned a stereotype: Brazil is no longer a polarized society with two extreme classes, rich and poor. It is now a middle class country.”

There are two factors that explain the phenomenon of this new entry into the international rating: the first is education which, thanks to the improvement in the last 15 years, has enabled many workers to access productive segments.

The second factor is the reduction of the black economy: many employees have entered the official labor market.

Consumption growth has clearly been favored by an increase in the average wages and a lower unemployment rate. Lastly, investments: Lula was able to identify strategic sectors and focus on those, obviously in synergy with Brazilian entrepreneurs.

Not all the problems have been solved – there are still large areas of poverty and a welfare system that needs to be improved; in fact, the protests in recent months have been calling for a more equitable health care system, a school system that is more widespread, and better pensions.

The Zero Hunger plan One of the cornerstones of Lula’s success was the program aimed at indigent citizens. Launched in 2003

by Lula, ten years later Zero Hunger has achieved very encouranging results.

With an initial budget of 500 million dollars, it has been able to combat the scourge of hunger with real money transfers and the distribution of food. The program is complementary to compulsory school attendance. “In this way” – says Josué de Castro, Brazilian sociologist and author of the book Geography of hunger – “the school facilities are supplied directly, thus reducing the risk of the dispersion of resources.”

Zero Hunger has eradicated the extreme poverty of 46 million Brazilians and Lula’s ministers who coordinated it have repeatedly pointed out that it is not an idea of philanthropy and welfare programs, but a policy that laid the groundwork for strengthening 022

the rights of tens of millions of Brazilians.

The fight against hunger has also included the development of family farming and investments have increased from one to four million dollars. Another Latin American country that is fighting hunger is Venezuela, although with less certain results. Misión Barrio Adentro is the main anti-poverty program: it provides the basis for ensuring acceptable standards of food safety and health in the contexts of greater social deprivation. The results have been encouraging in some favelas, and dubious in others.

Argentina has also launched a government program against hunger. This is a paradox for a country of 40 million inhabitants capable of producing food for 400 million, a fact that certainly does not ennoble the majority of Argentine politicians of the last 50 years.

the future of brazil has already been written |

The 2014 elections and the revival of Brazilian investments abroad Five months before the presidential elections of October 2014, Brazil is distractedly observing the election campaign; the World Soccer Championships are at the center of attention. Dilma Rousseff has lost some luster: the events of recent months have tarnished her high popularity ratings. The other candidate is Marina Silva, a former environment minister of the Lula government, with a very Brazilian history: from a poor family, she was illiterate until the age of 16 and then, with the help of some missionaries, she graduated in history and become an icon of redemption.

Rousseff and Silva are both candidates of a ‘lulist matrix’, so it is very unlikely that the economic model would be changed. It is not to be ruled out that, for reasons related to political marketing, Lula might run again, and in the case of victory, he would govern Brazil for a third term of office. Political analysts, sociologists, and economists almost unanimously believe that the program of the new government will maintain the same direction: to push domestic consumption and investments in the context of macro-economic stability that has never been questioned.

In addition, Brazil will continue to become internationalized with a clear design.

An important confirmation comes from

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Dilma Rousseff and Marina Silva are both candidates of a ‘lulist matrix’. It is not to be ruled out that if Lula were to re-candidate himself, in the case of victory, he would govern Brazil for a third mandate 023

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There are two factors that explain the phenomenon of this new entry into the international rating: education, that has enabled many workers to access productive segments, and the reduction of the black economy 024

the future of brazil has already been written |

BNDES, the National Bank for Economic and Social Development, which will put up 40 billion dollars to fund the development and growth of the famous ‘national champions’: industrial and commercial groups on which to focus. The idea is to consolidate teams that can be competitive in the world and therefore be able to make acquisitions in the international market. How? By favoring the mergers of national companies that can form strong groups able to compete primarily within the other countries of Latin America, and then in Europe and the United States.

The sectors that the South American Giant is focusing on are: food, petroleum, telecommunications, and ethanol. At a time when private credit has diminished, the public financial sector has compensated with the huge availability of resources. There have been no protests in this regard, not even from the purest liberals. What is convincing in the eyes of everyone is that Lula set in motion a project for the country with targeted investments and a well-conceived design.

Nothing has been improvised, neither indiscriminate funding nor easy credit.

For example, let’s take a look at the food sector. Brazil has significantly reduced imports from Argentina and soon the country will become a great exporter of commodities. Just think that, in Argentina alone, Brazil has invested more than ten billion dollars in the

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last five years, mainly in the food industry.

In short: become stronger at home to invest abroad: and the Banco do Brasil, the largest bank in Latin America, is interested in acquisitions in the United States.

Another sector in major expansion is the oil industry. The discovery of huge offshore fields has led Petrobras to seek international partners with which to carry out joint ventures for extraction. Here too, according to the BNDES logic, the idea is to strengthen the oil sector and thus Petrobras, in order to make it competitive in markets around the world. Confirmation has also come from another city, New York. “That Brazilian phenomenon,” – explains Marcello Hallake, a lawyer with the New York firm Thompson & Knight LLP – “has been seen for some time: making acquisitions to create national champions. And the BNDES is a catalyst of transactions that have an added value. It is worthwhile to observe what is happening in the ethanol industry.”

A glimpse has been provided a report by Banco Itaú, a major Brazilian bank: the sector has suffered from the recent crisis (resulting from the international financial crisis), and is now being relaunched with great effort. The restructuring of the debt of enterprises active in the production of ethanol is due precisely to the strategy of strengthening and revitalization. And the creator of this operation is, once again, the BNDES.

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contexts

The Doctor and the President A story of political friendship

by Marco Mathieu Journalist

Football is not only a sport. In a country that has experienced dictatorship and has not forgotten poverty yet, matches are played on the pitch that go far beyond the goals scored. Like the ones when the captain was Sócrates, the soccer champion in the 1970s and a great friend of Lula’s, with whom he shared a passion for the Corinthians and who, like the ex President, for many Brazilians pointed the way towards social redemption.

May 2004, Ribeirão Preto “I hate soccer.” That was the first thing that a tall and large man with swollen cheeks, short hair, and a week-old graying beard said to me when I met him in a bar in Ribeirão Preto, a four-hour drive from São Paulo. “Let’s meet for the interview at Pinguim, where you can drink the best beer in all of Brazil,” he explained on the phone the night before, after days of pursuit and missed calls. We actually drank many beers that afternoon, in the midst of his statements on doping and match-fixing, life, and politics. “In soccer, those who think with their own head are frightening,” he repeated. “It is the 026

only industry where employees have more power than their master. But rebellion is not permitted.”

Because Magrão, as his friends always called Sócrates (Sócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira) was never banal. A world-class soccer player (Botafogo, Corinthians, Fiorentina, Flamengo, and Santos) from the mid-Seventies to the end of the following decade, a symbol of his country (captain of the Brazilian national team in the World Championships of 1982 and 1986), a medical doctor (‘Doctor’ was his other nickname), an artist, an intellectual, and a political leader.

So much so that there were rumors about his having a position in a government headed by Lula. “We are friends, companheiros, and I have supported him for a long time. I participated in the working group dedicated to the sport. But now there are other priorities, and if I were to accept a position, I would like to truly be able to act. In Brazil, 40% of the population live in poverty: soccer is an opportunity for social redemption, but very few manage to break into it and the others remain poor and uneducated. I would like to change the law and require the sports clubs to make young players study, at least until they graduate.”

Before saying goodbye, there was time for him to make a personal prophecy. That came when I asked him if he ever thought of death. Sócrates replied, accompanying his words with a laugh that contrasted with his melancholy gaze. “I don’t know when it will happen, but I hope to die on the day when my team, the Corinthians, once again win the Brazilian championship.”

That period of civil mobilization, on and off the pitch, left its mark: the 1989 elections would be the first to directly elect a President of Brazil, 29 years later

March 2014, São Paulo “Look out, the former President loves soccer and when he speaks about it, he does so as a fan.”

These words of Luiz Dulci, a former minister and director of the Lula Institute, were meant to be a last warning before the start of the meeting with that charismatic man who is able to emanate histrionic sympathy: 68 years old, the former President of Brazil (two terms, 2003-2011), founder of the PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores), and a trade unionist. Luiz Inácio da Silva, for everyone simply Lula, lights up when the questions finally roll towards the ball. “In 1982, at a meeting of the party leadership, some friends proposed a boycott of the games of our national team involved in the World Cup in Spain, in protest against the military dictatorship, arguing that football is the opium of the people.” He stops, mimics his disbelief, then as now. He adds: “But for me, futebol was and still is a wonderful thing.” Another pause, 027

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then: “I ​​love soccer, I watch the games, and I’ve always been a Corinthians fan.”

And Italy? “I’m a fan of the Milan team: also because it has had and still has important Brazilian players. But I also watch the matches of Rome, and those of dear old Juve, and Inter. And once I was even a fan of Turin’s Toro team: my great friend Casagrande played there.” History from over twenty years ago, when the Brazilian striker, formerly a rebel-symbol of the Corinthians loved by Lula, played wearing the burgundy shirt for two seasons.

April 1984, São Paulo “We demand democracy and freedom for all Brazilians.” The voice on the microphone was that of Sócrates. Before him, a square in the center of São Paulo packed with over a million and a half people, for the biggest demonstration in the history of Brazil. Behind him, on the stage, among others there are Lula and the players of Corinthians, including Casagrande. This is the last rally of the campaign Diretas Já, which calls for the direct popular vote in the upcoming presidential election, and the first possible step towards the democratization of Brazil, hostage of the military dictatorship since 1964.

Sócrates and the Corinthians players have accompanied and supported the Diretas Já campaign from the outset. These are the years of Corinthian’s democracia, their experiment in self-management inside and outside the locker room. “Everything was decided by a vote,” recalled Sócrates, inspirer and leader of the democracia, from the times of the workouts to the purchase of new players.”

This was an experiment that anticipated the impending change in Brazilian society. From soccer to politics. So much so that Sócrates links his own future to the outcome of the vote on the amendment for direct elections: “If it is approved, I’ll stay and play here and I won’t go to Italy.”

The result was negative: no direct elections for now.

Sócrates moved to Fiorentina and the dream of Corinthian democracy seemed to fade. Yet, that period of civil mobilization, on and off the pitch, left its mark: after years of struggle, the 1989 elections would be the first to directly elect a President of Brazil, 29 years later.

Meanwhile, popular consensus grew around Lula’s party, which was to be successful – after repeated defeats – in 2003. And which he also explained thus: “The big news of the PT? There was nothing written in any books about politics or sociology to the effect that it would be possible to create a party that is a mixture. Not a pure party, only for Catholics, only blacks, only whites, or only Marxists: no, we are a mixture of political diversity, because we have learned to live democratically and have respect for diversity.”

68 years old, the former President of Brazil, founder of the PT, and a trade unionist.

Lula lights up when the questions finally roll towards the ball

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the doctor and the president. a story of political friendship |

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December 2011, São Paulo December 4th was a Sunday. And at the Pacaembu stadium in São Paulo, the last game of the season was being played. The decisive one for the title. A derby: Corinthians-Palmeiras. But at dawn, Sócrates had already lost his match with life: his second hospitalization in less than a week, and an intestinal infection that became fatal. The result of excesses and abuses: his love of beer turned into alcoholism that finally killed him. At dawn.

In the afternoon, the news of his death was greeted by a touching and collective farewell from the players, gathered in a semicircle in the center of the field, and the fans standing in the packed stands. Everyone there to say good-bye to him with their arm raised and fist clenched. Just as he celebrated goals and victories. Giving us a big smile as well.

That day the Corinthians went back to being the champions in Brazil, just as Sócrates had hoped.

And that day, Lula dedicated these words to him: “A world class player on the field and a great friend: he was an example of intelligence and political consciousness, as well as an immense soccer talent. His generous contribution to the Corinthians, to futebol and to Brazilian society will never be forgotten.”

In Brazil, soccer is much more than a sport or a national pastime. It represents an opportunity for redemption for whole sectors of the population

May 2014, Rio de Janeiro «Sócrates? He is our democracy” (a Corinthians fan). In Brazil, soccer is much more than a sport or a national pastime. It represents an opportunity for redemption for whole sectors of the population. A genuine reason for hope. And something to dream of. When all seems lost, there is always a game that your team can try to win.

And often the game is not only or not simply the one that is played on the field. As in the case of Sócrates: much more than a soccer player, such as to still be a symbol of rebellion and talent. Inside and outside soccer. One who came to love words and ideals even more than the sport that had given him fame, money, and glory. Thus, Sócrates has become a legend.

For many people, so has Lula, and he explains what he thinks his political legacy is: “During my two terms as President and for the first time in this country, people were treated with respect.

And listened to concerning decisions. I felt accomplished as President when I realized that the most humble people saw me not as a stranger, but as one of them who has made it: through me, they felt important. As they were the ones who were governing the country.”

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Pernambuco: the new locomotive of the North-East

by Chico Santos Journalist

The North-East of Brazil, one of the poorest parts of the country, has an exception within its borders, the state of Pernambuco. Thanks to a strategy to attract foreign investments implemented by the first Lula government and under the management of one of the country’s most promising politicians, Eduardo Campos, it has been able to revive its economy, climbing up the national rankings of the GDP.

The state of Pernambuco is the nineteenth by size of the 27 federal units of Brazil, but it is the seventh most populous. Located in the easternmost part of the Brazilian territory, in the heart of one of the poorest regions of the country, the Northeast, in 2011, (the latest available data) had a GDP of 104,39 billion reals, a number that put it in tenth place among the federal units.

But in dividing this wealth by the number of inhabitants, the GDP per capita amounts to just 11,776.10 reals (about 3,900 euros), and the state falls to nineteenth place. Consistent with this data, according to the last census conducted in 2010, the human development index of 030

Pernambuco, as calculated by the United Nations program for development, was 0.673, a figure that once again relegated the state to the nineteenth place. However, there have been concrete signs of an economic resurgence of the state since it lost the position of economic leader of the Brazilian Northeast in favor of Bahia, about three decades ago; it has already taken the position of the main commercial center of attraction in the region that it occupied during the Sixties, and as of 2005, its GDP growth has been higher than the national average,

Pernambuco obtained the fourth place in the selection made among the 237 regional units of South America with the best strategy for attracting direct foreign investments

with the exception of in 2007. Because of this, the participation of the state in the Brazilian GDP increased from 2.27% in 2004 to 2.52% in 2011: in that year, its growth rate was 4.2%, compared to 2.4 % of Brazil. “We have a strategy,” says the Secretary of the economic development of the state, Márcio Stefanni, remembering the amazing fourth place obtained by Pernambuco in the selection made in ​​ April by “FDI Magazine” (a publication of the renowned “Financial Times” ) among the 237 regional units of South America with the best strategy for attracting direct foreign investments. Pernambuco is only surpassed by the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and

Minas Gerais, located in the richest region of the country. According to Stefanni, this strategy was developed in 2006 during the campaign for Governor of the State of the economist Eduardo Campos, today a pre-candidate for the presidency of the Brazilian Socialist Party. Campos, 48, who was Minister of Science and Technology in the first government of President Lula, left that office in order to run for the position of Governor of his home state, which had already been ruled for three terms by his grandfather, Miguel Arraes. Brazil was then in a period, still in course, of distribution of annuities, which benefited the poorer parts of the population and,

consequently, the northeastern region where almost half of the population lives. According to Stefanni, Campos realized that the country would experience an expansion of consumption and that Pernambuco, in a strategic position for the regional market and for the international market, could ride this wave out of its impasse. The state could already count on a valuable instrument to implement its strategy for the attraction of investments: the industrial complex and port of Suape in the region of the capital Recife, consisting of a port with water up to 20 meters in depth and a surrounding major industrial area. According to official data, since its creation 35 years 031

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ago, and until 2013, Suape has already received about 50 billion real in investments, and Stefanni sees this both as an anchor and as a locomotive. An anchor because in the past seven years it has welcomed 70 companies, including heavy investments like those of the Abreu e Lima oil refinery of the state company Petrobras that should become operational at the end of this year. And a locomotive because, having received two billion real in investments for its modernization in 2007, Suape has the vocation to spread development to the hinterland of the state, home to the neediest populations. A great operation for infrastructures, also somewhat late, is the Transnordestina railway: with its length of 1,728 km, the work, private but with strong support from the Federal Government in 2010, was expected to be inaugurated but it is no longer certain that it will succeed in being operational by 2015. Even with the logistical difficulties that may jeopardize the continuity of this favorable cycle (another recent major work is the new ring road of Recife), the area of Suape continues to receive significant strategic investments.

The sum of the 12 largest investments equals a total investment of 51.6 billion reals, and once completed, it is estimated that more than 16,000 direct jobs will have been created. Fiat has promised to open the first automobile factory in the state at the beginning of 2015. Stefanni confirms that the agreement between the state and the federal government that existed until the launch of Campos’ candidacy has been important for achieving the investments, both those already completed and those in progress, but he notes that, while relying on the same support, other states in the Northeast such as Bahia and Sergipe have not achieved the goals achieved by the state of Pernambuco. According to the Secretary, in parallel with the policy to attract investments that can rely on tax incentives of up to 95% of the fee for the movement of goods and 032

services and the development program of Pernambuco, the decision has also been taken to ensure the training of the workforce needed to sustain this cycle. According to Stefanni, today the state has the largest network of full-time public schools in the country (260) and the total number of state vocational schools amounted to 26 and another 14 are under construction (in 2007, there was only one). The port of Suape, reducing the distances with the United States and Europe and attracting exporting firms, was one of the decisive factors for the current cycle of economic growth of the state of Pernambuco, according to the

economist Tatiane de Menezes. At the same time, she also enumerates the granting of tax incentives, “with the objective of mitigating/ transforming the local disadvantages”, and the general growth of the country; however, she is skeptical with regard to the continuity of this development cycle: she considers that there is a lack of quality connections, roads, and coastal navigation between Pernambuco and the centers of consumption in the Center-South of the country and that a process of professional qualification that will attract companies with high productivity, both in the indus-

pernambuco: the new locomotive of the north-east

trial sector and in the service sector, is not being created. De Menezes also believes that the oil industry and shipbuilding, two spearheads of the current cycle of growth, would lead to an increase in its GDP in the short term, but not sustainable growth, and cites the Camaรงari petrochemical group in the state of Bahia as an example. These are matters that have to be taken into account, just as it cannot be ignored that the state is experiencing an economic effervescence that is unprecedented in the last 40 years, at least. In the first two months of this year, industrial production in Pernambuco grew by 8.3% com-

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pared to the same period in 2013, while industry in Brazil, as a whole, grew by only 1.3%. The relationship is inverted in the unemployment rate: the metropolitan region of Recife had an unemployment rate of 6.8% in March, against an average of 5% in the six main metropolitan regions of the Brazilian capitals, but in March 2006, the situation was much worse: 14.1% in Recife and 10. 4% on average generally.

The industrial complex and port of Suape in the region of the capital Recife, since its creation 35 years ago, has already received about 50 billion reals in investments 033

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in-depth

A flag amongst the stars

by Stefano Milano Journalist

Lozenges, spheres and stars, and above all a positivist motto: order and progress. In its design, the green and gold flag contains the evolution in Brazil of politics and thought, its federal structure and part of its geography, as well as a passion for astronomy and science that is still very much alive today.

The green background and the large yellow diamond in the center are reminiscent of the colors of the imperial flag. However, the royal coat of arms and the signs of a past monarchy no longer appear.

They have been replaced by a turquoise globe, studded with bright stars, and circled by a white band which gives it a three-dimensionality. It is a star map. And the words Ordem e Progresso that stand out on the white band are a manifesto, a motto, an imperative. Order and progress, the principles of the positivism of Auguste Comte: l’Amour pour principe et l’Ordre pour base; le Progrès pour but (Love as a principle and order as the basis; progress as the goal).

You can tell a lot about a nation from its flag. It is a living picture of a people. And, for us at Oxygen, it contains a fascinating history of science.

The green and yellow of the Brazilian flag belonged to the old imperial insignia that glorified the colors of the royal family of Braganza of Pedro I – green for the first emperor of Brazil, whereas yellow represented the House of Habsburg, and thus, his wife, Leopoldina.

The difference between the old flag and that of the republic lies in a blue globe: a map of the stars in the sky over Rio de Janeiro. Not just any sky, but the very one that was over the city of Rio on the morning of November 15th, 1889, the day of the proclamation of the Republic.

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Each of the 27 stars sewn onto the flag stands for the one of states of the Brazilian federation, and of course, the capital of the Federal District.

At the center of the flag there is the constellation of the Southern Cross. The other stars and constellations are: Procyon, Sirius in Canis Major, Canopus, Hydra, Sigma Octantis, Scorpio, and the Southern Triangle. Unique in its kind is the star that represents the capital Brasilia: Polaris Australis, the Southern Hemisphere polar star, whose position near the celestial pole makes it visible from every region of this big country, at every hour of the day.

The celestial sphere is represented as one of the wooden globes from the nineteenth century: seen from above, as if the Earth – from our privileged perspective in the universe – were at the center of it.

Therefore a daytime sky is represented, with the stars inverted. A patch of sky is in a mirror image compared to how we observe it with our own eyes. The single star above the white band with the words Ordem e Progresso is Spica of the Virgo constellation, represents the state of Pará whose territory crosses the equatorial line. Because Brazil is also the land of two hemispheres.

It was Benjamin Constant, a member of the provisional government, who asked Professor Raimundo Teixeira Mendes, also a member of the government, to work on the design of a new flag. Texeira Mendes

asked for help from Dr. Miguel Lemos, and Manuel Pereira Reis, the dean of the faculty of Astronomy. The painter Decio Vilares availed his graphic skills but by then science had left its mark.

Over the years, Brazil has maintained that passion for astronomy. And just this year, Brazilian scientists have been involved in an important discovery: the first asteroid with rings. It is called Chariklo and exactly as in the case of Saturn, it is surrounded by thin,dense rings of dust and other particles. Today it is the smallest object around which similar formations have been found, and only the fifth body in the solar system to show them.

The rings of Saturn are one of the most spectacular views in the sky, easily visible with amateur telescopes. Less obvious rings were also found around the other giant planets (Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune).

But despite careful research, rings around other smaller objects in orbit around the Sun have never been found.

The discovery by the astronomers at the ESO Observatory in La Silla has been confirmed by other observations made from ​​ several sites in South America. The origin of the rings is a mystery, but it could be due to a collision that gave rise to a disk of debris. Meanwhile, the rings were baptized with the names of the two rivers that flow in the extreme north and south of the red soil of Brazil, the Oiapoque and the Chuí.

The sky on a flag, a country among the stars.

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interview

Occupy Brazil interview with Natalia Viana

Director of the Brazilian news agency PĂşblica

by Raffaele Oriani Journalist photographs by Daniel Kfouri / Lente Viva Filmes

Assigned during a period of economic growth, the World Cup and the Olympics are being held in a country which is today experiencing a slowdown in its development. This is why the huge investments to support them are no longer looked on very favorably by a population in difficulty, who for months have been expressing their discontent. A critical view of the choices of the institutions, by someone who has been following the protests in the squares and favelas.

