[ Thursday, February 24, 2005 ]
The beach at beautiful Camp X-Ray, Cuba.
There was never a formal send-me-a-postcard-in-Brasil contest, but if there had been, the winner would have been the one I got from a Canadian friend who was travelling in Cuba last month, and who made it all the way down to Guatanamo Bay. He reports that he drank a few beers at a restaurant overlooking the U.S. military's prison and torture center there, watching the CIA watch the Taliban, as it were. I got a postcard of Paris a few days later, bearing a San Francisco postmark, however. Nice try, folks.
Our lunch on the drive to the coast.
Paraty, Brazil. We've all piled into the Ford Fiesta for the five hour drive to Paraty, on the coast of Rio state. Paraty is a splendidly preserved Portuguese colonial town, and is in the running for becoming a UNESCO World Heritage site. It's also a big tourist destination. Our plan (us being Kraig and Agui and I) is to hang out here for the weekend and see the town and visit a few beaches.
Some sort of tropical flowering thing near the coast in Rio state.
The historic center is a smallish grid of a dozen or so streets and alleys, paved with irregular stones in a manner calleed "pe-de moleque" (peanut candy),as it resembles the surface of peanut brittle. The center of town was cleverly designed so that the tide comes in and floods and washes the streets. It is also pedestrian-only and the streets into the center are blocked by heavy old chains. I suspect, however, that the real reason for the chains is to prevent the tourists from leaving the old town and discovering that everything costs half as much as it does in the center.
Paraty has four colonial churches dating from the 17th century. At the time, and I suppose at least until slavery was abolished here in 1888, there was one church for slaves, one for mulattos, and another for the Portuguese bourgeoisie. Our Lady of Perpetual Slavery and Genocide. Then the aristocracy decided it needed its own church, and built the fourth one. Paraty's port was the terminus of the "Gold Trail," which made it a vital part of the Portuguese empire for a hundred years or more. Indian and African slaves mined the gold and hauled it down from the hills for shipping to Portugal.
One of Paraty's colonial churches.
We have rented a small boat for the day (along with the services of its captain and crew - Carlos and his nephew Marcello). They take us out to several different beaches and snorkelling areas. My first time underwater near a small island, there are thousands of fish swimming directly beneath our boat, looking for food. Carlos dives to the ocean floor and brings up a huge starfish, offering it to us. I'm not sure what we're supposed to do - pet it, gaze it at admiringly, eat it, take it with us . . .? It goes back to the ocean floor.
Homeland drifter staff relaxing on a boat on the Atlantic coast.
One of the things I have realized about travelling abroad is that it's a lot more fun and fulfilling to have either (1) a local connection with some friend or family, or (2) the ability to speak the language. I would not have enjoyed Brasil as much as I did, nor would it have been as easy as it was, without my extended family here. I learned a little Portuguese, but not enough to have a real conversation with anyone. This was the frustrating part of it.
For example, and this is only one example of many, I was walking down the street the other day and a woman came running up from behind me trying to get my attention. She was pointing at the tarot card painting on the back of my t-shirt, and she was really excited to tell me something about it. But she couldn't speak English, and I couldn't speak Portuguese. We tried in vain for a few minutes to communicate and then gave up. It's experiences like this that make me less and less interested in travelling in countries where I can't communicate in a local language.
Our boat for the day, the "Amor Eterno."
Ergo, the next trip is maybe to Australia, where they speak English more or less, or down to Latin America again after I take some Spanish or Portuguese classes. As my brother points out in my interview with him (below), Portuguese is more widely spoken than Spanish in the Southern Hemisphere. This is apparantly due to the large numbers of Portuguese speakers in Africa, and the population of Brazil (a lot more people than any other country in South America).
The coast near Paraty.
I wonder if anyone up in the USA saw this story covered in the mainstream press? A 73-year-old American nun, Dorothy Stang, was murdered in Para State, Brasil, on Feb. 16 because of her work in helping poor farmers there oppose illegal land grabs by loggers and ranchers. I did a google search for "Dorothy Stang" and had to scroll through 3 pages of hits in Portuguese before finding anything in the English language press, which was a story on CNN international edition's website. Greenpeace also covered it on their website. I wonder if anyone in the mainstream US press called her a "hero"?
View of our boat against the coastal Mata Atlantica (Atlantic rainforest).
