Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2005 10:02 pm Post subject: Action pack history: Finding tribal origin from manuscripts
Crushing the pride and culture of captive Africans in Brazil was not quick work as this article demonstrate. Four century of slave trading sure took a toll on Portugal and Africa. Is this why Brazil and perhaps Portugal progress as a nation is held back because the New and Old World Portuguese worked so hard for more than four centuries on capturing and taming Africans that they became tired and sloppy in making the nation of Brazil as we see today? These Jesuit priest seem to be all over the place. What happen to them? What did they teach the captive African, slave owners and all the parties involved in this bloodfest? Oh is their legacy the big event in Brazil that just past this week? Cheers.
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Brazil's African legacy. (immense impact on economics, culture, religion, demography and genetics of the country)(Cover Story)
by John Geipel
In History Today, August, 1997
It was the seventeenth-century Jesuit preacher and missionary. Frei Antonio Vieira, who said that Brazil had `the body of America and the soul of Africa' and this description continues, to some extent, to hold true. In Vieira's day, Africans and their offspring -- black and mulatto, slave and free -- far outnumbered Europeans in Portugal's South American colony.
Three centuries on, although the African element in the population is much diluted, Brazil's economic, demographic, genetic and cultural debt to Africa remains inestimable. From the colony's very infancy in the early sixteenth century, the contribution of Africa to the population and development of Brazil has been prodigious and pervasive and few aspects of Brazilian society and civilisation have remained untouched by its influence.
Over the four centuries of Portuguese involvement in the Atlantic slave trade, an estimated 10 to 15 million Africans were transported to the European colonies in the Americas. Of these, over 3.5 million were taken to Brazil, many arriving after the growth of the coffee industry in the mid-nineteenth century. Even after the Atlantic slave trade to Brazil was declared illegal in 1850, contraband `Black Gold' continued to be smuggled across the ocean.
The first Africans were herded ashore in north-east Brazil in the year 1538. The decision to exploit imported and unpaid black labour had been prompted partly in response to a Papal Bull of 1537, which forbade the enslavement of the indigenous `Indians' (though this was soon to be totally disregarded), and partly because the African's more robust constitution, greater immunity to the white man's diseases and conditioning to hard, physical work n a tropical environment made him more suitable than the native as potential slave material. Besides, the Portuguese were long familiar with the African in the role of chattel.
The slave trade and the consequent miscegenation between Portuguese and black Africans had begun in Europe over half a century before Cabral's discovery of Brazil in 1500. Indeed, the mingling of the two peoples had begun centuries earlier -- with the Carthaginians, the Romans and the Moors, all of whom brought large contingents of slaves, servants and mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa to the Iberian peninsula. Systematic exploitation of an unpaid African labour force by the Portuguese, however, began in earnest in the mid-fifteenth century, when slaves from Guinea were transported to the Alentejo and the Algarve and to the sugar mills of Madeira. This traffic reached such a scale that, by the turn of the sixteenth century, one in ten of the inhabitants of such towns as Evora was of African descent, while Lisbon, was one of several cities with an African quarter.
The bulk importation of African slaves to Brazil thus perpetuated a tradition already deeply rooted in Portugal. The blood of Africa ran in the veins of many Portuguese colonial dynasties. As Gilberto Freyre (the sociologist who, writing in the 1930s and 40s, did so much to reconstruct the relationship between master and slave in colonial Brazil) suggests, the affection displayed by many Brazilian planters to their black chattels may be attributed to an ingrained respect for `Gente de Cor' (People of Colour) dating back to the time of the Moors.
Compared with the Visigoths who had preceded them as overlords of Iberia, the Moors -- themselves of hybrid Afro-Asiatic stock -- were racially colourblind and did not discriminate against other monotheists (`People of the Book', meaning Christians and Jews) on the basis of ethnic origin or pigmentation. Moreover, as a consequence of five centuries of Arab occupation of their former homeland, the Portuguese in Brazil were long familiar with the Islamic religion practised by many of their African slaves.
From the 1580s, the importation of Africans to Brazil increased dramatically. After the initial expansion of the sugar industry, blacks soon constituted over two-thirds of the population of the north-east. A century later, the discovery of gold in Minas Gerais further increased the demand for slave labour. Meanwhile, in the sertao (hinterland) of the north-east, Pretos (blacks), Pardos (mulattos) and Cafuzos (Afro-indian halfbreeds) formed the majority population of what would become the state of Piaui. where the traditional ranching skills of such West African pastoralists as the Fulani played a prominent role in the development of the region's nascent cattle industry.
Despite the importance to Brazil's economy of African mineworkers, stockmen, stevedores and domestics, by the mid-eighteenth century these groups were vastly outnumbered by the field-hands working the engenbos or sugar mills. At the height of the sugar boom, 40 per cent of Brazil's slave population was involved in the cultivation of the cane. It was this group, largely composed of Bantu tribesmen obtained in sub-equatorial Africa, which endured the most severe and inhumane conditions -- but which also contributed most to the popular culture of Brazil.
By contrast, in the urban centres, a burgeoning class of skilled black and mulatto artisans was well established by the 1750s: tailors, coopers, boilermakers, joiners, shipwrights, caulkers, stonemasons, blacksmiths and bakers. Many of these were `forros' freedmen who had obtained manumission either by purchase (often through mutual-aid societies, some of which were organised on the basis of tribal affiliation), by completion of contract, or by the munificence of a liberal master. Many of these trades had long been practised in Africa, and black craftsmen were able to complement European techniques with those of their own traditions.
By the start of the sixteenth century, Brazil's population of African birth or descent already topped 20,000, with Africans being imported at a rate of 8,000 per year and making up 70 per cent of the labour force. The Portuguese, in common with the rival Western European slaving nations, did not confine their activities to particular parts of the African continent, but ranged far and wide in their insatiable quest for `Ebony Flesh'. By Vieira's time, the bulk of the slaves destined for Brazil were obtained in the Senegambian region, from where many were `processed' on the Cape Verde archipelago before being shipped across the Atlantic in hulks known mordantly as `tumbeiros' (hearses), for as much as half their human cargo would frequently perish during the ocean crossing.
In the seventeenth century, the supply of slaves came mainly from Angola and the `Contra Costa' (Indian Ocean coast) of Africa, including Madagascar, as far north as Zanzibar, where Portuguese slaving activities overlapped and competed with those of the Arabs. For a century and a half following the Portuguese recovery of Luanda from the Dutch in 1648, Angola provided an inexhaustible reservoir of human merchandise. During the eighteenth century, 70 per cent of the slaves shipped to Brazil were obtained in Angola; indeed, so massive was the human haemorrhage from its shores that large areas of the country remained virtually depopulated for generations.
Unlike the more urbanised Guinea (or `Sudanese') blacks, who were highly valued as house servants, the bulk of the Bantu obtained in Angola and Mozambique were put to work on the fazendas (plantations) of Brazil. It was here that an Angolan Bantu language, Kimbundu, became the lingua franca of the fazendas and missionaries were obliged to learn this language in order to catechise the newly arrived African bocais -- an opprobrious name similar in sense to the North American `Guineabird' or `Salt-water Nigger'.
The opening up of the diamond deposits in the early eighteenth century increased the demand for blacks skilled in the techniques of prospecting, metallurgy and extraction. Many of these Africans were obtained in the Gold Coast (Ghana) and Dahomey (Benin) region of Guinea; known collectively as `Minas' (from the fort of E1 Mina from which the majority were shipped out). They were often more familiar with mining methods than their masters and their contribution to the economy of both Portugal and Brazil was incalculable.
At the start of the Brazilian Empire in 1822, a demographic survey revealed that Gente de Cor constituted over two thirds of Brazil's total population -- 20 per cent of which still had slave status. The traffic of slaves was at its most intense between 1825-1850; during the nineteenth century, some 32 per cent of the total number of Africans imported since the start of the trade arrived in Brazil. It was these comparative latecomers who were to leave their indelible imprint on the culture of their new home.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the undiminished demand for unpaid labour, the Slave Coast of Nigeria became the primary source -- whence the late survival in Brazil of traditions rooted in the culture of the Yoruba and the Fon (better known in Brazil by their alternative African nicknames, Nago and Gege).
Many of the slaves were purchased as war captives from neighbouring tribes -- often after they had been deliberately incited by Europeans to fight one another; others were criminals., debtors or outcasts; while many, such as the hereditary caste of slaves of the Yoruba, already had slave status in their native community. The actual purchase was made, not by the negreiros or traders themselves, but by intermediaries, either white `degredados' (exiled criminals) who had gone native' or half-castes who were themselves the slaves of Portuguese planters. in Angola, after its recovery from the Dutch the Portuguese established a Chartered Colony, which despatched conquistadores to levy feudal dues in the form of slaves for export from the tribal chiefs of the interior.
Unlike some of the Spanish-American colonies, such as Cuba and Colombia, where detailed records of the slave trade were preserved, much of the documentary evidence of the Brazilian trade was destroyed in 1891, when the liberal Republican minister and abolitionist from Baia, Rui Barbosa, ordered it to be consigned to the flames. However, statistics for the period 1817-70, made by British consuls in the major ports of Brazil, were retained in the archives of the British Foreign Office. These help to identify the general geographical -- if not the specific tribal -- origins of the slaves imported throughout much of the nineteenth century; while the investigations conducted earlier this century by the anthropologist, Raimundo Nina Rodrigues and his disciple, Artur Ramos, filled in many details of the African background on the basis of identifiable tribal traditions surviving in Brazilian popular culture.
One of the first to stress the importance of acknowledging and evaluating the African contribution to the economy and civilisation of Brazil was the German naturalist, Karl Friedrich Philipp von Martins, whose prize-winning essay on this hitherto neglected subject was published in 1844. This need was also emphasised by the literary critic, Silvio Romero, who concluded that: `We owe much more to the Negro than to the Indian; he entered into all aspects of our development', and by such influential commentators as Afonso Celso and the black historian, Manuel Querino, whose many publications stimulated further research into the nation's African heritage.
The survival of African cultural traditions in Brazil must be attributed both to the direct links with the mother continent, which were maintained until the late nineteenth century, and to the fact that, as mortality was high and fertility low among the slave population, levels of imported Africans remained much higher, and for much longer, than in English-speaking North America. In contrast to Protestant Anglo-America, where slaves of similar tribal origin were deliberately kept apart in order to make communication -- and potential insurrection -- more difficult, the Catholic colonial countries did not enforce this segregation, policy so that African tribal identities were able to survive relatively intact.
Maintenance of African cultural traditions in Brazil was also made possible by the establishment there of quilombos, communities of maroons or runaway slaves located in the more inaccessible parts of the sertao. The earliest of these were already in existence by the mid-seventeenth century. During the disruptions caused by the thirty years of Dutch occupation of north-east Brazil (1624-54), when the Portuguese struggled to dislodge the interlopers, many more quilombos were founded in the Brazilian interior -- this where the frequent occurrence of African placenames testifies to their wide distribution. Some of these `Black Republics' comprised several mocambos or townships, each under the control of an African-style chieftain. The most renowned was Palmares, in the state of Alagoas, the so-called `Black Troy', which held out for over fifty years until its final surrender to the Portuguese in 1697, when the paramount chief, Zumbi, and his followers committed mass suicide rather than succumb to slavery. Palmares was one of the last of the quilombos to succumb to the relentless wars of attrition waged by the colonial authorities against these well organised, well defended and self-sufficient renegade strongholds.
These fugitive communities, although not exclusively black (they also attracted many Cafuzos, dispossessed Indians and disaffected whites and mulattos) employed many of the agricultural techniques and other traditions of Africa, and many were still used as places of refuge for half a century after the fall of Palmares.
Despite the essential Bantu traditions derived from the cultures of sub-equatorial Africa, which predominated in the senzalas (slave quarters) of the plantations and in the quilombos, the influence of other African peoples persisted, on a more local scale, in specific parts of Brazil.