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In 2007, the organization of the 2014 World Cup Soccer Championship was assigned to Brazil: the Amazonian giant was already the first and clearest letter of the BRICS, its economy was growing at 6% per annum, poverty was falling, and the social inclusion programs had made people doubt that the richest 1% of the country could continue to possess as much as 50% of the poor. In 2009, Brazil was also awarded the 2016 Olympic Games: so to Brazil, the crisis that had blocked the world that year, just seemed like a seasonal cold, so much so that in 2010 the Brazilian economy would be back on track, growing a robust 7.5%. The World Cup and the Olympics, which were supposed to be the celebrations of development made​​ in Brazil, have been turning into the targets of discontent, disappointment, and protests. Yes, because in the meantime the Brazilian locomotive has slowed its progression almost to a standstill, and to much of the population, the colossal investments in stadiums and such now seem to be an incomprehensible waste of public resources. Assigned in a boom period, the World Cup and the Olympics are coming to maturity in lean years: in 2013, the pinnacle of discontent and protest was such as to make the Director General of FIFA Jerome Valcke declare that “with less democracy, it would be easier to organize the World Cup”. The atmosphere has definitely changed, and according to a survey by Ipobe a good 38% of the population quite simply wish that the World Championships would be held elsewhere. Yet the Brazilian journalist Natalia Viana could not be less in agreement with Valcke. One of the most respected investigative reporters in the country, Viana was the voice of Brazilian Wikileaks at the time of the sensational publication on the cable

traffic of the U.S. diplomatic network.

Since then, she has founded the platform of online journalism apublica. org, continuing to investigate the exploitation of the Amazon, the management of public money, and the protest movement in recent years. We asked her how Brazil is preparing to host two sporting events able to attract the attention of the whole world: “In reality, the Olympics and World Championships have a very different weight. The real game is being played by the FIFA while the World Cup concerns public opinion”.

Are you saying it is the World Cup that has unleashed dissatisfaction with the conditions of the country?

I think that without the World Championship there would never even have been any protests. There is no need to stress the importance of soccer for Brazilians, and added to this is the fact that, while the Olympics will only concern Rio de Janeiro, the World Cup is played in twelve cities, which means involving the entire country.

What has been missing in the organization? In essence, what are you criticizing the government for?

Ministers and officials are now downplaying the scale of investments, but fairly reliable estimates speak of 30 billion reals (10 billion euro) having been spent on the World Cup alone, of which 8 (2.6) for the stadiums alone. To give you an idea: in a country of 200 million people with 60 million students, a month of games will cost about as much as four and a half months of the entire budget for education at all levels. If one adds to this the widespread corruption and the continued contamination between public investment and private money, it does not seem so strange that frustration prevails.

The protests erupted only when people realized that the World Cup would not have worked as a driving force to solve the old problems of Brazilian society 037

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20 CENTAVOS (20 CENTS) The photographs are from the documentary 20 centavos, a portrait of the events that took place in June 2013 in Brazil, directed by Tiago Tambelli and selected for the festival Tudo è Verdade (Everything is true). The film will be broadcast on national networks to mark the anniversary of the events.

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But Brazil is a country of poor infrastructures, for which it spends only 1.5% of its GDP, compared with 11% in China.

Don’t you think that this could have been an opportunity to modernize the country and make its perpetually congested cities more livable, for example?

No, the protests erupted only when people realized that the World Cup would not have worked as a driving force to solve the old problems of Brazilian society. Many of the projects on urban mobility will remain on paper, others haven’t been carried out ​​in time for the World Cup, and others to improve traffic flow to and from the airports and stadiums: certainly not a priority of our cities.

In the summer of 2013, the world was shocked by the wave of youth rebellion in Brazil. What can we expect in the summer of 2014?

At the moment there are only protests in São Paulo, where once a month students, public workers, and some black bloc instigators take to the streets. But last year, the explosion of protest spread because of the violent behavior of the police in São Paulo.

We will have to see if the error is repeated: the level of training the forces of order are subjected to (something like 150,000 agents and 20,000 private security guards, editor’s note), gives the impression that the government and intelligence agencies are not expecting a peaceful Championship.

While protests in the squares have declined, clashes with the police have continued in the favelas. What do you think of the operation of pacification of the favelas that was begun in 2008?

This is a very complex issue which concerns the area of Rio de Janeiro and involves the central problem of gangs and drug trafficking: I just think that rather than pacification, seeing as the Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora have settled in the 38 favelas, it would be more appropriate to speak of an actual military occupation.

From the economic point of view, what impact will the thousands of fans from around the world who is invading Brazil for the World Cup matches make?

A lot of money is going around, but very little of it will be left for us Brazilians. This is mainly because of the intrusiveness of the FIFA in the management of the soccer business: by law, FIFA’s activities are not subject to paying real taxes and can be managed by their staff in derogation of the Brazilian labor law. Furthermore, there is a large exclusive zone around the twelve World Cup stadiums where fans 040

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are able to purchase only the products of the major sponsors of the FIFA. Obviously this little-known aspect of the organization of the World Cup has been the subject of fierce dispute.

Think of July 14th, the day after the conclusion of the World Cup. Are you able to imagine a positive legacy of this great event?

Of course, the awareness that you can fight for your rights. After the protests for the Confederations Cup last year, when fourteen municipalities were forced to lower fares on local transport; or when the civic movement in Natal, in Rio Grande do Norte, was able to divert the road linking the stadium and airport; or even when the women of Salvador de Bahia stood their ground inside the stadium selling their pancakes that were not sponsored by anyone; we have all understood that a more participatory vision of public affairs is possible.

These years of disappointments, debates, and protests have nevertheless been a turning point for our young democracy.

Assigned in a boom period, the World Cup and the Olympics are coming to maturity in lean years

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data visualization

The cost of affluence edited by Oxygen

6 euros The (expensive) big screen Seeing a movie at the cinema in Brazil now costs on average nearly as much as in the US, where the average cost in the first quarter of 2014 was $7,96, a price that is unsustainable compared to peoples’ salaries

2 euros Coconut water In just five years the price of the popular drink sold on the street has increased from an average of €1 to almost double

3,60 euros

2,54 euros

Hamburger Four years ago it cost about €2 to buy half a kilo of hamburger at the grocery store, but now it costs nearly 4. This is a fact that is not surprising, given that the Economist’s Big Mac Index puts Brazil in the first places in the world rankings of the cost of the famous sandwich

A chicken thigh At the supermarket you now pay €2.54 per kilogram, compared to €1.66, which was the cost in 2010

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This is a time of growth in Brazil, but the population cannot seem to keep up with inflation. Although some groups’ paychecks have increased (such as teachers, whose average salaries in the last five years have passed from €300 to approximately €550), they have to deal with the rising prices of consumer goods: for example, the Brazilian flip-flops par excellence, the famous Havaianas, went from €4-5 to at least €10. Means of transport, entertainment, and drinks have almost become luxury goods for the people. Many increases also depend on the speculation in view of the World Cup, which has particularly affected Rio, where a shrimp omelet on the seafront of Copacabana today can cost up to €30.

16 euros 0,73 euros Mango Even a widespread and popular fruit such as mango costs more: in 2010, one cost even less than 50 cents, but more than 70 cents today

Corcovado Train A ticket for the Corcovado train is no longer accessible to everyone: ten years ago it cost less than €10, but today it is much more expensive

20 euros An exclusive outing Going to the beach in Paraty has become a luxury for Brazilians: the bus ticket from Rio costs twice as much compared to 2004

38 euros A night in Recife Spending a night in a midclass hotel in Recife costs almost €40, while just a few years ago, the price was not even €30

+50% Nightlife in Rio Admission to the famous nightclubs of Copacabana or Ipanema has doubled from an average of €7 in 2004 to €14 today

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The snap of energy

by Rocco Cotroneo Journalist

A country that has everything and in large amounts, natural resources to produce energy, land for biofuels and large reserves of water. With economic development though, consumption has also increased and Brazil is still forced to import fuel. This problem is linked to many factors, including a certain amount of climatic bad luck, which seems to be plaguing the country exactly when the eyes of the whole world are on it.

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There is water, lots of water.

And then there is sun, wind, oil, gas, and sugar cane. Nature has been generous with Brazil, a country as large as a continent that has all the resources to produce energy in abundance, most of them clean and renewable. “God is Brazilian”, they say here, and maybe we do not deserve such generosity. “You already have the Almighty on your side, so you wanted the Pope, too?” quipped Pope Francis after he had just landed in Rio de Janeiro last year. However, this cornucopia of energy sources, inherited from the past, is suffering from a difficult balance and needs continuous work. Since economic growth has been strong in recent years, consumption has grown in every sector, from the doubling of its fleet of cars to industrial production. And Brazil is gasping, but it shouldn’t have to be. It has the largest water resources on the planet, but a city like São Paulo has to enforce rationing; it has huge deposits of oil that have been discovered on the bottom of the ocean, but it still needs to import gasoline; for a long time, entire regions of the country have been living under the threat of a blackout.

And biofuels, another great hope, are playing an important role but less significant than expected a few years ago.

There are those who accuse a lack of vision and planning.

But bad luck has also played its part. In the year that Brazil has the eyes of the world focused upon it for the World Cup, it has rained very little in the southeast of the country, where most of the population lives and which produces three-fourths of the national GDP. The largest reserve of drinking water in São Paulo, home to 20 million people, reached just 8% of its capacity. Things have been a bit better concerning the hydroelectric reservoirs, but there have been months of panic. Meanwhile, entire Amazonian states such as Acre and Rondonia have experienced momentous floods.

It is the water that falls from the sky, and feeds the rivers and 046

Economic growth has been strong in recent years, consumption has grown in every sector, and Brazil is gasping, but it shouldn’t have to be

lakes, which moves the South American giant. 74% of the energy produced in the country comes from hydroelectric plants. The rest is fragmented between gas, petroleum, wind, solar, and nuclear power. Even considering the whole complex of renewable energy, Brazil has the most renewable matrix on the planet. 45% comes from water, ethanol, biomass, wind, and sun, against an average of just 13% in most developed countries. The leap forward is huge when you consider that in 1940, about 80% of the energy in Brazil was generated by burning wood (charcoal).

Even though there is so much bounty, in recent years the idea of a ​​ greater diversification has gained strength. Given the climate, the contribution of solar and wind power for domestic consumption is laughable; domestic photovoltaic systems are expensive and not supported by incentives. Most of the energy in households is consumed by the electric showers, an absurdity in a country with strong sunshine. The last ten-year plan still focuses on hydroelectric energy, with the construction of 71 new power plants, both large and small, by 2017. Four-fifths of the energy generated would come from just fifteen plants planned in the Amazon region.

But this is where things are going more slowly, especially because of ecological problems; for years, the eyes of environmentalism worldwide have been focused on the hydroelectric dam being built in Belo Monte, in Pará. To be made ready by 2015, with its 11.2 Gigawatts of installed capacity, it will be the second largest in the country after that of Itaipu, shared with Paraguay. Belo Monte will cause indigenous territories to be flooded, among other side effects. The project has already been ‘downsized’, revised to lessen its impact, which according to some is an error for a complex that is already subject to strong seasonality, due to the rainfall patterns. Still remaining are the risks associated with the extreme climate

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The largest oil discoveries in the Western world in recent years have occurred in the Brazilian Atlantic, offshore from Rio de Janeiro; this is the manna of the so-called pre-salt layer

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changes in a not too distant future. The other reservoirs being built along the tributaries of the Amazon are also being targeted by the environmentalists, for similar reasons.

It may seem paradoxical, but looking even further into the future, it is likely that Brazil will have to steer towards fossil fuels. Energy Minister Altino Ventura recently stated that “it is likely that after 2030, renewable sources will lose strength, because there will no longer be anywhere to build a large-scale hydropower plant. We will have to resort increasingly to gas, coal, and nuclear power”. The recent drought problems were also alarming: it doesn’t matter that the Amazon is flooded with water, if the ponds to the south are emptied. And in fact, the power plants have started to work at full strength in recent months, to avoid the worst. According to some analysts, the situation at the end of 2014 will be worse than in 2001, when the government was forced to impose a strict rationing plan.

Unfortunately, they say, the government is not taking any measures to reduce consumption; accustomed to its abundance and relatively low cost, Brazilians are great squanderers of water and electricity.

The largest oil discoveries in the Western world in recent years have occurred in the Brazilian Atlantic, offshore from Rio de Janeiro. This is the manna of the so-called pre-salt, because it is extracted under a layer of rock salt on the ocean floor at enormous depths. The wells will be fully operational only in the coming years, after a substantial investment. There are still conflicting opinions regarding the numbers: according to some estimates, the pre-salt operation will lead Brazil into the top eight producing countries in the world, thus able to become a major exporter. Others believe that production costs exceed expectations, and at most, Brazil will achieve self-sufficiency (already announced with great fanfare by former President Lula years ago, but never really

the snap of energy

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reached). In the process of extracting oil, a lot of natural gas will also be obtained, and this is what should fuel a number of small new-generation power plants. The gas will also be directed towards the industrial areas of Rio and São Paulo, reducing the need for imports, now mainly from Bolivia.

If the oil from the ocean fuels the great dream of urban mobility, for the tens of millions of citizens who have had access to their first car, the problems of congestion and pollution in Brazil are very similar to those already known and addressed in the northern hemisphere. The strong contribution of ethanol produced from sugar cane (Brazil holds the world record) has not yet been sufficient to reduce the need for crude oil, as hoped for. Like the rain, the alcohol for engines ultimately depends on mother nature: just one year of poor harvests, or market prices which move in an unexpected way, and Brazil would be forced to revise its oil-ethanol mix in gasoline. In short, nothing is to be taken for granted, even in the country blessed by God to which the whole world looks with envy.

It is the water that falls from the sky, and feeds the rivers and lakes, which moves the South American giant: 74% of the energy produced in the country comes from hydroelectric plants

THE KING IN THE TREES With a name that derives from the indigenous ‘jagwar’, which translates as ‘he who hunts while flying,’ the Jaguar dominates the rainforest: agile in trees and even in water, it hunts over 85 species of animals while covering a wide area from 30 to 500 square kilometers.

049

Pa

passepartout

Infrastructures to create growth Coal

LEGEND:

Dams

ENERGY PRODUCED

15.4

AMAPÁ

infographic by Centimetri

Oil109.0

Venezuela

Natural gas Nuclear

22.9

The GAS PIPILINES and the main power transmission interconnection lines

4.1 Perù

Hydroelectric

Paraguay

de iro

ne

Ja

lo

u Pa

Argentina Uruguay

RIO GRANDE

Hydroelectric Biomass and waste

77.9

Main power stations

367

Wind

29

TOTAL 050

io

o

Geothermal, Solar and other

3.0 0.6

BRASILIA Bolivia

R

Electricity (Import)

36.8

Natal

Sã

Producing affluence with its own resources is an ambitious objective and in Brazil there is no shortage of instruments. Minerals spread across the whole country (iron, tungsten, beryllium, bauxite, copper) make it a rich land, but the resources that are really helping it are the ones that produce energy.

The eighth country in the world by consumption and tenth by production, its favorite sources are water and wind, with wind farms positioned in the northeast in particular and hydroelectric plants throughout the country. In 2011, 531 TWh of electricity were produced, 80% of which was hydro-electric, but the secret to grow and meet the demand lies in differentiating the sources, so that transport, domestic consumption, but above all industry, also use energy produced by geothermal and solar plants, nuclear power, natural gas and, obviously, oil.

Losses of generation and distribution mean, however, that in order to meet demand, Brazil also has to import. Gas pipelines and power transmission interconnection lines create links in particular with Venezuela, Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay, and Peru. The forecasts, however, are optimistic: by 2035, Brazil will have converted from importer to exporter of energy.

22

Natural gas

Oil 12 Biomass 6 3 Coal Solar 2 1 Nuclear

Resources and infrastructures Coal-fired plants

Oil

Nuclear power station

ENERGY CONSUMED

Solar power parks

Wind parks

millions of Tep 8.2 12.7 9.5

CEARÁ

18.0

ALAGOAS

34.4

82.8

Industry

PARAÍBA

59.2

1.9 0.1 12.9 RIO DE JANEIRO

74.1

12.9 0.5 21.2 0.4 9.6 0.1 15.4

TOTAL

Transport

ESPÍRITO

0.8

44.6 16.3

Residential/other

Coal

Non energy uses

Mines

Note: the info-graphic table analyzes Brazil's primary energy, which derives from the direct use of the resources indicated. The production of electricity quantified in the text, instead, is secondary energy, that which is obtained from the processing of part of the primary energy.

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The Italy that is in Brazil interview with Raffaele Trombetta Italian Ambassador to Brazil

by Daniela Mecenate Journalist

A journey through the green and gold country, on days of international excitement and a few months before the appointment at the polling stations. Our guide will be the Italian Ambassador, who tells the story of a country with a thousand faces and many contrasts, with a complicated bureaucracy and at the same time very lively intellectually, written in the DNA of the population to whom it is difficult to stay immune.

Not just the World Cup. “The reasons to fall in love with Brazil are endless,” in the words of the Italian Ambassador Raffaele Trombetta, who explains everything to us starting with soccer, about an area that continues to grow amidst contrasts and hope, progress and setbacks. And despite everything, continues to score. “Here the community of Italian origin is the largest in the world; there are about 30 million Brazilians originating from Italy, more or less 15% of the population. This is also seen in the local customs: in São Paulo, for example, Italian gastronomy is all the rage, with a real passion for pizza!”

But in an area that is 28 times that of 052

Italy, the Italian presence stands out beyond just culinary traditions. “The presence of Italian companies is massive: giants such as Fiat, Pirelli, Enel, Ferrero, and Tim are firmly established on the Brazilian market, and other companies are flocking here, such as Barilla. There are about 850 Italian manufacturing facilities. What attracts them is obvious: an enormous market in which the bracket of average income has grown in recent years, a fiscal policy, which in some states is attentive to foreign investments, but also the great opportunities offered by abundant natural resources from iron to gold, and from gas to oil.

And in this regard, we mustn’t forget that a huge oil deposit was discovered off

the Brazilian coast, in the pre-salt layer, a treasure trove of ‘black gold’ that sooner or later will be a genuine El Dorado.

Meanwhile, to facilitate investments, the government introduced a policy of containing the pricing of natural resources, and electricity in particular: this has been a success, although in the long run this choice could prove unsustainable and may force it to take a step backward. And in a country that is starting to slow down its drive, this could be risky.

After the spikes of the past years, what is the expected growth for the years to come?

Brazil, we now know, is one of the BRICS countries with growth rates in their GDPs that reached almost 8%, but in re-

cent years there has been a slump and the expected growth for 2014 is 2% or little more. The rating agencies have also pointed out these weak growth outlooks, but nobody needs for Standard and Poor’s to see that Brazil is going through a phase of adjustment. About a year ago, a series of demonstrations against the government began in spite of the fact that the level of employment had increased and economic growth had been remarkable: these demonstrations are still continuing during the World Cup: the population has obtained a higher income, but now it wants services. Even President Dilma Rousseff has admitted that the problem is no longer in the home, but rather outside, in the infrastructures.

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This is a perennial problem for this country, which despite economic growth, has therefore not able to adapt in terms of infrastructures.

Indeed, this country is characterized by enormous distances and inaccessible areas, and sometimes moving is so complicated as to endanger the availability of the raw materials themselves.

In 2012, the government implemented a program for infrastructures that have borne some fruits, especially the road and airport networks, but which have not had the desired results.

The enormous size of the challenge partly explains why the country still has a lot of improvements to make in terms of infrastructures and technology. Similar considerations can be made for the political and administrative system: Brazilians know that an institutional reform is needed, but the complexity of the federal system makes it anything but simple.

What attracts Italian businesses is an enormous market in which the bracket of average income has grown, a fiscal policy attentive to foreign investments, and the great opportunities offered by abundant natural resources

Sometimes it seems that the most difficult thing to understand about this country is how it works! Can you give us some “instructions for use”?

That’s true, sometimes it is not easy to extricate yourself ... Brazil is a presidential federal republic divided into 26 federal states plus the Federal District of Brasilia. There will be elections on October 5th, and probably many balances will change, because the vote will affect the figure of the President and the governors of the federal states, as well as the House and the Federal Senate. In short, October 5th is an important appointment.

There are two electoral systems in Brazil, the majority one and the proportional one, and there are a large number of parties; there are currently more than 30, and this is reflected on an executive government with up to 39 ministers. The executive power is stable because the President and his/her government remain in office for four years, but the political framework is fragmented, the result of what has been called the ‘coalition presidentialism’. The consequence is the largescale distribution of public offices that has made it difficult in recent years for an entrepreneur who comes into this great country to get oriented and find the right person.

To return to the issue of institutional reform, the low number of measures taken in this area can be explained by the greater attention that the government has understandably paid in recent years above all to the fight 054

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against poverty. This is a fabulous country where economic progress coexists with terrible poverty and in which wealth has stopped at the medium-upper classes of the population. To remedy this situation, programs have been launched such as the Bolsa Família project, which provides a subsidy for those on the margins of society, attributed to one condition: that the children are sent to school.

There is one aspect, training and cultural and scientific progress, which seems to be of great concern to Brazil, isn’t it?

Certainly. Here the average age is low but it is growing quickly and the government has placed a lot of emphasis on training. For example, the Science Without Borders project allows the best young people to study elsewhere in the world at the expense of the state.

Here you can feel a great intellectual vivacity, in line with that of its traditions: it is a land of great and creative artists, attentive to innovations in the field of environmental protection, and to prove that is the fact that biofuels are in common use. So even in this, there are great contrasts: on one hand, the impressive architectural works, on the other, the favelas ...

The focus is now on the World Cup events.

There have been large investments: is there any expectation of a great return?

Actually, these days there has also been lots of controversy because according to some observers, the economic impact will not be significant in the face of the huge expenses for infrastructures related to the World Cup. This is probably true, and also the number of tourists will not particularly increase, but in my opinion the controversy is instrumental: it is an opportunity for the country to do its best in front of the world and it is worthwhile to invest in that.

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citizens in every situation, from loss of the documents to protection in case of public order issues. To promote a modern and dynamic image of Italy, we then launched the initiative Itália na Copa, a festival bringing our many excellences to the World Cup cities, presenting both traditional culture and capacity for innovation in science and technology. I wish to underline that the project represents a major operation to promote the image of Italy and has been made with virtually no recourse to public funds, but with the funding from enthusiastic private partners, both Italians and ItalianBrazilians. The festival includes events such as a workshop on Made in Italy technology and concerts with Fiorella Mannoia and Mario Biondi, as well as exhibitions on Italian art and customs, and on symbols of our Italian lifestyle and creativity.

Any predictions about the Italian team at the World Cup? Oh no, to avoid bad luck, no predictions!

Certainly, dreaming of getting to the top of the league does not cost anything: let’s say that if all goes well for Italy, then the Brazilians will need to be consoled!