I also wonder if anyone else saw the recent news on the AP wire titled "Ecstasy Trials for Americans Traumatized by the Bush Administration"? It's about freakin' time, folks. I guess that the FDA, in light of the suffering and post and current traumatic stress Americans have had to endure under the past four years of the Bush junta, has decided to allow clinical trials of MDMA (commonly known as ecstasy). Is there a sign-up form on the FDA website, yet? Here's an excerpt of the article:
THE GUARDIAN, February 21, 2005 "Ecstasy Trials for Americans Traumatized by Bush Administration" (by AP staff)
American citizens traumatized by the last four years of the Bush Administration and its illegal war in Iraq are to be offered the drug ecstasy to help free them of flashbacks and recurring nightmares. The US Food and Drug Administration has given the go-ahead for Blue State Americans and others to be included in an experiment to see if MDMA (ecstasy), can treat post-traumatic stress disorder.
Scientists behind the trial in South Carolina think the feelings of emotional closeness reported by those taking the drug could help Americans talk about their experiences to therapists. Several victims of rape and sexual abuse with post-traumatic stress disorder, for whom existing treatments are ineffective, have been given MDMA since the research began last year.
Michael V. Waxman, the psychiatrist leading the trial, said: "It's looking very promising. People are able to connect more deeply on an emotional level with the fact that their civil liberties and freedoms are under systematic assault by our government." He is about to advertise for people who have opposed the many despicable and short-sighted policy decisions of the Bush Administration in the last four years to join the study.
According to the US national centre for post-traumatic stress disorder, up to 30% of American activists suffer from the condition at some point in their lives. The condition is characterized by intrusive memories, panic attacks and the avoidance of situations which might force sufferers to relive their experiences in America's gradually evolving Orwellian police state.
One of the beaches near Paraty we visited.
Homeland Drifter Interview with my Brother
HD: Did seeing Terry Gilliam's film "Brazil" influence your recent decision to move to this country? If so, how?
K: No. But it was still a great movie.
HD: Instead of speaking their bizarre and odd-sounding language, why can't Brazilians just agree to speak Spanish like every other country in Latin America?
K: To the majority of the South's population, this is not a bizarre or odd-sounding language. More people speak Portuguese in the Southern Hemisphere than any other language. Indeed, Brasilians often ask each other during dinner conversations, "So when are the Afrikaners going to beginning picking up our native tongue?"
HD: Do you want to go to Uruguay soon for vacation? If not, why not?
K: I do not want to fall victim to an obvious urban backpacker legend. Uruguay coins cannot be used as quarters in American vending machines to help you buy bottles of Coke, Pepsi or Sprite for virtually nothing. I WILL NOT agree to bring you two suit cases full of them to San Francisco as you have requested. Indeed, US News & World Report recently documented how a Michigan backpacker incurred $3,460 of excess baggage charges hauling back Uruguayan coins only to recover $13.89 for them in scrap metal after discovering all vending machines known to him rejected this currency.
HD: How come it's the middle of carnaval, and we're the only people left in Sao Paulo?
K: Certainly not because all of the Brasilians have gone to holiday during this period in the United States. Enjoy our hospitality you ungrateful sibling!
HD: What really happened to the maid Agui hired four days ago?
K: I find the fact that you, my brother, have chosen to represent our former maid in court very disturbing.
HD: How does carnaval here compare with the county fairs we went to every summer while growing up in North Dakota?
K: Have you already forgotten? The County Fair had fireworks, monster truck demolitions, cotton candy and lots of agricultural produce and livestock exhibitions! What have you ever seen in the Sao Paulo or Rio carnaval that would make you forget the excitement of a Future Farmers of America (FFA) cow milking competition??!!!
So I'm in Sao Paulo yet again, endlessly walking up and down Avenida Paulista all week, searching for the prettiest bottle of cachaca in all the land. I've already loaded up on good Brasilian coffee, and I have found what is probably Brasil's only bubble wrap store, for packing supplies to protect my precious cargo of booze on its journey North. My Brasil trip is almost over.
Soundtrack: Sheik Tosado, Jumbo Electro, and Gilberto Gil
[2/24/2005]
[ Thursday, February 17, 2005 ]
Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. I took the bus over here last week, a six hour journey from Sao Paulo. Before departing Sao Paulo, I asked my brother for a few suggestions on what to see and do in Rio. He insists that I visit both the "Sugar Redeemer" and the "Jesus Loaf." Fortunately, I have figured out that these locations are actually his mistaken conflation of two different famous Rio vistas - Pao de Acucar (Sugar Loaf) and Christo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer). The latter is a massive statue of Jesus Christ perched on one of the highest peaks in the city. So thankfully I have not wandered around the city all week shouting in English "Ethel, where's that Jesus Loaf we saw on the postcard?"
View from the Jesus Loaf of Ipenema and islands off the Rio coast.