In Baia, for example, the most significant African retentions are those of the Nago and the Gege. Many of the dishes associated with Baian cuisine are of Nago inspiration, such as acaraje (kidney bean paste fried in dende palm oil), the sweet cakes of maize or rice flour known as aberem and the chicken, shrimp and garlic ragout, xinxim, popularly associated with Oxum, the Yoruba Goddess of Waters. The liturgical language of the syncretic Afro-Brazilian religion, candomble, was an archaic form of Yoruba, passed down orally by successive generations of babalaos or priests. (Elsewhere in Brazil, similar cults are known by such Bantu names as quimbanda and macumba.) In the hagiology of candomble, the gods of Guinea (the orixas) fuse with the Christian saints; Xango, Thunder God of the Yoruba, is identified with St Jerome, while his brother, Ogun, God of Blacksmiths, is merged with St Anthony.
In the mid-nineteenth century, groups of so-called `Agudas' (Brazilian slaves, largely of the Muslim faith) were `repatriated' to Yorubaland, where they were rapidly assimilated. This Transatlantic connection has been maintained up to our own time by such institutions as the Centro de Cultura Afro-Brasileira and the University of Baia, the only faculty in the Americas which has a chair in Yoruba. It is also significant that one of Brazil's most widely acclaimed touring music groups bears the Yoruba name of Oludun.
Specific Nago sects, often commemorating places in Nigeria, such as Ife, legendary cradle of the Yoruba, continued to survive in Brazil. Membership of these so-called `nations' was by no means confined to those who claimed Nago descent, but also attracted many adherents of other ethnic background, including whites. The multi-racial membership of these sects further emphasised the contrast between race relations in Brazilian society and those of Protestant Anglo-America.
Other distinctive African stocks were recognised during and long after the colonial period in Brazil. These included the Mandinga (from Mali and Senegambia), whose name is synonymous with witchcraft in much of lbero-America, and the Fula, whose name is applied in Brazil to a light-skinned `Cabra' or mulatto as a reminder of the fair complexions of the West African Fulani. Other African peoples continued to be remembered in the names of such black batallions of the Brazilian army as the Minas (from Ghana) and the Ardras (from Benin).
It was, however, the Islamicised blacks, known collectively in Brazil by the Yoruba name, Male, who, while numerically inferior to the largely Bantu and Nago masses, were to have the greatest impact on the ultimate destiny of Brazil's slave population: for it was they who spearheaded the insurrections which punctuated the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and accelerated the end of bondage.
Outstanding and most influential among the various peoples classed as Mali? were the Hausa of northern Nigeria, a highly urbanised nation whose so-called `holy war' against the white oppressor was a continuation of the jibad against the infidel which was part of Islamic tradition. In Brazil, many of these Male, despite having obtained their freedom, remained unassimilated and aloof from white society. Besides the Hausa, the Mandinga and the Fula were solidly Muslim, while many of the Nago had converted to islam long before their arrival in Brazil.
The Hausa, esteemed as house slaves for their imposing bearing and courteous manners, were frequently superior, in both intellect and erudition, to their masters and many, notably the alufas (imams), were literate in the Ajami (Arabic) script and well versed in the Koran.
The most spectacular of the slave insurrections, such as the 1835 `Male Uprising', were fomented and organised by these highly motivated people whose primary objective -- alongside casting off the yoke of slavery -- was to prosyletise their fellow Africans, many of whom had either adopted Catholicism or continued to observe their atavistic forms of worship. The crusading spirit of Islam was thus a dominant and unifying factor in the slave revolts that spread terror through a white population for whom the Haitian revolution of 1791 was still a fresh memory. When the uprising was finally put down, its ringleaders were either executed or exiled to Africa. Although many of these uprisings were well organised, the sheer size of the country meant that they could not be co-ordinated as they had been in the compact geographical setting of Haiti. Threatening though they were on a local scale, the Brazilian slave insurrections were much easier to isolate, contain and extinguish than their successful Haitian exemplar. Moreover, they could not boast a charismatic, supraregional leader of the stature of Toussaint L'Ouverture or of Antonio Maceo, the mulatto general who waged guerrilla war against the Spanish in Cuba in the 1870s.
In 1850, fifteen years after the Male Uprising, the slave trade was officially abolished in Brazil, one of the last former European colonies in the Americas to do so. Pressure to emancipate their slave population had been exerted on the Brazilians by both the British and the French since the early days of the empire, and in 1831 Dom Pedro had agreed to declare that all Africans entering the ports of Brazil were free.
Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 added further impetus to the movement in Brazil and in 1871 a `Lei do Ventre Livre' (Law of the Free Womb) was passed, granting freedom at birth to every child born of a slave. A Brazilian Anti-Slavery Society was founded under the presidency of Joaquim Nabuco in 1880, with the backing of the Emperor and such black abolitionists as Luis Gonzaga Pinto da Gama, Jose do Patrocinio (author of an influential anti-slavery novel, Motto Moqueiro) and Antonio Bento, editor of the journal, Redemption, and organiser of an `underground railroad', a network of escape routes which enabled slaves to flee from servitude into the mountain and jungle depths of the interior.
In contrast to the prominent role of Afro-Brazilians in the emancipation movement, mulattos were conspicuously under-represented. Indeed, many Creoles (Brazilian-born blacks) and mulattos were themselves slave-owners who stood to lose a great deal from abolition, and black leaders such as Andre Roboucas expressed deep regret at the disinterest and lack of involvement of their racial half-brothers, especially as many of the earlier insurrections, such as the Baia uprising of 1798 (again inspired by the Haitian Revolution) had been led by mulatto intellectuals, craftsmen and artisans. In 1885, a step closer to full emancipation was taken, with the proclamation of a law freeing all slaves aged sixty and above, and in 1888 the Aurea Decree liberated all 1.5 million still in bondage.
Today, 109 years after the end of slavery in Brazil, and despite the immigration of other, chiefly European and Asian, ethnic groups, an estimated 30-40 per cent of the Brazilian population (ie: upwards of 70 million souls) is still of direct or partial African descent. in the state of Baia alone, the landfall of the majority of Africans in the north-east, the percentage of blacks and mulattos remains, even today, as high as 70 per cent, much as it was in the eighteenth century at the height of the sugar boom.
The demographic pattern, however, is dynamic rather than static; the Afro-Brazilian population is far from uniform and its density continues to vary greatly between regions.
While only 5 per cent or less of the country's `coloured' population is estimated to be of unbroken African descent, the African element in Brazil's ethnic composition is still visible, as is the indelible African influence on popular culture, from the decorative arts to folklore, cuisine, herbal medicine, music and dance -- including the all-pervasive samba, whose Bantu name means `belly button' and which began life, as did so many other traditional Brazilian dances, on the sugar and coffee fazendas. The African influence manifests itself in spectacular form in such institutions as the Congadas and Maracatus -- dance re-enactments of African regal processions -- which have become such an integral part of the country's carnival parades.
In candomble, macumba and other Afro-brazilian religious cults -- despite the influence of European Spiritualism and the Catholic veneer -- the ancestral gods of Guinea live on, in dual Afro-catholic guise, while the African influence on the variety of Portuguese spoken in Brazil is demonstrable. This consists not only of a compendious vocabulary derived mainly from Kimbundu and (notably in Baia) Yoruba, but also of details of syntax and word usage and in the soft and sensuous pronunciation of what is often referred to as `Portuguese with Sugar'.
While it may no longer be possible, as it was in Nina Rodrigues' day, to attribute individual aspects of Brazilian civilisation to specific sources in Africa, it is this deep and ineradicable influence, the legacy of five centuries of intimate and almost continuous contact with the mother continent, which has given Brazilian popular culture so much of its unique identity.
John Geipel is the author of several books on anthropological linguistics. His latest contribution, on the secret language of the Gypsies of Spain, appears in Languages and Jargons, edited by Roy Porter and Peter Burke, (Polity Press, 1996).
CtF, you're making a very amateur historian's mistake in assuming that people of the past should have been motivated by what motivates us now. The Portuguese in Brazil never intended to build a nation here. _________________ Brazil is the country of the future and always will be!
CtF, you're making a very amateur historian's mistake in assuming that people of the past should have been motivated by what motivates us now. The Portuguese in Brazil never intended to build a nation here.
No I think you need a new pair of glasses or squint your eyes really hard.
Let me ask you this Mr. History Expert. What those Portuguese had the same God today as in their time. They breathe the same air. They ate the same food. They loved woman the same. They married the same way. They bought and sold land the same way. Etc. Not too much change except in technology. They had the knowledge (the Age of Reasoning) and moral authority to make a choice in the matter. Did you just tell me you are helping Brazil by doing some odd jobs for some corporation. Is that helping or building the country you believe in. Or are you there to just live your selfish existence just like the Portuguese did? Hey some married Africans types too like yourself. But I see your in a different league and time. Today the people whether Portuguese, Italian, English, Eastern European, Jewish, mullatoes descent Brazilian and you the "peaceful" persona are helping to build what is known as Brazil of today. Something as you mention the Portuguese lack. Brazil had and still have to deal with the issue of race. There is alot of unwarranted blame on Africans from in and out of Brazil for it third world pretext. Why is there a mastery of derogatory categories of every single type of African behavior and outer appearance as unfavorable by "black" themselves, mixed black up to white whatever. It does not appear to be changing any time soon. That is the result of 400+ years started by the Portuguese and passed down every single generation till today. That is alot of thinking and doing gone wrong.
OK Mr. History man here's your big moment. What if you had a little "white" Brazilian of convienices mention why are there so many people of different color. How come our skin is different? What do black people do in Brazil. My parents told me black people are bad, smelly and lazy. They like to hurt people. Where do black people come from? Negao this and Negao that. I want to be with my nanny how come she cannot stay here all the time. All in all, I dont want to grow up "black" Mr. Macunaima.
What will be your response? Since you are a man of today you will say perhaps we have equality now. Blacks are doing the things they do because they WANT to. Nothing from the past influence today's folks. I really hope you can keep a straight face with that, Mr. Motivation of Today. I do agree with you though about todays problems not the past need to be challenged but the mindset of the past in alot of folks hasn't changed to match it in regard to black people and considering them allies to helping the nation and not enemies for its descrution. Later.
Actually, CtF, you're quite wrong. The Portuguese today do not do hardly anything in the same way they did back in the 16th century. A shit-load has changed in terms of customs.
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They ate the same food.
No, they do not. Here in Rio, colonial style food is a fast-disappearing specialty. We have far more greens, pasta, fresh meat, processed flour and far less sugar in our diet. Not to mention alchohol. And that's not even talkning about the IMMENSE changes in customs brought about by technology. Opening up a can of tomato sauce and a package od spaghetti and cooking it up in a half hour on your stove is a far different affair than maintaining a domestic staff of mostly slaves whose only chore is to prepare food for you.
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They loved woman the same.
In strict biological terms, maybe. but I REALLy doubt, based upon what I've read, that Portuguese men in the 16th century gave one flying fuck about whether the women got any pleasure out of sex. Based on the number of "how to" books directed at men that I see in news stands and book stores, I think we can both agree that this has changed.
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They married the same way.
Families are now FAR different than they were then. Women have much more power. Back in the 16th century a woman was the property of her husband or father. Literally. You're telling me this is true today? Divorce was anathema back then and today it is the main fact of married life
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They bought and sold land the same way. Etc.
Now you are WAY off. You should really spend an afternoon reading about the changes in Brazilian and Portuguese land tenure law over the last few centuries. It'd blow your mind.
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What those Portuguese had the same God today as in their time.
If you think the Catholic church is the same institution it was in 1500, you are nuts. Back in 1500, protestants were outlawed in Brazil on the pain of burning at the stake. Jews were forcibly converted.; Today, Protestantism is the fastest growing religious movement in Brazil. Back then, most intellectuals were devout catholixs. Today, they are mostly agnostics or even atheists. To you, this is the same, huh?
CtF, you're making huge assumptions here which are simply based on your ignorance of history. Nothing more.