Did many Italian fans come in Brazil?

I think so! We waited for them with open arms, even the Brazilians who, despite the soccer rivalry, feel close to their Italian ‘cousins’​, ​whose national team is the one they love the most after their own. On the other hand, here a great deal of soccer has Italian origins: extremely popular teams such as Palmeiras and Cruzeiro were created from a team that was once called Palestra Itália (Italian Gym), which was founded

by Italian immigrants.

Did you prepared yourself for the event?

We prepared an extraordinary consular assistance device for Italian fans and tourists: in addition to a toll free number for contacting the Embassy and Consulates, we also have consular mobile units in the cities where Italy is playing. These are groups of officers ready to step in to help their fellow 055

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Room for new markets

by Angela Zoppo Journalist photographs by Alessandro Cosmelli

The figures on energy in Latin America are today far greater than those on Europe. The wealth of resources, the growing demand for energy and the boom of a middle class asking for services make this market very interesting for the sector’s operators. Brazil in particular offers great opportunities and Enel, which already has a substantial and deeply-rooted presence in the whole of the Latin American continent, has every intention of seizing them.

Since its acquisition of Endesa, the doors of the Latin American market have opened and Enel has become the first private electricity company in the area. This record has been defended and strengthened over the years. You could say that the Enel Group was in the right place at the right time (and by chance, given its determination to carry through the takeover bid for Endesa): in fact, the demand for energy is growing in Latin American countries and is such as to compensate for the decline that has been characterizing the domestic markets in Italy and the Iberian Peninsula for many years. Brazil, where the group has an installed capacity of over 1,200 Megawatts (976 MW

through Endesa, and 266 MW more with Enel Green Power), is no exception. With a 3.4% growth rate of the electricity demand per annum, Brazil is continuing a trend that is by now far-removed from that of old Europe. According to the latest estimates, by 2020 the rate will rise again to about 4%. There are many assets in this huge country: the regulatory framework is stable – although even President Dilma Rousseff has been stricter on the utility sector – and also benefitting Enel are the long duration of concessions (the minimum is about 30 years) and a rate of profitability that, with regard to the distribution of assets in the 2014-2018 business plan which

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was presented in March, is indicated at 10.2%, higher than that of Chile (10%), another key market in the Latin American strategy of the group.

Enel operates on several fronts: in addition to managing about one gigawatt of installed capacity, it is present in transmission through Cien, the highvoltage grid that reaches Argentina, and in distribution through Ampla, a company operating in the state of Rio de Janeiro, and Coelce in the state of Ceará, which was awarded the title of best utility company in the sector for the fifth consecutive year. Together they sell electricity to approximately 6.3 million customers, and in 2013, their business grew by 4.4%.

Coelce specifically was at the center of the operation that officially opened the campaign for the repurchase of minority interests, announced by Enel to rationalize the Latin American corporate chain.

In fact, what Endesa brought as a dowry was too complicated. The

great maneuvers for the rationalization of the plethora of subsidiaries and associates began last summer with the increase of the capital of the Chilean Enersis, and it is through this subsidiary that Enel has moved in the market, promoting the takeover bid regarding the distribution companies in Ceará. In mid-January, we launched the nonhostile public offer for the remaining 42% of Coelce.

At the end of the period of the tender offer, a month later, on Bovespa, the Brazilian Stock Exchange, Enersis bought a 15.13% stake in the company for an amount of approximately 176 million euro, while for the ordinary shares, it has gone into extra time.

But Brazil also has another undeniable appeal in the eyes of Enel.

It is, in fact, among the first countries in the world for the production of clean energy, with nearly 100,000 megawatts of installed capacity (not counting the great hydropower). In practice, almost 85% of the total installed capacity in the country comes from renewable sources. Enel Green Power has therefore earned a strong share of the market, with 173 MW of wind energy, 93 MW of hydroelectric power, and other 331 MW of projects that are already being implemented. Since the beginning of the year, it has also been awarded 11 MW of solar power.

Last April, the green subsidiary of Enel completed the Crystal wind farm, 90 MW in Morro do Chapéu in the state of Bahia, able to generate over 400 million KWh per year. Other wind projects, for approximately 88 MW and 163 million dollars of investments, will produce electricity that Enel Green Power will sell under the twenty-year contracts to be signed with the CCEE (Câmara de Comercialização de Energia Elétrica), allocated to the renewable energy company with the public tender Brazilian reserve auction in 2013.

Once again the systems will be in

With a 3.4% growth rate of the electricity demand per annum, Brazil is continuing a trend that is by now farremoved from that of old Europe

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the state of Bahia. A construction in Mato Grosso is in full swing for a state of the art 1.2 MW plant that will use thin-film technology and help provide electricity to the operations of the three hydroelectric plants (102 MW in total) of Salto Apiacás, Cabeça de Boi and Fazenda. The investment for the three hydropower plants is estimated at over 280 million dollars, and in this case too, we are starting with supply contracts that have already been secured. In fact, Enel Green Power will sell the energy produced in a pool of distribution companies operating in the regulated local market.

So much attention to green energy and new technologies couldn’t help but lead to another pioneering project: the creation of the first smart city in Latin America, in Armação dos Búzios, a town of 25,000 inhabitants in the state of Rio de Janeiro that is famous for its beaches. With an $18 million investment funded

by Aneel (National Agency for Electricity), the subsidiary Ampla installed all the applications of so-called smart grid, from smart meters to the automation network, from the integration of renewable to electric mobility, up to efficient public lighting.

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Alternative visions Interview with Maurício Tolmasquim President of the Empresa de Pesquisa Energética

by João Gonçalves Journalist portrait by Daniel Marenco

Third in the world for its hydroelectric potential, Brazil has an important history in the production of renewable energies, thanks in particular to the water assets in the Amazon region. Its energy does not only live on water, because the country today is looking further ahead: the sun and wind, timber and sugar cane will contribute to diversifying sources and reinforcing energy security.

The engineer and economist Maurício Tolmasquim is the president of the Empresa de Pesquisa Energética (EPE), the institution of the Brazilian government responsible for studies and research which, since its creation in 2004, has contributed to energy planning in the country. In this interview for Oxygen, Tolmasquim gives a detailed explanation of the plan of investments in the Brazilian electricity sector from 2015 to 2018, which will consist of 46.11 billion U.S. dollars (about 102 billion reals) for the production of an additional 31,891 Megawatts (MW). With the gradual reduction of the possibilities for the expansion of its hydroelectric potential, which is the most common mode of production in the country (86,020 in 126.55 MW of installed capacity at the end of 2013), 060

Brazil is looking towards other sources of energy, in particular wind, solar, and biomass.

Together with the thermal power plants using fossil fuels, such renewable sources broaden the range of alternatives to hydropower, ensuring greater energy security in the years with low rainfall, as at the present in 2014. Tolmasquim stated that the participation of wind energy for the electricity network of the country will jump from the current 2% to 10% in 2023.

What is the profile of Brazilian electricity production and how will it grow in the coming years?

Brazil has one of the most renewable electricity networks in the world. The proportion of renewable sources in its energy production is between 80 and 90%. This

variation depends on how much hydropower we are actually producing. In the world, renewable energy production accounts for only 20%. The main source that provides the world’s supply of electricity is coal, 40% of the total, which in Brazil, however, has a very low participation with less than 2%: here the main source of energy supply is hydropower. In terms of growth, Brazil has the third largest hydropower potential in the world, second only to China and Russia, and so far, it has used only one-third. Now, 60% of the remaining two-thirds is located in the northern region, in the Amazon, where we have the greatest concentration of another great Brazilian wealth, biodiversity. Our great challenge is to use part of the hydroelectric potential of this northern frontier while respecting its biodiversity.

In view of these environmental constraints, what is the real potential for the exploitation of this virgin electricity?

It will be much lower, perhaps half of what we already have. Moreover, given that the Amazon area is extremely flat, hydropower plants with a central reservoir are increasingly rare. It must be taken into consideration that, in the few places where it would be possible to have these plants with reservoirs, the environmental impact would be considerable. So we have turned towards the construction of river plants, which are not equipped with a reservoir. We will continue to have some with reservoirs, but there will be fewer and fewer, and given that these plants cannot store the fuel, which is water, it is essential to diversify the electricity grid.

What direction is this diversification taking?

We have been working with different energy sources for a long time now, and we will further this process. But to conclude the discussion on hydroelectric energy, the bid auctions that will take place between 2015 and 2018 provide for the procurement of 14,350 MW. The spearhead will be the São Luiz do Tapajós flowing-water plant, with an installed capacity of 8,040 MW. Returning to diversification, one of the alternatives will be the expansion of the park of fossil fuel-fired thermal power plants, preferably natural gas; but given that Brazil has to import gas, particularly in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG), and gas continues to be expensive, we could add some coal-fired power stations. As for the gas, we are negotiating with some European companies supplying LNG on the purchasing of the product to fuel our power stations.

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Wind energy is growing exponentially right now: in 2014, we will have doubled the amount of wind power installed

Will they be LNG terminals like those imported

by Petrobras?

That’s right: we have both companies that are studying the possibility of having their own LNG terminals, and companies that, along with Petrobras, are considering the possibility of renting some of the existing LNG terminals.

Until 2018, to what extent will thermal energy participate in this expansion?

We intend to procure 7,000 MW from fossil fuel-fired power plants. Another important source of energy is thermal energy from biomass, both what comes from the bagasse of sugar cane (biomass derived from the waste of the processing of sugar cane), and what is produced from chopped wood, the so-called chips.

Having an ethanol program, Brazil has an overabundance of bagasse and now the first plants using wood chips are beginning to appear: this is very interesting for the Brazilian electricity system because, in case of problems with hydroelectric power, we can use the wood that has been planted. If hydropower remains fairly constant for many years, the company can earn by exporting the

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wood for other uses. Planting a forest means having a stock of fuel that can be used at any time. Forests have made​​ their appearance at recent bid auctions, showing to be competitive given that they are growing at a very high pace here in Brazil. By 2018, we will have contracted 1,630 MW in biomass power plants.

Nowadays wind energy is becoming more widespread in the world. Don’t you think that Brazil’s exploitation of this energy source is still very low?

I believe that in Brazil, wind energy is growing exponentially right now: in 2014, we will have doubled the amount of wind power installed and the contribution of this segment to the whole of the country’s electricity production will increase from 2,200 MW in 2013 to 9,000 MW by the end of 2015. This concerns power plants that have already been contracted. Brazil has a very good wind potential, with strong and constant winds, which guarantees one of the cheapest megawatts in the world of wind energy. We have six companies that produce wind turbines, thus ensuring that at least 60% of the necessary equipment is produced domestically. Among other things, in Brazil the winds blow the strongest from May to November,

precisely the period with less rainfall in the Southeast and Northeast which are the areas with the highest concentration of hydroelectric reservoirs; the same also occurs with biomass from sugar cane, the harvest of which is from April to November; therefore the biomass from bagasse is also complementary to hydropower.

Will the triad of thermoelectric/wind/ biomass sources therefore replace, without any surprises, water energy in times of abnormal drought, just as is happening this year?

These are sources that complement hydropower: thermal energy from fossil fuel has the advantage that it can be used only when necessary, the other sources are naturally complementary. The goal is for wind power to procure at least 5,000 MW at bid auctions planned until 2018.

Today it represents about 2% of the electricity network in the country and it will reach 10% by 2023.

As a whole, how much new energy will this program add to the power grid in the country and what investments are necessary?

In total, the program until 2018 includes 31,891 MW, or 102 billion real, not to mention the small hydropower plants

(plants up to 30 MW), of which 910 MW will be contracted until 2018, and the first specific auction of solar energy is expected this year. Just to give you an example, the level of insolation in Brazil is twice that of Germany and therefore, the solar source has all the characteristics to become successful in the country. We are thinking of 3,000 MW of solar power in four auctions until 2018.

How can you reassure foreign investors concerning the regulatory problem in the Brazilian electricity sector?

Our framework attracts many investors, especially international ones. Do you want to know why? Because we have public auctions where the winner gets a long-term contract signed by the distribution companies: 30 years for hydropower, 25 for thermal power stations, and 20 for wind power. This contract has been accepted by the National Bank of Economic and Social Development (BNDES) as collateral for a loan on very favorable terms. In fact, the contract ensures that the plant owner has a permanent income, even in the case in which consumption does not grow.

Iguaçu Falls Indian legend tells us that when the beautiful Naipi fled with her lover, ​​ the Snake God, who wanted to marry her, split the rock so that it plunged into the river, and with it, the two young people: she was transformed into a rock and he was turned into a palm tree, and they can still be seen through the huge waterfall.

The level of insolation in Brazil is twice that of Germany and therefore, the solar source has all the characteristics to become successful in the country

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Wind at 20 knots

by Ben Backwell Journalist

In the past decade, the wind has been at the centre of the thoughts of many Brazilian policy-makers and entrepreneurs who, at times with a certain reticence, have been able to understand their value and lay the structural and legislative foundations to take greatest advantage of wind energy.

The article takes stock of how things have gone and will go, to understand which way the wind will be blowing in the next ten years.

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In large parts of the north east of the country, the wind is constant – as a vast warm ‘hair dryer’ – and this has allowed Brazilian wind projects to clock up some of the highest average capacity factors in the world Brazil has never been more prominent in global consciousness. Its hosting of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics coincides with its emergence as a major economic and diplomatic power, making this a ‘Brazilian decade’. Brazil’s projection of soft power as it strives for a place at the top table of world affairs is intimately connected to its ability to manage its abundant natural resources and confront the threat of climate change, to which it is highly vulnerable. Brazil has had long-term association with the sustainability agenda, hosting the landmark 1992 Rio Earth Summit and the follow-up Rio+20 in 2012, and leading the way on international agreements in areas such as deforestation. And so it is fitting that Brazil is now starting to take a leading position in the development of renewable energy, and in particular wind power.

Brazil has long enjoyed a significant advantage in terms of its carbon emissions profile.

Around 80% of Brazil’s power comes from hydroelectric power, while thermoelectric power from gas, fuel oil and coal makes up just over 16% and nuclear accounts for 2%.

Hydrocarbons’ availability has been historically limited, which allowed Brazil to become a global pioneer in biofuels in the Seventies. The current boom in pre-salt ultra deep water oil exploration has not so far brought large scale increase in flows of natural gas to the mainland, although it is likely to in the mid-term. Hydroelectric power will remain the mainstay of the country’s power system, but the huge capital investments, long term planning and major environmental and social impacts involved mean that Brazil is now unable to construct sufficient new hydroelectric capacity to keep up with power demand.

Hydro power supply can be sharply curtailed if several drought years follow each other, as they did in the run up to the 2001-

2002 energy crisis, which Brazil overcame without blackouts only by reducing consumption by 20% over an eight month period. Hydro generation relies on highly seasonal patterns of rainfall, and this can bring Brazil’s power system close to the brink.

There has been a growing realisation among policy makers that wind power is highly complementary with hydro power, with Brazil’s wind’s blowing most strongly during the winter dry period. They have also learned to appreciate the wind industry’s ability to add new power capacity quickly.

One of the consequences of the 2001-2002 energy crisis was the creation by the new PT administration of an auctioning system in 2004, as part of a series of reforms aimed at ensuring that adequate amounts of new power would be brought online. As part of the reforms, the government also created a new state-owned company – EPE – tasked with long term energy planning, and deciding – among other things – how the auctions should be designed and which energy sources should be included, based on criteria of energy supply security and cost effectiveness.

Brazil has extremely good wind resources.

In large parts of the north east of the country, the wind is constant – industry officials compare it to a vast warm ‘hair dryer’ – and this has allowed Brazilian wind projects to clock up some of the highest average capacity factors in the world, in excess of 50%.

The government established the legislation for the first support system for wind called PROINFA during the administration of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (19952003), although this was not implemented until the first Lula government by the then Energy Minister – now President Dilma Rousseff. There was still significant skepticism among government officials about wind as a large scale power source until the Spring of 2009, when wind industry 065

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bodies organized a trip to the then booming wind market of Spain for key Brazilian politicians and government officials, including members of the renewable energy committees in both the upper and lower houses of the Brazilian Congress.

“Seeing the scale of the industry, and most importantly the Red Eléctrica control room, from which the whole Spanish power system is controlled, caused cascading epiphanies in the minds of Brazilian officials and politicians,” says Steve Sawyer, Secretary General of the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC).

Among those on the trip was EPE president Maurício Tolmasquim who has since been instrumental in creating the framework for the rapid growth of Brazil’s wind industry.

A series of highly successful competitive tenders followed PROINFA from 2011 onwards. Wind power capacity will increase to over 9 GW by the end of 2015 (from 2.2 GW installed and connected at present). In 2013, alone, 4.7 GW was tendered. Government projections foresee 17.5 GW of wind power installed in the country by the end of 2022. This puts Brazil in the big leagues as far as wind power is concerned, with installations likely to be at around 2.5 GW per year.

International renewables developers such as Iberdrola, Enel Green Power and EDP Renováveis have been quick to take advantage of the possibilities, alongside dynamic local developers such as Renova, CPFL Renováveis and Casa dos Ventos. To meet the explosion in demand, turbine manufacturers such as GE, Alstom, Gamesa, Vestas, Wobben (Enercon), and Acciona are all producing machinery in Brazil.

The big surprise for participants in the global energy market has been the competitiveness of wind since the start of the tender system. At the December 2012 auction, Brazil awarded contracts for capacity from 10 wind farms at an average rate of R$87.94/ MWh ($42.2/MWh), with the lowest prices being R$87.77/MWh. Prices were 12% cheaper than the August 2011 tender, which at the time, were considered by some the lowest price for wind power in the world. As a comparison, the cheapest power purchase agreements (PPAs) in the highly competitive US wind power market come 066

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in the range of the mid $50’s per MWh. The importance of developments in Brazil for the wider wind industry cannot be exaggerated. The fact that wind power is becoming a major source of power supply without subsidy, as well as competing and winning against fossil fuel generation in open competition is of huge significance, in a context where recent debates about wind power have tended to be dominated by concerns about cost. What has allowed this to take place?

Firstly the giant ‘hairdryer’ of North Eastern Brazil is delivering capacity factors that are virtually unparalleled.

Secondly, the auction system created by EPE creates an extremely competitive environment, while providing predictability to wind developers through a guaranteed 20 year power purchase agreement (PPA). Thirdly, Brazil provides financing on extremely attractive terms through the BNDES. The system is not perfect, of course, and the rapidly developing Brazilian wind industry faces a series of challenges, both from the point of view of constructing the infrastructures and on therealismofthebidsplacedbydevelopers.

Meanwhile local content regulations governing the all important BNDES funding have been successful until now, but a second phase of regulations, known as FINAME 2, could push equipment costs and thus generation costs up. There are potential clouds on the policy horizon as well. Government officials are still keen to promote fossil-fuel generation with the familiar argument that more ‘base-load’ rather than variable power is needed, and have done much to support gas and even marginal coal generation.

If Brazil can develop a large flow of natural gas from its giant pre-salt hydrocarbon discoveries in the Santos Basin, state oil company Petrobras will constitute a formidable lobby in favour of building large amounts of new gasfired power plants in the years to come.

To maintain momentum, the wind industry needs to show it can deliver what it has promised, while continuing to innovate and keep generation costs low: getting it right won’t be easy. But Brazil’s leadership in wind power can only help its rise to global influence.

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in-depth

Stories of entrepreneurial ferment

by Elisa Barberis Journalist illustrations by Undesign

Energy, trade, IT, biotechnologies, fashion and design. Development concerns a wide variety of sectors: from oil to body cream and stadium seats. What production in Brazil has in common is the attention to environmental sustainability and respect for biodiversity.

Sustainable beauty The environment, first and foremost. This is the philosophy of Natura Cosméticos, the company of beauty products that was chosen as the second most sustainable company in the world in 2011. Conservation of biodiversity in the rainforest is the real feather in its cap: 80% of its production is based on plants grown by the farmers of São Francisco, in the far north of Brazil.

This indigenous community, composed of only 32 families, looks after one of the most important crops: 800,000 hectares of land from which the main ingredient used in a line of perfumes, oils, soaps, and creams is extracted. When Antonio Luiz 068

Seabra founded Natura in 1969, he had two specific objectives in mind: not only the appreciation of natural ingredients to protect them from over-exploitation, in order to preserve biodiversity, but above all, to promote the welfare and development of rural communities. In 1998, big brands such as L’Oréal and Palmolive attempted to buy the company, but the founder doubled his wager and focused on creating business models based on sustainability.

He recently launched a pioneering project, with the Surui population, that aims to eliminate about five million tons of CO2 emissions over the next thirty years.

Ecofriendly design For architects and designers around the world, today the home of Oscar Niemeyer and Marcio Kogan is the ‘promised land’: from airports to factories, from lighting to urban planning, the needs of an emerging economy are endless. And in view of the great sporting events to be held in Brazil – starting with the FIFA World Cup this summer – the sector is experiencing a new phase of expansion. At the forefront is the firm of BCMF Arquitetos, responsible for the majority of the architectural contracts for the 2016 Olympics in Rio, which has renovated the Mineirão Stadium in Belo Horizonte, stripping the original structure built in 1960 and creating a new roof using solar panels, thus making it the first fully solar-powered stadium. The building, which includes new shops and a museum dedicated to soccer, will use collected rainwater for an even greater reduction in the consumption of resources.

The logo of the Olympics and the Paralympics, on the other hand, was designed

by Tatil Design, which counts Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola among its customers. Again from an eco-friendly point of view, this award-winning firm has developed a new generation of packaging which is not only environmentally friendly, but above all, optimizes efficiency. Created in collaboration with Natura Cosméticos, it is a kind of revolutionary packaging to minimize product wastage and uses 70% less plastic than conventional packaging. The result is a vertical pocket which enables creams and other beauty products to be used up to the very last drop.

Shopping for all budgets With a turnover of more than fifty billion dollars involving more than 30,000 enterprises, Brazil is emerging as the new El Dorado of fashion and luxury brands. And while the shopping malls in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are full of the most important international names in fashion, modeled on Fifth Ave in New York, the local retailers are staking everything on emerging designers and stealing the spotlight from the historic panorama of European designer labels.

Such as Osklen, the eco-chic clothing brand founded 25 years ago by Oskar Metsavath, whose fashion show is one of the most enthusiastically awaited: in every dress, you can feel the hustle and bustle of a metropolis

that is growing very rapidly, just like the exuberance of the Brazilian nature. For its sportswear line, the fashion house - which designs and manufactures its collections while respecting the environment - is experimenting with hand-spun silk, fabrics made from the skin of freshwater fish, organic cotton, and Amazon latex.

Also made from 100% natural Brazilian rubber are Havaianas, the popular colorful flip-flops that have become a trendy accessory, to the point that 200 million pairs were sold in 2010 alone. Initially created by the company Alpargatas as a solution to allow even the poorest not to have to walk barefoot, protecting them from disease, they have now become a symbol for the well-to-do. From Missoni to Manolo Blahnik, some of the greatest designers have created limited editions, and the brand is now synonymous with a colorful and fun lifestyle.