The Sugar Redeemer. There's a short train ride to the top of the peak to see Christ and take photos of the city. On the way up, I have the misfortune of sitting across the aisle from a gross American dentist in his mid-50s, who won't stop broadcasting his American-ness to everyone within earshot. He's visiting a Brazilian guy he met at a dental convention in Orlando. Everything about him, even before he opens his mouth, says Sex Tourist. "They bought me one of those Samba dancers from the club last night - you know, for sex . . . tomorrow I'm gonna take out this new German jet, probably buy it and fly it back to California . . . yeah, his Porsche cost him $300,000, and back in the states the same car would have been less than $100,000 . . . have you seen this film . . . What The $#@(! Do We Know? I've seen it five times already. . . my God has answered me many times . . . oh, I've been in Asia a lot. I was married to a Thai girl once, that didn't last too long." I'm not making this up. I wish I had the nerve to tell him how awful he is, but I'm on vacation and it's much easier to just smile and nod.
View from the Jesus Loaf. OK, so this photo is cliche, but there really is something magical about this scenery.
Maracana Stadium. I went to a soccer game the other day. The main stadium here is called Maracana. It seats 120,000 people, and is the largest soccer stadium in the world. It used to seat 200,000, but there was an accident involving a railing some years back and they installed seats in the upper deck after that to decrease the capacity. I don't even really like soccer that much, but I can't miss the chance to see a game in Brazil in this amazing stadium. It is nearly sold out, and the Botafogo crowd is exhuberant, to say the least. The noise in the stadium when they finally score their first and only goal is hard to describe - maybe louder than a game-winning bottom of the 9th grand slam in the Metrodome. The visiting team, Americano (from Campos), wins 2-1. There don't seem to be any acts of hooliganism after the game. There are two separate rings of moats separating the spectators from the field to keep the disgruntled fans away from the opposing team and the referees.
Maracana Stadium during the Americano-Botafogo game.
There's a lot of wealth in Rio, and a lot of poverty. I think a lot of the recent wealth (i.e. that's not someone's coffee plantation or gold or sugar cane inheritance) has to do with the tourist business, especially when there are people coming here dumb enough to pay 23 USD for a bus tour that will take them to a soccer game at Maracana. Tickets to the game plus the round trip subway ticket there cost a total of 5 USD. The stadium is across the street from the subway station named after it, and appears on every map and in every guidebook ever written about this city. I guess there is some comfort to be taken in having a tour guide tell you which section to sit in to avoid having a plastic cup full of piss thrown on you for wearing the wrong team's t-shirt. I guess it's also nice to know in which sections fireworks are banned.
Anyway, I'm relieved that, apparently, not everyone thinks I'm not Brazilian, as more than a few people have begun conversations with me in Portuguese and then looked surprised when I answered "Nao entendo, nao falo Portuguese." At least I don't look like every other silly tourist with a yellow and green Pele jersey and a camcorder.
The METRO is convenient for just about everything in Rio.
Parque Nacional de Tijuca. I have hired a hiking guide to take me into a massive urban forest and national park here. The four of us, Tsiago, our guide, two geezers from the UK and myself, plan to hike to the highest point in the park overlooking the city. I love the word geezer. I will try to incorporate it when I get back. Anyway, these two geezers are on holiday from London. What they are doing on this nature hike is anyone's guess, as all they talk about is trying to score cocaine and hire prostitutes. I guess they need to do something in Rio that they can actually talk about when they get home and their girlfriends say "So what'd you two geezers get up to in Rio then?" Tsiago is a rock climber, biology masters student, and all-around citizen, and he would much rather talk about the symbiotic relationship bewtween ants and this wierd Brazilian tree he is pointing at than tell these two geezers how to get laid in Rio. After awhile, though, he finally and reluctantly comes up with the names of a few strip clubs. I tell the geezers that I think I saw some hookers on Mem de Sa in Lapa, and they excitedly insist on writing down all these leads when we get back to the van. One of them, by the way, nearly bursts a lung on the hike up, probably from smoking too much maconha or doing too many rails of the crappy cocaine they bought on the beach the other day.
Our hiking guide, Tsiago, in Parque Nacional de Tijuca.
There's a neighborhood here called Lapa, which is a little bit seedy and red-light district more or less, but not generally considered too dangerous for gringos. It's the only part of town with any concentration of bars and clubs. I go out there one night, trying to find a bar called Six Electro which is meant to have a good techno scene. When I arrive at the address at shortly after 11 p.m., it's all closed up, but curiously, there are a dozen or so folks standing outside selling beer and mixed drinks out of coolers. Oh, I get it. I am constantly forgetting how late everything starts in Brazil. This club is going to open, but not just yet. I walk around, have a few drinks on the street. (You can buy beer and caipirinas just about every 10 feet everywhere you walk in Brazil). A few hours later I'm back at Six Electro, and they're just starting to open the doors. The cover is $19 USD, but it includes a bunch of free drinks inside.