When the Portuguese settled here, they did not forsee the Brazilian nation, CtF. No one said "Hey, let's get to work constructing future citizens". In fact, in 1500, the idea of citizenship didn't exist ANYWHERE in the western world. Brazil was settled to make hard cash for the Portuguese crown and that was it. The national question didn't even really begin to get started until the 19th century here. C'mon, CtF! Read a few history books for christ sakes! You bitching that the Portuguese didn't build Brazil into a nation is a little like bitching that Richard the Lionhearted didn't turn England into a socialist republic. Brazil was never MEANT to be a nation: it was built to be an extractive colony. And like all nations who trace their roots to that sort of beginning, it's had a hell of a time digging itself out of slavery.
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Hey some married Africans types too like yourself.
You lost me there. What you just said makes no sense in English. Fala português, se quiser.
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Or are you there to just live your selfish existence just like the Portuguese did?
If I wanted to live a selfish existence, I couldn't do better than in North America or Europe, where I could freely buy the products of global hyper-exploitation, but would be far enough away from its side-effects that I could pretend that poverty in Brazil or Indonesia had nothing to do with me or mine.
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There is alot of unwarranted blame on Africans from in and out of Brazil for it third world pretext. Why is there a mastery of derogatory categories of every single type of African behavior and outer appearance as unfavorable by "black" themselves, mixed black up to white whatever. It does not appear to be changing any time soon. That is the result of 400+ years started by the Portuguese and passed down every single generation till today.
The very same thing can be and is said about the black experience in the U.S. Bob Marley made many of the same points about the black experience in Jamaica, as did Fanon regarding Martinique. So why is this a "Portuguese" problem and not a "western" problem? This, to me, seems to be the salient failure of your arguement.
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What if you had a little "white" Brazilian of convienices mention why are there so many people of different color.
Again, this is unintelligible. What is your question here?
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What do black people do in Brazil.
Many different things. My wife, for example, teaches university classes, as do many of our black friends. Others are lawyers, politicians and doctors. And no, this does not eliminate racism, but it does show that your ultra-reductionist argument is ignoring some very important facts and people.
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All in all, I dont want to grow up "black" Mr. Macunaima.
Your parents sound like they brain-washed you quite thoroughly. I am happy that mine didn't.
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Since you are a man of today you will say perhaps we have equality now.
I'm not even sure what is MEANT by "equality". What I'd like to see is more real affirmative action programs, particularly more money being channeled into basic education and university scholarships for people of color. Quotas don't mean shit if you don't have the cash to see you through school. I also think more real African and afro-brazilian history needs to be taught and appreciated.
But what I DON'T believe in is ethnonationalism, CtF. It hasn't worked anywhere and won't work here. Even Fanon clearly saw that. Attempting to reduce the world to a simplistic "white = bad / black = good" equation, or a conspiratorial view of history wherein the white Illuminati manipulate everyone like little puppets on a stage.
You think I'm racist? Fine. I accept the fact that I may very well have areas of racism in my personality which have yet to be turned over and analyzed and gotten rid of. But if all your argument boils down to is that I am racist because I am white and that this somehow erects an absolutely intransportable barrier between me and any black person, then you, sir, are simply full of what makes cows fart.
My big question is always why the historical, social and physical facts of blackness somehow supposedly make white people absolutely unable to understand, communicate with or appreciate black people, but the equally horrible, violence charged historical, physical and social facts of "womenhood" don't erect a similar barrier between men and women? If you are a fundamentalist ethnonationalist, by the same logic, you should also be homosexual.
Another problem is this talk of yours about "mindsets" as if they were these solid, set in stone things, determining peoples' every move. CtF, people are almost always prejudiced when it's interesting for them to be in political and economic terms. "Mindsets" don't rule prejudices, CtF: politics and economics do. Your parents didn't tell you that shit because they have some visceral rejection of black people: they told you that because in Brazil, black is associated with poverty and they were attempting to inculate you into the middle class. This isn't a "mind set", CtF. If they were surrounded by tons of middle-class and rich black people, I'm pretty sure that most of their prejudices would be rethought.
Prejudices have a logic, CtF. This doesn't make them good or nice, but it DOES mean that until you attack that logic, they are not going to go away. You can bitch all you want about the evil portuguese and western afrophobia, and in a sense, you're correct. But afrophobia, as Fanon so insightfully pointed out, is a SYMPTOM of a deeper problem, one based on ignorance, politics and economics.
Attack the ignorance, uplift the the poor and most of this shit will disappear. Just look at the States: black liberation has walked hand-in-hand with black socio-economic improvemnt. While the overall race is still pretty much in the same place as it was before, there IS a larger and more visible black middle class.
I guarantee you, CtF, 9 out of 10 white racists in Brazil would MUCH rather live next door to a black doctor than to a white favelado and you damn well know this is true. So much for your "mindsets", then, as the "root cause" of racism in Brazil. _________________ Brazil is the country of the future and always will be!
Actually, CtF, you're quite wrong. The Portuguese today do not do hardly anything in the same way they did back in the 16th century. A shit-load has changed in terms of customs.
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They ate the same food.
No, they do not. Here in Rio, colonial style food is a fast-disappearing specialty. We have far more greens, pasta, fresh meat, processed flour and far less sugar in our diet. Not to mention alchohol. And that's not even talkning about the IMMENSE changes in customs brought about by technology. Opening up a can of tomato sauce and a package od spaghetti and cooking it up in a half hour on your stove is a far different affair than maintaining a domestic staff of mostly slaves whose only chore is to prepare food for you.
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They loved woman the same.
In strict biological terms, maybe. but I REALLy doubt, based upon what I've read, that Portuguese men in the 16th century gave one flying fuck about whether the women got any pleasure out of sex. Based on the number of "how to" books directed at men that I see in news stands and book stores, I think we can both agree that this has changed.
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They married the same way.
Families are now FAR different than they were then. Women have much more power. Back in the 16th century a woman was the property of her husband or father. Literally. You're telling me this is true today? Divorce was anathema back then and today it is the main fact of married life
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They bought and sold land the same way. Etc.
Now you are WAY off. You should really spend an afternoon reading about the changes in Brazilian and Portuguese land tenure law over the last few centuries. It'd blow your mind.
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What those Portuguese had the same God today as in their time.
If you think the Catholic church is the same institution it was in 1500, you are nuts. Back in 1500, protestants were outlawed in Brazil on the pain of burning at the stake. Jews were forcibly converted.; Today, Protestantism is the fastest growing religious movement in Brazil. Back then, most intellectuals were devout catholixs. Today, they are mostly agnostics or even atheists. To you, this is the same, huh?
CtF, you're making huge assumptions here which are simply based on your ignorance of history. Nothing more.
When the Portuguese settled here, they did not forsee the Brazilian nation, CtF. No one said "Hey, let's get to work constructing future citizens". In fact, in 1500, the idea of citizenship didn't exist ANYWHERE in the western world. Brazil was settled to make hard cash for the Portuguese crown and that was it. The national question didn't even really begin to get started until the 19th century here. C'mon, CtF! Read a few history books for christ sakes! You bitching that the Portuguese didn't build Brazil into a nation is a little like bitching that Richard the Lionhearted didn't turn England into a socialist republic. Brazil was never MEANT to be a nation: it was built to be an extractive colony. And like all nations who trace their roots to that sort of beginning, it's had a hell of a time digging itself out of slavery.
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Hey some married Africans types too like yourself.
You lost me there. What you just said makes no sense in English. Fala português, se quiser.
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Or are you there to just live your selfish existence just like the Portuguese did?
If I wanted to live a selfish existence, I couldn't do better than in North America or Europe, where I could freely buy the products of global hyper-exploitation, but would be far enough away from its side-effects that I could pretend that poverty in Brazil or Indonesia had nothing to do with me or mine.
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There is alot of unwarranted blame on Africans from in and out of Brazil for it third world pretext. Why is there a mastery of derogatory categories of every single type of African behavior and outer appearance as unfavorable by "black" themselves, mixed black up to white whatever. It does not appear to be changing any time soon. That is the result of 400+ years started by the Portuguese and passed down every single generation till today.
The very same thing can be and is said about the black experience in the U.S. Bob Marley made many of the same points about the black experience in Jamaica, as did Fanon regarding Martinique. So why is this a "Portuguese" problem and not a "western" problem? This, to me, seems to be the salient failure of your arguement.
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What if you had a little "white" Brazilian of convienices mention why are there so many people of different color.
Again, this is unintelligible. What is your question here?
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What do black people do in Brazil.
Many different things. My wife, for example, teaches university classes, as do many of our black friends. Others are lawyers, politicians and doctors. And no, this does not eliminate racism, but it does show that your ultra-reductionist argument is ignoring some very important facts and people.
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All in all, I dont want to grow up "black" Mr. Macunaima.
Your parents sound like they brain-washed you quite thoroughly. I am happy that mine didn't.
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Since you are a man of today you will say perhaps we have equality now.
I'm not even sure what is MEANT by "equality". What I'd like to see is more real affirmative action programs, particularly more money being channeled into basic education and university scholarships for people of color. Quotas don't mean shit if you don't have the cash to see you through school. I also think more real African and afro-brazilian history needs to be taught and appreciated.
But what I DON'T believe in is ethnonationalism, CtF. It hasn't worked anywhere and won't work here. Even Fanon clearly saw that. Attempting to reduce the world to a simplistic "white = bad / black = good" equation, or a conspiratorial view of history wherein the white Illuminati manipulate everyone like little puppets on a stage.
You think I'm racist? Fine. I accept the fact that I may very well have areas of racism in my personality which have yet to be turned over and analyzed and gotten rid of. But if all your argument boils down to is that I am racist because I am white and that this somehow erects an absolutely intransportable barrier between me and any black person, then you, sir, are simply full of what makes cows fart.
My big question is always why the historical, social and physical facts of blackness somehow supposedly make white people absolutely unable to understand, communicate with or appreciate black people, but the equally horrible, violence charged historical, physical and social facts of "womenhood" don't erect a similar barrier between men and women? If you are a fundamentalist ethnonationalist, by the same logic, you should also be homosexual.
Another problem is this talk of yours about "mindsets" as if they were these solid, set in stone things, determining peoples' every move. CtF, people are almost always prejudiced when it's interesting for them to be in political and economic terms. "Mindsets" don't rule prejudices, CtF: politics and economics do. Your parents didn't tell you that shit because they have some visceral rejection of black people: they told you that because in Brazil, black is associated with poverty and they were attempting to inculate you into the middle class. This isn't a "mind set", CtF. If they were surrounded by tons of middle-class and rich black people, I'm pretty sure that most of their prejudices would be rethought.
Prejudices have a logic, CtF. This doesn't make them good or nice, but it DOES mean that until you attack that logic, they are not going to go away. You can bitch all you want about the evil portuguese and western afrophobia, and in a sense, you're correct. But afrophobia, as Fanon so insightfully pointed out, is a SYMPTOM of a deeper problem, one based on ignorance, politics and economics.
Attack the ignorance, uplift the the poor and most of this shit will disappear. Just look at the States: black liberation has walked hand-in-hand with black socio-economic improvemnt. While the overall race is still pretty much in the same place as it was before, there IS a larger and more visible black middle class.
I guarantee you, CtF, 9 out of 10 white racists in Brazil would MUCH rather live next door to a black doctor than to a white favelado and you damn well know this is true. So much for your "mindsets", then, as the "root cause" of racism in Brazil. _________________ Brazil is the country of the future and always will be!
BTW, Mr. Politically Correct, the social conglomerates most slaves in Brazil came from are properly called "nations" and not "tribes". _________________ Brazil is the country of the future and always will be!
Hey you have me laughing now. This looks to be a funny post.
About the Portuguese:
They ate the same food.
Macunaima wrote:
No, they do not. Here in Rio, colonial style food is a fast-disappearing specialty. We have far more greens, pasta, fresh meat, processed flour and far less sugar in our diet. Not to mention alchohol. And that's not even talkning about the IMMENSE changes in customs brought about by technology. Opening up a can of tomato sauce and a package od spaghetti and cooking it up in a half hour on your stove is a far different affair than maintaining a domestic staff of mostly slaves whose only chore is to prepare food for you.