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Retail enters the favela A middle class and a rapidly growing purchasing power, a high propensity to consume more and more, a market that is not yet saturated and which has great potential: for the third consecutive year, Brazil leads the world rankings of the most promising economies, not only in Latin America but around the world. From food to clothing, from household appliances to books, from toys to vacation packages, the leader in sales achievement is Lojas Americanas, the largest retailer in Brazil. Founded in 1929 by a group of Americans who came up with the idea of launching ​​ a store that had very low prices, today the brand is known to be more affordable than any other retailer, as well as one of the most important places of e-commerce in the country. Excellent value for money, in fact, is one of the strongest motivations behind the success of the shopping centers in Brazil.

With the ability to intercept the needs and buying habits of customers with low incomes and the decision to facilitate access to credit for those who do not have a bank account, the retailer of furniture and appliances Casa Bahia has become a point of reference for those who live in the favelas.

A unique case in the world of retail, the chain founded in 1957 by a Polish immigrant, now has almost 500 stores and has attracted more than 20 million consumers all over Brazil.


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Wealth of diversity In a country that has one of the largest biodiversities in existence, with 20% of the species on the planet, the biotechnology sector is emerging as an industry of great strategic importance for the future.

The Government has made a priority commitment to support their development and promote synergies between universities, research centers, and hundreds of ‘incubators’ whose mission is to support the startups for at least three years.

Among these, one of the most innovative is Bug Agentes Biológicos, which has found a way to naturally combat the larvae and insects that annually threaten the cultivation of sugar cane and soybeans. Fields

are ‘sprayed’ with swarms of wasps instead of chemical pesticides, of which Brazil – third largest exporter of agricultural products in the world – is the largest consumer after the United States. So far, Bug is the only alternative approved by the ministries of health and environment that is able to eliminate pests and prevent infestations.

Cutting-edge techniques to protect the fruits of the earth are also used by Embrapa, the state institute for agricultural research, which has created several techniques to increase the vitamin content in bananas, beans, maize, cassava, and squash, as well as to increase disease resistance in papaya and beans, and the energy content of sugar cane. In 2008, the company wagered on Africa and launched a partnership to share their agricultural technologies, now essential for the cotton industry that is developing in Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Mali.

From Brazil to China, the future is online Belo Horizonte, Manaus, Campinas, São Paulo: small Silicon Valleys growing in the heart of Latin America, thanks to the increasing number of incentives and tax breaks at the state and federal levels that encourage not just opening branches of foreign companies operating in the technology industry, but many local startups that aim to become known all over the world.

Created in 2007 with an initial capital of $300,000, the Boo-Box (boo-box.com) network now dominates advertising on the Internet in Brazil through a network of nearly 500,000 blogs, websites, and social profiles which display more than three billion ads per month, reaching 80 million people.

Included by the magazine “FastCompany” among the fifty most innovative companies alongside Google, Twitter, and Facebook, Boo-Box is also making its way as a provider for planning and monitoring services of advertising campaigns, especially for small businesses on a limited budget to

make themselves known on the Internet.

Created as a reseller of mobile phone games, today Samba Tech (sambatech. com) has instead become the largest online video platform on the continent, and it manages the contents of the top five television networks in the country as well as those of major brands such as MGM, Samsung, and MTV, on computers, televisions, and smart-phones.

The next goal? Destination China, which just like Brazil, is attracting the attention of foreign venture capitalists who see huge market opportunities in the growing penetration of the Internet.

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Brazil takes off

Green like plastic

A geostationary satellite that would provide ‘absolute security’, in both military and civilian spheres, after the scandal of the spy network masterminded by the United States to the detriment of millions of Brazilians, including President Dilma Rousseff. This is the latest challenge for Embraer, third aviation company in the world behind Boeing and Airbus by work force, with nearly 17,000 employees. Given the current crisis that has hit leisure travelers, the state company is preparing not only to land in space, but also to launch into the market of ‘business’ aviation, namely that of private jets used by managers and entrepreneurs. A symbol since 1968 of a country that produces and flies high, with an annual growth of 5% of the industry, Embraer is aiming for a turnover of over 315 billion dollars by 2031.

In view of the World Cup, also taking off are the low-cost carriers, presently in negotiation with the government to lower the cost of tickets and encourage air traffic, often the only way to cross the country because of the great distances and malfunctioning local transport. Azul, in particular, by having more affordable prices for everyone and special rates for those who have a limited budget or do not have credit cards, is trying to replace the much longer and more expensive bus trips. The first real test will be this summer, but in the meantime the company is already focusing on the United States.

Eco-seats of polyethylene made from ethanol from sugar cane and 100% recyclable: that is what soccer fans in Brazil are attending the World Cup matches are sitting on.

The seats, which debuted at the Morumbi Stadium in São Paulo, are the work of Braskem, a petrochemical company and largest producer of polymers in the world, with a large presence in Mexico and a growing business in the United States.

The demand for biodegradable material in the food sector and the banning of plastic bags have also accelerated the trend of the consumption of bio-plastics. With renewable raw materials such as sugar cane – not only used as a biofuel – Braskem annually produces over 200,000 tons of ‘green’ plastic, used by such giants as Johnson & Johnson and Walmart for their packaging. And the benefits for the environment are not insignificant: for each ton produced, 2.5 of carbon gases are removed from the atmosphere, thereby helping to reduce the effect of greenhouse gases.

The company is part of the much larger and older German-Brazilian group Odebrecht, which has 170,000 employees in thirty countries around the world in different sectors, from energy to engineering services, from transport and logistics to the real estate sector, and from construction to chemistry. But in the state of Rio, it has established itself as a pioneer in social work by developing projects in the areas of education, health, environment, and culture.

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Excellent Energy

Ministry of the SMEs

From a company that was notoriously disrespectful of the environment to a global leader in sustainability: in 15 years, the energy giant Petrobras has been able to change so as to become a model for those who work in the petrochemical industry. In fact, the company has imposed itself on the market not only as a pioneer of renewable energy and biofuels, but above all, for the innovative nature of its technology for extraction of oil and gas. With its new industrial plan and the construction of the Comperj complex, which will have approximately 200,000 employees, counting linked activities, it also aims to double production by 2020 from 2 to 5.2 million barrels. Its objective: to ensure the viability of the entire country. Petrobras currently controls 14 drilling rigs in deep-water offshore platforms all over the world, and another seven will be in operation in the next few months. With a storage capacity of 600,000 barrels and 80,000 other products every day, the Chinook-Cascade structure, located 165 miles off the coast of Louisiana, is distinguished from the others due to its capacity to be unfastened and moved out of the path of hurricanes, thus avoiding shortages of crude oil in the long term.

In the wake of disastrous accidents and oil spills, Petrobras has invested in a strict environmental policy, entrusting its management directly to top managers who monitor performances, and stimulating competition among its suppliers to demonstrate their excellence.

There are grocery stores and hand-made clothing boutiques, consulting or accounting firms, small factories or farms.

They constitute 99% of the universe of businesses and provide at least twothirds of the 94 million jobs, to the extent of representing 20% of the country’s GDP. Small and mediumsized enterprises are the backbone of Brazil and their growth is boundless, especially in the Southeast, where the survival rate has far exceeded that of Canada, Austria, Spain, and Italy. Merit goes to favorable legislation which has reduced and unified taxes into a single solution, but also to the increase in education and the strengthening of the domestic market, with over a hundred million more consumers. Entrepreneurs who are better-prepared and skilled manpower are the keys to success of the companies that have chosen to invest in human capital, also focusing on the recruitment of young people and the unemployed over 40, rather than operational efficiency.

This decision has met with support from the new Ministry of SMEs (PME, Pequena e MĂŠdia Empresas, or small and medium enterprises) created by President Dilma Rousseff to support not only the revitalization of the city, but especially the more isolated rural areas. If, on the one hand, excessive bureaucracy and taxes that are still high for the majority of Brazilians discourage these business initiatives, on the other, investments in innovation and professional management mark the turning point for encouraging new businesses. And while the government has put the creation of public policies to facilitate employment at the top of its agenda, the rest of the world will just have to wait and see: is Brazil the new El Dorado?

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interview

The marvelous city: a legacy at risk Interview with Ermínia Maricato

Professor of Architecture at the University of São Paulo

by Maria Chiara Voci Journalist

As for all major events, public opinion is divided over the World Cup and the Olympics, especially as regards the management of funds. Town-planners, architects and professors discuss them and some of them do not conceal their concern that the double event may leave a legacy that is neither important nor positive for the city and the economy.

“Rio de Janeiro is a wonderful city, with many urban problems and social issues.

A double big event is likely to bring wealth and employment with it for a certain period of time; but these are only temporary benefits which concern too limited a group of people. In contrast, the risk is that the much-vaunted benefits end up turning out to be far less significant than the announcements, with the high costs borne by the population.” In the irresistible climate of enthusiasm that accompanies the World Cup in Brazil and the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, dissident voices can be heard.

Such as that of Ermínia Maricato, an urban planner, professor of Architecture at the University of São Paulo (FAUUSP), and former executive secretary of the Ministério de Cidades from 2002 to 2005. The following is her opinion on the relationship between the social consequences and benefits brought about by the arrival of new stadiums, infrastructures, and accommodation to respond to the logic of two inter074

national events, which leaves no room for interpretation – especially concerning the impact that they have made on Rio, the capital of the third federal state of the country.

From the 2014 World Cup to the 2016 Olympics, Brazil and Rio are bringing home a double victory. However, you are very critical of those who speak of it as an important success for the country. Why? The dual sporting event has brought and is bringing significant investments with it.

However, these are a matter of projects that do not coincide with the urgent requests that have been disregarded for far too long and which are present in our cities. Starting with Rio, there are many needs that should come before the reconstruction of the stadium of Maracanã and the urban renewal of Porto Maravilha. I’m talking about basic and compelling needs such as health, education, housing, and urban mobility. In addition, I believe that in the end, the vaunted benefits of the World

The arrival of infrastructure works will produce immediate employment: it is likely that hotels, restaurants, and tourism businesses will increase their movement for a specified period of time

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Cup and the Olympics will prove to be far less significant than expected, while the costs that we’ll have to pay will be very high.

This so-called ‘legacy’ is not what we need.

What assumptions are your certainties based on?

By observing what various experiences, before this one in Brazil, have shown us in the past. The process triggered off by major events is repeated with very similar characteristics, even if in different countries and contexts. The bibliography on the subject is already considerable and there are many recorded cases of ‘white elephants’, mega constructions of dubious utility, which become an additional burden to cope with.

So do you fear that after 2016, Brazil and Rio de Janeiro will be in a worse, instead of better, condition?

I simply believe that there will be a physiological consequence. Sports events promoted by the FIFA (International Federation of Football Association) and the IOC (International Olympic Committee), by the very nature of the demands they bring into play, have a profound impact on the legal, economic, social, and urban development of a nation. Every project, all the work coming in, and every product placed on the market responds to a specific logic dictated by the sponsors and by the terms of contracts for commercial and television rights. Often the very financial institutions and construction and property development companies, ‘archistars’ in search of a global visibility, end up promoting an entrepreneurial wave that overshadows the national economies, causing countries to get into debt at an extraordinary cost.

But don’t you think that the arrival of a great event also means plenty of jobs and wealth for the entire population?

Great events do not create wealth for everybody, but just for a group of holders of capital who are specialized in ‘doing business’ with this kind of opportunity. It is true that the arrival of infrastructure works will produce immediate employment. It is likely that hotels, restaurants, and tourism businesses will increase their movement for a specified period of time. However, these effects are due to expire and are anything but free. Real estate speculation and the so-called ‘gentrification’ arethe‘trademarks’that,withrareexceptions, accompany these costly changes, hidden behind the promises of their many virtues.

What are the consequences that you fear the most concerning the context of Rio de Janeiro?

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market implies the increase of urban segregation. The displacement of about 40,000 residents in the favelas from the most central areas to more distant suburbs will make the housing conditions of the metropolis worse, rather than better. The real estate development that accompanies processes of urban renewal tends to increase inequalities: prices rise, from rents to food, once again furthering the exclusion of the poorer classes.

Was the city of Rio prepared to deal with major changes? What I mean to say is, had any plans already made that would be able to intercept and channel the resources, arriving in the wake of the big events, in the correct direction? Or has it been necessary to draw up an ‘emergency’ plan, only depending on the event?

Unfortunately these kinds of events contrast with the urban plans aimed at reducing social inequality and solving major urban problems, as in the case of mass transport. Mega events are more about doing business than solving social problems.

Does this need to do a lot of work in a short time have consequences?

The haste with which the new structures have to be, and are being, completed, proceeding at a fast pace on a tight schedule, leads to hazardous conditions for the workers. In Brazil, we have already recorded several deaths linked to the construction of the stadiums, as shown by what happened recently in São Paulo.

Are there any works that, more than others, will have a long-term impact?

Taken as a whole, the Brazilian stadiums are the most expensive infrastructures with regard to the great deal of work as a whole in 12 cities for the 2014 World Cup, and the 2016 Olympic Games in the city of Rio de Janeiro. On the contrary, the interventions of​​ mobility that have been made do not exactly coincide with those that were needed the most and which were expected to improve the conditions of urban mass transit. What is happening here is what already happened in South Africa, for example.

In short, the burden of the events will be felt in the years to come ...

I’m afraid so. As already mentioned, from the experience of other countries and especially in unequal societies with serious social problems such as ours, the arrival of international events has as an immediate consequence the use of considerable resources, channeled into the secondary objectives.

That is what happened in Greece, South Africa, and even China. In my opinion, it is very likely that Brazil will follow their example.

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I believe that the vaunted benefits of the World Cup and the Olympics will prove to be far less significant than expected, while the costs that we’ll have to pay will be very high

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Rio de Janeiro:

The social dimension of energy

by Luis de Carvalho Jan van der Borg Erwin van Tuijl Euricur researchers

The large Brazilian cities, the land of waste and irregularity in energy consumption, represent a problem for the distribution of energy: they, and Rio in particular, are the starting point for the study by Euricur and Enel Foundation, which analyses the social behavior related to energy consumption to define new models addressing citizens and businesses.

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Over the last fifteen years, economic reforms coupled with active redistribution policies have led to notable social and economic progress in Brazil.

Overall, economic growth and enhanced consumption possibilities (e.g. by a new middle class) went hand-in-hand with rising energy demands. Currently, the Brazilian electricity mix is largely ‘clean’ (mostly hydro-powered) and the transmission grids are considered to be well connected throughout the country. However, some key bottlenecks can be found in distribution, namely in large cities like Rio de Janeiro.

Wasteful consumption, informality and non-technical losses (e.g. energy theft) are notably high, imposing large costs for utilities, governments and ratepayers. Moreover, distribution grids require modernization to cope with new regulatory frameworks on smart metering, hourly-tariffs and distributed generation.

The thorny issue with these challenges is that it is not just possible to ‘technologize’ the way out of the problems: many deeply-rooted social dimensions have to change as well. Energy consumption behavior, cultural and social practices have to evolve, new knowledge production networks have to be formed and new business models have to emerge.

For this reason – as the Euricur and Enel Foundation are exploring in an international study called Energy Transitions in Cities – early experimentation in cities (like Rio de Janeiro) are fundamental to steer the required combinations between the technical and

social worlds. There are many reasons for this. Cities are the places where new solutions can be more easily visualized and linked with concrete urban challenges (e.g. congestion, exclusion, economic change); moreover, physical, social and institutional proximity between stakeholders makes it easier to promote cooperative arrangements to develop, test and adapt solutions. Finally, cities and large metropolitan areas concentrate diverse communities of users, allowing understanding different social preferences and behaviors. The case study of Rio de Janeiro – available at the Working Paper Series of Enel Foundation – details how local Distribution System Operators (DSO), Ampla and Light, are tackling many of these challenges.

Take the concrete case of non-technical losses (accounting for roughly seven percent of all the electricity distributed in Brazil), such as the ones related with theft. Previous studies linked it with violence and criminality (e.g. in slums), urban density and difficulties of access, but also with socio-cultural factors such as dysfunctional and very low-income households, distrust of public services, lack of knowledge and entrenched cultural behaviors. As explained during our field visit, “...parents and grandparents in many households never paid for electricity during their whole lives, it is considered as something free, nature-given”. In order to curb theft and informal grid connections (known as ‘gatos’), a number of new remote, IT-powered telemetry solutions were

Cities and large metropolitan areas concentrate diverse communities of users, allowing understanding different social preferences and behaviors

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deployed over the last decade by DSOs and technology providers, sealing meters and concentrators in armored boxes. However, the societal and cultural dimensions of the problem had been underestimated: the early implementation of the new metering solution generated considerable societal backlash. The bills of many households soared as they were unaccustomed to using electricity rationally, increasing non-payment costs and raising political tensions between utilities and local governments.

Later on, in order to tackle the social dimensions consequently, Ampla launched Consciência Ampla, a large portfolio of social initiatives (for children, students, households, opinion-makers, associations and community leaders) to support and empower consumers rationalizing energy consumption. It includes, among others, energy education and recycling initiatives, replacement of old appliances, capacity building (e.g. training, income management) and other initiatives to empower users in making the right consumption decisions. Light is deploying similar portfolios of social-oriented actions, namely in recently pacified slums in which the relation between the company and local communities was inexistent for decades. Examples are the ‘transition pact’ (through which consumers are granted one month of experimentation with the new solution, in order to rebalance consumption) and a recycling-rebate program (‘Light Recicla’), through which new

‘formal’ consumers in slums are granted rebates in the electricity bill in exchange for recyclable waste.

Over recent years, energy losses in many deprived areas have decreased substantially, but there is still a long way to go to radically change the way electricity is distributed and consumed.

Hence, what does the case of Rio de Janeiro tell us about the social dimensions of energy transitions?

We would like to highlight two critical issues. First, it suggests that ‘transitions to formality’ can take a long time. Informality is part of the DNA of many urban areas in which the state was absent for too long.

For many decades, communities and micro-businesses were organized through systems of informal exchanges, which tend to re-organize themselves. Any ‘back-to-formality’ initiative in such communities should take this into account.

Second, contrarily to conventional social corporate initiatives (relatively marginal to the company’s strategy), the social programs deployed by Ampla and Light are now at the core of the company’s business proposition.

They simultaneously impact on profits (decrease losses and making energy distribution more efficient) while contributing to engage, empower and ultimately create value in the communities in which the companies operate. By doing so, they also suggest that on-going energy transitions can open new opportunities for richer modes of engagement between energy companies, cities and society.

Energy consumption behavior, cultural and social practices have to evolve, new knowledge production networks have to be formed and new business models have to emerge

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Curitiba

A fast and smart tortoise

by Alessandra Viola Journalist

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A smart city for more than forty years, the success of Curitiba is based on concepts, solutions and theories, those of the former mayor Jaime Lerner, which have made this city a magnificent subject of reflection for town-planners all over the world. The ‘smart’ city is one where life, work, leisure and nature are not separate but contaminate one another – like the tortoise that spends its whole life under the same shell.

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It was not established in the United States, and not even in China or the United Arab Emirates. Nor in Europe, nor is it an achievement of the last decade. If you don’t know already, you would never guess; the first smart city in the world was born in Brazil in the Seventies. Its name is Curitiba, and from a height of almost a thousand meters above sea level, lying on the plateau of Paraná which dominates the state of the same name, and of which it is also the capital, it slyly looks at the development of the whole country, with its nearly forty years of experience in being an ecological and sustainable city.

The first pedestrian street in the world? It was here. ​​ And also the first light-rail system. Curitiba has the highest number of square meters of greenery per inhabitant, and its recycling has become a ‘goods exchange’ to

help poor families. A model of a city that has proven to be truly sustainable that comes from a developing country but on the strength of its example, one that has given architects, city planners, and administrators in more developed countries pause to think. The recipe is simple.

“If you want creativity, cut one zero from your budget” – in the words of Jaime Lerner, architect, mayor for three mandates, and the visionary author of the most profound innovations in Curitiba. “If you want sustainability, cut two zeros from your budget.

And if you want solidarity, assume your identity and respect the diversity of others. These are the issues that are increasingly important, not only for cities but for the entire human race, and which are related to three important aspects of cities: mobility, sustainability, and tolerance.”

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Curitiba, lying on the plateau of Paraná which dominates the state of the same name, of which is it also the capital, slyly looks at the development of the whole country, with its nearly forty years of experience in being an ecological and sustainable city 083

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Needless to say, he was involved in all three in Curitiba.

First elected in 1971, he combined a dream, city planning, and common sense by supporting the development of state of the art urban infrastructures.

Now considered the capital with the best quality of life in all of Brazil, in the early Seventies Curitiba was a farming town with just over six hundred thousand inhabitants, in fast-paced expansion and rapidly converting to commerce and industry, which grew becoming populated by abusers, favelas, inequality, and asphalt, and without any planning. The first challenge for the new mayor, now a university professor and consultant in different cities around the world, was to control the periodic floods that flooded roads 084

and houses. Against the advice of those who suggested undertaking imposing and expensive public works (such as burying or diverting water courses), Lerner opted for ‘cleaning up’ the shanty areas in much of the city, and the construction of a huge green zone, where the river could safely overflow, creating ponds and a habitat for plant and animal species. Thanks to that plan, Curitiba is now one of the greenest cities in the world, and went from half a meter of vegetation per capita in the Seventies to the current 55 square meters (in Italy, according to Istat, the average is 30 square meters) for each of its nearly two million inhabitants. A sort of green belt, where the parks are all connected with one another, also fosters the survival of plant

I think that cars are like our ... in-laws. We have to have good relations with them, but we cannot let them guide our lives

and animal species whose maintenance is entrusted – in addition to the co-responsibility of citizens – to ... sheep. During his total of 22 years in government, Lerner made common sense and creativity his winning weapons.

So, when the city found itself in the throes of its first serious mobility problems, the then mayor of Curitiba thought, against the advice of those who sought to demolish some old buildings in order to widen the main street of the city center, Rua das Flores, of closing it to cars for fifteen blocks, thus inventing the first pedestrian street in the world.

To avoid the protests of shopkeepers, Lerner improvised an actual blitz: the road was closed, paved, and made pedestrian in just 72 hours. “I think that cars are like our ... in-laws,” – he said

curitiba a fast and smart tortoise |

in a speech to the American Society of Landscape Architects. “We have to have good relations with them, but we cannot let them guide our lives. I am convinced that a city is like a family portrait. You would never destroy a family portrait because you didn’t like an old aunt. You are that portrait.” Lerner has tried to impress criteria of functionality, sustainability, and co-responsibility on his family portrait, starting from transport. The main arterial roads were divided into three parts, one for entering the city, one to leave it, and one reserved for public transport, and then this visionary public administrator created the first light-rail system. It is a bus service that runs at the same speed and efficiency as subways (every minute), but which is much cheaper and easier to manage.

“The first thing we asked ourselves was: what is a subway? It must have speed, comfort, reliability, and a high frequency.

But who says it has to be underground? Inevitably, that is a very expensive system. Why not get the same benefits with a bus?”