A tree in the Parque in which ants live symbiotically with the tree, protecting it from predators.
It's a fun club, hip hop on the ground floor and surprisingly good pop house/techno upstairs. The hip hop room is full of Brazilian guys looking like they just walked out of a Nelly video. Wait, is this really a Nelly video? I think it is . . . time to stop drinking sugar cane liquor and lime juice and get in a taxi while I can still slur the words "Metro Catete, por favor."
Museu Historico Nacional (National History Museum). Rio has some wonderful museums. I've been to six of them, and have several more on my list that I won't have time to see. The National History Museum has some great exhibits on colonialism, slavery, and the history of indigenous people in Brasil. For example, there's this chart showing how the indigenous population gradually declined absolutely and proportionally from 1500 to 1950. When they Portuguese first landed in 1500, there were a million indigenous people in Brazil. By 1950, there were only 200,000, and were less than one percent of the population.
A display of 16th and 17th century crucifies in the National History Museum.
Today I visited the Museu de Republico, across the street from my hotel. It is mostly a memorial to the late President Vargas, who lived here when this building was the Presidential Palace. (Rio was the capital of Brasil before they built Brasilia in the 1950s and the government moved to what was then the middle of nowhere.) This building is also where Vargas, while still president, killed himself with a handgun in 1954, and his blood-stained pajama top and pistol are on display in part of the museum.
Elias Muradi, Untitled (welded aluminum and photography, 1999), in the Museu de Arte Contemoranea, Niteroi.
It's Valentine's Day, and I'm sitting alone in a romantic restaurant in romantic Ipanema, eating a filet mignon. I order the "Suspiro de Amor" for dessert, and wish that my honey was here. Apart form the few other backpackers and tourists I encounter and make small talk with, I've been Norma No Mates since I got to Rio. I could easily go to one of the several ex-pat and backpacker bar hangouts, but I would feel pathetic and weird going to any of these places just to meet other English-speaking people, most of whom I would have nothing to say to, anyway. But being alone in Rio is losing it's appeal, so I'm sort of relieved to have a return bus ticket back to Sao Paulo in a few days. I want to spend some more time with Kraig and Agui before I leave Brasil.
Painting in National History Museum - Clecio Penedo, Colonization and Dependence, (acrylic on plywood, 1987).
I had another really excellent dinner tonight at a restaurant called "Arab." It's meant to be the best food in Copacabana, and I believe it. They make a fantastic tabouleh salad with mango and pineapple instead of tomatoes. I had another filet mignon with onions. I can't actually remember the last night that I haven't had a filet mignon. Dead cow is abundant, very tasty and quite inexpensive here. Yum.
So six days in Rio has blown the drifter budget all to hell. I was thinking I could do this whole Brazil trip for around $40 a day, but that plan went out the window the day I got to Rio. I did find a relatively cheap hotel, and I am glad I picked this one, as it sits right next to a subway station - saves me a bundle on taxi fares around the city. I finally (sort of) figured out how to use the bus system, which is pretty convenient, too. Anyway, to make myself feel better about all the money I'm spending on my 3-star hotel ($46 a night), I stopped by the Copacabana Palace Hotel last night during my evening walk along the beach. They had a few rooms left, but only in the back of the hotel with no view, starting at $260 a night. I didn't even ask how much the ocean-front rooms cost. Anyway, this inquiry made me feel better about the minor drifter budget meltdown. I knew it would.
Chart in National HIstory Museum of indigenous population of Brasil.
You may have noticed that there are no photos here of Rio's legendary beaches. I decided to leave my digital camera at the hotel both times I went to hang out at the beach, as it would be a big advertisement of the fact that I have money and own a camera that costs more than several months income for most Cariocas. Crime against tourists is a big topic in Rio, and there are warnings in all the guidebooks. I'm not sure how dangerous it actually is anywhere in Rio. All I can say is that I walked all over Centro, Zona Norte, Zona Sul, and the beaches, at times after midnight, and nowhere did it "feel" unsafe. I didn't go near any of the several favelas, however. Anyway, the beaches are quite beautiful and they are an integral part of Rio life.
Now it's back to Sao Paulo. I'll re-group, do my laundry, and hang out for a day or two before going to the beach with Kraig and Agui for the weekend, most likely. They still have no furniture (all their belongings are on a container ship somewhere in the Atlantic ocean now, on their way to Brazil), but at least they have a computer. This doesn't totally make up for the utter lack of food in the apartment - the last time I checked, all they had was beer, nicorette gum, and Fruit Loops.