Whelp I have to break your diet plans but are you eating the black beans, rice, and pork diet. That seems to be the diet of many folks. I see that the Portuguese moved on to the recent fashionable organic eating. But the staple still remains as pork rice and beans. Maybe some beef but pork is considered a lot cheaper. The Indians introduce the Portuguese to their diet but it wasn't filling or satifying with its roasted monkey mecaw and fresh roots and fruits and such. No, the Portuguese changed the entire landscape to what we see today rice, sugar, beans, beef, pork, and now soybean for its oil and such. Thats what they ate and continue to eat four centuries later. Of course you can change the pork to beef to fish, change the rice to potato or corn, change the bean to pasta. High starch, high protein diet. Still the same.
I am glad you can cook yourself up some spaghetti while your wife and her portuguese brazilians guest eat rice black beans and whatever meat of the day.
Agreed technology made things different including having the conveniences of supermarkets and other food eateries.
They loved woman the same.
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In strict biological terms, maybe. but I REALLy doubt, based upon what I've read, that Portuguese men in the 16th century gave one flying fuck about whether the women got any pleasure out of sex. Based on the number of "how to" books directed at men that I see in news stands and book stores, I think we can both agree that this has changed.
You mean to say that brutal colonial Portuguese weren't sensitive. But the Brazilian Portuguese are to woman of today. That infamous classic "machismo" came from somewhere. I am surprise the Brazilian Portuguese are reading this material when back then they had the Jesuit priest to give them "instructions" on living and probably loving also. Looks like they need to call the nearest Jesuit for another lesson.
They married the same way.
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Families are now FAR different than they were then. Women have much more power. Back in the 16th century a woman was the property of her husband or father. Literally. You're telling me this is true today? Divorce was anathema back then and today it is the main fact of married life.
Still the declaration of husband and wife using a religious institution and having it certified with local authorities is going in full force. What I wasnt referring to is the status of woman. Woman status has changed but men are still the conductors of running society at most levels. Maybe not the individual bedroom or household but beyond that its goes to men.
They bought and sold land the same way. Etc.
Your telling me that they had no form of transaction for land. The old Portuguese just held onto land and never let go. There was no exchange for gold or some other precious commodity for land ownership. Are you telling me it was out of goodwill. I really hope you believe that. Brazil beginning was declared for the Emperor and the Church and all things inside it in terms of explored lands was the king or Church including the Indians.
What those Portuguese had the same God today as in their time.
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If you think the Catholic church is the same institution it was in 1500, you are nuts. Back in 1500, protestants were outlawed in Brazil on the pain of burning at the stake. Jews were forcibly converted.; Today, Protestantism is the fastest growing religious movement in Brazil. Back then, most intellectuals were devout catholixs. Today, they are mostly agnostics or even atheists. To you, this is the same, huh?
No I was not speaking of the Church.
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Today, Protestantism is the fastest growing religious movement in Brazil.
I am keeping close watch of this personally. The church I attend is doing work there in this effort.
Now for the rest of the stuff...
They had the same holy text to draw God from. Are you telling me there are missing chapters in the Bible on how to deal with rough terrain, Africans, Indians, etc. Their God from then is the same now. Now they had Jesuits back then and they "intepret" all things for them. But the same text remains. Somewhere in that text is "love" your neighbor . They sure showed alot of love their neighbor the Indians of then and of today. Just like today they had someone like a Jesuit "intepret" it.
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When the Portuguese settled here, they did not forsee the Brazilian nation, CtF. No one said "Hey, let's get to work constructing future citizens". In fact, in 1500, the idea of citizenship didn't exist ANYWHERE in the western world. Brazil was settled to make hard cash for the Portuguese crown and that was it. The national question didn't even really begin to get started until the 19th century here. C'mon, CtF! Read a few history books for christ sakes! You bitching that the Portuguese didn't build Brazil into a nation is a little like bitching that Richard the Lionhearted didn't turn England into a socialist republic. Brazil was never MEANT to be a nation: it was built to be an extractive colony. And like all nations who trace their roots to that sort of beginning, it's had a hell of a time digging itself out of slavery.
No, but those old Portuguese wanted to control all things slavery, land, and trade if you want to control things then you inevitably want to see it to its end. They never let go. That is Brazil. Brazil is not some meeting place where all races mated willfully to produce a race of humans never witnessed in this world. Brazil is not a stronghold for women and blacks. The Jesuit were there to give instructions on how everything should take place. The old Portuguese just needed a good pair of ears to listen and do. So these Portuguese knew what they were doing because it worked successfully and continued onward using the same depressing techniques of unjust beating and murder that plague the mentality of folks there today. Machismo is still around. Intepretation of black and Indians as burden and out caste is the same. This is all coming from the authority of today. However a number of common folks are waking up to a different message and this is who is building the next Brazil that the Portuguese neglected. I hope your part of this team. But I see you have a small problem with "machismo".
Hey some married Africans types too like yourself.
African types as ancestry from the continent of Africa. They married them similar to yourself. Not all the time but it happened and still happens.
Or are you there to just live your selfish existence just like the Portuguese did?
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If I wanted to live a selfish existence, I couldn't do better than in North America or Europe, where I could freely buy the products of global hyper-exploitation, but would be far enough away from its side-effects that I could pretend that poverty in Brazil or Indonesia had nothing to do with me or mine.
You got me there, come again dear sir
There is alot of unwarranted blame on Africans from in and out of Brazil for it third world pretext. Why is there a mastery of derogatory categories of every single type of African behavior and outer appearance as unfavorable by "black" themselves, mixed black up to white whatever. It does not appear to be changing any time soon. That is the result of 400+ years started by the Portuguese and passed down every single generation till today.
Lets play Jeopardy....
ClaimToFame: My name is ClaimToFame host replacing Alex Tribec for this one episode...
ClaimToFame: Double Jeopardy, Mr Macunaima, how much you want to wager...
Mr Macunaima: All of it
ClaimToFame: OK, here's the question, what country coined the phrase "racial democracy"... Times up whats your answer
Mr Macunaima wrote:
The very same thing can be and is said about the black experience in the U.S. Bob Marley made many of the same points about the black experience in Jamaica, as did Fanon regarding Martinique. So why is this a "Portuguese" problem and not a "western" problem? This, to me, seems to be the salient failure of your arguement.
ClaimToFame: Thanks, but the answer is Brazil.
Brazil is the country to say its a racial democracy. No western country made this claim. So to be a racial democracy being "black" should be very profitable there. In all accounts its the exact opposite. Being white carries a weight of authority. I know when anybody sees black it means poor and life of great poverty and struggle. Thats the way Brazil thinks until the black shows otherwise.
Let me clarify for you...
What if you had a little "white" Brazilian of convenience or means or not in poverty or have access to education and money mention why are there so many people of different color?
What do black people do in Brazil.
Many different things. My wife, for example, teaches university classes, as do many of our black friends. Others are lawyers, politicians and doctors. And no, this does not eliminate racism, but it does show that your ultra-reductionist argument is ignoring some very important facts and people.
Nice answer, but I bet the answer would be quite different in a different settings. It would be very discouraging to hear I know I've witnessed it.
All in all, I dont want to grow up "black" Mr. Macunaima.
I made that up for the fear of people have against blacks. My parents harbor no ill will toward blacks or any other human for that matter including disable, religious, homeless, etc or intellectually high minded individuals such as yourself Mr. Macunaima.
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I'm not even sure what is MEANT by "equality". What I'd like to see is more real affirmative action programs, particularly more money being channeled into basic education and university scholarships for people of color. Quotas don't mean shit if you don't have the cash to see you through school. I also think more real African and afro-brazilian history needs to be taught and appreciated.
OK, I agree with you on some of these principals.
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But what I DON'T believe in is ethnonationalism, CtF. It hasn't worked anywhere and won't work here. Even Fanon clearly saw that. Attempting to reduce the world to a simplistic "white = bad / black = good" equation, or a conspiratorial view of history wherein the white Illuminati manipulate everyone like little puppets on a stage.
Lady: Oh no!
ClaimToFame: What lady?
Lady: What he said...
ClaimToFame: What he say?
Lady: conspiratorial view of history...
ClaimToFame: What should I do run, hide, pee in my pants
Who said I believe in that. If you think there is not a conspiracy in history than let me introduce you to something called a law. The law of gravity. I know that if I am an white Illuminati and I jump off the big Jesus statue in Rio I will splat to the ground. I know if ClaimToFame jump off the Empire State Building in New York City he will equally splat to the ground. Next the law of life and death. ClaimToFame and White Illumanati are born, do some great things, die. We both are born and we both will die.
Now where do we differ. Its called the law of man. If you understand tariffs it means to keep the other man or competitor out of business. That is the law of man to keep all out of business of doing good or eaually doing bad. Someone is setting the law to benefit themselves while the other person suffer loss. Many laws of man do have good intentions but it still has someone gaining and someone loosing. There is the corruption in making it and interpreting it but the law of gravity and life and death applies equally and no one has yet figured out how to turn it off. Which law has truth? Which law has conspiracy all over it? You decide.
No one is reducing the world they are trying to understand it to make it better. That's what I beleive if you are the one seeking to understand it.
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You think I'm racist? Fine. I accept the fact that I may very well have areas of racism in my personality which have yet to be turned over and analyzed and gotten rid of. But if all your argument boils down to is that I am racist because I am white and that this somehow erects an absolutely intransportable barrier between me and any black person, then you, sir, are simply full of what makes cows fart.
My big question is always why the historical, social and physical facts of blackness somehow supposedly make white people absolutely unable to understand, communicate with or appreciate black people, but the equally horrible, violence charged historical, physical and social facts of "womenhood" don't erect a similar barrier between men and women? If you are a fundamentalist ethnonationalist, by the same logic, you should also be homosexual.
Another problem is this talk of yours about "mindsets" as if they were these solid, set in stone things, determining peoples' every move. CtF, people are almost always prejudiced when it's interesting for them to be in political and economic terms. "Mindsets" don't rule prejudices, CtF: politics and economics do. Your parents didn't tell you that shit because they have some visceral rejection of black people: they told you that because in Brazil, black is associated with poverty and they were attempting to inculate you into the middle class. This isn't a "mind set", CtF. If they were surrounded by tons of middle-class and rich black people, I'm pretty sure that most of their prejudices would be rethought.
Prejudices have a logic, CtF. This doesn't make them good or nice, but it DOES mean that until you attack that logic, they are not going to go away. You can bitch all you want about the evil portuguese and western afrophobia, and in a sense, you're correct. But afrophobia, as Fanon so insightfully pointed out, is a SYMPTOM of a deeper problem, one based on ignorance, politics and economics.
Attack the ignorance, uplift the the poor and most of this shit will disappear. Just look at the States: black liberation has walked hand-in-hand with black socio-economic improvemnt. While the overall race is still pretty much in the same place as it was before, there IS a larger and more visible black middle class.
I guarantee you, CtF, 9 out of 10 white racists in Brazil would MUCH rather live next door to a black doctor than to a white favelado and you damn well know this is true. So much for your "mindsets", then, as the "root cause" of racism in Brazil.
No I dont think you are racist but I do see you have strong energies or output against Black American men in Brazil Rio. I dont know what happen to you in America but the blacks you associated with seem to not appreciate your report of them and their history. So now you and your wife are out to count all the black American men with their pants down. Thats fine. Thats your business. I hope you do the same to all American too because it seems the other americans did not appreciate your wife so be an equal opportunity exposer. In Brazil it seems mighty pleasant to get up close and personal with blacks mulattoes near white whatever but after the fantasy image start to drift to what reality is all about its time to find greener pastures. Those greener pastures dont appear to be spending life in a Brazilian favela. Later.
Wait, I love this one you gave me.
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I guarantee you, CtF, 9 out of 10 white racists in Brazil would MUCH rather live next door to a black doctor than to a white favelado and you damn well know this is true. So much for your "mindsets", then, as the "root cause" of racism in Brazil.