Today the road system is called the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and it has already become a model for eighty similar systems around the world, convincing almost half the population of Curitiba to no longer use their car for urban transport. Thanks to 150 miles of cycle paths as well. How did the city manage to do this? “Curitiba has no secrets, just what you might call a special focus on simplicity. Cities are not so complicated: you just have to understand them. I would not say that Curitiba is a paradise: we have all the problems of big cities, but I think that here, we have what makes the difference: respect for people.” Lerner founded all his policies on this idea and on the co-responsibility of the citizens.

“We had to work with economic solutions. We started cleaning up our bays thanks to an agreement with the fishermen. So if it’s not a good day for fishing, the fishermen can go fishing for the junk that is in the water, and we buy it from them. The more you collect, the cleaner the bay gets

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and the more fish there will be in the future.” This is more or less the same principle on which the differentiated waste collection is also based. “We had roads where the trucks for waste collection could not enter. Especially in the favelas, where people lived in the middle of garbage and there seemed to be no solution. So in 1989, we launched a major campaign in schools, teaching children to recycle and explaining to the residents of the poorest and inaccessible neighborhoods that we would buy their trash if they had differentiated and delivered it to collection points. In exchange for every five kilos of trash, a pound of fruits and vegetables. The favelas were cleaned up in three months, and even this little financial support has helped many families to make ends meet. Sometimes we even give out bus or cinema tickets.”

Today Curitiba has one of the highest percentages of recycled materials in the world: around 70%. And it will probably manage to be more elastic than the other Brazilian cities in dealing 086

with the horde of tourists who went there on the occasion of the forthcoming World Cup Soccer Championship. “Cities are not the problem, they are the solution,” Lerner likes to say. Perhaps his visionary folly is nothing but simple (but nonetheless precious) common sense!

The first challenge for the new mayor was to control the periodic floods that flooded roads and houses. Lerner opted for ‘cleaning up’ the shanty areas in much of the city, and the construction of a huge green zone, where the river could safely overflow

Turtle City For Jaime Lerner, the ideal city is inspired by the life of the turtle, which sleeps, works, and moves in the same space; if its shell is cut, it dies. Cities should follow this pattern: life, work, and fun all in the same place, to avoid wasting energy unnecessarily.

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Búzios

by Enel

Inaugurated in November 2011, the conversion project to turn Búzios into a smart city will be finalized in June 2015: by then the Brazilian city will have become a unique model of energy efficiency in Latin America.

Based on the application in an urban context of smart grid technologies, the project funded by ANEEL (Agência Nacional de Energia Elétrica) and directed

by Ampla, the distribution company of the Enel Group in Brazil, aims to act on energy management, both from the point of view of generation and integration, and in terms of consumption and control.

There will be a total investment of over $18 million, with many advantages for the community: a more direct verification of consumption accompanied by the ability to control the energy consumption of household appliances, the use of LED lamps in public lighting with positive implications from both an economic point of view and in terms of safety, and the possibility for citizens to take advantage of charging stations for electric

cars and bicycles. Families and small businesses can also become prosumers (both consumers and producers) of energy and enjoy a better energy supply service. In Búzios, there is also a point for recycling the waste of the Consciência EcoAmpla program, whilst door-to-door collection from homes and commercial premises is made for vegetable oil. In February 2014, 28,583 liters of oil and more than twenty tons of refuse were collected, generating a discount of about $5700 on their bills for the Ampla clients. There will be benefits for everyone, as well as important benefits for the environment. The theatre of the program is Armação dos Búzios, a tourist center in the state of Rio de Janeiro, chosen for its great potential of solar and wind energy, the structure of its electricity grid, its visibility abroad, and the number of inhabitants, enough to experiment with active demand management through smart meters: the 10,363 clients of Ampla involved in the project will be the pioneers of this smart town.

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opinions

Creative matrix

by Domenico De Masi Sociologist and author of the book “Mappa Mundi” photographs by Boa Mistura

Native roots, contamination of Portuguese and African cultures, and immigration from all over the world. The country at the centre of international economic and media attention has forged its strength out of its diversity, and has dug out the creative part from each of these origins, basing its past, present and, undoubtedly, its future, on this.

The Indian matrix Brazilian creativity has four matrices: Indian, Portuguese, African, and universal.

Cabral landed at Porto Seguro perhaps on April 21st of 1500. One year later, Amerigo Vespucci also came. Both of them found fertile soil, moderate winds, a great climate, drinking water, plentiful fruit, and a welcoming population “with so much innocence showing on their faces”.

The Indians back then, thanks to the exuberant relationship between natural resources and population, were ahead of their time regarding ‘creative idleness’ (summary of work, study, and play) which, according to Keynes, technology would have allowed his grandchildren.

The Indians – here is the essence of their creative matrix – adorned their bodies extravagantly and possessed tools, jewelry, and personal ornaments of great aesthetic refinement. As documented

by Darcy Ribeiro, the greatest scholar of their culture, “the true function that the Indians expected from everything they made was its beauty. Their beautiful ar088

rows and their precious ceramics incidentally have a utilitarian value. But their real function, that is to say, the way they contribute to the harmony of the collective life and the expression of its culture, was to create beauty.”

In Mundus novus Vespucci wrote: “Among the kinds of meat, human flesh is the most common food”. But it was a ritualistic cannibalism, which, many centuries later, became the inspiration for one of the greatest Brazilian avant-garde aesthetic movements that used cannibalism precisely as a metaphor for cultural metabolism. Its birth certificate, the Manifesto Antropófago published by Oswald de Andrade in 1928, contains desecrating passages like these: “Only Cannibalism unites us. Socially.

Economically. Philosophically ... We want a Caribbean revolution. Greater than the French Revolution ... Before the Portuguese discovered Brazil, Brazil had already discovered happiness.”

Brazilians have inherited the gentleness of manners and conviviality, which we find in so many of their artistic expressions, from the Indian inclination for happiness.

The Portuguese matrix Eduardo Galeano says that there are “countries specialized in earning and countries specialized in having to lose: that is the significance of the international division of labor.� The Portuguese matrix of Brazilian creativity lies in the many ways in which the colonists began to specialize in earning: with the mining of diamonds and gold, and with plantations of sugarcane, then rubber, and coffee.

Along with this creativity, the colonists added procreativity: seeing as it was mostly males who came from Portugal and Africa, every Portuguese man impregnated dozens of indigenous women, encouraged to do so by the colonial authorities, authorized by the Crown and blessed by the missionaries. This is how the most culturally diverse and postmodern people in the world started to come into being.

In November 1807, the King of Portugal, who had fled to Brazil to escape from the double threat of the British

and Napoleon, suddenly transformed it from a colony to the motherland. It has been on the rise ever since that moment: Brazil had a Constitution, slaves were freed, and the modernization of the country began.

It had discovered, even before England did, that as well as the growing of cotton, its industrial transformation into thread and cloth was economically advantageous: every ranch had looms that produced in mass. But in 1785, on the basis of an agreement with the British Crown, the Portuguese Crown was granted permission to sell its wine in Britain while pledging to destroy all the looms set up in Brazil. So the English textile industry got rid of its greatest global competitor.

The creative Portuguese matrix still fuels commercial initiatives by Brazil, which is still the largest producer and exporter of coffee and sugar, and for the last 120 years, its diplomatic skill has enabled it to peacefully resolve all the problems of living with ten bordering countries.

Boa Mistura This collective from Madrid, which has been active since 2001, includes various artistic and professional figures, and works on urban space.

Their works have colored walls in Berlin and SĂŁo Paulo, in South Africa, and in Norwegian cities, and have been the subject of exhibitions and social projects. These photos are of the Brazilian project Luz nas vielas (Light in Alleys).

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The African matrix The African matrix has contributed in particular to the Brazilians’ musical creativity and their world leadership in plastic surgery.

The only property of slaves was their own body. In the eyes of the master, their value, both commercial and sexual, depended on their strength, health, beauty, and agility.

Hence their body care, jogging, dancing, and capoeira, but above all, the most advanced schools of plastic surgery, the best manufacturers of cosmetics, and the best classical and contemporary dance companies.

The African matrix finds a persistent expression in religious syncretism and above all, in musical creativity. Its popular music, along with literature, has been a worldwide ambassador of saudade, joy, sweetness, and the future, and of nostalgic memories, desires and hopes.

With Sinfonia de Rio de Janeiro (1955) composed by Antônio Carlos Jobim, and with the record Canção do amor demais (1958) again by Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, in the hybrid Brazil of the exciting Fifties, music also became sweetly hybrid by wedding the samba of Rio and Bahia to the jazz of New Orleans and accordions of the Parisian

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Left Bank to give the world the poignant minimalism of bossa nova, which became the soundtrack for cosmopolitan optimism and democratic modernization. Also in the Fifties came the cinema of Glauber Rocha, the theatre of Augusto Boal, the Centros Populares de Cultura, all pushing towards participation and creativity.

A synthesis of music and dance most certainly influenced by the African roots is the carnival, renewed every year with unparalleled collective creativity that not only explodes into colors, sounds, and gestures, but also into the organizational machine that transforms its folklore into one of the largest tourist and economic enterprises in Latin America, studied by economists, sociologists and anthropologists.

The universal matrix Today, Brazil’s population exceeds 200 million, and as well as its Indian, Portuguese and African matrices, Brazilian creativity has also added that of those from many other countries who a hundred years ago provided peasant labor, and today provide graduates. Swiss, Germans, Italians, Poles, Slavs, Japanese, Syrians, and the Lebanese have enriched the colors of the country’s skin and its creativity with their stimulation, inspiration, and new resources attracted by a friendly land that is refractory to racism.

An example and symbol of this expansive season was the enlightened presidency of Juscelino Kubitschek, who with his visionary courage, stimulated the great adventure of Brasilia.

Soon after, there was a fact that helped fuel the global dimension of Brazilian creativity by turning a tragedy into opportunity. Between 1964 and 1984, the military dictatorship forced many intellectuals into exile, from F.H. Cardoso to Gilberto Gil, from Oscar Niemeyer to Darcy Ribeiro, from Chico Buarque to Caetano Veloso, and from Cristovam Buarque to Brizola. Returning home after the authoritarian parenthesis, these talents, almost all of whom are involved in politics, have modernized the country allowing its GDP to grow continuously.

Today Brazil is the world’s seventh-largest economy; it ranks fifth globally for industrial production; it has the second largest number of Facebook users, and is in fourth place for subscriptions to the Internet.

This portentous development has been accompanied by a further form of creativity.

Since the Thirties, with uninterrupted sociological imagination, a dense array of social scientists have revealed Brazil to the Brazilians. Fernando Henrique Cardoso wrote: “We owe many of the concepts, images, myths, and narrative poles that are still used to define the country, to explain the specific-

ity of Brazil, to these essayists. They were the true inventors of Brazil, each in their own way.” The conquest of identity has led the Brazilians to let every art and every science take an original path, intentionally characterized by global ambitions and local roots.

Upon reaching modernity, Brazil produced creative geniuses such as Alberto Santos Dumont, designer of the first airship and the first airplanes, or Carlos Chagas, the first and only case in the history of medicine in which the scholar himself described a disease, and discovered the causative agent and the carrier.

But little by little, painters such as Cândido Portinari and Tarsilia do Amaral, architects like Niemeyer and Paulo Mendes da Rocha, designers such as Fernando and Humberto Campana, clothing designers such as Lino Villaventura, soccer players such as Pelé, drivers such as Ayrton Senna, filmmakers such as Glauber Rocha, Ruy Guerra, Fernando Meirelles, and Walter Selles, and a hundred others, along with novelists such as Jorge Amado, poets such as Carlos Drummond de Andrade, and composers such as Hector Villa Lobos, have made ​​Brazil one of the most creative countries in the world.

Brazilians have inherited the gentleness of manners and conviviality, which we find in so many of their artistic expressions, from the Indian inclination for happiness

The Brazilian Way Today, Brazilian creativity has found one of its highest expressions in business and management. According to the latest ranking by ‘Forbes’, the entrepreneurs Jorge Paulo Lemann and Joseph Safra are respectively the 34th and the 55th among the top hundred richest men in the world. In addition to being an excellent model of organization and proud to be Brazilian, the network Globo churns out dozens of soap operas sold throughout the world every year and is positively responsible for the cultural modernization of the masses, and not only in Brazil. The same enterprise, through the Marinho Foundation, has created museums – one of the Portuguese language, one of soccer, and one of the future – that are unique in the world as to originality, pedagogical mission, and organization. In a recent article (The new frontiers of innovation in “Aspenia” issue #64), Roberto Panzarani recalled the originality of organizational enterprises such as Nature, Havaianas, and Osken. But also Porto Digital in Recife, Semco, and Rede Brasil Fertile. These all point to a Brazilian Way “that combines the quality of the environment, the accessibility of products, intelligent management, and the

happiness of everyday life.” The secret of so much creativity lies in the fact, pointed out

by Gilberto Freire, that “the Brazilian mentality is not offended by the play of contrasts, comparisons, paradoxes, contradictions, and mixtures. Brazil lives in syncretism, the conjugation of opposites, the marriage of what at first sight seems irreconcilable.”

Being young, the country is prone to renew itself, but by mixing the new with the old, resulting in an original way to evolve, making its way of life more difficult and complex, but also richer, in an ever-nascent state.

In his first novel – The Carnival Country in 1931 – Jorge Amado ironically has one of his characters say that Brazil “is the country with the greatest future in the whole world”.

Ten years later, in 1941, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig took up Amado’s concept and turned it into prophetic irony in a book entitled Brazil, Land of the Future. For twenty years, between 1964 and 1984, in Brazil oppressed by the military dictatorship, you would repeatedly hear “O Brasil è o pais do futuro” – “Brazil is the country of the future”. Today, this persistent stereotype in the Brazilian imagination has become reality. “O futuro chegou”, the future has arrived.

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data visualization

A land of wealth

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17.3 million tons of copper This is the amount of the Brazilian reserves, which are located almost entirely in the state of Parรก

edited by Oxygen

fish species There are more fish species living in the Amazon river than in the entire Atlantic Ocean

A fistful of Brazilian land can be worth gold ... and not only that.

Iron, tin, and copper are some of the other minerals that can be found in the soil and which are mainly concentrated in states such as Minas Gerais (which not surprisingly means general mines). But the riches of Brazil are also on the surface: fresh water, huge expanses of farmland, and forest, as well as being crucial from an environmental perspective, by providing the habitat for an enormous variety of plant and animal species.

3rd tin resources 13% of the tin resources in the world is found in Brazil, which is the fifth largest producer. The record for production is held by China

5th producer of rare earths In the race for the production of rare earths, in 2012 Brazil occupied fifth place, tied with Malaysia

9th gold resources Again among the countries with the greatest gold resources in the world, today it is in ninth place. First place is held by South Africa

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6,937 kilometers of river This is the extent of the Amazon River, whose basin covers over 56% of the Brazilian territory

75,000 kinds of trees One square kilometer of Amazon rainforest is home to more than 75,000 kinds of trees and 150,000 different species of higher plants

45,000 m3 of freshwater This is the amount of water available per capita annually, one of the highest amounts in the world

98 million 3.5 million green square kilometers This is the amount of space occupied by the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, which covers a total of more than 5 million square kilometers

tons of iron The amount of iron produced per year makes it second only to China, whereas the country occupies the 5th place on the list of available resources

Minas Ă— The state of Minas Gerais, generally called Minas, is a historically rich land.

After the illusion of finding huge deposits of gold, it has become the largest producer of coffee, soybeans, and above all, minerals: iron, nickel, quartz, bauxite and ...yes, evena little gold.

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A test run for innovation

by Cesar Baima Journalist

Not only an exotic tourist destination or a reserve of great resources: its recent economic stability has allowed Brazil to invest in research to emerge from the tail-end positions it occupied in the past on a global scale.

This challenge is already showing its fruits, especially in academia and education, through the development of programs that encourage cultural inter-exchanges and stimulate universities to focus on excellence.

Although it was simply a bit player on the world stage of the production of knowledge until just recently, in the last decade, Brazil has made itself known in the battle to play a leading role in those areas considered strategic for the country. In addition to research in agricultural sciences, which has contributed to making the production and exportation of Brazilian wheat among the largest in the world, the country is now trying to diversify into other priority areas, ranging from oil and energy to its air defense, health, telecommunications, and sustainability. In this way, the country is dealing with long-standing problems such as businesses’ lack of investments in the areas of research and development, and new challenges such as turning this knowledge into products and processes that are patentable and profitable.

With the good economic trend since the beginning of the last decade Brazil has seen investments in research and development increase.

According to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, 094

the total amount invested in this sector by governments and companies has increased from 12 billion reals in the year 2000 up to almost 50 billion in 2011. Nevertheless, this amount is equivalent to just 1.21% of the country’s GDP, well below the 2% threshold that the European Union considers the minimum for developed economies.

This is a percentage that is reflected in unfavorable data, such as the registration of patents: according to UNESCO, Brazil deposits four patents per thousand researchers, an average below that of the BRICS (7.4) and of Latin America (5.9).

Another problem is that 52% of this value comes from public funds and, within the percentage paid out by the companies, there was a significant participation of Petrobras, which is state-owned. This picture is very different from that of countries such as South Korea, where investment in research and development accounted for 3.7% of its GDP and was made mostly​​ by the private sector. Jerson Lima Silva, the scientific director of the

Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro Foundation (FAPERJ) and winner of the 2010 Conrado Wessel Scientific Award (FCW), states that the country continues to record practices that do not stimulate any exchange between universities and businesses: “For example, we have a law concerning innovation that allows a researcher to engage in another activity provided that they abandon academic life, when both activities could be combined in favor of a better result.”

Recently the main development was the launch in March of last year of the Inova Empresa program, which is based on a three-party funding system: resources from businesses, grants, and public credit, as well as support from an applied research center which has provided its researchers and its infrastructure for the development of the project proposed by the enterprise. With resources of approximately 32.9 billion reals, the program has brought flexibility and speed to the process of supporting innovation in the pri-

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vate sector, as well as providing the researchers involved in the projects with a greater vision of the market.

Maurício Canêdo, a researcher in the field of applied economics at the Brazilian Institute of Economics at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (IBRE/FGV), endorses the recent achievements in the policies of innovation incentives: “When we speak of tools for increasing competitiveness, for example, we are growing more in this area than in that of the physical infrastructures of the country, whose difficulties drastically affect the activities of Brazilian companies.” However, Canêdo notes that the trend adopted by the protectionist industrial policy is counterproductive, reminding us that Brazil continues to bear the mark of one of the most closed economies in the world: “Nobody innovates by accident. If a sector is protected from international competition, it will not invest in innovation. In this way, we now have a scenario in which the government reduces the cost of in096

novation on the one hand, but on the other, it also reduces the benefit of such an investment,” he says.

Even if investments are still far from perfect from the point of view of academic production, the increa-

With resources of approximately 32.9 billion reals, the Inova Empresa program has brought flexibility and speed to the process of supporting innovation in the private sector sed resources available have helped to stimulate the number of publications of articles by Brazilian researchers and institutions in domestic and foreign periodicals. According to the Web of Science service run by

Thomson Reuters which analyzes more than eleven thousand scientific journals published worldwide, in 2003, Brazil was the origin of 1.7% of all the world’s scientific output and in 2012, it was already responsible for 2.7%, going from a number of less than 13,000 to nearly 35,000 annual texts. Another database of scientific publications, Scimago, (supported by the Scopus system of the specialized publishing house Elsevier), also shows the great evolution of the Brazilian presence in the global scientific community. According to this database, the country jumped from the 21st position in 1996 in the ranking of those who produced the most quotable documents (8,600), to 13th in 2012, with more than 53,000. “This is an important finding because it allows us to better interpret the numbers.

In the end, our production is greater than that of Switzerland, but we have no Nobel Prize winners. On the other hand, China is in second place for the publication of scientific papers, but as far as the quota-

a test run for innovation |

tions’ impact factor goes, it is not so far from Brazil”, compares Silva.

The fact is that the economic stability that has occurred over the past decade has enabled the country to outline longer-term strategies, focusing on the importance of innovation, not only in and of itself but also on its strategic role in the quality of education and in creating an economy of knowledge. This has been observed both in the debate on the improvement of primary education and in the creation of programs such as Science Without Borders, launched in mid-2011 with the objective of integrating the training of Brazilian students with scholarships for them to study abroad, and to promote scientific and technical cooperation to strengthen the training of human resources in key areas, focusing on the basic sciences and various kinds of engineering, where the offer is below Brazil’s requirements.

The initial goal of the program is to fund 101,000 scholarships until the end of this year. “It is a positi-

ve interaction that has allowed us to bring people, such as the Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry, the Swiss scientist Kurt Wüthrich, here to help us in our research at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)”, recounts Silva. Wüthrich

With a good economic trend since the beginning of the last decade, Brazil has seen investments in research and development increase is a specialist in the area of ​​nuclear magnetic resonance and among his activities at the UFRJ, he teaches doctoral and post-doctoral students, giving lectures and holding conferences and special seminars.

However, the destiny of these

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projects still depends on the actual extent of the investment, given that any new initiative today has to fight for its place within the same budget that supports programs of research and development and the efforts to increase the number of Brazilian universities in the world ranking of excellence. For specialists, it is only with this stimulus, obtaining the adhesion of the private sector, that Brazil will be able to achieve the leading role it seeks: “But everything depends on the stimuli and the decisions of the government,” Silva reminds us.

To illustrate the importance of this effort, it is enough to mention the growing trade deficit recorded by the country in medicines and active pharmaceutical ingredients, one of the priority areas which in 2013 amounted to 7.6 billion U.S. dollars.

“This is a good example of the fact that today any problem is presented as a justification for restricting investment, and without science and technology, it will only get worse in the future,” concludes Silva.

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A country of records edited by Oxygen

A giant with regard to population, with about 200 million inhabitants (and the largest number of people of Italian origin in the world), the economy, with a GDP of more than 2.2 trillion dollars, and nature, with a wealth of resources that makes it the first of the mega-diverse countries, i.e. those with the largest number of living species. Brazil is not only excellence from the point of view of the abundance of landscapes, fresh water, and mineral resources: its industry has also recorded

Christ the Redeemer × At 709 meters above sea level, with its height of 38 meters, this statue of Christ is the second highest in the world.

Inaugurated in 1931, its lighting was activated in Rome, from where Marconi sent an ​​ electrical signal to an antenna located in the district of Jacarepaguá.

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important numbers, making it a leading exporter of many goods, most notably coffee, meat, orange juice, and sugar cane, and the production of steel and oil, as well as eucalyptus pulp. And the off-note? Its records are not only positive ones: the country also holds the world record for car thefts, as well as being the first market for crack. And on a culinary note? There is Brazilian acarajé (a seasoned bean paste, fried, and stuffed), the most calorie-packed dish in the world.