Anyway, life in Brazil is good. Oh, thanks to those of you who have actually sent me postcards and other mail during my trip here. I have received mail from California, Washington, and Montana so far. Thanks!
[2/17/2005]
[ Thursday, February 10, 2005 ]
Sao Paulo, Brasil. I'm in Sao Paulo with Kraig and Agui, and the first night of carnaval we're at the city's custom-built sambadrome. Every hour and half or so, another samba school (organized by neighborhood, more or less) slowly, very slowly, makes its way down the track. Every school has a few thousand dancers, a couple hundred drummers, their own song, theme, and several floats. The experience of the samba parade here is unlike what I'd expected. It feels a little controlled and overproduced. (For example, our tickets for track level seats were 56 bucks apiece).
The carnaval parade here is definitely not the more spontaneous and free-flowing street party that I imagine it to be in Salvador and Olinda and perhaps other cities in Brazil. But anyway, whatever it is or isn't in comparison to other parts of Brazil, it is loud, beautiful, and mesmerizing, nonetheless. The intricate floats and costumes reflect an enormous amount of preparation and work, and the whole thing has a certain classy and grandiose aura about it.
Agui and Kraig in the Sao Paulo sambadromo.
We arrive at the sambadrome at 11 p.m., just after the first procession has ended. Seven hours and 6 samba schools later, the sun is just starting to rise, and the parade is still going strong. The last school is just starting down the track as we are leaving for home.
The next night we go out to big gay Sao Paulo's big gay samba club, which, fortunately, has a decent techno room off to the side, so I don't have to listen to samba all night. Some of our party underestimate the potency of the club's capirinhas, and we repair to an early morning cheeseburger and milkshake breakfast at BurDog, Sao Paulo's 24-hour burger joint.
We went out for sushi last night. There's a lot of it here because there's a pretty sizeable Japanese population. After dinner, we walk up the street in Japantown (the Liberdade area, as it's called here) and Kraig pulls us over to a doorway with a security buzzer. There's a sign next to the door in Japanese. A woman opens the door, looks a little confused, and then after some awkward explanations tells us that we can come inside if we like. She doesn't look too thrilled about it, though.
This is a "Japanese only" bar and restuarant, and after a few drinks with a guy at the bar and the woman proprietor, she tells us that they don't admit Brazilians, and she only let Agui in because he is with the two of us, i.e. my brother and I - Americans. Her reason is the "the Brazilians don't like to pay . . ." The back of the bar is lined with partially consumed bottles of Johnnie Walker Black Label, each with a customer's name written in Japanese on a label on the bottle. Kraig and Agui were here once before, when a Japanese guy invited them to join him for a drink.
It's clear that the presence of non-Japanese people is a little odd for the proprietor and her sole customer, a drunk Japanese farmer, but they are both formal and polite, nonetheless, and she serves us a beer, green tea, and a little saucer of chocolates. My brother insists on moving the conversation to racism and xenophobia in Japanese culture, a topic which is tolerated but not exactly welcomed. When we get the bill, we find that our one bottle of cheap Braziian beer has cost us slightly over $33 USD. The same bottle costs less than $2 USD in a grocery store, and it would be unthinkable to charge more than $6 USD for it at even the fanciest, most exclusive Brazilian dance club. And with this bill, we have just been politely informed: Thank you very much, please don't come here again."
I've been back in Sao Paulo seven days now, and I'm getting restless to get out of here and see some other parts of Brasil. The past few days, when we haven't been out drinking and eating, we've mostly lounged around watching "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," which is on TV here constantly. Just about everything else on Brazilian TV is total crap, and I wouldn't want to watch it even if I understood the language. Novellas (soap operas) are really big here, and look just as silly as ours. The other choices are dubbed cartoons or soccer games. My brother is threatening to photograph me watching TV for a homeland drifter expose. I least I don't have a refrigerator full of Coca-Cola!!! Oooops, who said that?
I spend several afternoons at the huge electronics store down the street, which has a great CD selection and listening stations which read the barcode on the CD and then play the disc for you. I've been getting to know Brazilian music this way, listening to thematic compilation discs, and trying to figure out what CDs I'll buy before I go home. I''ve already determined that I will probably never be a great appreciator of bossa nova or samba. I did find a disc by a very cool and weird bossa nova/hardcore band, however, and some good Brazilian hip hop. There's some decent bossa nova-influenced eletronica here, as well.
