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News :: Miscellaneous |
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On the Road in Brazil, fourth in a series |
Current rating: 0 |
by Sarah Kanouse and Sascha Meinrath, UCIMC
Email: skanouse (nospam) eudoramail.com (unverified!) |
14 Jul 2001
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Although we're meeting a very diverse group of Brazilians, we're only scratching the surface of the economic, social, cultural and ethnic difference that underpins life in Rio de Janeiro. However, due to our very limited ability to speak Portuguese, we've been unable to converse with anyone not essentially middle or upper class and educated. Ability to speak some English, more than race, is an indicator of class, and an inability to discuss social issues without it has narrowed the range of our acquaintances. Nevertheless, we've had a diverse group of experiences over the past few days. |
Although we're meeting a very diverse group of Brazilians, we're only scratching the surface of the economic, social, cultural and ethnic difference that underpins life in Rio de Janeiro. Through Sascha's family's connections, we're meeting a section of Rio's professional and business elite; we're staying in a luxurious apartment with a cook and a maid in an exclusive enclave called Fonte de Saudade with a family that owns a textile factory, and last night we went out for drinks with a lawyer and her fiance, another lawyer now studying to become a judge. Through the Independent Media Center network, we're meeting filmmakers, artists, musicians, anarchists and assorted radical activists with a standard of living quite similar to our own in the US. Through happenstance, we've met more mainstream activists from Rio's largest favela assistance group, Viva Rio. Through Sascha's 90 year old, German-Jewish grandmother, we've met an assortment of Brazil's second generation European immigrant population. However, due to our very limited ability to speak Portuguese, we've been unable to converse with anyone not essentially middle or upper class and educated. Ability to speak some English, more than race, is an indicator of class, and an inability to discuss social issues without it has narrowed the range of our acquaintances. Nevertheless, we've had a diverse group of experiences over the past few days.
On Wednesday, July 11, we took a trip an hour's drive into the mountains surrounding Rio de Janeiro. We stayed in a small town that was a little slice of Bohemia -- complete with German kitsch in the town center, and streets named after German settlers and cities. Some years ago, it was a fashionable summer retreat for Rio's upper classes, especially German immigrants (members of Sascha's family lived there). The 19th century Brazilian Emperor, Dom Pedro II spent half the year in his palace here. The city is home to the textile factory owned by our host. The father of our host bought the factory in the early 1960s, and it is now one of the leaders in fabric production for high fashion women's wear in the country, with over 370 employees. The factory is beautiful -- a series of old, green and white buildings set on a hillside and connected with a network of cobblestone roads and landscaped grounds. It is also setting the curve for medium-sized manufacturing outfits, with a high level of safety, a comprehensive water treatment facility, state of the art machinery, and exceptional facilities for its workers, including an on-site clinic, a subsidized cafeteria, a gymnasium, and a profit sharing program. One noticeable difference from US factories is the modesty of the administrative offices. Our host's office is about 12 x 12 feet, with a large desk covered with stacks of papers and fabric samples, a credenza, and two simple chairs. Landscaping was not limited to around the administrative building; in fact, even the water treatment facility had blooming rosebushes. We learned that the Brazilian minimum wage is roughly 140 Reis per month, or about US$60. Werner pays $200-$800 per month for factory floor employees, with the ability to earn up to an extra 50% bonus for productivity. We spent some time discussing globalization with our host, who feels that his factory is specialized enough to benefit greatly from the removal of trade barriers but fears what will happen to other sectors of the Brazilian economy. He believes that trade barriers and the definition of "free trade" in current agreements and negotiations is lopsided, favoring already powerful economies like the United States and protecting powerful lobbies from foreign competition.
On Thursday, July 12 we interviewed two Americans living and working in Rio de Janeiro. Joanna Block is the marketing director of Viva Rio's fair trade campaign; her partner, Andrew Smith, is a business consultant with On the Frontier, a firm working with medium sized companies in developing countries to help them compete on the world market. Both of them believe that the market economy offers opportunities to overcome entrenched poverty. Joanna works to market products made by Rio's favela dwellers to tourists and Northern hemisphere retailers. 100% of the profits from the sale of the products goes to the women who make them. Joanna emphasized the project�s goal as to assist micro-producers in the favelas to become self-sustaining: to learn business skills that will enable them to manage their businesses independently and to start new ones. Joanna described conditions and legal status of favelas; in addition to a large amount on internal violence, the police, which do not patrol the areas, sometimes provoke violence and shoot favela residents. Although the government collects information on favelas, it is unwilling to share information with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like Viva Rio, and Joanna feels that for now well-funded NGOs are the best way to combat social problems in the context of Brazil�s entrenched bureaucracy, widespread corruption, and limited financial resources. We interviewed Andrew about his work and his perspective on poverty in developing countries. He stressed that countries that compete on the world market on the basis of low wages and cheap raw materials are dooming themselves to perpetual poverty. He argued that countries must create industries in niche markets and turn raw materials into competitive, "value added" goods for export to wealthy countries. He believes that the market economy and free enterprise is "the most effective system we have yet found to create prosperity," but believes that agreements like the Free Trade Area of the Americas must have strong labor and environmental standards written into them to reduce exploitations of developing countries.
We left Andrew and Joanna's apart-hotel in Leblon, the chicest neighborhood in Rio, and traveled across town to Cinelandia, a run-down but historic district to meet with Miguel and Ricardo, activists from the Brasil Centro da Midia Independente. We ate lunch at an all you can eat Chinese/Brazilian buffet for 4 Reis (US$1.60) and talked about their work in favelas. They feel that video work is most accessible to poor, often illiterate Brazilian workers and offer screenings and discussions of videos on globalization and anti-capitalist protests in the poorest parts of the city. They want to expand their work to include the creation of an independent, community radio network, as many favelas have low-power radio stations and need politically-oriented programming. They are in the midst of organizing, and their first public meeting will be held next week. Although Joanna at Viva Rio had not heard of the IMC movement, the Brazil IMCstas had certainly heard of Viva Rio. They criticized Viva Rio as seeking "pragmatic solutions," such as reducing guns in the favelas and supporting small businesses to create export items, that leave untouched underlying causes of poverty and oppression. Essentially, they don't believe that the "free" market can solve the problems the "free" market creates and see Viva Rio as remaining ineffectual because they do not engage in direct action to challenge the economic system. We spent the rest of the day with Miguel, ending up at his friends' house where we sang Brazilian songs, watched several short films they produced and debated US cultural imperialism, including our own complicity as English speakers in a non-English speaking country.
Friday and Saturday were spent visiting Sascha's grandmother and friends, including Miguel's family. Miguel's mother is a former TV journalist who produced environmental documentaries throughout the 1980s but who now must produce video press releases for the Brazilian government, as her age prevents her from landing work in commercial television. His brother is an ecological biologist who works for an NGO that restores mangrove swamps. Miguel's family was exiled from Brazil during the military dictatorship of 1968-1985 for political activity against the government. Miguel was born in France but had no nationality due to his family's banishment. Miguel and his family are among the most dynamic and interesting people we've met in Brazil, and we've had a great time getting to know them.
Over the next few days, we'll spend more time with family friends doing touristy stuff and will interview another Viva Rio employee as well as more Brazil IMC folk. Excerpts from our interviews will be aired on the IMC newshour on July 30. |