86% Brazilian vitamins A very high percentage of orange juice is exported, mainly to the U.S. market

39% A little sugar With more than onethird of the world’s sugarcane production, this makes it one of Brazil’s most solid exports

41% The years of the chicken Brazil accounts for almost half of the export market for poultry, which according to the Economist, will be the kind of meat most consumed in the coming years

27% 13%

Café do Brasil The most famous record is that of coffee: nearly a third of world trade

Not just ocean The percentage of its freshwater puts Brazil in the first place in the world

1.36 Meat exported The millions of tons of beef exported in 2013, 25% of world trade

10-20% A country of diversity This is the percentage of Brazil’s large contribution to the biota, the biotic component, which is the total collection of plant and animal species in a certain area

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2014: the year of the World Cup redemption

by Darwin Pastorin Sports journalist 100

In 1950, the dream of a nation was almost a certainty: to win the World Cup, but the match, which should have been a formality, did not go as expected. This year, the World Cup is back in Brazil and the desire for redemption is great.

Moods, expectations, preparations, protests, and the economy: the story of a country that is hosting the event 64 years later and with a completely new face.

Sixty-four years of waiting. Since 1950. Brazil, which has won five World Cup soccer championships, is the essence and beauty of soccer – Pier Paolo Pasolini (who played right wing) spoke of ‘poetry’ to describe the play of the athletes in green and gold jerseys, and just naming Pelé and Garrincha evokes its magic and joy. But there is still that dark page to be torn out, a wound to be washed away: because the negative memory of that 1950 is not one of singing or dancing: it is melancholy, anger, and a desire for revenge.

When Brazil organized the 1950 World Cup, the Maracanã stadium, which could contain nearly two hundred thousand spectators, was built in Rio de Janiero, and Brazil undoubtedly had the strongest team. And, in fact, Zizinho and his comrades marched to the goleada beat, with people wearing T-shirts bearing the word ‘champions’ going crazy in the stands.

Then came the day of the decisive match against Uruguay: for Seleção, the Brazilian national team, even a tie would be enough to triumph. But the Brazilian team was a goal machine: it could not settle for the crumbs. So,

that July 16th there was an atmosphere of celebration.

There was the sound of trumpets and drums as an entire nation prepared for a soccer carnival.

Because no-one could ever stop those aces.

Jean-Paul Sartre called soccer “a metaphor for life.”

And life is never a given, fate changes its mood, the ball sometimes bounces weirdly and takes strange trajectories.

July 16th was not a day of celebration. An illusion was turned into collective drama.

After the first half ended 0-0, the Seleção team began climbing back in glory, scoring with the attacker Friaça. Now: try shutting your eyes. Try to imagine the explosion, yes, the explosion at the Maracanã: confetti, laughter, songs, and samba. Samba everywhere! But something, or rather someone, changed the course of the match.

And that someone was named Obdulio Varela, captain of the Celeste team. He took the ball and held it tight. The English referee George Reader told him to give back the leather ball. Varela said, “I do not understand”, meanwhile murmuring about an alleged offside.

The Brazilian players became nervous, the Brazil-

The Maracanã stadium fell silent, you could only hear the sobbing. All of Brazil was astonished, listening to the radio commentary. Sixtyfour years later, Brazil is once again organizing the world championship: to erase the stigma of 1950

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64 the number of matches that will be played from June 12th to July 13th

32 the number of the nations involved in the 32 days of the World Cup

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12 the number of the cities and stadiums where the matches are played

56.268 spectators the average capacity of the World Cup stadiums

73.531 the number of spectators who will be able to watch the final match in the Maracan達 Stadium

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2014: the year of the world cup redemption | oxygen

ian fans became nervous, even the Brazilian sky grew nervous.

But Obdulio: not at all. He took his time and that time turned into gold. Putting Brazil out of the picture, Schiaffino managed to tie the score and, a few minutes from the end, Ghiggia created the winning goal, and thus the Cup victory. The Maracanã fell silent, you could only hear the sobbing, there were even those who took their own life. All of Brazil was astonished, listening to the radio commentary. And the Seleção goal-keeper, Moacyr Barbosa, the first mulatto player to wear the number one jersey of the national team, became a ‘tragic hero,’ the scapegoat. From that moment on he was marginalized and forgotten. He became invisible.

Sixty-four years later, Brazil is once again organizing the world championship: to erase the stigma of 1950 and restore honor to Moacyr and his brothers. It will not be easy, despite the presence of a champion such as Neymar, a goalscorer who grew up in Santos and is now a ‘star’ of the Barcelona team, ​​alongside Argentina’ s Lionel Messi. For the final game at the Maracanã on July 13th, there are many national teams accredited by the predictions: in addition to Seleção, the teams of Argentina, Uruguay, Germany, as well as Italy’s team coached

by Cesare Prandelli. The Italian team was not lucky in the draw and the heat of some cities could really and truly weaken legs and hamper breathing. But Italian players have accustomed us to impossible feats, think of Spain 1982 and Berlin in 2006. Who will the new Paolo Rossi be?

The World Cup has also led to many protests. Together with the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro (an extraordinary success achieved by former President Lula), there are good opportunities for building facilities, improving infrastructures, and increasing the flow of tourists. But for the people, that is not enough.

The Land of Soccer has rebelled, demanding, above all, hospitals and schools. Because health and education are not to be taken lightly, nor the future of their children. President Dilma Rous-

seff has promised to listen to everyone: to make the South American Giant grow even more. There have been delays in the construction of stadiums, perfection has undoubtedly not been reached, there have been work-related deaths, heated controversy, and acts of violence, but the World Cup could represent a new opportunity for the Brazilian economy. For some time now, you have been able to breathe new air, the number of the poor has decreased thanks to the Zero Hunger project, and the middle class has risen again. Above all, after the seasons of dictatorship, people are only speaking of democracy and growth.

And Brazil also owes that to a champion who recently left us: Doctor Sócrates, an ace player for the Corinthians and the Seleção team.

Thanks to his ‘Corinthian democracy’, the first and also only attempt to bring socialism into a changing room, today’s Brazil is for everyone, and not just the privileged few. The players captained by Sócrates went out onto the field, inviting people to go to vote, to choose their president directly, to raise their head and say no to the violence of the military. Doctor Sócrates, who spoke of Gramsci and solidarity, will be one of the symbols of the World Cup: a powerful symbol, one that is noble and winning.

I was born in Brazil after my parents emigrated there from Verona. My heart has always been divided in two, between Brazil and Italy. As a special correspondent of the newspaper “Tuttosport”, I saw the Italian team triumph in 1982 at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium in Madrid, and the green-gold team win the World Cup, defeating Roberto Baggio and his team-mates with penalty kicks, in 1994 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.

In 2006, as the director and conductor of LA7 Sport, I accompanied Italy’s journey in the Berlin world championship games with a live daily program. Now my desire in Rio is to see the final match between Italy and Brazil: that would surely be a ‘winner’.

There have been delays in the construction of stadiums, perfection has undoubtedly not been reached. But the World Cup could represent a new opportunity for the Brazilian economy 105

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in-depth

The science in soccer

by Davide Coero Borga Journalist illustrations by Undesign

An alien would describe it as a primitive form of religiousness: millions of hominids, on the spot or connected from their homes, yelling and screaming whilst within the confines of a rectangle, 22 gladiators in underpants tussle to gain possession of a piece of leather, but for those who grew up with soccer, it is quite simply extraordinary. Science also comes into play to explain the impossible trajectories by Roberto Carlos, Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Andrea Pirlo.

It doesn’t really matter whether it is made of leather, rags, or plastic. A soccer ball is pure magic. It thrills the soul. It makes the Earth quake.

The Africans who hosted the last World Cup know something about that. And what’s more, geologists know that in 2007, re-analyzing the data collected during an international campaign of surveys on the seismic situation in Cameroon, they noticed some anomalies in the background noise that characterizes the normal telluric activities on the planet: high-frequency tremors, detected by a score of seismographs all over the country, perfectly synchronized with each other ... and scientifically inexplicable.

The mystery was solved by a soccer fan. In fact, the period in which the detections ​​ were made coincided with the matches of 106

the Africa Cup of Nations championship, and the abnormal tremors coincided with the goals scored by the Lions team, the local favorites. Every time the national team of Cameroon scored a goal, their fans would cause a ‘foot-quake’, as researchers called it – feet vigorously stamping the ground as a form of exultation.

Homo Ludens A ball is the toy of toys. The fact that it has become so popular speaks volumes about the vice of Sapiens Sapiens to turn some object of common use into a toy. This is an attitude that we share with many other animals, mostly mammals, where the toy takes on an important role for learning basic knowledge for survival. For example, using rubber balls as a toy, puppies develop skills that

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are useful, at least in the wild, for hunting.

If we take this instinct to play with objects into account, it is not surprising that mankind has also come to design and produce industrial-grade toys designed for this purpose. Some categories of playing are probably part of a common cultural heritage of various populaces. Others have become essential in the formation of modern man.

What we poetically call a sphere - the soccer ball - is first and foremost an icosahedron, the form we get by sewing together twelve pentagons and twenty hexagons

All kind of balls But in the end, it’s just a game, right? Try telling that to the neighborhood goal-scorer, the kids who turn their courtyards or an empty square into packed stadiums in honor of the sacred deities, the protectors of street-soccer. Then there is a matter of futile debate. Should the ball be of leather? Or hard plastic like the Tango ball? Or the more economical Super tele ball? The difference could brighten someone’s day.

Soccer is actually an exact science.

In order to win, it certainly comes in handy to know about physics, geometry, and ballistics. What we poetically call a sphere – the soccer ball – is first and foremost an icosahedron, the form we get by sewing together twelve pentagons and twenty hexagons.

The ball is a short, stocky, aerodynamic body, which is why it moves so well in the air. In 2010, when Adidas presented the Jabulani, the regulatory ball for the World Cup in South Africa that was rounder than ever before, it was a fiasco.

Unpredictable trajectories, inaccuracies, and complications in the phrasing. The ball had to be hurriedly returned to the designers who had to insert micro-serrations and small weights to increase the stability of the Jabulani ball.

Over time there has been a return to something more like an icosahedron, the geometric shape of the Telstar, the ball used in Mexico in 1970.

It doesn’t really matter whether it is made of leather, rags, or plastic. A soccer ball is pure magic. It thrills the soul. It makes the Earth quake

It takes physics That’s what it is. Head shots, free kicks, and effects with the ball can be explained in terms of mass, velocity, density of the body, shock theory, aerodynamics, and the theory of fluids. Whether the effect is to pass, to 108

chip, or take a shot, the kicks and penalties that keep us in suspense comply with complex rules of physics.

In 1997, the perfect shot with which the Brazilian Roberto Carlos humiliated Fabien Barthez, the French goalkeeper, entered the history of science: the kicked ball that seemed to be flying into the stands, instead made a curve just a few meters from the goal net, lightly glancing off the post.

That is what physicists call the Magnus effect: studied to interpret the changes in the trajectory of a rotating body in fluid motion, it explains how the rotation imparted to a ball can create a difference of aerostatic pressure between the left and the right side of a leather ball, generating a lift (the Bernoulli effect): a physical force that pushes the ball causing it to make a parabola a few meters long.

Andrea Pirlo has made it his trademark.

When he performs his free kicks, rather than towards the left or right, the rotational force is given from top to bottom, thus sending the ball that is seemingly aimed at the stands into the goal net.

In 1997, the perfect shot with which the Brazilian Roberto Carlos humiliated Fabien Barthez, the French goalkeeper, entered the history of science: the kicked ball that seemed to be flying into the stands, instead made a curve just a few meters from the goal, lightly glancing off the post

Those who ... Brazil in 2014 On a hot July afternoon while returning from work on foot, if you happen to stand still in the middle of the road and discover a city that is completely silent, deserted, practically a ghost-town, do not let it frighten you. There is nothing spectral hanging in the air. Prick up your ears and listen to the buzzing that comes from open windows facing onto the building courtyards. The lay rosary of a sports commentary will give you the comfort that you need to reach your home. A polyphonic shouting will celebrate the team that scores a goal.

The World Cup Soccer Championship, now in its 20th edition, will enter its final phase from June 12th to July 13th, 2014. The playing field is unique: Brazil, the land of Pelé, Zico, Falcão, Romario, Didi, Roberto Rivelino, Zizinho, Rivaldo, and Ronaldo.

The land of soccer. Because as Toninho Cerezo, the Brazilian midfielder who played for the Rome and Sampdoria teams in the Eighties, said, “soccer is happiness, joie de vivre, soccer is rice with beans”.

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Social-World Cup

by Simone Arcagni Journalist

Hosting the FIFA World Cup is a great opportunity for visibility and Brazil knows this very well. Faced with a more shared and participatory enjoyment of events today, the country is staking a great deal on the Internet, investing in technologies that make it possible to watch the matches on all mobile devices and taking the opportunity to make the national history and culture known with a social approach.

The World Cup is a major media event, and in fact, it is perhaps the greatest media event on a truly global scale. Not surprisingly, big players and advertising are converging on it, all with the aim of catching the attention of an audience as wide and motivated as that of soccer fans.

All the more so seeing as Brazil is the country where soccer is experienced as entertainment, excitement, and fun. First of all, these are the World Cup games of a new kind of television: for the first time, the media event is followed on most platforms and social networks, and on mobile devices such as notebooks and especially tablets, rather than on the classic television set at home.

This is a revolution that tells of practices that are changing, as well as the usage of new models that are linked less to the place and more to the ‘social’ aspect.

The Brazilian World Cup soccer championship will be seen in Italy on the Internet and with mobile devices: Perform Group (a com-

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pany active in the marketing and production of sports content) has noted that this world championships is the first to be followed heavily on mobiles via streaming and on the social media. Research conducted by Perform Group, in collaboration with Kantar Media Sport and TV Sports Markets, entitled Global Sports Media Consumption Report points out that Italians are increasingly following sport, and soccer in particular, on digital platforms, and this phenomenon is even more evident during the World Cup in Brazil.

Social networks play a key role and, therefore, advertising strategies are also taking that into account, as well as the ability for communication within Brazil itself. Not surprisingly, the Brazilian government has recently developed a new portal for tourism that plays the card of social networks and participation. Brasil Home (http://visitbrasilhome. com/) is the social platform that takes the form of a house, but a house that is special because

Brasil Home × Immersion in the music of Gilberto Gil, the recipe for oyster ‘Moqueca’, and books by Machado De Assis: the portal ‘Brasil Home’ allows you to move about in a virtual house in which every object recounts a piece of the cultural history and landscape of the country.

each room allows you to get in touch (via links, photos, and videos) with a different aspect of Brazilian culture: its sports, cuisine, landscapes, natural and architectural beauty, history, and so on. In the new Brazil, even tourism has become digital. So now this country is hosting the soccer tourists and spectators from around the world who want to see, comment on, review, participate in, and experience these World Cup events.

So while the Italian coach Prandelli has prohibited the use of social networks for the national team players who are engaged in the event, the FIFA has given the green light to the goal line technology for the first time … Brazil’s strategy is to use this event to steer the country towards innovation: in the first instance, there are the twelve cities hosting matches that are adopting the new ICT systems of broadband and 4G technology for mobile communication. The idea is to push the country – which is already accredited as one of the emerging realities of the world – towards a large-scale technological upgrading. And for the government, having won the organization of the 2016 Olympics is a further step in this direction. The question is whether the strategy will really work or if it is likely to create even more gaps between the different strata of the population. One concern shared by observers, academics, students, and scholars alike, and that has even seen many people become mobilized, asking the country not to organize the World Cup, and to invest the money instead in the economic plans for those Brazilians who are still living in situations of absolute poverty.

From the highly technological, hyper-connected stadiums with ‘green’ technologies of the latest generation to the favelas, there is a division that Brazil has to resolve. These committees want to raise awareness in this direction and, coincidentally, they do so by organizing mostly on social networks: in any case, it is nevertheless clear that communication in Brazil has definitively turned over a new leaf.

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Street Art Urban narrations edited by Oxygen

Better Out Than In Collaboration between Banksy and Os Gêmeos

A city that does not have an outlet to the sea, made up of skyscrapers and tall buildings whose density strains the eyes; this is how Os Gêmeos, twins and exponents of Brazilian street art, see their city, São Paulo.

And it is precisely from the need to create some space among the concrete that has led them along their path of being street artists, and part of a very flourishing tradition in São Paulo, where since the early eighties with the fall of the military dictatorship, artists have taken to the streets and made them colorful. Unlike the pixação (which are mainly written), the Brazilian murals are paintings, often quite large, that cover the city walls and sidewalks, thus giv-

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ing them a new identity. The fame of many artists today has crossed national borders: in 2008, Nunca and Os Gêmeos were selected by the Tate Modern for its exhibition dedicated to street art, and last year eleven Brazilian artists were invited by the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt to celebrate the presence of Brazil as the guest country at the book fair. Os Gêmeos also painted the plane the Brazilian team is using during the World Cup. The attention given to street artists today also originates from influences from other worlds, such as fashion; the São Paulo artist Nina Pandolfo designed the Baguette handbag designed for the opening of Fendi’s first store in Brazil.

Rio de Janeiro Colonial architecture meet street art

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Muro dos ídolos Murals celebrating the Botafogo team in Rua General Severiano in Rio de Janeiro, where the old stadium stood, through its historical players. In the photo, Donizete and Túlio

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Muro dos ídolos Nilton Santos

Mural in the favela Complexo do Alemão, Rio de Janeiro

Muro dos ídolos Loucos 22 depicts Botafogo supporters, the Loucos pelo Botafogo

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Muro dos ídolos Russão and Garrincha

Germany 2006 Graffiti celebrating the Germany World Cup. Santa Teresa, Rio de Janeiro.

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Bambas da Lapa Circo Voador, Rio de Janeiro, the artwork by fifteen writers

Muro dos Ă­dolos Botafogo de Futebol e Regatas, Rio de Janeiro

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In

interview

Brasilia, a capital of contrasts interview with Rainer Hehl

Professor of architecture at the Technical University of Berlin

by Michele Fossi Journalist

A very young city born at the drawing table at the end of the 1950s, Brasilia is the architectural meeting place between the democratic vocation of the project

by Lúcio Costa and the social inequalities of the nation, brought together in the favelas and slums which grew up spontaneously around the city. Often considered an artificial city, today it is the real symbol of the country with great contrasts.

In the Fifties, there was an atmosphere in Brazil of energy, hope, and enthusiasm: economic development, catalyzed by the rapid technical and industrial progress, finally seemed at hand, and thanks to João Gilberto’s guitar and Tom Jobim’s piano, bossa nova was living its moment of greatest fervor. It was in this context of faith in the future and general euphoria that President Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira (elected in 1955 and known for having coined the slogan “50 years in 5” with which he promised to acquire 50 years of prosperity for the country in just 5 years of his government) decided to launch an ambitious project, one that had already been talked about in the nineteenth century: to found a new capital in the underdeveloped center of the country, so as to catalyze development and avoid an over-centralization of power and 118

economic activities around Rio de Janeiro. The person who won the competition, announced by the President to the surprise of many, was the only one of the architects and planners participants who had shown up at the appointment without any detailed designs, but rather with a written text accompanied by a simple sketch: Lúcio Costa. “He was a cultured and refined man, born and educated in France, who was deeply fascinated by the ideas of modernism advocated in Europe by Le Corbusier,” says Rainer Hehl, a professor of architecture at the TU in Berlin and author of numerous publications on Brazilian urban planning, including Cidade de Deus – City of Gods (Ruby Press, 2012) and Brazil minha Casa ­­– Nossa Cidade (Brazil: My House – Our Town) (Ruby Press, 2014). Costa’s Descriptive Memory of the Pilot Plan– reveals his vision of a utopian

Urban designer Costa’s vision of a utopian city was one in which the architecture would reflect the democratic values of ​​ equality and social justice set out in the Brazilian Constitution

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city in which the architecture would reflect the democratic values of ​​ equality and social justice set out in the Brazilian Constitution. Thus between 1956 and 1960, Brasilia, the first ‘test-city’ in the world, was created in only 41 months. “It was a triumph of absolute rationality, nothing in the meticulous and detailed urban plan made ​​by Lúcio Costa was left to chance: at the drawing board, he divided the designated areas for residential, commercial, banking, and hospital needs, limiting the industrial areas and even the maximum height of the buildings, which in Brasilia never exceed the surrounding vegetation. The feeling is bizarre: on the one hand, you hear the noise of the highways that run through the city; on the other hand, just outside your window, you can see a wall of green vegetation. Added to this are the buildings of Brasilia designed by Oscar Nemeyer, a student of Costa’s who immediately became involved in the project, which were conceived as modern concrete piles that are all supported by a system of columns and pillars, with the result that the architecture of the new capital is never an impediment to mobility: to use an expression dear to him, it ‘frees up space’. It is a work of art, in all respects: in fact, seen from above, the layout of the new capital poetically recalls a bird in flight.” To such an extent that the astronaut Yuri Gagarin, when he went on a visit to Brasilia after his historic trip into space, said: “It is like landing on another planet”. Worried that in the years to come the city would un120

dergo a chaotic proliferation that would affect the perfection of the original plan, Costa also conceived a model of urban growth based on the creation of satellite cities, connected to the mother-city by highways with express lanes. “So over the years, the city created to embody the principles of equality enshrined in the Constitution paradoxically became the symbol of segregation and social inequality: on the one hand, there was the Brasilia designed at the drawing board, inhabited by the rich and cultured intelligentsia, and on the other, there were the satellite cities such as Santa Maria, São Sebastião da Gama, Ceilândia, and Sobradinho, populated by the destitute who had come flocking from the most backward areas of the country.”

“The satellite cities of Brasilia,” Hehl remarks, “are very different from each other: some have grown in a planned manner and therefore rightfully belong to the so-called ‘formal’ (meaning ‘planned’) fabric of the capital, whereas others have developed in a completely uncontrolled manner, resulting in an oasis of ‘informality’, or favelas and slums.

This makes Brasilia, today, one of the most interesting case studies for us as architects, to observe the relationship between the formal and informal fabric in the cities of developing countries in the twenty-first century.” This relationship has been acquiring new, unexpected meanings in recent years. “For decades, the favelas of the satellite cities of Brasilia were perceived as off-limit areas in the hands of criminals, kept

alive by a black economy parallel to the official one. We now know that, far from being irreconcilable extremes of a dichotomy, the formal and informal fabric of Brasilia represent two underworlds that interact with each other more and more vividly. As a matter of fact, there is growing evidence that they actually need each other in order to exist: the informal sector needs the formal sector because it provides jobs and services, while, conversely, the formal sector relies on the informal sector to find cheap labor, without which the whole city would grind to a halt.” But there is more: with the growth of the Brazilian middle class, the favelas are taking shape as a new market with a huge potential.

“According to the latest statistics, a

This is particularly true in Brasilia, which now boasts the primacy of cities with the highest human development index (HDI) of the entire country”, explains Hehl. “In three to four years, the imaginary line that spatially separates the formal and informal fabric of Brasilia and other Brazilian cities has thus acquired a new meaning: from an insurmountable social barrier between rich and poor to a frontier to conquer for the rampant Brazilian capitalism that today sees its greatest potential for expansion in the informal areas that are increasingly populated by the middle class.” This is undoubtedly reflected in the newborn slum housing market: if just a few years ago, to talk of it would have made you smile, today it is one of the sectors with the fastest economic growth in all of Brazil, with the value of land in the informal areas of Brasilia and other cities in Brazil having quadrupled in just four years.