Through some internet research, homeland drifter staff have determined that a trip to Uruguay is now necessary. It seems that the government of Uruguay happens to mint a certain 10-centisimo coin which has the same weight and size as a US quarter. The current cost of said Uruguayan coin is less than one US cent. That's a lot of loads of free laundry back home. I think I should sell this important scoop to Consumer Reports magazine, of something like that? Please note that homeland drifter certainly does not advocate the phreaking or hacking of vending machines or parking meters . . . or something, and that this information is solely for, um, educational and entertainment purposes, um, or something like that . . .
Soundtrack: samba in the streets
Franz Ferdinand on the CD player in the car
[2/10/2005]
[ Thursday, February 03, 2005 ]
Somewhere in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. I'm on a semi-leito (sleeper) bus full of other other folks on their way to Porto Allegre for the World Social Forum. In front of me sits a woman wearing a Forteleza Indymedia t-shirt, beside me are three German activists from Frankfurt, in back of me is a Dutch student, etc.
After a series of unfortunate incidents, my ostensibly 18 hour bus ride has turned into 29 hours. First, at 1 a.m., we come to a stop on the highway behind a long line of other parked vehicles. I awake at 7 a.m. and we are still parked in the same spot on the highway. The Germans tell me "Die Brucke ist kaput." Some of us walk the 1 kilometer up to the scene. The highway bridge in the other lane has collapsed. There's an overturned, crushed 18-wheeler, sticking out of the water below, and another one nearly cut in half that barely made it across. The rumor is that there are some cars under the water, and at least several people have been killed.
Former highway bridge en route to Rio Grande do Sul.
I walk back to our bus and inform everyone that "yes, obviously the CIA has blown the bridge to prevent us from attending the World Social Forum." No one seems to believe me, even though I'm American, and thus uniquely qualified to recognize the devious sabotage of my kind.
The police will not allow traffic to proceed until an engineer gives the thumbs up on the integrity of the remaining bridge. Fortunately, the scenery from our parking lot vantage point is stunning. We finally start moving across, and I am hugely relieved to see a few bigger-and-heavier-than-our-bus trucks ahead of us in line. All the Brazilians on the bus hold their breath as we cross, and then applaud our luck or God's grace or both.
At around noon, we pull off the road and into a big bus repair facility. The Germans look at me again: "Der Bus ist Kaput." After another hour sitting around, we get underway after our bus's "tube" is replaced.
Landscape en route to Rio Grande do Sul.
We're now 11 hours behind schedule, and the Dutch woman informs me that we're going to miss the Manu Chao concert, which is part of the opening ceremonies of the Forum. Fuck, I didn't even know about the Manu Chao concert! Now I'm upset. (As I learned days later, it was also a Gilberto Gil concert.) Fuck, fuck!
Porto Allegre, Brazil. We finally pull into Porto Allegre at 1 a.m. the next morning. I get a taxi to the "solidarity accomodation" I reserved weeks ago on the Forum's pathetic website. When I get there, the women whose apartment it is tells me that my reservation has been cancelled and she has no room for me. I wish the German guys from the bus were standing here to say: "Das Schlafen Zimmer ist Kaput." Solidarity? Fuck.
I already know that there is not a single vacant hotel room anywhere in Porto Allegre, so I get out to the Forum grounds and hike around Youth Camp, which fills a huge park in downtwon Porto Allegre), trying to find a place to sleep out with no tent, sleeping bag, or anything else resembling camping gear. I finally crawl onto a piece of plywood in a recycling shack and sleep until sunrise.
World Social Forum, Porto Allegre, Brazil.
The next day, through some marvelous gift of the universe, I run into a woman I met in Mumbai last year, and she kindly leads me to one of her friends, who conveniently has a tent and sleeping bag he's not using. All is well, again, and I can relax a little. I pitch my tent next to a group of crusty Argentinian hippies.
I have already heard that there's a lot of theft from tents in Youth Camp, so I'm a little anxious about camping out. As it turns out, however, I feel very safe camping here because the hippies do very little other than sit around their campfire smoking dope, sipping erva mate, and cooking food. They don't even leave camp to attend any of the WSF programs all week. Oh, well.
So, what follows are parts of an article I'm writing about the Forum, which may be interesting to you if you're interested in knowing more about the Forum. Otherwise, there are more photos, so keep scrolling down, anway . . .
Sign for free internet kiosk on WSF grounds.
Introduction: The WSF takes place from January 26 to 31. The Forum began here in 2001 as a radical response to the neoliberal economics and practices of the IMF and World Bank, and as a direct challenge to the World Economic Forum held at the same time each year in Davos, Switzerland. The Forum, broadly speaking, has been a call from global civil society and anti-globalization activists for radical change on a broad spectrum of issues facing humanity. The WSF is a call for fair trade, not free trade; for corporate accountability, not corporate rule; for sustainable growth, not growth at any price.
