RAPIDINHAS

The big surprise of Rio's Carnaval this year was the first-time victory for Escola de Samba (Samba School) Unidos do Viradouro, a somewhat obscure club from Niterói, a dormitory town in Greater Rio. A surprise anyway for those who thought carnavalesco Joãozinho Trinta, 63, had passed his prime. He is the author of the oft-cited, "The poor love luxury. The intellectuals are the ones who love misery." It was under his leadership and using a samba enredo called Trevas! Luz! A Explosão do Universo (Darkness! Light! The Explosion of the Universe), describing the Big Bang theory, that Viradouro beat all the odds. For legendary Joãozinho, who has eight times been champion, the latest was the sweetest victory. After suffering an ischemia (a decrease of blood supply to the brain) that left him with a paralyzed right arm, he emerged from the ordeal a champion once again. He had also been ostracized from competition since 1992 when he was accused without proof of corruption and child molestation.

Since 1990, displaying your genitalia during the Escolas de Samba parade is considered a crime. Nobody would know that, however, from looking at the pictures published by Brazilian newspapers and magazines. Some violators, however, had a chance to make amends before being taken to jail. Like Alessandra Borges, Kelly Cristina, and Marcela Milk, the three exuberant bateria queens from Escola de Samba Beija-Flor, who couldn't convince anybody that under the body painting over their genitals there were adhesive bandages. When they decided to cover the offensive parts with a minuscule towel, however, enough pictures had already been snapped to fill up a giant photo album.

And then there were those who did just the opposite. Alleging discomfort, Nana Gouveia, one of Portela's star dancers, took off her red plumage costume and bared it all in the streets in front of other lustful cameras (see pictures). It must be said that she modestly kept her boots on. After seeing published pictures of her strip-tease in the daily newspaper, Gouveia matter-of-factly explained: "Taking off all your clothes during Carnaval is not the end of the world. I felt flattered with the pictures they published of me since there were so many pretty women."

With few celebrities on hand, Ricky Martin from Menudo fame and soccer prodigy Ronaldinho, who is a Beija-Flor samba school fanatic, became stars. The Spaniards, however, who bought Ronaldinho's talent to play on their field, weren't happy to see their idol sweating his shirt on the avenue. "Less Samba and More Goals," screamed a headline in a Madrid newspaper.

The Brazilian Health Ministry, which who last year created a catchy Carnaval marchinha encouraging men to wear camisinhas (condoms), made news again this year with another camisinha de Vênus campaign. The symbol chosen in 1997 was a peru (turkey), also a common word for penis. Camisinha nele (Get him a condom), says the message over a cocky turkey. Health Minister Carlos Albuquerque defended the turkey symbol and praised the bird, which "is so joyful."

During the four days of Carnaval, 2.5 million free camisinhas (the word also means little shirts) were distributed around the country, along with posters, headbands, stickers, T-shirts and another Carnaval marchinha: "Vista a camisinha nele (Dress him with a condom)."

Lars-Olof Gustafson, ("53, feeling like 35") from Gothenburg, Sweden, seemed seriously interested in getting the facts when he posted the following message at the Internet's soc.culture.brazil newsgroup, recently: "Please send info about cannibals in Brazil if you have them." A tracking of his postings in several other groups shows he is a serious man, divorced, looking for an oriental soul mate. However, there was a barrage of indignant answers to his candid question. It was João de Souza, using the fictitious name of a company called Cannibals-R-Us, who had the most hilarious, to-the-point, and charitable response. Take a look:

"Dear Mr. Gustafson, you are in luck! We at Cannibals-R-Us are having a sale! That means that you can now purchase your very own Brazilian cannibal, and it won't cost you an arm and a leg, unless you prefer to pay that way. We offer the following models:

- SMALL - In case you just want to get rid of some particularly incriminating evidence. ($100.00 or three fingers)

- MEDIUM - Guaranteed to silence noisy family members. ($376.00 or your left testicle)

- LARGE - Will eat all your undesired co-workers, or your money (or limbs) back! ($750.00 or your choice of either an arm or a leg)

- X-LARGE - Great fun at parties! ($1,000.00 or your oldest child)

Prices do not include shipping and handling. S&H charges vary, depending on how well you can dance the Lambada. Considering that you are northern-European, you will probably have to pay our highest rates.

All our cannibals are house-trained! Luxury models include clothes! For more information, please write to: Cannibals-R-Us - Bar do Zé - Men's bathroom, third cubicle - Rio Amazonas, AZ. 12345 - Brazil."

Justice showed that it can have long arms, long enough to reach Brazilians, who until now were guaranteed an undisturbed good life after getting rich through fraud and embezzlement and fleeing the country. Miami federal judge Phillip Bloom presided over the jury that condemned lawyer Jorgina Maria de Freitas Fernandes, who defrauded Rio's Social Security service (INSS) of $34.3 million, to pay $123 million in damages. Fernandes was just one of a 15-member gang made up of judges and high-ranking workers at the INSS that stole more than half a billion dollars from the government between 1990 and 1991 through fraudulent indemnification. Four of the accomplices are now in jail.