Brasilia, today, is one of the most interesting case studies to observe the relationship between the formal and informal fabric in the cities of developing countries percentage of between 65 and 70% of the inhabitants of the Brazilian favelas, now belongs to the middle class; in 2002, it was only 37%. So the favelas have suddenly appeared as an endless pool of millions of potential new consumers.” This has been confirmed by a recent study

by Data Popular, the Brazilian polling institute, verifying that access to consumer goods in the informal areas of Brazilian cities has exploded in the last ten years: the number of inhabitants of the favelas who own a washing machine has doubled and is 50% today, 90% have a cell phone, 40%, a computer, and 45% are regular Internet users. “By now the Brazilian favelas are populated mostly by consumers in the classic sense of the term, 70% go to the malls of the city center and eat out once a week.

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The tree of wealth

by Donato Speroni Economics journalist

The awareness that preserving natural wealth can drive the economy often arrives late: this is the case of the Amazon region, in the past over-exploited and subjected to environmental stress, but which in the past few years has recorded, in some areas, a decline in the rate of deforestation which allows us to hope in an inversion of the trend.

Question: Who organizes the annual World Forests Summit, the meeting of world leaders on the condition of forests? Greenpeace, the WWF, or some other organization of tree huggers, the fanatical defenders of the trees? Wrong: These meetings are promoted

by The Economist. They are expensive: in order to participate, you have to shell out €1,500. The most recent meeting, which took place on March 20 in Stockholm, had business as its subject: the relationship with the expansion of agricultural land, the future of bio-energy and timber markets, and new products derivable from trees.

The initiative of the British magazine underlines that there is an ongoing turning point in the approach to the problem: the extension of tropical forests must be protected not only to limit climate change or to save biodiversity and indigenous peoples, but because the woodlands are a vital part of the economy of the future, a source of wealth both for those who invest in them and for the countries in which they are located.

In the past, governments of countries that are home to tropical forests have allowed or even encouraged their destruction so as to derive exports and currency from them.

Instead, the turning point is to consider this wealth as part of a new sustainable economy, using trees in an environmentally friendly manner. The 2012 FAO report State of the world’s forests devoted a chapter to the importance (so far little studied) of timber to the economies of developing countries, considering that at least 1.6 billion people worldwide depend

on forests for their survival, not to mention the 60 million who still live in them.

Today we are beginning to understand the value of the original forest: a study published in “Nature” states that one hectare of Amazon rainforest would yield $148 every year if converted into land for cattle ranching, $1,000 if used for the extraction of commercial timber by destroying all other types of shrubbery, and $6,820 if the forest were respected, and merely ‘harvested’ to collect fruits, latex, and timber.

It is still early to talk of a turnaround, but thanks to this new perspective, progress at global level is encouraging. The FAO estimates that in 2010, the world’s forests covered an area of ​​4.03 billion hectares.

In the first decade of the new century, the annual rate of deforestation fell from 8.3 million to 5.2 million hectares and some large countries have begun to increase the extension of their forests: China by 1.6% per year, and India by 0.5%.

The pace of deforestation is decreasing in Brazil too; two-thirds of its territory are covered by forests: 544 million hectares, equivalent to 17% of the total forests worldwide, according to a study by the World Forest Institute.

According to satellite measurements, it has gone from about 12,000 square kilometers destroyed annually in 2007-2008 to less than 5,000 today, a figure that shows a significant commitment, even though halting this destruction is not easy because it is strongly linked to population dynamics.

Illegal logging and other activities such as the smuggling of exotic animals have contributed

to the degradation of the Amazon rainforest, but the main causes responsible for more than 90% of the impact of deforestation are cattle ranching and agriculture, especially when practiced by clearing the land with fire, which often extends beyond the areas that they wanted to ‘clean up’. The population in the Amazon areas has increased tenfold over the past 50 years, surpassing 20 million inhabitants and in fact, human pressure is the main threat to forests in Brazil.

According to the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI), an international think tank, 70% of the assets of deforestation today derive from logging carried out in order to obtain small property plots, but Brazil would not need to use all that land for agricultural production: it would be enough to simply improve the productivity of the land already being cultivated in order to obtain satisfactory results.

Obviously it is not easy to change models of economic activity and make the necessary investments, but a rational economic exploitation of tropical forests is the great hope for saving the lungs of the planet. Almir Narayamoga, the head of an Amazon tribe, the Surui, says, “We are not saying not to use the forest, but always to reflect on the medium and long term effects of any intervention.”

The Surui are the first tribal population in the Amazon to become involved in a project funded by the UN, “Redd” (Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation).

Ten percent of the income generated will go to local non-tribal populations, thus demonstrating how forest conservation can generate employment and income.

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Tropicália, the permanent revolution

by Paolo Ferrari Music critic

Its seeds had been sown in the 1930s, but it was in the two hot years of 1967 and 1968 that Tropicália exploded in Brazilian popular music thanks to the young musicians Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso. Capable of going beyond the traditional dichotomies that characterized the country’s music, it had an enormous impact and not even the harsh reaction of the national regime was able to prevent it influencing the current national musical scene.

Lisbon, August 4th, 1969. Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, both of them twenty-seven years old, arrived in Portugal for a week, exiles from Brazil subjected to the excessive rigidity imposed by the authoritarian military regime. They sang in a theater, and the presenter asked them if the music they had just played for the enthusiastic audience was due to the movement called Tropicália. Caetano, looking like a wild hippy intellectual, responded: “The name of a movement exists at the time when that movement exists, and Tropicália, as such, does not exist any more.

It produced fruits that have attracted attention to some Brazilian songwriters and influenced our ideas. But now we are no longer in Brazil and the movement no longer exists.”

This is the beginning of the excellent documentary Tropicália by Marcelo Machado.

What the two Brazilians could not foresee at that time was the ability of Tropicalia’s spirit to penetrate deep into the culture of that great Portuguese-speaking country to become an indispensable segment of the DNA of Brazilian popular music. Tropicália tout

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court was born in 1928 with the Manifesto Antropófago by Oswald De Andrade, a source of inspiration for the emotional and cultural bulimia of the mid-Sixties that resulted in a brilliant crossover between the cult of its preColumbian roots and the desire for a future shared with the youth in the rest of the planet. It was in 1967 when Gil and Veloso upset the audience of state television by singing, respectively, Domingo No Parque and Alegria Alegria. Immediately afterwards, Veloso published the song Tropicália. Once the cork had popped, in 1968, not just any year, out came the 33 rpm collective manifesto Tropicália ou Panis et Circenses: photographs show a gang of freaks, references to lysergic rock are explicit, and likewise, the link with the great school of bossa nova of João Gilberto and Tom Jobim – and even Dadaism, pacifism, and sexual liberation as well. All put together by a collective that sounds like a multi-colored puzzle of epochal talents: Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, Os Mutantes, Gal Costa, Tom Zé, Nara Leâo, Rogério Duprat, the poet Torquato Neto, and the agitprop singer Maria Bethânia, too anarchical to ever feel part of a group, in the role of supporter. The impact was devastating, prison and exile were around the corner. On his return in 1972, Tropicália seemed a thing of the past, light years away. “It was a utopia,” stated Gilberto Gil soon afterwards.

From movement to spirit According to Rogerio Duarte, a graphic artist, poet, and songwriter who is three years older than Caetano and Gilberto, the quintessence of Tropicália was the advent of the culture of synthesis in a country accustomed to the dynamics of contrast: Africa against Europe, Rio against Bahia, and so on. This would explain the nature of the cultural revolution of far greater scope than only that of the music scene and its current stability in the spirit of film, theater, art, and song. This reasoning can be extended to the extraordinary ability of Brazilian pop to live in a constant dialectic between generations, rather than relying on processes of conflict between the new and the past. As the collective Tropicália valorized the lively lessons of João Gilberto and Tom Jobim from a different perspective, so in the following decades, the present has continued to weave the intrigue of renewal while proudly showing the threads of the past. Up to noisy displays of affection such as the recovery of the repertoire of Os Mutantes by the metal group Sepultura, and the doped tropical rock of the very contemporary Carotas Suegas.

While the shining careers of Caetano, Gilberto, Gal Costa and Tom Zé continued in the spotlight around the world, in the un125

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derground and with particular intensity in the Northeast of the country, embers were smoldering and kept a flame alive that was destined to flare up with renewed energy in the early Nineties.

Utopia pays off The last decade of the twentieth century expressed sufficient evidence to constitute proof: Tropicália was a fertile utopia ready to return to the limelight in new forms. A quarter of a century after their historic collective album, Gil and Veloso reunited for Tropicália 2; David Byrne, immersed in the sounds of the southern hemisphere, launched Tom Zé in a big way with his record label Luaka Bop; cosmopolitan samba reggae spread through the furious rhythms of Carlinhos Brown.

Above all, a guy from Recife was leading a new cultural movement, the Mangue Beat.

His name was Chico Science, his band Nação Zumbi, with the return of pre-Columbian imagery mixed with the spirit of Afrika Bambaataa’s Zulu Nation, a pioneer of hip hop in the U.S. The sound was a blend of local roots, rap, black music, and reggae that shook the country, leaving a far longer lasting mark than the short life of its young hero, killed in a car accident at the age of thirty-one. The other champion of the Nineties neo-Tropicália was also from Recife, named Osvaldo Lenine Marcelo Pimentel, who chose to use the most combative of his four names, Lenine. He was a star, he won a Grammy Award, worked for cinema and television, and expressed the mix of past and future in his texts that Chico Science sought in sound. Behind the two of them, arose the legacy of a cult figure of Brazilian Popular Music, Luis Gonzaga, who was born in 1912 and died in 1989, also from Recife. This creator of an innovative kind of music, the Baião, it was defined

by Veloso himself as “the first significant cultural event with mass appeal in Brazil.”

These communicating vessels between generations have led to today’s rich Brazilian sound. A proliferation of talent, turnabouts, interactions, and experimentation from which the old guard has not been exempt: whoever saw a show on the recent Italian tour of Caetano Veloso saw the seventy-one year-old from Bahia on stage with a trio of young musicians of indie rock persuasion.

One of them, Pedro Sá, is also part of the Orquestra Imperial, an all-star group from the Rio scene where the stars Moreno Veloso and Kassim also shine. If the speciality of the combo is the resumption of samba Gafieira, Forro In The Dark by Mauro Refosco starts right from the Forró, a sound popular in the northeast since the days of Gonzaga himself.

Impressive, also even in terms of graphics research, is the idea of cybernetic freak Cibelle, poised between song-writing, electronic mu126

tropicália, the permanent revolution |

Once the cork had popped, in 1968, not just any year, out came the 33 rpm collective manifesto Tropicália ou Panis et Circenses: photographs show a gang of freaks, references to lysergic rock are explicit, and likewise the link with the great school of bossa nova

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sic, and alternative rock, not only through her records but also with film, theater, and visual applications. Her temperament of urban unrest may seem distant from the spirit of rural origin of a singer-songwriter such as Vanessa Da Mata, who grew up in a small town in Mato Grosso and stepped onto the world stage for the duet Boa Sorte with Ben Harper; instead the two souls are reflected through the magnifying glass evoking the divas of Brazilian popular music, from Gal Costa to Joyce, from Rita Lee to Maria Bethânia, Margareth Menezes, and Daniela Mercury. Between the two poles there runs a wide range of tropical female pop, with Céu close to the U.S. soul divas, Dom La Nena who is so tied to the British school as to work almost in symbiosis with Piers Faccini, and Flavia Coelho seduced by reggae with a Jamaican echo.

A Curva Da Cintura It should be remembered that the Tropics do not encompass only Brazil. The suggestion of the link with Africa has been strong ever since the advent of Tropicália and couldn’t help experiencing a comeback with the penetration of the hip hop subculture in the country. In this case too, the strength of Brazilian popular music has kept the local scene sheltered from the strictly derivative applications which the international waves have given rise to in other contexts. The most successful figure, Marcelo D2, has worked with the cream of the U.S. rap scene, but he has never lost his connection with street musicians and the Carnival of Rio; the surreal Dj Dolores loves to put fragments of bossa nova and samba in her digital productions, while the poet and rapper Criolo, the man of the moment in the national ferment, blends the engagé songs of Lenine and hip hop style.

They are all artists for whom Africa is an essential reference point, on the trajectory of the planet that the formidable project of the Brazilians Arnaldo Antunes and Edgard Scandurra with the Malian Toumani Diabaté has defined A Curva Da Cintura (from belt to curve). They, the scathing guitarist Lucas Santtana, the vocation of the psychedelic afro punk Metá Metá (Half Half), the arthouse touch of the Afrocentric songwriter Tigana Santana, and the Graveola e o Lixo Polifônico collective, for which the explicit definition post-Tropicália was coined, are the now evidence of the permanence of the utopia of Gil, Veloso, and companions in the DNA of the most prominent Brazilian popular music today on the new international pop scene. This ferment, as often in pop movements, has found a home with a record label of reference, the innovative Mais Um Discos based in London – where the Greenwich Meridian become an antenna tower for missions coming from the Tropic of Capricorn.

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| oxygen without borders

Half Africa and half New World

by Emanuela Donetti Journalist

A Portuguese king married first to a Habsburg and then to a Frenchwoman, African traditions that landed together with the slaves, and national monuments standing on foreign soil …

Then there are impassioned divinities, the cult of Candomblé, the roots of which, hardly surprisingly, are a mixture that also includes Christianity. The history of Brazil is one of the encounter of three continents and discovering it is like travelling through the centuries.

Pedro de Alcântara Francisco António João Carlos Xavier de Paula Miguel Rafael Joaquim José Gonzaga Pascoal Cipriano Serafim. This was the name of the first king of Brazil. Having grown up like any other young thug in the Brazilian countryside after his father, John IV of Portugal, had moved across the ocean, when he was proclaimed king, he chose to be called Pedro I, for simplicity. As a boy, he escaped from his guardians and teachers, and along with his brother Miguel, he would meet up with his peers in the neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro: he grew up to be reckless but well-liked by the people, and, above all, he was an excellent strategist.

His marriage was arranged with Maria Leopoldina of Habsburg-Lorraine, the sister of Marie Louise, the second wife of Napoleon, who, in Italy, had became the Countess of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla.

Seeing the turn that independence movements in neighboring Latin American countries were taking, at the suggestion of his father, Pedro declared Brazil independent from Portugal in 1821. First it became a constitutional monarchy, and then he named himself emperor at the age of 24. Leopoldina gave him seven children, but she died during the Cisplatine war. During a clash with Argentina, this region of Brazil

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was able to gain independence and to create present-day Uruguay. And Pedro I had no choice but to marry the niece of Napoleon’s first wife, Amelia de Beauharnais, although gossips say that he enjoyed himself greatly with the Marchioness of Santos, with a certain Domitilla, as well as her ​​ sister, and (even) with a Portuguese nun with whom he also had an illegitimate child.

We can realize that, with such a founder, Brazil couldn’t help but be born under the influence of a dancing star, or at least, certainly a very folkloristic one.

A country which is overseen by Yemanya, the benevolent goddess of the sea, the one who creates, the mother of life, and who governs the waters of the oceans, seas, and rivers leading to the sea. And since it is believed that her life began in the sea, it is also believed that all life began with Yemanya.

Her name is a contraction of Yey Omo Eja, which means “mother whose children are fish”. She is also the sister and wife of the Aganju, god of the earth, and the mother of Oya, goddess of the winds, who, however, is more important, because the air, in turn, is shaped by the oceans and seas. Maternal and protective, she loves good company, hunting, and doesn’t mind having to use a machete.

Candomblé and Catholicism × Born in the period when missionaries were converting the African slaves who arrived in Brazil, this religion associated certain figures of the Catholic tradition with their own gods; thus, Jesus is Oxalá, St Jerome is Xangô and St Anthony is Ogun.

Yemanya is part of the African tradition brought to Brazil by slaves who arrived on the South American coast after a papal bull in 1537 defined the Native Americans as “Indians of the true name”. So, having to stop taking advantage of the local populations, partly because of the papal excommunication and partly because the slaves actually were of fragile constitution, and above all, dying in droves because of European diseases, that was how the African slave traffic also came to make a stop at Salvador de Bahia.

Mainly used in the cultivation of sugar cane, but also in the mining of precious stones in Minas Gerais, it is estimated that during the most intense periods about 8,000 people, both men and women, arrived on the Brazilian coast. They brought their traditions and religions with them, which merged with the Christian ones and gave rise to Candomblé, the worship of the goddess Yemanya: half Earth Mother, half Goddess of the Sea, maternal and wild as only a passionate woman can be.

Half Africa, and half New World.

Candomblé is still practiced in the streets of Bahia, whereas slavery has been illegal since 1871; this was thanks to Isabella of Brazil, the granddaughter of Pedro I, who had made it become an independent state with the establishment in 1889 of the Empty Loins law, better known in Brazil as the Lei Aurea, with which all newborns in Brazil have the right to be free. Beloved for this reason, Isabella is remembered by the Brazilians as their Redeemer.

There is a statue of her on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, right in front of Pão de Açúcar.

This is doubly symbolic, seeing as the Sugar Loaf, which literally rises from the ocean waters in the shape of a loaf of sugar, is actually a rock that is totally African. The monolith, a mountain that characterizes the image of Rio, and Brazil in general, is actually formed from a single block of gneiss, a metamorphic rock, that originated about 600 million years ago from the alteration of the granite beneath the earth’s crust after the change in pressure and temperature caused by the separation of the continents of Africa and South America.

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interview

Dizzying literature interview with Andréa Del Fuego Writer

by Cecilia Toso

photographs by Raquel Brust

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Brazilian literature which finds readers, publishers and passionate audiences at book fairs, owes in part its renaissance to the regained national wellbeing. There is no shortage of supply, with new titles and experimentations, but also with traditions such as that of renewed magic realism. The career and opinions on the national literary situation by someone who creates literature and considers it a ‘dizzying’ experience.

The Brazilian writer Andréa Fátima dos Santos, aka Andréa del Fuego, comes from “the great horizontal and vertical city” of São Paulo. And she has written a bit of just about everything concerning this city. From having been the author of a sex advice column in a newspaper (which is where she got the pen name ‘del Fuego’) she went on to children’s literature, writing for blogs, writing short stories, and finally to writing a novel with her first, and very successful, Os Malaquías, winner of the José Saramago award in 2011. And she has always retained a part of all these experiences: from the pseudonym to the playfulness of certain texts, from the eroticism to the brevity of the stories projected on the novels. These are experiences that she has accumulated, making her, at not yet forty, one of Brazil’s most interesting writers.

You were part of the group of writers invited to the book fair in Frankfurt when Brazil was the guest country in 2013. How much Brazilian identity is there in your work?

As an author, I am not trying to say where I come from. It’s something that happens naturally: people write from within a body,

a city, a place. I live in São Paulo, the largest city in Brazil, which is its financial heart: it is chaotic, urban, and polluted. In the case of Os Malaquías, however, it was from here that I wrote of a rural area of the country that no longer exists. In fact, in the time when the novel is set, most of the population still lived in the countryside; today only 15% of Brazilians live in the countryside. The place I wrote about still exists, but it has lost its rural innocence, because now the whole world is living in the same era.

Os Malaquías, which tells the story of my family that survived lightning striking the home of my greatgrandparents, depicts the moment this rural area was beginning to achieve progress, when, in order to bring electricity (and therefore the future) to it, the residents had to move away and the region was flooded in order to build a dam. My second novel, As Miniaturas, is set in a historic building in downtown São Paulo which, however, is a fictional place as so often happens in magic realism: its context of trafficking, poverty, beggars, and violence just provides a background for a story where the dreams people should have are being suggested to them.

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Magic realism is very present in your texts.

Does it have some typical aspect compared to that of other Latin American traditions?

In Brazil we have a very interesting representative of magic realism: Murilo Rubião, who published about 50 stories in the Fifties and Sixties, spending more time on rewriting his past stories than on creating new ones.

His style has influenced me in some way: it is a matter of speaking with a very realistic language about something that does not exist. So you end up giving a plausibility to the absurd, and that is what I have tried to do in my texts: to be concise, use very clear language to try to bring readers to a place that does not exist without them feeling deceived, because that place really exists, I just do not know where. Unfortunately, my writing tends toward poetic prose and my job is primarily to make it more concise, so that it does not subtract any strength from the text. In Os Malaquías, there is a scene in which a character falls into the coffee colander: I rewrote it thousands of times, it was very rich, as if I had put too much seasoning in a dish. The cleaner the language was, the more ‘incarnate’ the scene would be. Now I’m trying to get away from magic realism a little, but it is a very natural part of my work, it is my defect and my limit.

You have explored many different genres in your writing, including the mini story, a genre which is little known in Italy, which may be made up of just one sentence, or a paragraph. Were you trying to find ‘your’ own genre or did you want to explore the extent of literature?

Yes, I do believe that literature is extensive, to the point that you can begin a text thinking that it is a novel and suddenly realize that it can’t go any farther than a short story. You have to have this freedom with your own texts to give them the length they require: a short story, a paragraph, a mini story, or even a novel if it has the oxygen to be able to become one: like what happened with Os Malaquías, which was a fantastic experience for me. Today I’m writing short stories for anthologies, but my next project is a novel: the relationship that you create with a text of this kind, so intimate and familiar, is a vertiginous experience. Literature is living together, spending time trying to cope with your own limitations.

Your first novel is full of short chapters, which last about as long as a scene: does this influence come from the short story form?

During the seven years when I was writing Os Malaquías, I started a blog, as did many authors, even José Saramago himself! The world was converting, so I decided to as 132

well. I thought of writing some images, not as if I were creating a caption, but as a kind of story that would arise and make the photograph continue. That is how the mini stories came into being, as unimportant texts, without any expectation of publication, just as an exercise for my blog. It was a delightful thing, and I finally realized that if I took those texts from the blog and they underwent a literary treatment that, as its first ingredient, allowed for time to let them rest, then I would be able to turn them into a book. And the mini stories were already contaminating the way I was writing, so when I started to rewrite Os Malaquías, I aimed for greater cuts. What seemed to be a silly thing, ephemeral and poor, has become a powerful tool instead, one that has made me able to write a novel. Everything is a journey.

What is the situation of literature in Brazil?

After being at the fair in Frankfurt in 2012 and 2013, and after seeing that huge bag of cultural values, where it is decided what texts there will be in the rest of the world, it is hard to believe that there are no readers and that books, the best support that literature can have, have come to an end.

Because they still feed an extraordinary market. One that is growing even in Brazil: there are many illiterate people who are becoming educated, there are literacy programs for adults, and the field of education has really been opening up with more and more people involved in their own schooling. It is a slow but continuous movement, and the potential of readers in Brazil is immense: thousands of Brazilians have yet to encounter a book in their life.

