For a change

The big cities keep getting bigger. To survive, millions have been operating a prosperous industry that pays no taxes, has no license, but makes poverty a little less painful. At least there are no walking skeletons in the streets of São Paulo or Rio.

Wilson Velloso

Brazil changed a lot since my last visit in 1993. At that time, while I was in São Paulo, the UN Office of Population reported that Greater São Paulo had gone over Mexico City. And that meant that, with 22-million people, the town once called Paulicéia Desvairada by poet Mário de Andrade was second only to Tokyo, Japan. A sobering piece of news.

São Paulo City keeps on building like crazy. In Rio, many natives make fun of Mayor César Maia, saying that he's replacing the old wavy-patterned sidewalk stones because he doesn't approve of their wavelength. In the country's two biggest cities many streets now look like Oriental bazaars, with stands selling every imaginable item under the sun (or smog, in São Paulo), from antiques to zithers, from exquisite lace to ratty furs. Together, says Veja magazine, no less than 30 million Brazilians nationwide operate what economists call the "informal economy."

This is an underground trading, and manufacturing too, without licenses, taxes, import duties, or invoices. According to Veja estimates, it moves over $205 per year, something to ponder about. More money than the GDP of a few First World countries. The good news is, that many changes, I believe, are to the better. At least in São Paulo and Rio, the poor are eating better: you don't meet living skeletons, Somalia or Rwanda-style, even among the homeless living in cardboard slums, the favelas (shantytowns) now a generic social term listed in most self-respecting English dictionaries.

Restaurants are crowded at all times, although you don't have to sit anywhere to buy a sandwich, bits of broiled meat allo spiedo (on a spit), all sorts of fruit juices and sodas, coxinhas (reconstructed chicken and bread tidbits), pastries. However, if you want to buy cooked food by the pound, you must go inside, get a shopping ticket, pick up from a vast array of dishes, sidedishes, salads, soups, sauces, toppings, desserts, then have your plate weighed at the cashier. What kind of food can you get in the "Por kilo" places? Anything from the Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Arabic, Thai, Polish, Chinese , etc. cuisines.

In the most enterprising places, such as "Ryan's Fast Foods" in São Paulo, you can have lasagna and feijoada (black beans), egg rolls with cassava; others offer matzos with plum guacamole, pancakes filled with zucchini, olives and cheese, salads of native mango, kiwi, persimmon, melon, grape, star fruit; topped with yogurt if you like. For a happy ending, an Arab dessert of sesame seeds, almonds, and honey.

Rio doesn't yet have such dazzling variety but does fairly well, thank you. It doesn't flaunt an extensive Metrô (subway) network either; but pretty soon its South Line will reach Copacabana. On the other hand, the city has a tremendous fleet of buses of all colors and liveries serving routes combining all destinations possible. Add a bit extra to your Metrô fare and buy a combo ticket equally good for rides on buses, suburban trains and/or ferryboats across the bay, in varying configurations. The São Paulo Metrô moves more people in one day than its Washington DC counterpart in two months.

And, like in New York, the same 88-cent fare takes you anywhere on the web. During the rush the São Paulo subway runs a train every 90 seconds. Stations are impeccably clean, with scads of janitors on duty all the time. The no-nonsense turnstiles accept multiple-fare tickets from any end or side and tell you how many rides are left. If you want to, you write the figure on the ticket yourself. Senior citizens ride from free both on the subway and the buses, even the private ones.

In the DC subway several escalators are on the blink, or under repair, in any given day. In São Paulo, even escalators open tropical storms run all the time. If an occasional one stops, the passenger flow is momentarily detoured to a standby escalator. Like in Europe, most stations have several entrances and exits to different directions, square, even on different levels. And they have clean restrooms too.

Service people, like those waiting at tables, luggage suitcases, doormen, chauffeurs, and many others are being better paid. Because Brazilians are not yet familiar with the new real coins, the minimum tip is usually an 1-real bill even if the job was worth only 2 or 3 reais. The new currency is holding its ground vis-à-vis the dollar and other foreign money, with a varying agio of 4 to 7 percent over the dollar. And the traveler check dollar is worth only 92 Brazilian cents.

On the negative side, newspapers are full of typos and substandard language: publishers have invested heavily in electronic equipment, and apparently no longer can afford editors and proofreaders. Since most writers and reporters are bright-eyed but inexperienced eager beavers just out of journalism school, loosed on the computers and being paid bottom wages, the overall result is dismal. The bosses seem to think that run-of-paper color, used rather indiscriminately and garishly, compensates for the style flaws. Full-color ads run riot all over the papers.

Some domestic news are alarming: landless peasants invading fallow land belonging to remote owners, including foreign corporations, have been rounded up and massacred by moonlighting policemen paid by landowners. The infamous death squads still operate all over. They now claim that to be "protecting society" executing hardened petty criminals, including minors, who probably refuse to pay sufficient protection money to the killers in mufti. Nothing much happens to these "ethnic cleansing" practitioners. The creaky Brazilian legal system is an ancient oddity from "the time when dogs were tied up with sausages."

From time to time, a daredevil reporter comes out with a documented story on slave pools hauling laborers around the country to work in big estates growing sugarcane and other commodities. Sometimes, stories say, they're paid $20 a month, just enough to keep body and soul together for a pre-ordained time. This, of course, justifies the labor turnover, and accelerates the activity of slave-traders on a commission of so much per head. Awesome stories of workers owing their souls to the company store, just like in the Ernie Ford's song, have gone the rounds for years and have even shaken up United Nations bodies.

Summing up, modern-day Brazil is having its share of plusses and minuses, just like it did before. The only difference is that now you can read about it, and watch it on television. The point is: when will something be done about it?

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