White racist pretty much havent gotten use to black doctors (there is not that many compared to the huge class of white favelados or helping society develop black doctors like yourself) yet white favelado, that is no big surprise and quickly dealt with by calling the police or security where they take them to the other side of town I hope not harmed on the trip. Take care.
Welcome back to the forum, ClaimToFame. It looks like you followed my advice, and came back to the debate, even though you'd said you were leaving.
Have you already read the any of the books that Macunaima suggested you read, as you said you were going to? _________________ Alia aetas alios mores postulat.
Thanks Puro Hurbrido, I said I was leaving but not for how long I was going to be away. If you look carefully I did not put a time date on my leave I just said I will end my presence on this forum for (how long) forever, a long time etc. I said I was going to check into it but again I did not say when. If your holding me accountable to all things then I should be the devil with all the craftiness that happens on this forum. Make sure you ask someone how long next time.... Later.
It isn't a question of accountability. I'm just curious.
I'm particularly curious about how much more you have learned about Brazil since you last left this forum. _________________ Alia aetas alios mores postulat.
Whelp I have to break your diet plans but are you eating the black beans, rice, and pork diet. That seems to be the diet of many folks. I see that the Portuguese moved on to the recent fashionable organic eating. But the staple still remains as pork rice and beans.
Rice and beans is HARDLY a Portuguese staple. It is, in fact, a NEW WORLD staple and can be found all across the Americas, CtF, for the same reasons that it's found here: it's easy to raise, keep and transport. Even in the U.S., colonial food was mostly beans and rice or corn. Maybe you should take a basic history of nutrition course? And as for this being our diet today, while R+B are usually offered at every meal, they are HARDLY the staple for the white middle class you are railing against. Walk into any por kilo in Brazil and see how many other foods - including sushi and spaghetti, not to mention arab dishes - are offered.
Are you Brazilian, CtF? You make generalizations like a gringo who's never been to Brazil. I guess I should tell all the tens of thousands of Japanese, Italian, Arab and even German places all over Brazil that they need to shut their doors, in spite of their booming econimc success (I hear Habib's is opening up frachises in the States these days) because "Portuguese don't eat their food". Well, the Portuguese might not, but Brazilians - of all colors - certainly do.
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You mean to say that brutal colonial Portuguese weren't sensitive. But the Brazilian Portuguese are to woman of today.
Nope. In both cases, I rather think it depends on the individual in question. But we can say one thing for CERTAIN: sex is now a commodity and to be able to do it WELL is something most male Brazilians aspire to. None of those things were true as recently as 100 years ago. As for "machismo", perhaps you think the gringo johns filling up Copa's clip joints, night after night, year after year, are somehow more "culturally sensitive" to women's needs...? As has been pointed out repeatedly on this forum, there is a growing afro-american contingent among them, so apparently being a brutal or mach bastard isn't exactly something Portuguese - or even white - men have a monopoly over.
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Still the declaration of husband and wife using a religious institution and having it certified with local authorities is going in full force.
ROFL! Oh my God, son! Can you GIVE a more generic description of marriage? Shit, what you said applies to about every human culture there is, or do you think that union between men and women in, say, the pre-contact Trobriand islands, DIDN'T involve religious institutions or certification by the local authorities? You might as well say that the Portuguese breed today and bred yesterday, so this means that nothing's changed.
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Your telling me that they had no form of transaction for land. The old Portuguese just held onto land and never let go. There was no exchange for gold or some other precious commodity for land ownership.
I said NOTHING of the sort. I said that land tenure laws were VASTLY different from then to now. If you can't understand what I say, please do me the same favor I do you and DON'T put words in my mouth.
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They had the same holy text to draw God from. Are you telling me there are missing chapters in the Bible on how to deal with rough terrain, Africans, Indians, etc. Their God from then is the same now.
Bullshit! In name only. The interpretation of those texts has completely changed. Or are you seriously telling me that we're still hanging protestants as witches in Brazil and whipping Jews until they beg to convert?
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Brazil is not some meeting place where all races mated willfully to produce a race of humans never witnessed in this world.
Granted. These days, no intelligent, educated Brazilian claims it is. In fact, the only people I hear making these claims are the really ignorant or gringos. But so what?
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Brazil is not a stronghold for women and blacks.
Has anyone ever claimed it is? IS THERE ANY PLACE IN THE WORLD THAT CAN MAKE THIS CLAIM? You know there isn't. So why are you singling out Brazil? Given what it's started with, Brazil's record has been pretty damned good comparatively speaking. Certainly no worse than that of the U.S. in terms of race relations.
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The Jesuit were there to give instructions on how everything should take place.
You really HAVE no effective notion of Brazilian history, do you? Son, the Jesuits were driven out of Brazil at gunpoint in the 18th century, almost two centuries before slavery's end. Whatever our problems, we can't blame them on the Company of Jesus. In fact, WHATEVER their problems, the Jebbies were one of the few organizations that actively FOUGHT the crown and the settlers so the Indians might retain their lands. Of course, they did this so that the Indians could be brought under the control of the ?Mother Church, but it was still FAR MORE than any other group of white settlers did in the Indians behalf, ANYWHERe in the Americas. So if your crying bitter tears over the Indian's conquest, I fail to see why you hate the Jebbies so. Today's Indians certainly don't. Ask them.
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Machismo is still around. Intepretation of black and Indians as burden and out caste is the same.
Of course. And this is so much different elsewhere in the Americas and, in fact, in the world, right? Europe just LOVES black immigrants and is fighting over the right to aid Africa. And we all know what a lovely racial democracy the United States is. As for machismo, the men of the first world are so enlightened that they'd never DREAM of renting out underage third-world pussy at a dime on the dollar. Why, one can't make an honest buck owning a clipjoint in Copa these days because the gringos refuse to go in them...
Machismo and racism are human CONSTANTS, friend, and their current flavor is WESTERN. While they need to be fought against, NOTHING you've said up to now makes Brazil any "worse" in this aspect than any other settler nation of the Western Hemisphere. Or indeed their mother nations in Europe. The problems are called COLONIALISM and IMPERIALISM and RACISM and SEXISM, CtF, and you are seriously kidding yourself if you think these things are worse here than anywhere else in the Americas.
Perhaps you are a relatively wealthy first-worlder who, up to now, has been cushioned from the sight of poverty and oppression by your citizenship, hmmm? Now you see it here and, psychologically, push it off as a Brazilian specialty, all the while forgetting who BUYS and CONSUMES our sugar, coffee, steel, gold (not to mention our petroleum) and whos lifestyle would suffer a serious kink if the laborers here producing that shit were actually to be paid a decent, living wage. And you have the gall to blame this situation on the Brazilian upper classes, as if these people weren't a wholly owned subsidy of Europe and North America, Inc?
Put the clue bottle down, CtF.
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But I see you have a small problem with "machismo".
ROFL! Well what, precisely, would that be? Other than I disagree with you, I mean...
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Hey some married Africans types too like yourself.
African types as ancestry from the continent of Africa. They married them similar to yourself. Not all the time but it happened and still happens.
Now you have me completely baffled. Take a deep breath, try again, and tell me what you're trying to get at here.
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If I wanted to live a selfish existence, I couldn't do better than in North America or Europe, where I could freely buy the products of global hyper-exploitation, but would be far enough away from its side-effects that I could pretend that poverty in Brazil or Indonesia had nothing to do with me or mine.
You got me there, come again dear sir
You accused me of living a selfish existence. If I wanted to be selfish, the best thing I could do would be to go off to live in Europe or the U.S., where I would be JUST as dependent upon Brazilian exploitation to maintain my lifestyle, but where I could pretend - as you apparently do - that it has nothing to do with me, because I'm French or American or whatever. That would be exceptionally selfish.
Got it this time? If not, what are you not getting?
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ClaimToFame: OK, here's the question, what country coined the phrase "racial democracy"... Times up whats your answer
No "country" coined the phrase "racial democracy". It was coined IN Brazil by a handful of very elite intellectuals and it has been EXTREMELY and EXCEPTIONALLY debated since its coining BY OTHER BRAZILIANS. Your tossing the blame on Brazil for this is as dumb as the Brazilians who hate the U.S. because of George Bush.
The term "racial democracy" has ALWAYS been criticized here. The only time when it even approached anything like "consensus" was during the MILITARY DICTATORSHIP when it was basically AGAINST THE LAW to criticize it. Said dicatorship, I think we can both agree, did not represent the will of Brazil's people or its intellectuals, so why these should be tarred and feathered for the Generals' views, I haven't the foggiest.
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Let me clarify for you...
What if you had a little "white" Brazilian of convenience or means or not in poverty or have access to education and money mention why are there so many people of different color?
This makes no sense in English. Try again.
But the point of your little Jeapordy game is illegitimate. Your original beef, which I responded to, had nothing to do with racial democracy, did it? It had to do with, and I quote, that...
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There is alot of unwarranted blame on Africans from in and out of Brazil for it third world pretext. Why is there a mastery of derogatory categories of every single type of African behavior and outer appearance as unfavorable by "black" themselves, mixed black up to white whatever. It does not appear to be changing any time soon. That is the result of 400+ years started by the Portuguese and passed down every single generation till today.
As I said, this is true EVERYWHERE in the Americas and Europe. You seem to be saying that because Brazil had the bad luck to suffer under a military dictatorship for twenty years, one installed, aided and abetted by the European powers, we should now be judged by what those generals had to say about race, even though Brazilian INTELLECTUALS and ACTIVISTS have been pointing out Brazilian racism and studying it since the 1950s.
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What do black people do in Brazil.
Many different things. My wife, for example, teaches university classes, as do many of our black friends. Others are lawyers, politicians and doctors. And no, this does not eliminate racism, but it does show that your ultra-reductionist argument is ignoring some very important facts and people.
Nice answer, but I bet the answer would be quite different in a different settings. It would be very discouraging to hear I know I've witnessed it.
Again, you are being a reductionist. Yes, there are a lot of poor blacks here. Yes, there are more poor blacks, percentually speaking, than whites (the same thing is true in the U.S., btw). But this does not mean ALL blacks are poor. Maybe you need to get out of your little sojourn in whatever favela you are in, learn some Portuguese, and get a wider view of Brazil? You sound like a typical gringo NGO missionary: come here already knowing the answers to all our problems without even being able to speak - let alone read or write - the language, hang out in the worst places for a few months and all of a sudden you feel you are an expert on the biggest continental country in the Americas, all 180 million of its people and it whole 500 year history.
You, sir, are the worst kind of imperialist. You can't even be bothered to respect Brazil. All Brazil is good for, in your view, is to serve as an empty canvas for whatever crackpot social engineering scheme you've dreamed up which you feel will bring utopia. But unfortunately for you, the canvas really ISN'T empty, nor is it painted in the stark black and white tones you imagine. And when this fucks up your plans for whatever pretty jubilee picture you've imagined, I suspect you'll scuttle back off to wherever you came from, shaking your head and cursing Brazilians. And all the time, the problem is to be found straight smack in the middle of your good 'ol imperialist arrogance.
Brazil's had five centuries of experience with people like you and I suspect your type will never learn. This place already is a country and a nation. It has its own histories and cultural rythyms that are quite unlike anything imagined in your reductionist theories. In order to make ANY impact on it, you must first learn to understand it andf that means accepting Brazil on its own terms and respecting it for what it IS, instead of classifying it as some little thrid world shit hole urgently in need of your brand of "learning", "justice", religion or whatever other snake oil you happen to be selling.
This country sheds folks like you off its back like a snake sheds water, CtF. Want to really help Brazil? Learn something about it first. The "Lonely Planet Guide" version of its history you seem to have sucked down is not enough.
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I dont know what happen to you in America but the blacks you associated with seem to not appreciate your report of them and their history.
CtF, black americans don't like ANY white who talks about black history and politics. Whatever view I take, I will thus have some screaming at me and others patting me on the back. That's just the name of the game. This is why I only OBSERVE black politics in the States, I do not get involved. It is their ball and if someone calls me into the game, their will immediately be three others who'll try to kick the shit out of me just for being white and in the game.
