Tag Archives: Brazil

Climate Disruption: Thought of the Week

27 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption

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Video: Zika Virus: What you need to know

Zika Virus: Our Dystopian Climate Future

I’ve spent much of my life chronicling the ongoing tragedies stemming from global warming: the floods and droughts and storms, the failed harvests and forced migrations. But no single item on the list seems any more horrible than the emerging news from South America about the newly prominent Zika disease.
~ Bill McKibben, “The Zika virus foreshadows our dystopian climate future,” The Guardian, January 25, 2016

 

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Brazil’s Stand at the UN 2014 Climate Summit

28 Sunday Sep 2014

Posted by in Brazil, Nature and the Environment

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Deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest - BrazilDeforestation in the Amazon Rainforest – Brazil
Photo Credit: Manchete Online

 

On September 23, over 900 leaders from government, business, finance, and civil society came together at the United Nations Headquarters in New York for the 2014 Climate Summit. Judging from the Summary of their most significant announcements, they issued more promises “to galvanize transformative action in all countries to reduce emissions and build resilience to the adverse impacts of climate change.”

Promises are easy. Following them through is another story.

The pledge to halve deforestation by 2020 and reach zero deforestation by 2030 is ambitious. Since trees release carbon when burned, such a move would secure an additional 4.5 to 8.8 billion tons of carbon yearly. This is equivalent to carbon emissions from one billion cars on the roads worldwide.
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Which Foreign Language Should I Learn?

03 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by in Education, Guyana

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Takutu Bridge linking Guyana and BrazilTakutu Bridge linking Guyana and Brazil
Source: Stabroek News

 

Before Guyana gained its independence from Great Britain in May 1966, we knew more about Britain than we did about our own country. In high school, we studied British history and literature. Until the publication of Geography of Guyana by Guyanese Professor Leslie P. Cummings in 1965, we had no geography textbook on Guyana. In Form I, our first French and Latin classes began with the conjugation of the verb to love.

Although located on the mainland of South America, Guyana remained an island of English-speaking people on a continent dominated by Spanish and Portuguese. Learning French guaranteed our isolation from our continental neighbors.

After Guyana gained its independence, high school students had the option of choosing between French and Spanish. Latin lost its relevance for our new nation.

While I never had the chance to show off my French, it proved quite useful when learning Portuguese. I observed several similarities between the two Romance or Latin languages: sentence construction, verb conjugation, and gendered nouns and adjectives.

In the 1980s when the Guyanese government banned the importation of a wide range of consumer products, language was no barrier for the rise of a new type of Guyanese entrepreneur: the huckster. While the majority of hucksters traveled to the English-speaking Caribbean islands of Barbados and Trinidad to purchase food and other consumer products for resale in Guyana, others ventured into neighboring Suriname (Dutch) and Brazil (Portuguese). Dense forest terrain along the Venezuelan border deterred this type of informal trade in contraband goods.

Over recent years, Guyana’s relationship with its southern neighbor, Brazil, has grown immensely. Since its completion in 2009, the Takutu Bridge now links the two nations, across the river where hucksters once illegally sneaked across the border under cover of darkness. In February 2010, Guyana became a signatory member state of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR).

On 17 October 2013, Guyana finally committed to a long-term relationship with Brazil. The Ministry of Education launched its Portuguese Curriculum for schools. Until more Portuguese teachers are trained, only five high schools in Georgetown will offer this additional option. Guyanese business owners or their representatives and trade professionals who seek to do business with Brazil should have some degree of fluency in the language.

From my own experience in Brazil when acting as an English/Portuguese interpreter for visiting clients, I can tell you that a lot gets lost in translation. A whole new world of understanding and appreciation for another culture opens up to us when we can communicate with our business partners and the local population in their native language.

French, Portuguese or Spanish: Which foreign language should I learn? This is the question young Guyanese high school students must now ask themselves. Perhaps it’s none of these three options. Considering China’s rise as an economic power, their choice might well be Mandarin or Cantonese.

Living Behind High Walls

14 Sunday Aug 2011

Posted by in Brazil, Urban Violence

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Entrance (Portaria) to Apartment Building in Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil

When I migrated to Brazil with my husband and two sons in April 1987, Brazil had not long ago emerged from 21 years of military dictatorship rule (1964-1985). As we settled in to make our home there, we did not realize that Brazil had a long way to go before it could address the glaring inequality between the population and the minority upper class that owned and controlled the agricultural lands, major industries, financial institutions, and the media.

During our first week in Fortaleza, we entered a tiny neighborhood mercearia (grocery shop) and boggled at the shelves stuffed with a wide variety of canned, bottled, and other food products. In the stores in downtown Fortaleza, there were no shortages of consumer goods – all Made in Brazil.

Our elation was short-lived. Inflation, like a woodpecker, whittled away at the meager profits of our home-based pastry business. Like the low-paid worker, we could not earn enough to keep pace with the constant price increases of staple and other essential items.

