The Brazilians by Joseph A. Page Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Brazilians
Book Review: Self-devouring serpent must shed its past before eating
Summary: 4 Stars
The Brazilians by Joseph A. Page Addison-Wesley, 540 pages, $27.50 1995
reviewed by D. D. Dunkerson 1000 words.
Mr. Page, a professor of law, in his first chapter introduces the reader to Brazil and Brazilians as derived from his sixteen visits to the country over thirty years. He has also authored books on NE Brazil, a Nader Report, and Peron. He informs the reader that his themes are selective and not comprehensive; but one cannot be selective in the general attributes he places within his "Brazilianness".
His "Brazilianness" encompasses qualities of graciousness, great anticipation of greatness, pleasantness, hospitality, politeness, tenderness, and delicacy. Without native words for "understatement", Mr. Page then adds grandiose, sweetness, energetic, sensual, extraordinary adaptability, carefree, mawkish, intense personalism, and current attainments rather than the two in the bush. As for quantities of Brazil derived from such qualities, they are most impresssive: 5th largest country, more Brazilians than all but five nationalities, 153 million people, largest Roman Catholic population, 50% of the population under 20 years old, largest black population outside Africa, and more Japanese except for Japan itself. In a land where the world's largest concentration of wealth is located, there is an abundance of ores, sugar, soybean, and corn for a populace of 66% poor, 71% without running water, 79% without refrigeration, 85% without sewage disposal, 50% without schooling.
Brazil has for so long a time been characterized by the SE sliver of coast - by Rio and Sao Paulo. The interior, a vast place, has been mostly rural and very poor, even by Brazil's standards. Climatic conditions, overpopulation, and pharaonic governmental projects can force the rural poor outward to the periphery of Brazil in the NE and SE. Their pressure against a tiny slice of coast where cariocin Carnival in mild form prevails at all times vs. the paulistian hardworking heavily industrialized dynamo has promoted an urban criminality of poor vs. rich.
The poor press hard enough that a low value for life prevails, a more subtle than USA's racism is accentuated and some of those pressured undertake measures, with impunity, to relieve the tangible and almost suffocating hindrance of daily activity. They resort to magical religions. They melt in a pot in which no single taste sums the ingredients. Some finally use surrealism, however primitive, for rebuttal to such a bewildering morphism.
After his introduction, Mr. Page devotes most of the remainder of the book to chapters concerning a broad survey of Brazilian factors with profiles of prominent personages.
The Portuguese -- disparaged, but having had Family as a definition of social, economic and personal relations that arose amidst a monarchy and an empire in Brazil that had a distaste for organization.
The Africans -- In Brazil it is neither black nor white as all the intermediate shades are accepted in an ongoing process of miscegenation which is to "whiten" the people. Brazilians brought in six times the number of slaves as did the USA and Brazil did not end slavery until 1888. In 1891 the slavery archives were burned. People of "color" are in the majority. In the cities blacks are 80% of the population, but government is 90% non-black.
The Have Nots -- There are places like Sao Conrado having a glass cylinder as a hotel, with an apartment building deluxe, tennis courts, swimming pools, golf course, glistening beach, sanitation, health care, and education. Going up the hills above Sao Conrado is Rocinha, a favela of 300,000 people, like many others to which the poor have flowed from worse conditions in the countryside. Many of these poor are perhaps destined to become a dehumanized subspecies. They travel in the favela on foot through animal stench, sewage flow, no police, no fire department, and a too expensive private medical care. They need public health care in a matrix of understaffing, poor maintenance and malfunctioning equipment. They take hours to get to a job not paying a living wage. They ride overcrowded,undependable and unsafe trains or buses. The worst conditions are in the NE which contains the largest concentration of wretchness (rural or urban) in the Western Hemisphere. Children who "want to die" are allowed to do so.
The Culture of Brutality -- The national, state, and local military or police have used terror, torture, and repressive means against the governed. The have-nots use force against all (themselves included). This vast cycle of violence is as the animal whose head feeds itself by devouring its own tail. Brutality becomes routine, ordinary.
Suffer the Little Children -- Murder, or street kids, who can be violent themselves, is conducted by death squads. The lawless children enjoy an impunity matched only by some Brazilian elite but the children number 32 million in poveruy and the elite aren't being hunted down. The kids want to run away to what they see on TV. They know "nobody is born stealing."
Where is Brazil? The author notes that Sao Paulo does not have a "there" there, no localizing locality. In this city is the most powerful commercial and financial center in the Western hemisphere outside the USA. If not in Sao Paulo, then perhaps in "Amazonia" -- 40% of the country and a gossamer cover for an Amazon Basin becoming debased far too rapidly? Or in Rio where one's appearance is the ne plus ultra living?
There has to be a "where" for the "there" and where are the Brazilians? Look to the soccer fields where there is sustained a degree of involvement that not even Carnival can match. Look to Carnival where there is an astonishing dedication, diligence, imagination, and enthusiasm. Look to the telenovelas where there one finds viewer ratings approach 100% for television productions akin to soap operas but only more so and not so.
Look to a national circus where there is no center ring. One doesn't find capitalism there ( Catherine Deneuve is quoted as asserting that the Brazilians are too carefree) but foreign investments are increasing as exports boom and inflation eases. Despachantes act as guides through bureaucratic mazes; and there is jeitinho -- a rapidly improvised creative cultural response to potentially confrontational situations.
Lastly look to the heart, Brazil has been mentioned as the heart of the planet. Look among these people named for where their "there" is located -- the paulistas, cariocas, mineiros, nordestinos, gauchos, and curitibanos. There you will find hardworking, funloving, frugal, introverted, and fiercely independent individuals. But a Brazilian "individual" isn't an American one. The author quotes Roberto da Matta, and I paraphrase, to the effect that there is a Brazilian destiny and the freedon within it to practice loyalty to friends, anything for family and, most of all, to be where there is the knowledge that Brazilian relationships will not allow for one to be walking alone in life.Book Review: Subjective, Filtered Prospective, with Audacious Claims Unsubstantiated by Facts
Summary: 1 Stars
I've read many supposedly non-fiction works in my life and in none of them have I found wilder claims not backed by precise notation and direct sources. At one point he says, "Brazil is now a leading producer of human misery." All good, then he goes on to talk about the issues supporting his claim about the misery. But to make such a claim, if one were a true scholar, one would need to back it up with the data from around the world, the misery index, how it's determined, what is the criteria for comparison, etc.? It's not there, it's his subjective opinion based on what he is determining as misery and then using the claim to substantiate his argument. Just about every page is filled with these subjective pronouncements, again, with little or no source notation to verify his so called facts. Having traveled to Brazil many times over the course of 15 years (I'm actually here now in RIo for 3 months) I see a different Brazil. I hope anyone who reads this book will reserve judgement and also see for themselves.