A Q&A with Larry Rohter about Brazil on the Rise
Q: How did you become interested in Brazil? Tell us about your relationship with the country.
A: Originally, I wanted to become a China scholar, but while I was in graduate school at Columbia, studying modern Chinese history and politics, I was offered a chance to work part-time in the New York office of Rede Globo, a Brazilian media conglomerate. My boss there eventually sent me to work on a project at the home office in Rio de Janeiro, and once I actually set foot in Brazil, that was it. I was hooked. I found everything about the country to be fascinating: the people, the landscape, the culture, the history, the cuisine.
I got the TV Globo job in the first place because my girlfriend at the time, who comes from a family with deep roots in Rio, was also working there, and so I was socializing with Brazilians who found it interesting that I could pick up their language so quickly and thought I would fit easily into a Brazilian environment. She and I eventually married, and remain married, so I acquired an extended, ready-made Brazilian family. That helped me to see the country from the inside looking out, rather than from the outside looking in, which is the way a lot of academics and journalists tend to experience foreign cultures.
Q: You first lived in Brazil in the mid-1970s. How has the country changed in the past 35 years?
A: When I first moved to Brazil it was under a military dictatorship that presided over an economy that was primarily agricultural and extractive. Today, Brazil is an exemplary democracy—noisy, messy, and even corrupt at times, but with no nostalgia for that authoritarian past, and no desire to go down the road that has led to ruin in Cuba and Venezuela. Economically, the country has diversified in ways no one could have imagined then. It remains an agricultural power, likely to overtake the U.S. soon as the world’s leading exporter of foodstuffs. But it also has a flourishing industrial sector, producing automobiles and airplanes and consumer goods, and is the world leader in renewable energy, thanks to the early and wise decision to invest heavily in the production of ethanol made from sugar cane.
All of these are obviously positive changes, and I welcome them because they have improved the lives of tens of millions of ordinary Brazilians. The one thing I miss from those bad old times is a certain sense of solidarity. Brazilians are a very warm and cordial people, and under the dictatorship there was a generalized feeling of “it’s us against our oppressive government,” or that “we’re all in this together and have to protect and look out for each other.” Today’s Brazil is far more individualistic, like most other places, and some of the traditional bonds that once tied people together have frayed.
Q: Brazil is known for Carnival, "The Girl from Ipanema," and samba—can you tell us more about the culture and the cultural influence of the country on the rest of the world?
A: I think Brazil’s culture is its greatest glory and main calling card in its dealings with the rest of the world. I’ve never been in a place more profoundly musical, and of course that has been expressed through the samba and bossa nova and the Tropicalista movement headed by people like Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. Human beings are programmed to respond to the beat of the drum, which mimics the beat of the heart, and Brazilian music is built on an amazing variety of rhythms. That’s why you see pop artists ranging from Sting, Peter Gabriel, Beck, and Paul Simon to Michael Jackson, M.I.A., Nelly Furtado, and Diplo incorporating Brazilian elements into their own music.
But because Brazil is such a musical superpower, other parts of its culture sometimes get overlooked, unjustly in my opinion. Machado de Assis is one of the world’s great writers, the novelist Clarice Lispector is now emerging as a literary icon, Oscar Niemeyer is one of the architectural giants of the 20th century, Helio Oiticica and Lygia Clark practically invented conceptual art, and film directors such as Fernando Meirelles (City of God) and Walter Salles (Central Station and The Motorcycle Diaries) are enriching the vocabulary of cinema. Brazilians have an amazing creative capacity, and as their country engages more with the rest of the world, we all stand to benefit from that.
Q: In recent years, Brazil’s economy has boomed—can you tell us how this happened, and Brazil’s significance in the international market?