Together with the majority working class, we jostled for survival. Street children and adolescents roamed downtown, major streets, and beach fronts in search of food and whatever they could snatch. They targeted women (myself included) and the elderly. Bandidos (bandits) did not hesitate to kill whenever they encountered resistance. If you had no money, they took your clothing and shoes, leaving you in your underwear. Pistoleiros (gunmen) for hire eliminated enemies and rivals for as little as fifty US dollars.

In the middle and upper class neighborhoods, private security guards manned portarias (guard huts, like the one shown in the above photo) at the entrance of apartment buildings. Houses hid behind high walls, some with signs ‘Cuidado com o Cão’ (Beware of the Dog). To avoid triggering angry responses from guard dogs on the other side of walled residences, I shunned the sidewalk and walked on the street.

I was not familiar with the numerous popular breeds of guard dogs. But one of them was notorious: the Pit Bull.  The Pit Bull had arrived in Brazil a year after we did and soon gained a reputation as a beast, capable of brutally killing a person. Cases of such deaths usually hit the headlines of Brazil’s TV Network.

The day a Pit Bull escaped from a yard while I was walking by on the street left me shaken. Before his owner had secured him by his collar, he had snapped at the back of my left calf, ripping my sheer nylon stocking, and leaving red teeth marks.

Brazil is currently debating a law to prohibit the sale and breeding of the Pit Bull as well as sixteen other fierce dogs. A number of Brazilian states have already done so. Owners of Pit Bulls must secure them with collars, chains, and muzzles. Offenders are heavily fined. Imprisonment awaits those whose animals injure or kill their victims.

The Pit Bull was not my kind of companion. I found refuge from the violence stalking the city behind high walls.

Riding the Bus in Fortaleza, Brazil

24 Sunday Jul 2011

Posted by in Brazil

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SOURCE: Population Demands More Buses, Diário do Nordeste, Fortaleza, 2008

Be prepared for anything when you use the bus in Fortaleza, capital of the northeastern State of Ceará. More so, if you are a woman.  But if you’re like me and you don’t drive, the bus is an everyday lesson in tolerance and sharing space: sometimes, a very tight space.

During the first month of our arrival in Fortaleza, I learned not to enter a bus with little standing room. As you have to pay the trocador and pass through the turnstile, you cannot get off the bus through the entrance. When my stop approached, I couldn’t squeeze my way towards the exit. I was forced to remain on the bus until it reached the terminal.

Getting to work by public transport was a waking nightmare. There were never enough buses during peak hours. If I wanted to get to work on time, I could not make the mistake of thinking that the next bus would be better. It could be clogged at the entrance! It’s no way to start your workday, especially if you have to take two or three buses.

I leave you to imagine what wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters must face under such a tight squeeze, especially when targeted by perverted males on the hunt. Until the day I started working for a manufacturer that provided privately operated buses for its workers, I, too, had my share of close encounters of the degrading kind.

Like the trabalhadores brasileiros (Brazilian workers), I dreamt of owning a car to end this daily assault. Even a Fusca 1982 (Volkswagen Beetle) with a sickly engine would do. Clammy bodies struggling with adversity squashed my decision to reduce the toxic fumes pumped into our atmosphere.

Life has a way of getting in the way of our best intentions.

Guyana – Brazil – USA

10 Sunday Jul 2011

Posted by in Brazil, Guyana, United States

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Guyana, Brazil, and the United States are all located in the Western Hemisphere, once known as the New World.

Guyana – formerly British Guiana, until its independence from Great Britain on 26 May 1966 – ranks economically in 160th position among 227 nations of the world (based on GDP in 2010, CIA World Factbook). Its estimated total population of 745,000 people is less than that of the US city of San Francisco and not even a third of the population of Fortaleza, the capital of the northeastern State of Ceará, Brazil.

Although located on the northern coast of the South American continent, Guyana’s language and culture set it apart from the rest of the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking nations dominating the continent. Back in the colonial
days, the French language taught in high schools suited the British Motherland that hobnobbed with France across the English Channel, but did nothing to help Guyanese to connect with neighboring Brazil, Venezuela, and Suriname (formerly Dutch Guiana). Guyana’s kinship lay with the English-speaking islands in the Caribbean Sea.

A founding-member of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in 1973, Guyana finally embraced its South American family of nations on 23 May 2008 when the nation’s president signed the Constitutive Treaty of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) in Brasília, Brazil. By aligning with the immense regional block, little Guyana gains a bigger voice.

Brazil– the world’s fifth largest country and population – ranks in 9th position among the nations of the world (based on GDP in 2010, CIA World Factbook). Numbered among the world’s top four emerging economies, Brazil is fast gaining clout on international forums. Fear lurks among many Guyanese that the neighboring Brazilian giant will roll over and smother Guyana. Fear is good… It spawns caution.

Liaisons come with the good and the bad. Ask any American about the Chinese giant, now fully awake and kicking. Products, Made in China, are now anathema for millions of Americans who have lost their jobs to China. Still, American consumers expect more for less. To remain competitive, American companies are doing more with less: increasing their productivity by draining the blood of their lean workforce.

We want to have it all: gain without pain. Something’s gotta give.