As for the black Americans on this site, agian, some I gree with, some I do not and the ones I agree with the most - like Adrian Eric - are some of the ones I've had the biggest fights with. I fail to see, however, why I should agree with some high-school student who's barely read word one about civil rights in the U.S. when he claims it was some sort of "blacks only, all united together, here we go" mass uprising when the historical record - mostly written by blacks, mind - shows that it clearly wasn't. I'll take the words of an informed black man - like Cornell West or Paul Gilroy - over an internet troll who CLAIMS to be black (and in many cases, as we've subsequently found out, probably isn't), any day. Your mileage may vary, but that's your problem, not mine.
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So now you and your wife are out to count all the black American men with their pants down. Thats fine. Thats your business. I hope you do the same to all American too because it seems the other americans did not appreciate your wife so be an equal opportunity exposer.
Like we really give two flying fucks about what all the "other americans" think. They can continue voting for Bush, for all of me, and probably will.
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In Brazil it seems mighty pleasant to get up close and personal with blacks mulattoes near white whatever but after the fantasy image start to drift to what reality is all about its time to find greener pastures. Those greener pastures dont appear to be spending life in a Brazilian favela. Later.
And how long, might I ask, are you planning to stay around YOUR typical favela? I TEACH in one and have for years. I'd be doing more of it if I had more time, but after 20 years here, doing what I do, I really doubt that this life of mine is a "passing fantasy".
Can you say the same? Sounds to me like this is a classic case of someone projecting upon another what they fear in themselves.
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White racist pretty much havent gotten use to black doctors (there is not that many compared to the huge class of white favelados or helping society develop black doctors like yourself) yet white favelado, that is no big surprise and quickly dealt with by calling the police or security where they take them to the other side of town I hope not harmed on the trip.
So you admit, then, that there just happens to be a class component to this oppression you're harping about? _________________ Brazil is the country of the future and always will be!
I had to cough out water at how funny this post I read above is, so let me get some more good laugh before I get some sleep.
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Rice and beans is HARDLY a Portuguese staple. It is, in fact, a NEW WORLD staple and can be found all across the Americas, CtF, for the same reasons that it's found here: it's easy to raise, keep and transport. Even in the U.S., colonial food was mostly beans and rice or corn. Maybe you should take a basic history of nutrition course? And as for this being our diet today, while R+B are usually offered at every meal, they are HARDLY the staple for the white middle class you are railing against. Walk into any por kilo in Brazil and see how many other foods - including sushi and spaghetti, not to mention arab dishes - are offered.
Thank you but stick with that diet because it is doing you wonders. Now if they are not the staple of middle class Brazilian Portuguese then why not give up on the domestic market (jobs and ownership) for rice growing (or alternatively grow Japanese rice in Brazil not that stick clump of rice for sushi), give up on the sugar cane growing (there is a alternative sweetners used), give up on the raising of swine (cattle and chicken farming is so much greater), give up on the growing of black beans lands and hand it over to those that do eat it. I know this is illogical to you high minded intellectuals so is the basis of what your telling me. So bear with me.
The Indians ate off the land through work and labor without debt and they were forced or gave it up to the Portuguese that found profit on growing this wonderful food stuff. Currently your saying it is not profitable for the body of these Brazilian Portuguese. We Portuguese Brazilians get much nourishment off the Arab, Japanese, Italian, and German foodstuff. Now why don't the improved and intellectually high minded middle class Portuguese Brazilian and generational farmer since colonial time Portuguese Brazilian use their brains and expel themselves off their farms and give it to the Brazilians laborers most likely mixes of African and Indian and consumers of the rice, pork, and black beans most likely mixes of African and Indian mixes. Middle class people dont like farms anyway, just big outdoor villas, so just give these staples and land to those that NEED it like their colonial ancestors NEEDED IT from the Indians and can put it to better use to feed their families. No actual loss of jobs and ownership, it just trades hands locally. Unless they still consider blacks and Indians foreigners. That is another topic to build on.
I know you use the same principle when you get a new computer, and you still have an old computer that is collecting dust so you give it to someone that would put your old computer to good use. Again to high minded intellectual like yourself its illogical. Keep thinking like that. Let me keep using this quote for you.
(ClaimToFame wants to emphasis to all readers) wrote:
No, but those old Portuguese wanted to control all things slavery, land, and trade if you want to control things then you inevitably want to see it to its end. They never let go. That is Brazil.
But you keep telling me they are not the same from back then.
Macunaima wrote:
Nope. In both cases, I rather think it depends on the individual in question. But we can say one thing for CERTAIN: sex is now a commodity and to be able to do it WELL is something most male Brazilians aspire to. None of those things were true as recently as 100 years ago. As for "machismo", perhaps you think the gringo johns filling up Copa's clip joints, night after night, year after year, are somehow more "culturally sensitive" to women's needs...? As has been pointed out repeatedly on this forum, there is a growing afro-american contingent among them, so apparently being a brutal or mach bastard isn't exactly something Portuguese - or even white - men have a monopoly over.
I am glad you get enough learning from watching gringos and natives whip it up night after night. It sure beats using your teaching skills in the night to improve history appreciation in a favela for educationally neglected Brazilian youth. Yes, that is time well spent my friend. Say hi to all for me will you and send my best regard. And keep watching those Black American men using those scratched up binoculars with their pants down.
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ROFL! Oh my God, son! Can you GIVE a more generic description of marriage? Shit, what you said applies to about every human culture there is, or do you think that union between men and women in, say, the pre-contact Trobriand islands, DIDN'T involve religious institutions or certification by the local authorities? Laughing You might as well say that the Portuguese breed today and bred yesterday, so this means that nothing's changed. Laughing Laughing
It not as complicated as what you just said. Thanks for agreeing and getting a good chuckle. If you look closely at a rock you can find a crack. I am glad I made your stone face crack a laugh. I happy with you. :
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I said NOTHING of the sort. I said that land tenure laws were VASTLY different from then to now. If you can't understand what I say, please do me the same favor I do you and DON'T put words in my mouth.
Sure. But, you havent prove me wrong on this one have you. So it will stand as is.
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Bullshit! In name only. The interpretation of those texts has completely changed. Or are you seriously telling me that we're still hanging protestants as witches in Brazil and whipping Jews until they beg to convert?
Still same God though. I will leave this alone at this point.
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You really HAVE no effective notion of Brazilian history, do you? Son, the Jesuits were driven out of Brazil at gunpoint in the 18th century, almost two centuries before slavery's end. Whatever our problems, we can't blame them on the Company of Jesus. In fact, WHATEVER their problems, the Jebbies were one of the few organizations that actively FOUGHT the crown and the settlers so the Indians might retain their lands. Of course, they did this so that the Indians could be brought under the control of the ?Mother Church, but it was still FAR MORE than any other group of white settlers did in the Indians behalf, ANYWHERe in the Americas. So if your crying bitter tears over the Indian's conquest, I fail to see why you hate the Jebbies so. Today's Indians certainly don't. Ask them.
So have you followed up. When they left Brazil I am sure many of the came back under new certification and new hats to Brazil. That is all they know is Brazil. They are like many of the gringoes that plague the scenery you surround yourself with. Since their tourist visa expired in Brazil they come down with a scheme to pick up a student visa to stay longer. In essence they switch hats but practice the same. The settlers were in need of more and better priest because they lack "intepretation" themselves and their population was growing. So the Church retrained them and reintroduced them as part of the new Church agenda. No lost there Jebbies just changed their title. I am sure the Indians know that.
This happens all the time in government medical research and alot of other fields. When government says it will fund AIDS, any type of researcher or doctor just get a new certification in less than 6 months and start work on getting those AIDS funds. Three years later the government says we will fund CANCER, so these same people dont sit around unemployed they get new certification and claim those CANCER funds the same way. This continues and continues. Same people they just put on new hats.
Happen all the time to Jews during the Islamic conquest of N. Africa and Europe. Changed to muslim because it was profitable to do so. When Muslim declined changed to Christian because it was profitable. But inside the group still practice Judaism. Outside whatever was the dominate of the day.
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Of course. And this is so much different elsewhere in the Americas and, in fact, in the world, right? Europe just LOVES black immigrants and is fighting over the right to aid Africa. And we all know what a lovely racial democracy the United States is. As for machismo, the men of the first world are so enlightened that they'd never DREAM of renting out underage third-world pussy at a dime on the dollar. Why, one can't make an honest buck owning a clipjoint in Copa these days because the gringos refuse to go in them... Rolling Eyes
Machismo and racism are human CONSTANTS, friend, and their current flavor is WESTERN. While they need to be fought against, NOTHING you've said up to now makes Brazil any "worse" in this aspect than any other settler nation of the Western Hemisphere. Or indeed their mother nations in Europe. The problems are called COLONIALISM and IMPERIALISM and RACISM and SEXISM, CtF, and you are seriously kidding yourself if you think these things are worse here than anywhere else in the Americas.
Perhaps you are a relatively wealthy first-worlder who, up to now, has been cushioned from the sight of poverty and oppression by your citizenship, hmmm? Now you see it here and, psychologically, push it off as a Brazilian specialty, all the while forgetting who BUYS and CONSUMES our sugar, coffee, steel, gold (not to mention our petroleum) and whos lifestyle would suffer a serious kink if the laborers here producing that shit were actually to be paid a decent, living wage. And you have the gall to blame this situation on the Brazilian upper classes, as if these people weren't a wholly owned subsidy of Europe and North America, Inc?
Put the clue bottle down, CtF.
I see you accept reality as is. Nothing will change because as you point out Machismo and racism are human CONSTANTS. You can fight but this will still kick you in the face and reduce your humanity to pieces. It's still around for you because your historical book analysis ways of looking at things don't work. You keep applying the same old techniques to a world quite different everyday. Take a look at yourself before you bring the self esteem down of another "black" Brazilian. You dont want to let their hopes down. I know you give your best energies or output off in copa area spying but carry such low energy in your studies and people in general Go ahead write your book soon because I see your about to retire.
On myself, my lifestyle wont suffer one bit if Brazil decides to start a trade battle. I am still whole. I have a brain. I have health. I am almost there but there is one last thing I wont mention on here. I live a very simple almost appalling lifestyle compared to all Americans and I would say I can stand living in a sewer smelling favela, no electricity, with dirt or concrete floors with visible cracks, rusty steel or wood roof, running water up the hill, bugs and mosquito biting in all hours of the night, odd noises in the night, hot thirst, and such because I would choose to live in one. I have done it on numerous occasions before but I wont say where.
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You accused me of living a selfish existence. If I wanted to be selfish, the best thing I could do would be to go off to live in Europe or the U.S., where I would be JUST as dependent upon Brazilian exploitation to maintain my lifestyle, but where I could pretend - as you apparently do - that it has nothing to do with me, because I'm French or American or whatever. That would be exceptionally selfish.
Good observation, but most Brazilians do not have the same mind as you. They see these places to make dreams happen. I guess your not a Brazilian in these regards.
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Again, you are being a reductionist. Yes, there are a lot of poor blacks here. Yes, there are more poor blacks, percentually speaking, than whites (the same thing is true in the U.S., btw). But this does not mean ALL blacks are poor. Maybe you need to get out of your little sojourn in whatever favela you are in, learn some Portuguese, and get a wider view of Brazil? You sound like a typical gringo NGO missionary: come here already knowing the answers to all our problems without even being able to speak - let alone read or write - the language, hang out in the worst places for a few months and all of a sudden you feel you are an expert on the biggest continental country in the Americas, all 180 million of its people and it whole 500 year history.
Now who's a reductionist. Reducing typical gringo NGO missionaries. I see you practice what you preach. I see you also have a prejudice against living in the "worst places". I thought the copa bars are the worst places you mean that not all. It cant be that way in brazil because there is choice, right? You must live in the clouds in Rio looking down on these folks. I just knew your were high minded. I didnt know how high until now.