At the broadest level, then, this is the reason for the creation of the first WSF in 2001. And the question it poses is this: Can the combined efforts of peoples' movements (indigenous, trade unionist, poor, farmers, etc.), NGOs, and global civil society stop the growing assault on basic justice and equality coming from multinationals and militarist governments?
By the looks of it, what remained of the Amazonian rainforest was cleared to print all the newspapers, flyers, tracts, and brochures handed out at the WSF.
By the time the WSF moved to Mumbai for its 2004 incarnation, 85,000 were in attendance. This year, in Porto Allegre, there were 155,000 participants (perhaps 80% of whom are Brazilian). 35,000 of this number were in the Youth Camp. There was a brigade of 6,880 translators to provide simultaneous radio translation in the Forum's four official languages this year - Portuguese, English, Spanish, and French. People from 135 countries participated and were involved in 2,500 panels, seminars and other activities. There were 2,800 volunteers working at the infrastructure level.
What is "anti-globalization"? Is the anti-globalization movement just a band of blac bloc'ers throwing rocks at WTO meetings? Well, it is for the mainstream press, but on the ground here it looks a lot different. Just about everyone now knows that our planet is "globalizing" in some sense of the world, and has been, at least economically, since the rise of capitalism in the early 16th century. So the real question is no longer, "are you for or against globalization," but is rather "what type of globalization do we want?" One model talked about a lot here is that of "alter-globalization." In other words, re-organizing our interrelated planetary economy in a way that is just and sustainable and diverse.
A performance at the Forum.
For the new global justice and solidarity movement (as it is sometimes called), the primary threat to global equality and freedom is the power of transnational corporations which, acting in concert with governments, enact their massive imperialist fantasies of privatization of public resources throughout the world. This corporate + state power, which is increasingly overlapping, acts to destroy civil society, democracy, cultural diversity, and the commons. The anti-globalization movement thus fears that we are currently on a path towards (or have already reached) a kind of Hobbesian “fortress world,” in which the rich wall themselves off from the poor on a global level, using their economic and military power to enforce grotesquely unjust economic terms.
Instead of letting transnational corporations set the agenda and extract profits from the global South while privatizing every molecule of every substance on earth (including the DNA of indigenous people), we need to "globalize" in a democratic way that values public and common ownership of resources, individual dignity, and cultural diversity.
Drummers.
What happens at the WSF? Is the Forum just a big pep rally for the Left? Is it a massive waste of time and resources squandered on preaching to the planetary choir? Pep rally, sure. But even if the Forum was little more than a giant rally for Left anti-globalization forces, I'd say it's a much-needed psychological and emotional shot in the arm for anyone who spends the rest of the year fighting oppression and injustice. Preaching to the choir? Maybe. But there's a lot more education, analysis, networking, and strategizing being done down here than there is simple preaching to the choir.
The primary events at the Forum are panels and seminars organized thematically on a staggering variety of topics. The topical terrain is divided into 11 broad themes, each as a sort of village-within-a-village with its own cluster of meeting rooms, food services, stalls and information booths, and internet services. Some of the topical terrains are, for example: "counter-hegemonic communications practices and rights," "demilitarization and struggle against war, free trade and debt," "human rights and dignity," "defending diversity, pluralities and identities," "autonomous thought, re-appropriation and socialization of knowledge," and so on.
Carolyn and Stephanie - two Canadian student activists I met at the Forum.
The event is held on a few square miles of the waterfront in downtown Porto Allegre, combining a tent city, an existing cultural center, and some big old warehouses along the water to house most of what happens. Each day, there are three time blocks of several hours each, in which meetings and programs are held according to topical terrain, resulting in dozens of programs being held simultaneously at any given moment during the Forum. In addition to all of this, there is a concurrent and vibrant cultural program including an international film festival, loads of visual art, performance, and theatre, and music day and night.
It becomes a frustrating challenge in time management to participate in everything that one wants to attend, given the huge number of meetings and films and other events that happen each day here. I suppose better too much than not enough, though, when it comes to radical global activism.
A display at the Espacio Che Guevera. If I had a dollar for every Che t-shirt I saw this week.
In the evenings, when most of the NGO folks go back to their hotels, the Youth Camp (filling a huge park on the WSF grounds) really comes alive and there is music blasting from a dozen different stages until 5 a.m. some nights. "If I can't dance, I don't want to be a part of your revolution."