Over the past decade, the growth of writers

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and publishers has been a tremendous: at the same time in which major publishing centers are expanding, there are small publishers who are making handcrafted editions. In addition, festivals and book fairs are being created throughout the country and there are programs at government level to promote translations, and because of that, there are many more translated works of contemporary writers.

Is this literary well-being due to Brazil’s economic growth?

Totally. The programs I mentioned are the very portrait of economic growth. The rise of the middle class, more access to culture, to the Internet, and more consumption: we are facing a generation, a class that is emerging, and who buys what they have seen that their boss has bought to show that GIGANTO PROJECT For the festival PhotoEspaña.br, the Brazilian photographer Raquel Brust turned ​​ Minhocão, the elevated road in São Paulo, into an installation in which the architecture of the city becomes the support for the exhibition of gigantic photographs that interact with the life of the general public.

today they too can afford it. Culture flourishes with economic well-being: the crisis is the raw material of art because it allows you to reflect, but the consumption of culture has nothing to do with the crisis but rather, with economic stability.

Does Brazilian literature have an audience abroad?

Foreign audiences, those who are European, have deeply rooted reading habits, they want to know, and I think curiosity leads them to explore Brazilian writers as well. Given the many authors who are coming into being at this time, the chance to be known beyond their country of origin is an open game. The Frankfurt Fair has somehow stimulated the curiosity of publishers and it will be possible to know how far Brazil has managed to bring its literature only in a few years’ time.

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Behind the Carnival

by Alberto Riva Journalist

Once a popular and democratic celebration which joyfully paraded through the streets and glittered in the Sambadrome, the Brazilian carnival is very different today. The brightly colored costumes, the glitter and feathers are a spectacle of light and color that is more for the tourists than for locals, and which moves money from half around the world. But can gambling dens, sponsors and public money really pull the plug on one of the greatest celebrations of kitsch in the world?

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When he was asked many years later to direct his first samba school, the famous Salgueiro, Pamplona transformed carnival by having blacks dress as blacks His name is Fernando Pamplona.

He studied at the school of fine arts, and wanted to become a designer. He then became something more important: carnevalesco (carnivalesque).

This is a profession that exists only in Brazil and in fact, for a long time, existed only in Rio de Janeiro. Hollywood has its heroes whose names are John Ford, Frank Capra, and Billy Wilder. In Rio, their names are Fernando Pinto, Joãonzinho Trinta, Max Lopes. And Fernando Pamplona.

Who is a carnivalesque? A mixture of director, choreographer, producer, costume designer, and writer. If the samba school had a soccer team, the carnivalesque would be much more than just the coach. Also because a soccer team is made ​​up of eleven men, whereas four thousand foliões, or revelers, swarm onto the Sambadrome’s kilometer of cement and the show lasts 80

minutes. The carnivalesque is the person who has to keep them all together and push them towards the Apotheosis, which is not a figure of speech but the name of the square where the parade dissolves, often amidst tears.

As for Pamplona, he was born in 1926 in the neighborhood of Botafogo. One February morning long ago, when he was still a boy and his nanny was taking him to school, they passed a bloco de rua, a festive parade, on the street and his nanny tagged along. By the time they got home, it was almost evening.

The girl was fired on the spot; instead, little Fernando was left with the image stuck in his mind of the princess and the prince whom he had seen dancing on the pavement as if they had wings. Many years later, when he was asked to direct his first samba school, the famous Salgueiro, Pamplona transformed carnival. How? By dressing blacks as blacks. Said like that, it sounds like the umpteenth discovery of hot water. It is 135

not. Indeed, his proposal was considered a sacrilege.

The carnival was the only occasion in which the poor workers of the favelas and outskirts could dress up as Louis XV of Marie Antoinette! But instead along comes this handsome white gentleman, a resident of Copacabana, and he wants to dress them up as slaves? The fact is that, as ​​ the subject of his show, Pamplona chose the rebellion of Zumbi dos Palmares, the first slave (1695), who escaped from prison and established Quilombo, a free republic that for many years survived far from the colonizers, in the northeast of the country.

Before Pamplona, nobody had ever decided to dedicate a carnival to Zumbi. At first the blacks of the samba school refused to give up their rich clothes, but they slowly changed their minds. Result: Salgueiro won the carnival of 1960 and the carnivalesque became a celebrity.

Fernando Pamplona died on September 29th, 2013. He was an elegant, proud, old gentleman who for many years had moved away from the shows that, in his opinion, were no longer what they had once been. Times had changed.

There had been a time when the carnival was the authentic expression of a community. Translated, it means favela. A precise world, a culture. Changed, for the people of Pamplona’s generation, from the time that a lot of money entered the business of carnival. Ever since the decision of the topic of the show would no longer be made by the carnivalesque – like the one who had decided to celebrate Zumbi – but by the sponsor, a brand of beer or cars, or often a large tour operator selling a Tokyo/Rio/Tokyo allinclusive package, from the place on the beach to the hotel room to the clothes the tourist will wear on the night of the event, the glittering night that online newspapers from around the world will celebrate in their photo galleries with mulattoes towering on floats. The image that the whole world has of Carnival in Rio. By now most of the four thousand people flocking to the Sam136

badrome are tourists.

It has become so expensive that it is often difficult for those of the ‘community’, as Pamplona called them, to even get into the stands. The community is no longer at the center of the party, but relegated to being its factory, committed to the hard-and-fast rhythms of making the floats and costumes to be placed in the display windows of the grand hotels in Ipanema.

In order to understand this transformation, we must go back to Pamplona and the day he received a call from Nélson de Andrade. And who is that? The boss of Salgueiro. Profession? Bicheiro. What is that? The boss of the game of bicho. The illegal lottery.

Like the Neapolitan grimace. A racket worth millions that has had its hands on the samba

The ‘Bicheiro’ is the boss of the game of ‘bicho’. The illegal lottery. Like the Neapolitan grimace.

A racket worth millions that has had its hands on the samba schools since the mid-twentieth century

behind the carnival |

schools since the mid-twentieth century. Why is that? Because the schools, such as Salgueiro, Mangueira, Portela, Villa Isabel, and Mocidade Indipendente, are linked to a neighborhood and its people. To carry out their business without having to worry, the bicheiros needed consensus and so they did their recruiting in the schools, bankrolling their costs.

A kind of vote trading for control of the territory. In 1946, legislation closed the casinos and so the bicho became the fever of Rio. Legendary Bicheiro figures such as Castor de Andrade, Carlinhos Maracanã, Natal da Portela, despite being outlaws (although, with indulgent malice, the law defines them as ‘offenders’), ruled over the carnival, and it is happening yet again today with their heirs and the new figures who have emerged in the meantime: for example, Anísio, the owner of the school Beija-Flor, who has ended up in jail several times, one of them right during the carnival. Therefore many schools, orphaned of their masters and funders, have opened to the influences of the great sponsors and low-level community criminality.

The festival has become a moneyeating bandwagon (including of public funds), but also the music, the samba (editor’s note: in Portuguese, the noun is masculine), which has always

oxygen

been the great artistic expression of the phenomenon, has lost its luster. It has lost its lovely balançado rhythm, now making the thousands of tourists rush from one point on the track to another, as it has been turned into a military march, without any swing, without melodic flourishes. Yet, seen as a whole, the magic of those three nights lit up by millions of kilowatts, surrounded by tons of ostrich feathers (it is not the most ecological event on the planet), miles of trimmings, and cubic meters of polystyrene and make-up, is still impressive: it is a superbly kitsch spectacle, amazing in detail and, if seen live, it is thrilling. The people of Rio, however, have become substantially detached from it in the last ten years. Far from the Sambadrome (designed in 1984 Oscar Niemeyer), the Brazilians prefer to take to the streets in the blocos de rua: today they have spontaneously returned by the hundreds, organized and extemporaneous, each with their own flag and name, often ironic. They throng in a street, a square, a corner, or a flight of stairs. They gather at the beach, in bars, at homes. At night, or at dawn. It is here that even today a child can still see, as Fernando Pamplona did, ​​ the prince and princess dancing. It is here on the streets that every February the dream begins once again.

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in-depth

Inhotim: nature saved by art

by Maria Cristina Didero Journalist

Between the rainforest and the Brazilian savannah, in an area with one of the highest biodiversities on the planet, there stands a centre for contemporary art which is also a botanical park and home to over 800 works of art and almost 5000 varieties of plants. It offers a real treasure for the eyes, from sculptures to installations, from figurative art and video to a variety of plants unique in the world, which the park helps to preserve.

A long tradition of collecting and culture links contemporary art to nature. From the great experience of Land Art – whose American protagonists ventured into the remotest places in the deserts and wastelands of the U.S. to create monumental works in which to be completely immersed – to the more recent and complex experiments in public art or participatory art, mankind has always been confronted with the grandeur of the landscape. The mirage of fusing an anthropic expression with what surrounds humanity – which some would described as divine – makes us travel back to the origin of humanity itself, when art was scratched onto the cool walls of caves and had a ritual, mystical, and apotropaic function. But contemporary art is certainly not exposed to the risk of seeking ‘the salvation of mankind’, it is sufficient to reflect on the world today, revealing some hidden mechanisms, functioning as a comet that looks to the future or shows, more or less clearly, the mood of 138

the time that has generated it. Today’s artists are confronted with the world and its various manifestations in order to protect, defend, and above all, interpret it, fighting the battle with an ethical and unconventional spirit. There is a place in which this remarkable fusion has been constructed systematically, piece by piece, within an institutional path (desired and conceived carefully and punctually for years) that has involved artists, architects, landscape designers, researchers, and biologists: about sixty kilometers from Belo Horizonte, in the town of Brumadinho in immense Brazil, the Instituto Inhotim and Botanical Garden, the center for contemporary art and at the same time a lush botanical garden, opened to the public in 2006.

Conceived by the mind and created by the generosity of the well-known entrepreneur and art collector Bernardo Paz, Inhotim covers an area of ​​110 hectares hosting dense forests and tropical gardens, in which different works of art are installed,

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and there are large architectural pavilions used as exhibition galleries; this is a masterful effort, dedicated to art.

Paintings, sculptures, drawings, photography, videos, and installations by more than 100 Brazilian and international artists (from more than 30 countries) make up the permanent collection of Inhotim, consisting of more than 800 works ranging from the Sixties to the present day – about 170 can be seen on display at the same time.

Inside the park, 21 different exhibition spaces, each of about 1,000 square meters, were built to house the permanent collection and the busy schedule of temporary exhibitions promoted by the institute. Four of these pavilions – named Lago (lake), Fonte (fountain), and Praça (square) and Mata (forest) – with their outdoor spaces, have been conceived as neutral and flexible pieces of architecture that can accommodate any type of artistic media and they are often used to present the new acquisitions of the collection to the public at a biennial event. However, the seventeen other pavilions have been specially developed to contain site-specific works of renowned artists on the international contemporary art scene such as Tunga, Cildo Meireles, Miguel Rio Branco, Hélio Oiticica & Neville d’Almeida, Adriana Varejão, Doris Salcedo, Victor Grippo, Matthew Barney, Rivane Neuenschwander, Valeska Soares, Janet Cardiff & George Miller, Doug Aitken, Marilá Dardot, Lygia Pape, Carlos Garaicoa and Cristina Iglesias. Inhotim is located in a particular area, between the Atlantic rainforest and the cerrado (or Brazilian savannah), two of the richest habitats for biodiversity on the planet but at the same time, and unfortunately, also one of the eco-systems most at risk of extinction. Of the 110 acres of land occupied by the structure, as many as 25 are made up of protected gardens; since 2010 another portion of the territory has been linked to the Natural Heritage Private Reserve project which has established a close partnership with the local community of the Espinhaço mountain range, from which researchers can now take different species of plants to be imported and stored at Inhotim. Here the work in the gardens began well before the park opened to the public: beginning in the mid-Eighties, some rare species of trees and types of rare tropical plants, Brazilian 140

inhotim: nature saved by art |

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and otherwise, were imported to grow and develop in the park. The goal was to create a seamless integration of new shrubbery with the surrounding landscape thanks to the construction of more architectural elements such as a series of walkways, patios, paths, steps, and elements characteristic of Brazilian landscape gardening (think of the work of the great Roberto Burle Marx, architect, botanist, and landscape architect). Today Inhotim’s collection of plants includes nearly 5,000 varieties, with a special focus on palm trees (of which more than a thousand kinds flourish there) as well as other plants such as philodendrons or Calla lilies of which almost 400 different specimens can be found in the park. But these lush gardens are not only a feast for the eyes: in fact, in the Inhotim park, “as well as educational programs devoted to students, children, and enthusiasts, the focus is on integration and service for the local community through specific projects that look to improve the quality of life in the area of Minas Gerais,” says Antonio Grassi, Executive Director of the facility. He adds: “The structure, organization, and spaces make this place not only a unique institution in the world, but also

Inhotim is spread over ​​110 hectares where different works of art are installed and there are large architectural pavilions used as exhibition galleries one of the most important tourist attractions in this region of Brazil, and also one of the most interesting cultural destinations in South America, which has been capable of attracting over one and a half million visitors since opening day.

Not only the experts, botanists, and lovers of contemporary art come to visit us, but a public from all walks of life: we had 300,000 people in our park in 2013 and this year we expect at least 100,000 more.

The latest survey revealed that about 25% of our guests are foreigners. This is very important to us, considering that we are in a difficult place to reach. In July of last year, we hit our record of visits: 53,000 people. A truly significant milestone.”

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in-depth

Agribusiness: a market that has its roots in the forest

by Silvia Ceriani Journalist

Behaving well in the field of energy, privileging clean resources, is not enough for Brazil to be considered out of danger at environmental level. The good example that the country has been giving for a few years has to find an ally in less invasive agricultural and food policies that aim to preserve a resource like the rainforest, too often sacrificed in favor of livestock breeding and agriculture.

The fifth largest country in the world by extension, Brazil – which alone occupies 47% of the area of Latin America – was the sixth largest economy in 2011 and 2012, and by 2050, it is estimated that it will rank in fourth place.

The merit goes to a dynamic economic policy, one that has also been able to focus on the right energy. This term is not used at random, seeing as it is precisely energy sources that represent the largest portion of government investments in the Growth Acceleration Plan (PAC). Brazil also has the lion’s share with regard to ethanol – in many ways contradictory from the point of view of clean energy – representing the second largest producer and the biggest exporter worldwide, but also other energy sectors have gained increasing importance: for example, in 2012, Brazil was crossed by a favorable wind which in one year, led it to increase its capacity for wind generation by 73%. Similarly, PAC2 allocated significant resources for the development of photo-

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voltaic and hydroelectric power.

But is everything that glitters really gold? Or, asking the question in any way, will Brazil be able to manage growth the best it can while preserving the enormous wealth of natural, and exhaustible, resources that it has been given? A few years ago, Virginie Raisson in 2033: Atlas of the futures of the world showed the potential future scenarios depending on how Brazil will prove itself capable of reconciling its economic potential with the extremely contradictory social, environmental, and economic aspects. And in this context, we mustn’t forget the policies of food production, which by their very nature are related to energy.

A large part of the ecological discourse carried forward by Brazil and the attention given to clean energy are, in fact, likely to be affected by a food and agriculture policy that is too aggressive and that is taking over the Amazon piece by piece to turn into one of the largest areas of farming in the world, as well as one of the largest markets for soybeans. Only loosely related to the exploita-

PAC × The growth acceleration plan (PAC) was launched in 2007 with the goal of obtaining a GDP growth of 5% per annum. In order to achieve this, almost €200 billion have already been allocated. PAC2, implemented in 2010, planned on tripling investments, channeling them towards transport, energy, culture, the environment, and health.

tion of timber, the deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon – and the subsequent uprooting of a priceless heritage of biological diversity – is mainly due to growth in these two markets. Responsible for 70% of deforestation, the extensive cattle ranches in this region have recorded a constant growth which for twenty years now, has settled at an annual rate of over 10%. And the figures will go even higher yet, driven by the increase in the population and that of the average consumption of meat. The land that is not occupied by grazing is assigned to the production of soybeans, largely genetically modified and mostly destined to use as feed and biofuels. With an annual production of 60 million tons in 2007-2008, Brazil ranked as the second largest producer of soybeans and the figure has further increased, so that today it exceeds 80 million tons.

But when an area like the Amazon is at risk, it is clear that the responsibility of Brazil takes on a magnitude that goes well beyond national borders. Therefore, Brazil will be able to present itself as a nation that is truly attentive to environmental issues understood in their entirety only if it resolves the dilemma that pits its economic development against the conservation of its natural heritage in the way that is the most favorable for the environment, if the interests related to the safeguarding of the latter take precedence over those that fuel the practice of deforestation, and if environmental policies are able to assess, as a whole, many issues ranging from the production of energy to that of food.

Brazil has certainly given evidence of having a farsighted vision of energy by focusing on the diversification of sources and the search for alternatives to fossil fuels. On the other hand, however, the hope is that it knows how to accompany this vision with policies that are equally wise, in order to more effectively protect its resources while managing to enhance – from an economic point of view as well – the huge biological diversity that still distinguishes the territory.

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Oxygen 2007/2014 Andrio Abero Giuseppe Accorinti Amylkar Acosta Medina Emiliano Alessandri Nerio Alessandri Zhores Alferov Enrico Alleva Colin Anderson Lauren Anderson Martin Angioni Ignacio A. Antoñanzas Paola Antonelli Marco Arcelli Antonio Badini Roberto Bagnoli Andrea Bajani Pablo Balbontin Philip Ball Alessandro Barbano Ugo Bardi Paolo Barelli Vincenzo Balzani Roberto Battiston Enrico Bellone Mikhail Belyaev Massimo Bergami Carlo Bernardini Tobias Bernhard Alain Berthoz Michael Bevan Piero Bevilacqua Ettore Bernabei Nick Bilton Andrew Blum Gilda Bojardi Aldo Bonomi Carlo Borgomeo Albino Claudio Bosio Stewart Brand Franco Bruni Luigino Bruni Giuseppe Bruzzaniti Massimiano Bucchi Pino Buongiorno Tania Cagnotto Michele Calcaterra Gian Paolo Calchi Novati Davide Canavesio Paola Capatano Maurizio Caprara Carlo Carraro Bernardino Casadei Federico Casalegno Stefano Caserini Valerio Castronovo Ilaria Catastini Marco Cattaneo Pier Luigi Celli Silvia Ceriani Marco Ciurcina Corrado Clini Co+Life/Stine Norden & Søren Rud Emanuela Colombo Elena Comelli Ashley Cooper Barbara Corrao Paolo Costa Manlio F. Coviello

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Armin Linke Giuseppe Longo Arturo Lorenzoni L. Hunter Lovins Mindy Lubber Remo Lucchi Riccardo Luna Eric J. Lyman Tommaso Maccararo Paolo Magri Kishore Mahbubani Giovanni Malagò Renato Mannheimer Vittorio Marchis Carlo Marroni Peter Marsh Jeremy M. Martin Paolo Martinello Gregg Maryniak Massimiliano Mascolo Mark Maslin Tonia Mastrobuoni Ian McEwan John McNeill Daniela Mecenate Lorena Medel Joel Meyerowitz Stefano Micelli Paddy Mills Giovanni Minoli Marcella Miriello Antonio Moccaldi Renata Molho Maurizio Molinari Carmen Monforte Patrick Moore Luca Morena Javier Moreno Luis Alberto Moreno Leonardo Morlino Dambisa Moyo Geoff Mulgan Richard A. Muller Teresina Muñoz-Nájar Giorgio Napolitano Edoardo Nesi Ugo Nespolo Vanni Nisticò Nicola Nosengo Helga Nowotny Alexander Ochs Robert Oerter Alberto Oliverio Sheila Olmstead Vanessa Orco James Osborne Rajendra K. Pachauri Mario Pagliaro Francesco Paresce Vittorio Emanuele Parsi Claudio Pasqualetto Corrado Passera Alberto Pastore Federica Pellegrini Gerardo Pelosi Shimon Peres Ignacio J. Pérez-Arriaga Matteo Pericoli Francesco Perrini

Emanuele Perugini Carlo Petrini Telmo Pievani Tommaso Pincio Giuliano Pisapia Michelangelo Pistoletto Viviana Poletti Giovanni Porzio Borja Prado Eulate Ludovico Pratesi Stefania Prestigiacomo Giovanni Previdi Antonio Preziosi Filippo Preziosi Vladimir Putin Alberto Quadrio Curzio Marco Rainò Virginie Raisson Federico Rampini Jorgen Randers Mario Rasetti Carlo Ratti Henri Revol Gabriele Riccardi Marco Ricotti Gianni Riotta Sergio Risaliti Roberto Rizzo Kevin Roberts Lew Robertson Kim Stanley Robinson Sara Romano Alexis Rosenfeld John Ross Marina Rossi Bunker Roy Jeffrey D. Sachs Paul Saffo Gerge Saliba Juan Manuel Santos Giulio Sapelli Tomàs Saraceno Saskia Sassen Antonella Scott Lucia Sgueglia Steven Shapin Clay Shirky Konstantin Simonov Cameron Sinclair Uberto Siola Francesco Sisci Craig N. Smith Giuseppe Soda Antonio Sofi Donato Speroni Giorgio Squinzi Leena Srivastava Francesco Starace Robert Stavins Bruce Sterling Antonio Tajani Nassim Taleb Ian Tattersall Paola Tavella Viktor Terentiev Chicco Testa Wim Thomas Stephen Tindale Nathalie Tocci

Jacopo Tondelli Chiara Tonelli Agostino Toscana Flavio Tosi Mario Tozzi Dmitri Trenin Licia Troisi Ilaria Turba Luis Alberto Urrea Andrea Vaccari Paolo Valentino Marco Valsania Nick Veasey Matteo Vegetti Viktor Vekselberg Jules Verne Umberto Veronesi Alejo Vidal-Quadras Marta Vincenzi Alessandra Viola Mathis Wackernagel Gabrielle Walker Elin Williams Changhua Wu Kandeh K. Yumkella Anna Zafesova Stefano Zamagni Antonio Zanardi Landi Edoardo Zanchini Carl Zimmer

Testata registrata presso il tribunale di Torino Autorizzazione n. 76 del 16 luglio 2007 Iscrizione al Roc n. 16116 Printed in June 2014 at the Tipografia Facciotti, Rome

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Brazil

a challenge right across the field It is on everybody’s lips and in everybody’s minds: Brazil has been the star country in the past few months. Venue for the 2014 World Cup, it is in the sights of half the world, and not only for reasons connected with soccer. After having been envied for its economic development over the past few years – whilst the crisis hung over the West –, today its explosion is experiencing a moment of adjustment, generating concern, hypotheses, and expectations everywhere, in particular because it coincides with two events of global importance: the World Cup and the Olympics.

Oxygen tells the story of the present of this country with its huge contrasts, a place of immense wealth possibly at risk, which exports everything and has to import a great deal, which is growing and stopping, which is celebrating and protesting. It is a nation of which everyone has a strong image, but which few really know well. The country of excesses and great passions, like that of world soccer which has returned to Brazil after 64 years.

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