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You, sir, are the worst kind of imperialist. You can't even be bothered to respect Brazil. All Brazil is good for, in your view, is to serve as an empty canvas for whatever crackpot social engineering scheme you've dreamed up which you feel will bring utopia. But unfortunately for you, the canvas really ISN'T empty, nor is it painted in the stark black and white tones you imagine. And when this fucks up your plans for whatever pretty jubilee picture you've imagined, I suspect you'll scuttle back off to wherever you came from, shaking your head and cursing Brazilians. And all the time, the problem is to be found straight smack in the middle of your good 'ol imperialist arrogance. Laughing
No, I see your an artist too but I guess that career didnt work out there also. Now I want to know who made you mad today. I see you love to see people in jeopardy especially gringos because YOU did the same and no one helped you. If this is the attitude of worldly gringoes who reside in Brazil then Brazil needs to look elsewhere. Truly.
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Brazil's had five centuries of experience with people like you and I suspect your type will never learn. This place already is a country and a nation. It has its own histories and cultural rythyms that are quite unlike anything imagined in your reductionist theories. In order to make ANY impact on it, you must first learn to understand it andf that means accepting Brazil on its own terms and respecting it for what it IS, instead of classifying it as some little thrid world shit hole urgently in need of your brand of "learning", "justice", religion or whatever other snake oil you happen to be selling.
If this is on the tour books, then I see why one type of tourist makes it to Brazil and tells his "love" story. And I would equally say you know how to keep good company.
For a man with "options" three passport it sounds like you made a bad choice somewhere in life. Be happy, carnival just past dont you have that festive spirit that your city release to all. Be happy the Brazilians finally accept you. Apparently that is not enough for you.
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This country sheds folks like you off its back like a snake sheds water, CtF. Want to really help Brazil? Learn something about it first. The "Lonely Planet Guide" version of its history you seem to have sucked down is not enough.
Glad they do, with your mind at work that is all Brazil needs. Another god in the clouds. Please do not be disappointed if we folks dont bear gifts in your name for sacrifice. Later.
Oh another funny here.
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I'll take the words of an informed black man - like Cornell West or Paul Gilroy - over an internet troll who CLAIMS to be black (and in many cases, as we've subsequently found out, probably isn't), any day. Your mileage may vary, but that's your problem, not mine.
I would not take the word of Cornell West. I dont know how you approach black Americans but maybe you need to build trust or acceptance in another way. If you get your approach from books or any other media its not going to work in 99% of situations. Just dont be yourself is my advice. But since I dont have that special vest or cap my words just as you say "sheds...like a snake sheds water" to you.
Now when I was at a conference a black activist was very candid about Mr. Cornell West. For the record the man ideology is socialist and he wants blacks to follow in his ideology. However he excludes the benefits he gets from the "system" that he wants blacks to shy away from. He has a sizable income alone from preaching his intellectual bag of gum drops. Now that is what I call an "expert". Do what I say and not what I do.
Fortunately this black activist who believes that "real" capitalism in practice can put an end to racism and says most blacks who attend his priced tours listen but do not follow his recommendations.
The Indians ate off the land through work and labor without debt and they were forced or gave it up to the Portuguese that found profit on growing this wonderful food stuff.
Ditto throughout the Americas. So why, again, is this a supposedly Portuguese problem and not one of western imperialism?
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I know you use the same principle when you get a new computer, and you still have an old computer that is collecting dust so you give it to someone that would put your old computer to good use. Again to high minded intellectual like yourself its illogical.
You just contradicted yourself there. Are you saying I give old computers away to charity or are you saying that I don't because it's illogical?
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No, but those old Portuguese wanted to control all things slavery, land, and trade if you want to control things then you inevitably want to see it to its end. They never let go. That is Brazil.
CtF, all you are saying is that in Brazil, as in all wsetern settler states, the old colonial elite control more of the pie than anyone else. Fine. But this is also true of everywhere else in the Americas including (GASP!) the United States and Canada, where the anglo-saxon, east coast wlite and their western ramifications (such as the Bush family) are still very much in the driver's seat.
So again, what, specifically, is Portuguese or Brazilian in this situation? If we were different than the rest of the Americas on this point, you might have a point. the fact of the matter is, however, that we are not. This is a western problem stemming from imperialism and colonialism and it is endemic wherever the European put his foot.
To claim, however, that the continuation of this problem means that nothing has changed in the Americas or in Brazil since 1500 is simply moronic, however. It is the claim of a lazy man who cannot be bothered to read history, let alone understand its impact in contemporary power politics.
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I am glad you get enough learning from watching gringos and natives whip it up night after night. It sure beats using your teaching skills in the night to improve history appreciation in a favela for educationally neglected Brazilian youth. Yes, that is time well spent my friend. Say hi to all for me will you and send my best regard. And keep watching those Black American men using those scratched up binoculars with their pants down.
Apparently, sexual tourism, the trafficking of women and children and pedophilia aren't worthy topics for people to engage with in your opinion.
Sonny Jim, one of the reasons I got pulled into studying and writing about the Copa scene was because so many of my young female studnts believed that their way to a better life lay through selling themselves down there. If you think Copacabana and the favelas are two seperate worlds, then you haven't a clue as to how the social and professional lives of my students are actually lived here in Rio. To me, the two problems are intimately related in the precise sense of those words and to ignore the one is to ignore the other.
It does poor students from the favela no good to pass the vestibular if, in the meantime, they've gotten pregnant, left the country to work in a brothel in Spain, or have contracted HIV.
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ROFL! Oh my God, son! Can you GIVE a more generic description of marriage? Shit, what you said applies to about every human culture there is, or do you think that union between men and women in, say, the pre-contact Trobriand islands, DIDN'T involve religious institutions or certification by the local authorities? Laughing You might as well say that the Portuguese breed today and bred yesterday, so this means that nothing's changed. Laughing Laughing
It not as complicated as what you just said.
Read the quote again, CtF. I wasn't saying your definition of marriage was complicated: I was saying that is was so overly simplistic that it could apply to ANY human culture, in any time or any place, not just the Portuguese. Hello...
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Sure. But, you havent prove me wrong on this one have you. So it will stand as is.
You seriously think the Portuguese crown is still passing out hereditary tracts of land in unalienable, seismaria lots, do you? I don't have to "prove" shit, CtF. The changes in land tenure laws in Brazil over the last few centuries are well known to anyone who's even attempted to read a bit about this country's history. If you can't be bothered to do that, all you'll say is "Well, I don't accept your proof, so there." I just gave you here and above ONE example and you haven't even engaged with it, so why bother to attempt to "prove" anything to someone whose ignorance on the topic quite properly places him straight out of the conversation? I might as well try to "prove" blue exists to a blind man.
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Still same God though. I will leave this alone at this point.
Probably because you know you're being taken to the cleaners on this one. Tell me, CtF, if worshipping the "same God" means that the Portuguese today are culturally the same as the Portuguese 500 years ago, then why don't you just claim that today's Brazilians are "really" the same as the Jews of 100 BC? After all, both groups "worship the same God", right? And I guess that would also make us the exact same cultural beings, in religious terms, as Utah mormons, Chinese Christians, the Russian Orthodox and the Ethiopians. After all we all worship the same God. Hell, following your logic, then, the Portuguese and their descendents are, in fact, hard core afro-supporters. After all, they worship "the same God" as the Jamaican Rastafarians, right? Shit, CtF, how can you be claiming the Portuguese are racist fucks when they worship the same God as Bob Marley? They all find their God in the Christian Bible, after all.
Oh, my. Look up the concept "reductionism" in a good philosophical dictionary, CtF. Your theories on life and the world are the clearest examples I've seen in a while.
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When they left Brazil I am sure many of the came back under new certification and new hats to Brazil.
Actually, I have followed this up and no, there doesn't seem to be any examples of this. There are, of course, jesuits in Brazil today, but there influence is very, very small. I know no one, for example, whose ever attended a jesuit school here, though they must exist somewhere. SEVERAL of my friends in North America have, however. Seems to me you'd be more profitted by wrrying about the Jebbies hold over GW Bush, CtF.
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This happens all the time in government medical research and alot of other fields.
Not in the 18th century it didn't. Again, CtF, your nasty habit of judging the past with today's eyes raises its ugly little head.
It won't hurt you to read soiem history, Claim. I promise.
I had to cough out water at how funny this post I read above is, so let me get some more good laugh before I get some sleep.
Citação:
Rice and beans is HARDLY a Portuguese staple. It is, in fact, a NEW WORLD staple and can be found all across the Americas, CtF, for the same reasons that it's found here: it's easy to raise, keep and transport. Even in the U.S., colonial food was mostly beans and rice or corn. Maybe you should take a basic history of nutrition course? And as for this being our diet today, while R+B are usually offered at every meal, they are HARDLY the staple for the white middle class you are railing against. Walk into any por kilo in Brazil and see how many other foods - including sushi and spaghetti, not to mention arab dishes - are offered.
Thank you but stick with that diet because it is doing you wonders. Now if they are not the staple of middle class Brazilian Portuguese then why not give up on the domestic market (jobs and ownership) for rice growing (or alternatively grow Japanese rice in Brazil not that stick clump of rice for sushi), give up on the sugar cane growing (there is a alternative sweetners used), give up on the raising of swine (cattle and chicken farming is so much greater), give up on the growing of black beans lands and hand it over to those that do eat it. I know this is illogical to you high minded intellectuals so is the basis of what your telling me. So bear with me.
The Indians ate off the land through work and labor without debt and they were forced or gave it up to the Portuguese that found profit on growing this wonderful food stuff. Currently your saying it is not profitable for the body of these Brazilian Portuguese. We Portuguese Brazilians get much nourishment off the Arab, Japanese, Italian, and German foodstuff. Now why don't the improved and intellectually high minded middle class Portuguese Brazilian and generational farmer since colonial time Portuguese Brazilian use their brains and expel themselves off their farms and give it to the Brazilians laborers most likely mixes of African and Indian and consumers of the rice, pork, and black beans most likely mixes of African and Indian mixes. Middle class people dont like farms anyway, just big outdoor villas, so just give these staples and land to those that NEED it like their colonial ancestors NEEDED IT from the Indians and can put it to better use to feed their families. No actual loss of jobs and ownership, it just trades hands locally. Unless they still consider blacks and Indians foreigners. That is another topic to build on.
I know you use the same principle when you get a new computer, and you still have an old computer that is collecting dust so you give it to someone that would put your old computer to good use. Again to high minded intellectual like yourself its illogical. Keep thinking like that. Let me keep using this quote for you.
(ClaimToFame wants to emphasis to all readers) escreveu:
No, but those old Portuguese wanted to control all things slavery, land, and trade if you want to control things then you inevitably want to see it to its end. They never let go. That is Brazil.
But you keep telling me they are not the same from back then.
Macunaima escreveu:
Nope. In both cases, I rather think it depends on the individual in question. But we can say one thing for CERTAIN: sex is now a commodity and to be able to do it WELL is something most male Brazilians aspire to. None of those things were true as recently as 100 years ago. As for "machismo", perhaps you think the gringo johns filling up Copa's clip joints, night after night, year after year, are somehow more "culturally sensitive" to women's needs...? As has been pointed out repeatedly on this forum, there is a growing afro-american contingent among them, so apparently being a brutal or mach bastard isn't exactly something Portuguese - or even white - men have a monopoly over.
I am glad you get enough learning from watching gringos and natives whip it up night after night. It sure beats using your teaching skills in the night to improve history appreciation in a favela for educationally neglected Brazilian youth. Yes, that is time well spent my friend. Say hi to all for me will you and send my best regard. And keep watching those Black American men using those scratched up binoculars with their pants down.
Citação:
ROFL! Oh my God, son! Can you GIVE a more generic description of marriage? Shit, what you said applies to about every human culture there is, or do you think that union between men and women in, say, the pre-contact Trobriand islands, DIDN'T involve religious institutions or certification by the local authorities? Laughing You might as well say that the Portuguese breed today and bred yesterday, so this means that nothing's changed. Laughing Laughing
It not as complicated as what you just said. Thanks for agreeing and getting a good chuckle. If you look closely at a rock you can find a crack. I am glad I made your stone face crack a laugh. I happy with you. :
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I said NOTHING of the sort. I said that land tenure laws were VASTLY different from then to now. If you can't understand what I say, please do me the same favor I do you and DON'T put words in my mouth.