Mumbai 2004 versus Porto Allegre 2005: The Forum in Mumbai in 2004 followed the Porto Allegre model, overall, but there are several striking differences. In Mumbai, there was very little participation by the local population in the cultural programs. In fact, a large police presence in Mumbai kept the thousands of homeless Indians living in squalor just outside the grounds from entering the forum. One of the really heart-breaking things for me in Mumbai is reading the words of a journalist who left the grounds one day to interview the poor living in the neighboring slum. The children said the police wouldn’t let them into the grounds, and they all wanted to know "Why won't they let us go to the big festival?"
Floating World, on the waterfront at the Forum grounds.
By contrast, in Porto Allegre, a lot of locals come to the Forum grounds every night to listen to music, hang out, socialize, eat, drink, and walk around. As such, the Forum here feels much more legitimate and inclusive than it did in Mumbai. On the other hand, there is a lot less poverty in the waterfront neighborhood where the Forum is held, at least as compared to Mumbai. Nonetheless, there are constant reports of theft throughout the week in the Youth Camp park. Whether this is the work of locals, misguided anarcho-punks stealing from their comrades, others, or a combination of these things, who knows.
One other important difference is that this year all the events are completely self-organized, with no central panels organized by the host committee. According to activist and public intellectual Waldon Bello (Focus on the Global South), this reflects a ""conscious effort to build a space that is horizontal and open, and which encourages cross-fertilization across political, sectoral, geographic, cultural, and language barriers.”
One final distinction that affected me a great deal is language: Because of the extreme diversity and number of South Asian languages, the events in Mumbai were held in mostly English or with English translation, as English is lingua franca in South Asia. In Latin America, though, it's nearly entirely Spanish and Portuguese, so the programming is focused on these two languages, as it should be.
A tree holding a cardboard planet earth, downtown Porto Allegre.
Lula and Chavez at the Forum: One heartening trend in the past several years is the move to the left in many Latin American governments. In particular, Uruguay elected its first centre-left government in the fall of 2004, Argentina's Kirchner has repudiated the failed privatization policies forced on his country by the IMF, Brazil elected the Workers Party leader Luis Inacio Lula da Silva (Lula) a few years ago, and Hugo Chavez recently won a referendum on his rule in Venezuela.
Lula came to the Forum this year and addressed it before flying off to Davos to address the Forum's nemesis - The World Economic Forum in Davos. Lula is much less popular among the Left here than he was even a year ago. He has struck a few deals with the World Bank and IMF which have cost him the support of many of his former progressive and radical allies. In fact, two allied parties have withdrawn from his coalition government in Brasilia. Nonetheless, he ostensibly takes an important message to Davos - putting justice before economics.
Shopping cart mobile sound system.
The only foreign head of state to attend the WSF this year was Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. He addressed a packed arena during a lengthy political rally and speech. Chavez is hugely popular here. During his Porto Allegre trip, he also visited a MST (landless workers movement) encampment to show his solidarity with them.
WSF: Stage or Actor? The salient debate that emerges from this year’s Forum is this: What is the role of the WSF in global politics, and is it an actor or merely a stage? For the past 5 years, the WSF has consciously refused to adopt any platform or take any political action as an entity. The thinking until now has been that the purpose of the Forum is to provide open space for organizing, networking, and dissemination of knowledge and strategies. Many are starting to question this approach, especially now in light of the continued war and occupation in Iraq. There will be lively debate within and without the WSF International Committee and Secretariat on this subject for some time to come.
The Forum in Africa and Beyond: The WSF is a massive and still growing phenomenon. Rather than carry on year after year with the Porto Allegre/Mumbai model, the WSF had decided to split into three regional blocs in 2006. There will be forums in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The likely host countries for the first two regions are Venezuela and Morocco. The Asian host has not yet been selected.
In 2007, the Forum will revert to the previous model, and a unified World Social Forum will be held somewhere in Africa. Again, the host country has not been determined. This year saw many delegates from the African Social Forum organization planning for the next several years as more emphasis will shift to Africa and its common and unique issues in globalization.
Rally in downtown Porto Allegre, last day of the Forum.
Parting thoughts: The global justice movement, best summarized and expressed to date on the stage of the WSF, is a force of thousands of dedicated activists working to completely re-envision and re-direct the planet's current negative trajectory of globalization. What is important to recognize is that for each of the 155,000 activists here, there are dozens more allies and actors in each of our cities, towns, townships, villages, and farms, who are becoming more and more conscious of the planetary crossroads we face, and who have decided that another world is possible. With or without the WSF as an entity, millions of people have decided to fight to make another world a reality.
Can 155,000 activists change the world? Looking at the passion, anger, vision, and commitment here in Porto Allegre this past week, one would have to answer with a resounding "yes."
Reading List: Samba: Resistance in Motion, by Barbara Browning
[2/3/2005]
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