Ads Recipe for Success
Their style of advertising has been compared to the controversial campaigns of Italian clothing maker Benetton. Marcos Silveira, 42, and Sérgio Eduardo de Paula, 38, the creators of ad agency Doctor, don't think this is a fair comparison, however. "We adopt an upbeat tone while Benetton campaigns, albeit winners, are somber," comments Silveira.
Despite being less than one year old, Doctor has already won 22 medals from respected Prêmio Colunistas. A panel of experts has considered it Rio's best and Brazil's fifth most creative ad agency (losing only to four companies from São Paulo that are in the hands of multinationals).
One thing they don't want is to create a "cute" campaign. "Our aim is to provoke impact," says Silveira. In a recent billboard for Ele e Ela, a for-men publication, they poked fun at mighty Playboy, the main competition. "Shut up, Magda," said the copy for the ad, which exhibited a radiantly naked Solange Gomes, the Ela e Ela covergirl. It happens that Marisa Orth, a TV actress who plays a character called Magda in the comedy show "Sai de Baixo" (Get Off There), was on Playboy's cover at the time. The ad's punch line is the same phrase that is continually directed to Marisa Orth on the show. In another memorable campaign, Doctor used Italian Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto's famous painting, the Last Supper, to change the popular image of a restaurant called Porcão (Big Pig).
Silveira and de Paula became celebrities in the ad industry for their controversial and erotically-charged campaign for DuLoren, a lingerie company, showing lingerie-clad women kissing each other, a woman judge seducing a prisoner, and exhibitionist nuns. However, they are not all shocking, all the time. They can also be subtle, as in a piece for Rio's daily Jornal do Brasil, a respected newspaper that is barely surviving the competition with powerful O Globo. In this case the ad showed two headlines from the papers for the same day and about the same subject.
The Jornal do Brasil headline says: "Romário is back on the national team." The one from O Globo reads: "Zagalo says that Romário has lobby." In a subhead O Globo assures that soccer player extraordinaire Romário was off the national team. The whole country would soon know that JB was right. So, the coup de grâce in this ad worked perfectly, with this simple statement: "When in doubt, read JB".
Crime The Bandit We Love Convicted American rapist Caryl Chessman, the Red Light Bandit, became famous in the '40s for robbing women and then abducting and forcing them to perform sexual acts. His epithet came from his habit of flashing a red light—similar to those used on police cars—on his victims' faces. Convicted under California's Little Lindbergh law, Chessman was sentenced to death, but through personally conducted appeals he was able to stay his execution for 12 years until 1960 when he died in the gas chamber. His address in San Quentin, Cell 245, Death Row, became known worldwide after he wrote a book using it as the title.
The Brazilian Red Light Bandit (Bandido da Luz Vermelha), released after 30 years in prison, has been all over the news in Brazil these days. Apart the same nickname, both criminals appear to have nothing else in common. The Brazilian doesn't have a developed intellect, having only completed the third grade. João Acácio Pereira da Costa was initially called Homem-Macaco (Monkey-Man) by police, but reporters changed it after a victim reported that he had entered her house at night with a flashlight and then had kissed her hand before leaving. Vain to the extreme, after seeing reports of his robbery as "Assault the American Way", Luz Vermelha bought a red bulb for his flashlight.
"I was inspired by the journalists," he told daily paper Última Hora in 1968. "I've done other burglaries using a red-light. The newspapers were the ones that gave me the idea of becoming the Luz Vermelha."
Condemned to 351 years in prison for 88 crimes, including four murders, seven murder attempts, several rapes and assaults, Luz—that's how he wants to be called now—benefited from the new 1985 constitution, which limits prison terms to a maximum of 30 years. Toothless, disheveled, holding a Bible, and totally incoherent, João Acácio, who is 55 years old now, is living in Joinville, state of Santa Catarina, with his uncle, 81, the same man who took him and his brother home as a child. His father died of tuberculosis when he was eight years old and his mother abandoned him soon after that.
It is hard to say why Luz Vermelha has become a legend and Brazil's most notorious contemporary outlaw. He was even the subject of Rogério Sganzerla's very successful movie O Bandido da Luz Vermelha, released in 1968, just one year after the criminal was captured. At 17 he was already known by the police in Joinville for the three dozen or so bicycles he had stolen. At 18 he was jailed for stealing a Jeep. He escaped from prison and moved to São Paulo in 1963, at age 21.
Over four years he terrorized a city and was condemned to a term that should have kept him behind bars for many lives. His reign was short. He wasn't particularly clever or vicious—although convicted for four murders—and he was involved in a little more than 100 burglaries and robberies.
Seven of his 30 years in detention were spent in lunatic asylums. Luz Vermelha is obsessed by the Statue of Liberty and talks frequently about the subject, according to his lawyer José Luiz Pereira. Recently, when the prosecution was able to get an injunction so he could be transferred to a prison-hospital, alleging that he was a danger to society and himself, the Brazilian media screamed foul. Weekly newsmagazine Isto É, for example, wrote: "The law says: he who stays in jail for 30 yeas straight has to be released, it doesn't matter if he has been condemned to an eternity."