Sure. But, you havent prove me wrong on this one have you. So it will stand as is.
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Bullshit! In name only. The interpretation of those texts has completely changed. Or are you seriously telling me that we're still hanging protestants as witches in Brazil and whipping Jews until they beg to convert?
Still same God though. I will leave this alone at this point.
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You really HAVE no effective notion of Brazilian history, do you? Son, the Jesuits were driven out of Brazil at gunpoint in the 18th century, almost two centuries before slavery's end. Whatever our problems, we can't blame them on the Company of Jesus. In fact, WHATEVER their problems, the Jebbies were one of the few organizations that actively FOUGHT the crown and the settlers so the Indians might retain their lands. Of course, they did this so that the Indians could be brought under the control of the ?Mother Church, but it was still FAR MORE than any other group of white settlers did in the Indians behalf, ANYWHERe in the Americas. So if your crying bitter tears over the Indian's conquest, I fail to see why you hate the Jebbies so. Today's Indians certainly don't. Ask them.
So have you followed up. When they left Brazil I am sure many of the came back under new certification and new hats to Brazil. That is all they know is Brazil. They are like many of the gringoes that plague the scenery you surround yourself with. Since their tourist visa expired in Brazil they come down with a scheme to pick up a student visa to stay longer. In essence they switch hats but practice the same. The settlers were in need of more and better priest because they lack "intepretation" themselves and their population was growing. So the Church retrained them and reintroduced them as part of the new Church agenda. No lost there Jebbies just changed their title. I am sure the Indians know that.
This happens all the time in government medical research and alot of other fields. When government says it will fund AIDS, any type of researcher or doctor just get a new certification in less than 6 months and start work on getting those AIDS funds. Three years later the government says we will fund CANCER, so these same people dont sit around unemployed they get new certification and claim those CANCER funds the same way. This continues and continues. Same people they just put on new hats.
Happen all the time to Jews during the Islamic conquest of N. Africa and Europe. Changed to muslim because it was profitable to do so. When Muslim declined changed to Christian because it was profitable. But inside the group still practice Judaism. Outside whatever was the dominate of the day.
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Of course. And this is so much different elsewhere in the Americas and, in fact, in the world, right? Europe just LOVES black immigrants and is fighting over the right to aid Africa. And we all know what a lovely racial democracy the United States is. As for machismo, the men of the first world are so enlightened that they'd never DREAM of renting out underage third-world pussy at a dime on the dollar. Why, one can't make an honest buck owning a clipjoint in Copa these days because the gringos refuse to go in them... Rolling Eyes
Machismo and racism are human CONSTANTS, friend, and their current flavor is WESTERN. While they need to be fought against, NOTHING you've said up to now makes Brazil any "worse" in this aspect than any other settler nation of the Western Hemisphere. Or indeed their mother nations in Europe. The problems are called COLONIALISM and IMPERIALISM and RACISM and SEXISM, CtF, and you are seriously kidding yourself if you think these things are worse here than anywhere else in the Americas.
Perhaps you are a relatively wealthy first-worlder who, up to now, has been cushioned from the sight of poverty and oppression by your citizenship, hmmm? Now you see it here and, psychologically, push it off as a Brazilian specialty, all the while forgetting who BUYS and CONSUMES our sugar, coffee, steel, gold (not to mention our petroleum) and whos lifestyle would suffer a serious kink if the laborers here producing that shit were actually to be paid a decent, living wage. And you have the gall to blame this situation on the Brazilian upper classes, as if these people weren't a wholly owned subsidy of Europe and North America, Inc?
Put the clue bottle down, CtF.
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I see you accept reality as is.
CtF, whether or not I want to CHANGE reality has nothing to do with my description OF IT AS IT EXISTS. The point I am making is that there are certain historical constants in human behavior. If we want to change these, we need to see them for what they really are, first. It does nothing to project these problems off onto another people, whomever they may be, and say that that PEOPLE is the problem. This is what you are doing with the Portuguese and it is simply another manifestation of the problem itself.
I am interested in eliminating racism, sexism and other reductionist determinisms, CtF. I fail to see how this is going to be accomplished simply by switching targets and saying "OK, now instead of the blacks being all that is bad, the Portuguese are." And guess what? I am in very good company on this, my position: Fanon, King and even Malcolm X all came to the same conclusion.
Casting blame on a people feels good, doesn't it? It allows you to feel all self-righteous and gives you a clear enemy to oppose. The problem is that it just contributes to the ongoing problem. Behaviors and perhaps individuals need to be opposed. More importantly, positive solutions need to be thought up and emplaced. All I've seen you do here, though, is piss and moan about the "damn Portuguese", as if they were the root of all of Brazil's, or even the world's, problems.
Let me clue you in on a couple of facts, son:
1) The Portuguese are a JOKE in this country.
2) Other white groups - Italians, Germans, Spanish - have been just as racist and anti-black in Brazil.
3) Other COUNTRIES have been and are just as racist and anti-black as Brazil.
So why you're whining and pissing and moaning about the Portuguese is simply beyond me.
You know what you sound like, CtF? A white European missionary who's terrified, at heart, that some day the black and brown people around you will see YOU as part of the problem too. Best to keep their eyes on the Portuguese then, hey?
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You keep applying the same old techniques to a world quite different everyday.
I thought your point was that nothing has changed in this world since the 16th century?
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On myself, my lifestyle wont suffer one bit if Brazil decides to start a trade battle.
Who mentio0ned anything about a "trade battle"?
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I live a very simple almost appalling lifestyle compared to all Americans and I would say I can stand living in a sewer smelling favela, no electricity, with dirt or concrete floors with visible cracks, rusty steel or wood roof, running water up the hill, bugs and mosquito biting in all hours of the night, odd noises in the night, hot thirst, and such because I would choose to live in one. I have done it on numerous occasions before but I wont say where.
Oh, you poor suffering soul for Jesus, you! What, are you looking for a cookie?
CtF, do you speak, read or write Portuguese? up to now, you've shown absolutely no fleuncy in the language, from which I deduce that your sojourns in Brazil have been strictly temporary. All things considered, I doubt you've spent more than a year, total, in this country, and that drawn out over several trips.
It's pretty damned easy to live in a favela for a few months. I have. Let's see you do it year after year, with no trips back home to your nice, middle-class parents' home in Europe. You do that for a decade or so and then maybe you'll have some cause to feel superior to "middle-class" slackers like me who're making the princely salary of 1200 R$ per month.
As for me "retiring soon", as a foreign immigrant, almost all of my work in Brazil has been off the books. I have thus hardly even ENTERED into the job market where retirement bennies are offered. If I am very lucky, and play my cards well, I will be able to retire by the time I am 65. And even the, I'll probably have to take translation and writing work in on the side to the day I die.
Yeah, I really live a luxurious lifestyle, compared to you, Indian Jones.
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Good observation, but most Brazilians do not have the same mind as you.
Son, given the fact that you apparently don't speak our language fluently and MANIFESTLY know nothing about our history and very little about our cultures, what, pray tell, allows you to speak about what "most Brazilians think" with such authority? Other than your prejudices, that is...?
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Now who's a reductionist. Reducing typical gringo NGO missionaries.
You don't seem to understand what "reductionism" means. I would be reductionist if I said "all gringo NGO missionaries are the same" or if I claimed that you must be a NGO missionary because all NGO missionaries think the way you think. Instead, I said that you sound like a "typical" one. This is not making a reductionist argument in the slightest. When you claim that the "Portuguese" of today are essentially the same thing as they were 500 years ago or that my behaviors can be deduced based upon the fact that I am (somehow) middle class, then you are being reductionist.
A good dictionary helps a lot, CtF. I suggest you use one.
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I see you also have a prejudice against living in the "worst places".
What makes you say that? All I claimed is that if one looks at Brazilian society EXCLUSIVELY from a point of view centered around these, one will never apprehend it and without apprehending it, one has no hope of changing it.
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I thought the copa bars are the worst places you mean that not all.
Where did I ever say - or even imply - that?
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You must live in the clouds in Rio looking down on these folks.
You're really a nut, you know, CtF? You try to present yourself as so well-informed about Brazil, but you don't even know that it Rio, it's the POOR who live up among the clouds, looking down on the rich. This fact is INSTANTLY and extremely obvious to anyone who's ever been here or who has even read about the place. That you don't know it is a serious indication of your general ignorance about the country.
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No, I see your an artist too but I guess that career didnt work out there also.
I make a metaphor that uses a canvas to illustrate a point and this is enough to let you see that I am an artist and a failed one to boot? ROFL! you are really reaching now, CtF! Hey, if I had used a metaphor involving aerodynamic design, would that have been enough for you to believe that I am a failed flight engineer?
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If this is on the tour books, then I see why one type of tourist makes it to Brazil and tells his "love" story. And I would equally say you know how to keep good company.
I suggest you stick to crafting simpler insults, CtF. Your English skills just aren't up to the more complicated and subtle ones and I really hate to see the language of Shakespeare mangled by piss-artists.
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For a man with "options" three passport it sounds like you made a bad choice somewhere in life.
Son, I AM happy. I think you're full of what makes cows fart. I think that you're a european middle-class kid trying to work off some of your class and race guilt by doing good deeds in the third world. I also think you are incredibly racist when it comes to dealing with "the Portuguese" (however you conceive of these people). finally, I think your views of Brazil are very simplistic, reductionist, determinist and based on nothing more than your imperfect projections of your desire upon the blank screen of a culture you are just beginning to know. (There. now you can say I am a failed cineasta as well.) None of this, however, makes ME unhappy. I'm doing what I want, working where I want, getting an education, living with a wonderful wife and even managing to contribute time and effort to making this country a better place to live. When I was 18, I too, went through a phase where I thought I was going to save the world by casting my lot with the angelic poor. It's a phase I recommend for any young man, but it has it's inevitable limitations. As we say here "If you're 20 and not a communist, you're heartless, but if you're 40 and still are, you're stupid."
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I dont know how you approach black Americans but maybe you need to build trust or acceptance in another way.
CtF, get this through your head: I am not looking to be trusted or accepted by black americans. I am simply looking to tell the truth. I EXPECT that, given that, most human beings, white or black, will not trust or accept me, given that most human beings are as attached to simplistic reductionist determinism as much as you are.
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If you get your approach from books or any other media its not going to work in 99% of situations.
CtF, why is it that people who apparently can't be bothered to crack the covers of a book always feel yourselves to be so much more in touch with reality than those of us who make a habit out of reading? Reading doesn't remove me from reality, CtF: in fact, it helps me put myself in reality at a level I would not otehrwise be able to experience. Just because you have an aversion to the written word and to learning and teaching is no call to classify those who don't as "unrealistic".
Let's talk "realism" son: you are attempting to create social change in a country whose language you probably don't understand and whose history and politics you CERTAINLY know nothing of. How realistic is that?
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Just dont be yourself is my advice.
Oh, yes. I find that being false and manipulative with people ALWAYS leads them to accept and trust one more. Gee, CtF, what wonderful wisdom! Is this how you're doing your work, by "not being yourself", creating a more acceptable persona for those Brazilians around you who think they know you to depend upon? One that really isn't there? Oh, brother, are YOU ever in for some unpleasant suprises...
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Now when I was at a conference a black activist was very candid about Mr. Cornell West. For the record the man ideology is socialist and he wants blacks to follow in his ideology.
Unlike yourself, I have actually READ what CW has to say and I thus don't have toi depend on the second hand opinions of others to come to conclusions about him. I don't find West to be socialist in the slightest and I have read his works while you have not, so we can clearly see who has an informed opinion here. Seeing how "socialism" is a term often used by people who know nothing of it to attempt to offhandedly dismiss the people they disagree with, I think you're going to have to offer a bit more detailed critique of West's ideas than that, CtF, if you want anyone with half a brain to take you seriously. _________________ Brazil is the country of the future and always will be!
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Looks like they need to call the nearest Jesuit for another lesson.
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