Jorgina, who was condemned to 14 years in prison in Brazil, left the country four years ago', and nobody knows for sure where she is, but the decision against her allows the Brazilian government to use real-estate and other values in the U.S. to recoup the money she owes. Only $2 million has been located in the U.S. More than $200 million of the stolen money is in Brazil, but the process there has been dragging on for six years now. Members of the gang continue to receive rent from many of the buildings they bought with the stolen money.

As for the lawyer, she is said to have breast cancer and be living on a yacht, continually traveling between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. According to relatives, she is writing two books: one autobiography and another discussing the differences and similarities among the Social Security systems in several Latin American countries.

Brazil is not happy with all the restrictions imposed on Brazilian products exported to the U.S. Steel, textiles, shoes, and orange juice are just some of the items Brazilians have a hard time exporting to Uncle Sam. Foreign Minister Luiz Felipe Lampreia credits those barriers for the $3 billion trade deficit Brazil had with the United States in 1996. On the other side, Washington has been raising the volume of its own dissatisfaction, accusing Brazil of not opening its doors wide enough, particularly in the telecommunications field. Talking in Davos, Switzerland, during the World Economic Forum, Stuart Eizenstat, State Department Undersecretary for Economic Affairs, demanded from Lampreia that Brazil open its markets at a faster pace. President Fernando Henrique Cardoso himself came with the reply: "There is nothing to demand from Brazil on this question. When the subject is Brazil, we are the masters of the time."

Is the CIA behind the creation of the Brazilian death squads, those paramilitary gangs that kill bandits, suspects, innocents, and children alike? New York Union College sociologist professor Martha Huggins answers affirmatively, saying she has proof. This and many other horror stories linking the U.S. to human rights violation in Brazil are the raw material for Huggins' forthcoming book to be released in July. Her research will expose the CIA's secret story of meddling in Brazilian affairs during the period of military dictatorship.

The book will maintain, for example, that it was the CIA who trained a group of 40 Rio police agents who then organized the first death squads. These death squads engaged in the practice of throwing political prisoners from helicopters into the Amazon jungle. The CIA also helped in the creation of the extinct SNI (Serviço Nacional de Informação _ Information National Service), going so far as to give the names of people who could be trusted and thus made part of that secret political police. Nothing new there. Pentagon documents released recently showed that U.S. Army intelligence manuals were used from 1982 to 1991 to teach 60,000 Latin American military and police officers at the Army School of the Americas (located in Panama until 1984 when it moved to the American state of Georgia) how to blackmail, torture, and kill their own people.

The city of São Paulo has launched a tongue-in-cheek campaign extolling the virtues of the megalopolis. In one of the pieces, composed of three consecutive double pages filled with pictures and information, there are some funny comparisons to other cities in the world. Reads the copy by ad agency Salles/DMB&B: "São Paulo is like Miami. You do your shopping, amuse yourself, and once in a while you meet an American."

On another page there is the revelation: "São Paulo is like Rome. Only our pizza is better." And then there is the clincher: "São Paulo is like New York. Here the taxi drivers can't speak English either." The theme of the campaign, which has it's own Internet homepage (http://www.spguia.com.br ) is "São Paulo. The best the world has to offer, we have it here."

Actor Guilherme de Pádua was recently condemned to 19 years in prison for killing actress Daniella Perez, who was his co-star in the novela (soap opera) Corpo e Alma (Body and Soul), on December 28, 1992. The actress was stabbed 19 times with a pair of scissors, and Pádua, who became an international cause célèbre after confessing (confession later recanted) to the crime, had been in jail waiting for the trial. Paula Tomás, who was Guilherme's wife at the time, is also in jail, accused of co-conspiring the murder. Law experts believe that she was benefited by the condemnation of Pádua and has a good chance of being found innocent at her trial in April.

The actor was considered guilty by five of a seven-person jury, and he could have received a 30-year sentence, the maximum penalty allowed by the Brazilian law. According to Daniella's mother, novela writer Glória Perez, the sentence was a "wise one" because a 30-year condemnation would automatically trigger a retrial of the case. "But I will continue fighting," she said, "to reform the Penal Code, so people like Guilherme and Paula will get life in prison and will not be able to kill other people."

Since Pádua has already spent four years in prison, is a first offender, and has been well-behaved in jail, he might leave prison before the end of the year. The convicted assassin would go out during the day to work and would return to jail at night to sleep.

The luxurious Copacabana Palace Hotel in Rio opened its doors in 1923. By the next decade it had become the favorite hangout for the international jet set. Hollywood actress Ava Gardner and millionaire Nelson Rockefeller were merely two of its illustrious guests. But starting in the 70s, the Palace began its steady downhill march. Restored after being bought in 1989 by American millionaire James Sherwood, who spent $30 million in renovations, the Copa, as it is often called, is back to its glamorous self. And its excellence has just been recognized in a poll of 20,000 Yankee travel agents, who answered a questionnaire in the respected Official Hotel Guide. The beachfront Copacabana was chosen as the best hotel in Latin America, getting the same five star rating as the Phoenicia in Scottsdale, Arizona (USA) and the Ritz in Paris.