João Acácio ended being released on August 26, three days later than scheduled. The same media then gave the convicted murderer the star treatment when he was finally let go. Every one of his steps outside the prison was described in detail: his words, what he ate, the visit to three whorehouses where he joked with the working ladies but didn't go to bed with anyone, and the near brawl that ensued after a male fan in the brothel tried to kiss him.
Loquacious, at times he can just stop talking, becoming suddenly mute. One of his dreams, he said, was buying a Chrysler Simca Chambord, a luxury car from the period when he was incarcerated. Despite all of his Don Juan aura and convictions for rape, weekly magazine Veja wrote that Luz never had a girlfriend, ignored the hundreds of marriage proposals he got while in prison and ended up falling in love with cook Bernardino Marques, a male inmate.
Even as a youngster, Luz Vermelha already presented a series of symptoms of disturbed personality. He liked to dress as a tropical cowboy wearing colorful pants, flowery shirts, hat, boots, and spurs. He sometimes presented himself as a Gaúcho (from Rio Grande do Sul) farmer, sometimes as a Paulista (from São Paulo) industrialist. He also liked to flash his opulence, conspicuously leaving money hanging halfway out of his pockets.
Always acting alone, he preferred the thrill of an inhabited house, choosing to rob during the night instead of on weekends. He would usually cut the electricity to the house. Legend has it that he would become a Don Juan when there was only a lady in the house and that he would end up raping the woman.
In one of his exploits, after killing businessman Jean von Christian Szarazpatak in June 1967—and he did this to prove that he was still on the loose after police caught a man who they claimed to be Luz Vermelha—he put on his victim's clothes and left the house by the front door. The police had surrounded the place after being called by neighbors who had heard the shooting, but did nothing to stop him. Another of his victims was 19-year-old student Walter Bedran. And once Luz killed a worker just because he did not like the way he stared at him.
Soon after leaving prison, Luz, through his lawyer, offered the press a chance to make a photographic essay of himself naked. It was one of his dreams, his attorney said. A Santa Catarina newspaper took some pictures of him in the buff, but didn't have the nerve to publish them. No one else has shown any interest.
On the first night in his new home, Luz scared his hosts. When his uncle woke up at 6 AM, he had disappeared. Soon after, he was brought back by a friendly driver. "I feel like a free butterfly," he explained. He had left to walk all over the city. "Everybody loves me," he concluded quite content.
Crime Double Take Two kidnappings shook Brazil in September. In both cases a child was taken by the kidnappers. Ives Yossiaki Ota, 8, son of a businessman, was doing his homework at home in São Paulo when he was abducted. Cleuci Meirelles de Oliveira, 12, daughter of a Brasília politician and businessman, was arriving at school when three hood-covered kidnappers took her from a car being driven by a security man.
Ives's kidnappers killed the boy when he recognized them. Only after that did they start negotiating for an initial $800,000 ransom. Cleuci's hiding place was stormed by police while the abductors were trying to get $5 million from her father, Luiz Estêvão de Oliveira. More alarming than anything was the finding that in both cases the kidnappings had been perpetrated by military policemen.
Kidnapping used to be more common in Brazil. In Rio, which in 1995 had 109 cases of abduction, the number of kidnappings fell to 73 in 1996 and totaled only 38 at the end of August this year. In São Paulo, though, the problem is growing. The number of abductions increased from nine in 1995 to 12 last year, with 15 more cases this year by the end of August. With the richer families hiring security and taking more precautions, kidnappers have started choosing their victims among the upper-middle-class and the middle-class.
Forbidden Fruit American diplomats in Brazil were recently deprived of a series of vegetables and fruits brought from the U.S. when officials from the Brazilian Agriculture Ministry decided to incinerate the perishable goods. They were all inside a U.S. Air Force C-141, which at least once a month takes three tons in products—from water to disposable diapers, toilet paper, sanitary napkins and even cat food—to the American diplomats exiled in Brazil.
The reason for the search-and-destroy mission is a Brazilian law requiring that non-industrialized products be accompanied by a phytosanitary certificate when entering the country. According to weekly newsmagazine Veja, among the incinerated products were boxes of lettuce, tomato, radishes, and lemons. There were also several bags of asparagus, corn, onion, and broccoli. Apparently no other country among the 96 with diplomatic representation in Brazil imports its own broccoli. "The only thing Americans don't import is oxygen," says a Brazilian diplomat. "But they would if they could."