A: Investors and manufacturers are obviously going to find any country with 200 million people to be an attractive market. But beyond that, Brazil has an extraordinary resource base (iron ore, bauxite, tin, timber, cellulose) and energy matrix (oil and gas, ethanol, hydroelectric power). Certainly the rise of China has also contributed to growth in Brazil, today one of China’s main sources of raw materials. But intelligent long-term planning has played an important role too: by diversifying production across the board to include new crops (soybeans, chicken, orange juice) and a variety of industrial goods, Brazil finally has been able to end its traditional dependence on a single product, such as coffee or rubber. In the past, that often forced Brazil to borrow money from foreign banks, but today, in contrast, Brazil is a net creditor, with reserves of more than $250 billion
If I were to point to just one thing as the critical factor in Brazil’s economic ascent, though, it would be the taming of inflation in the mid 1990s. For more than a generation prior to that, inflation had corroded the Brazilian economy, sometimes running more than 1,000 percent a year. Bringing it down to close to zero made it possible to save money in a bank account without worrying that its value would erode, to buy goods on credit and to take out mortgages to purchase houses and apartments. As a result, millions of poorer Brazilians were incorporated into the economy for the first time and could thus afford to leave their children in school instead of forcing them to go to work at a young age.
Q: Tell us about the class divide in Brazil. Race and class are hot-button issues—can you break them down for us in Brazil? How is it different from the U.S.?
A: These two issues are clearly an Achilles heel for Brazil. Americans and Brazilians share a common shame in their past, that of slavery. But slavery in Brazil began earlier and lasted longer than in the United States, and was not confined to a single region. Also, racial definitions are different in the two countries: Portuguese slaveholders were even more likely to have children by African or Indian slaves, and as a result, most of Brazil’s population is of mixed-race descent, with dozens of terms to describe skin color. But the elite ruling class has always been white, and has often regarded the mulatto majority with disdain. Racism still pervades many aspects of daily life in Brazil, but Brazilians remain reluctant to acknowledge that. A thorough and honest discussion of race, bias and discrimination has yet to begin.
As for class, it is closely related to race, since the overwhelming majority of the very poor are black or brown. Both of the two most recent governments have taken steps to alleviate the glaring social inequity of a fabulously rich minority sitting atop a mass living in poverty: they have instituted income redistribution programs and invested in better health and education opportunities for the poor, who tend to be concentrated in rural areas and on the outskirts of Brazil’s big cities. But race-based affirmative action programs modeled on those of the United States are just now being put in place, and are extremely controversial, with opponents claiming they will lead to the end of a “racial democracy” that in reality has never existed.
Q: What are your thoughts on the upcoming elections in Brazil? How does this stand to change the country as we know it?
A: October’s presidential election is extremely important, perhaps even a watershed vote. Brazil is nearing the end of a 16-year cycle that, under a pair of presidents, Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has been marked by a degree of political stability, prosperity, and lessening of social inequality that is unparalleled in the country’s modern history. The challenge in this election is to choose a new leader capable of continuing and deepening those processes and taking Brazil to the next level of development. Each of the three main candidates (Dilma Rousseff, José Serra, and Marina Silva) has strong points, but each also has flaws. So there is a lot at stake, and Brazilian voters are aware that if they make a mistake, the remarkable progress achieved since 1995 could be at risk.
Q: What is it about Brazil that fascinates Americans?
A: From a distance, I think that Americans are intrigued by what appears to be the easygoing tropical sensuality of Brazil and the delight and enthusiasm with which Brazilians lead their lives. As I remark in the book, joie de vivre may be a French term, but Brazilians have perfected the art of living with gusto and relish. That stands in contrast to a certain Puritan strain in our own history and character. Of course, there is also a moralistic streak in Brazilian society, but it’s not on the surface and thus is not so readily identifiable.
Once Americans get to Brazil, they are often impressed by Brazil’s vastness. By that, I mean not just the Amazon jungle, which occupies half of the country’s territory, but also a sprawling metropolis like Sao Paulo, which is more populous than any U.S. city and whose geographical enormity and cultural sophistication always come as a surprise to first-time visitors. And finally there are certain obvious outward similarities between the two countries. Both the U.S. and Brazil are nations of continental dimensions, with immense interiors that were first explored and developed by adventurers and cowboys who exterminated hostile Indian tribes. Today, both countries are multi-racial societies, built on a flow of immigrants from every corner of the world, and are driven by sense of manifest destiny.