From 1989, when it had an average 59 points of the television audience, until recently, Jornal Nacional, the prime-time news show of the Globo TV network, has had its attentive public cut almost in half. Recent data from Ibope (the Brazilian Nielsen) shows Jornal Nacional with an average of only 35 points. In the U.S. such a rating would make any TV executive ecstatic (ABC, CBS, and NBC, together, get only 26 points for their news programs), but Globo got used to its virtual monopoly of Brazilian TV in the past. Advertisers have complained that $90,000 for a 30-second spot during Jornal Nacional is too expensive, especially since Globo is not delivering the promised audience anymore.

In the last three months alone, the Jornal slipped 8 points (800,000 houses). Meanwhile, Marimar, a dubbed-into-Portuguese, sugar-coated Mexican soap opera being shown opposite the news at SBT (Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão — Brazilian System of Television) has added 7 points to its own audience. But Globo is not losing its poise. Says Walter Poyares, spokesperson for the network's presidency: "People nowadays have several options of entertainment. But we are still on the top."

Brazilians will not work a total of 124 days this year. This number includes Saturdays, Sundays, holidays and days that are enforcados (hung) between holidays and weekends. How bad is not working more than one third of the year? "It is terrible, catastrophic," says Merheg Cachum, president of Abiplast (Associação Brasileira da Indústria de Material Plástico _ Brazilian Association of the Plastic Material Industry).

"To be able to rest on the holidays is synonymous with a good quality of life," disagrees Carlos Alberti Lancelotti, director of FIESP (Federação das Indústrias do Estado de São Paulo — Federation of Industries of São Paulo State). Lancelotti believes that dedicating two-thirds of the year to work is more than enough to attend the needs of the market.

Just when everybody thought Brazilians wouldn't even go near a theater showing a national product (the hyped-up Cacá Diegues's Tieta, for example, was one such a disaster), they started to make huge lines to see Pequeno Dicionário Amoroso (Little Love Dictionary). The unpretentious first full-length movie by director Sandra Werneck is packing the houses since it premiered in January. Made for a meager $900,000, Dicionário tells an ordinary love story with humor and intelligence. It seems that couples are using the film as a therapeutic session.

In Brazil, there are close to 20,000 people in line waiting for a transplant. Fifteen thousand want a kidney that might save their lives, another 500 need a liver, and at least 400 are ready for a heart transplant, just watching and praying for a heart. To help them, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso has signed a law, making compulsory the donation of organs by the dead. That's not what exactly what the law says, but that's what it means in practice. Until now, Brazilians had to sign an authorization while alive in order for their organs to be used. From now on, if they don't have the giving spirit, they will need to get a new ID card (one of the most nightmarish experiences in the Brazilian bureaucracy) on which they will state their decision.

Seventy five percent of Brazilians say they are in favor of donating organs, but there are those who fear that the new law will encourage the traffic of organs and the premature death of people in hospitals. "Nothing could be farther from the truth," says Elias David-Neto, president of the Associação Brasileira de Transplante de Órgãos (Brazilian Association of Organ Transplants). "There is traffic only when there is a shortage of organs. With a bigger pool of supply, there is no reason for commerce."

Unable to handle all the cases of gunshot wounds caused by large-caliber weapons, the largest emergency hospital in Rio, the Souza Aguiar, abandoned its conventional treatment methods in favor of war medicine procedures. The new approach was introduced by Dr. Rodrigo Gavina, 29, the Thoracic Surgery Department chief, who noticed that 40% of the people being brought into the hospital featured wounds caused by heavy weapons. "I felt insecure when

I had to treat a man whose left lung had been perforated by an AR-15 bullet," says Gavina. More than 90% of the people hit by high-caliber weapons die before getting to the hospital. Nevertheless, this still left 1,521 people who were seen at the Souza Aguiar last year. "Our situation is just slightly better than that of Lebanon during its civil war," laments the doctor.

Rio has become a large language lab. New slang is always sprouting in its hillside favelas (slums) and among its surfers and street kids. This summer, young beachgoers have added a series of expressions to their patois. Here's some help for those ready for the hot sands of Posto 9 on Ipanema beach:

Bombação — commotion

Chegar no escritório (get to the office) — to have a private talk

É show — it's super

Estar nas trevas (to be in darkness) — to be in a bad situation

Fala, nobre (say it, noble) — tell me, bro

Falar com o Conde (talk to mayor Conde) — to use cocaine

Ficar na mezenga — to be in a bad situation

Não intruja — don't worry

Papo de Carlitos — a lie

Pega-pau (penis holder) — an idiot

Pela-saco (scrotum peeler) — a bore

Pila! — get out!

Puro suco (pure juice) — shapely girl

Qual é a da bagaça — what's new?

Vaza! — get out!

When starting her career as a model and always at the side of Pelé, her boyfriend from 1980 to 1986, Maria da Graça Meneghel, better known as Xuxa, made several visits to the U.S.

While making tests in New York for the Ford modeling agency in 1981, when she was still 18, Xuxa also posed for Brazilian photographer Luiz Alberto.

She was trying to explore all her sensuality, striking some Marilyn Monroe-like poses.