McGrammar In an experience that generated plenty of good will and free publicity in the media, the McDonald's restaurant chain in Brazil decided to include some notions of Portuguese in the ingredients of its Big Mac. The company launched an institutional TV campaign which uses humor to correct some frequent grammar mistakes. "Aqui falta dois Big Macs" (Two Big Macs is missing) says a father in one of the spots. "This family does not agree on anything," says Pasquale Cipro Neto, the star of the commercial, before showing how to say it right: "Aqui faltam dois Big Macs." Cipro Neto, a Portuguese teacher, is already known on TV from a program on educational television, TV Cultura, called Nossa Língua Portuguesa (Our Portuguese Language). Regarding his $50,000 fee, he is donating most of it to Fundação Padre Anchieta, the cash-strapped foundation that finances TV Cultura. Does he love Big Macs? "A sandwich only when prepared by my wife," he confesses.
Reigning Fear A study recently released by the Brazilian Movimento Nacional de Direitos Humanos (National Movement for Human Rights) shows that a mere 7.44 percent of all murder cases in Brazil put the accused in prison. This percentage is even lower when the people indicted are drug traffickers, policemen, and hired killers. Mistrust of justice and the lack of protection for witnesses are in large part responsible for this situation.
To address this problem, the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration is introducing a bill in congress to create the Program of Protection for Witnesses and Victims. Inspired by similar strategies in Italy and the United States, though much more modest in scope, the law would guarantee police protection for two years to people who serve as witnesses in crimes involving police or organized crime. Under some circumstances the individual being threatened might be moved to a different city and receive some monetary aid until he gets a job.
The announcement has been received with skepticism in many circles. In an interview with weekly magazine Isto É, Marco Antônio Ferreira Lima, a prosecutor in São Paulo who received death threats from police officers, doubts that the new legislation will change anything: "If the State is not able to protect its own representatives, how can it think it can protect victims and witnesses?"
The Mouse That Roared Now the world can know. The Brazilian submarine Tamoio has sunk a NATO aircraft carrier, the Príncipe Astúrias, from the Spanish Navy. The episode occurred in May, but only now has the Brazilian Navy made public the top-secret information. It's true that the sinking was only simulated, occurring as part of the Link Seas Operation war games, but the action was nevertheless important. Invited to participate in the naval exercises, Brazil was expected to be a mere decorative figure since the country's Armed Forces are acutely underfunded. Many European nations could not believe that Brazil had conventional submarines, and much less that they are currently developing their own nuclear submarine in Iperó, state of São Paulo.
Helping the Brazilian effort—450 Brazilian men participated in the maneuvers—were other national war vessels such as corvette Júlio de Noronha and frigate União, which were able to neutralize the ultrasophisticated radars of NATO's fleet. Considering this, it is now expected that the Brazilian Navy will once again be invited when it is time for NATO's 1998 war games.
Messy Fun Forró, the supercharged northeastern ball that according to legend comes from the English expression "for all", has become all the rage in the south of Brazil. Forró is not a musical genre but a party in which a diversity of rhythms is allowed and encouraged, including baião, coco, frevo, xaxado, and xote. Traditional forró balls held in Rio and São Paulo for the large northeastern migrant community have seen a growing invasion by local youngsters drawn by the energy of these parties and the fact that the couples have to dance cheek to cheek.
Several youth clubs are reserving one night a week for the novelty. In places like São Paulo's Projeto Equilíbrio, Friday, forró night, has become the week's busiest party, with close to 1,000 people packing the house for the so-called bailão (big ball). By the way, according to Brazilian music historian José Ramos Tinhorão, forró is just an abbreviation for forrobodó, a word meaning mess, confusion. Something forró certainly is.
Full of Teeth What moved President Fernando Henrique Cardoso is making Brazilians chuckle. Flying dentures, chickens with dentures, and all kinds of jokes involving toothless and dental prostheses have plastered the Brazilian media since Cardoso announced that dentures were the new symbol for the Real, his economic strategy to fight inflation and improve the economy.
"In the old days, people were saying that chicken was the hero of Real, afterwards it was yogurt's turn, but now I think this place belongs to the denture," said the President. "Go see the poor getting teeth. This is not a laughing matter, this is the truth, this is a huge step forward, the fact that the person can take care of himself. This is the Real plan and this moves me."
Cardoso revealed later that he discovered the relationship between his economic plan and dentures when he met Joaquim, the housekeeper on his ranch, flashing a big smile with brand new teeth. This was an old dream of his, he told the President.
The Associação Brasileira de Odontologia (Brazilian Odontological Association) maintains that 80 percent of the 1.4 million toothless Brazilians are already wearing dentures. And dentists and prosthodontists have noticed a decline, not an increase, in the number of people ordering dentures in the last year or so.
Curiously, FHC's aides had suggested that he use the present fever in house construction as the new symbol for the Real, since the number of new buildings has increased by 10 percent since the beginning of the year. But the image of a smiling denture seemed more appealing to the President.
A Second Chance? Back in Brazil after a self-imposed exile in Miami, former President Fernando Collor de Mello has been extremely busy trying to put his political career back on track. He has been denied political rights and is forbidden by congress from seeking any elective post until the year 2000 on the grounds of corruption while serving the presidency. Collor was elected in 1989 on an anti-corruption platform. The former President, who resigned in 1992, has now appealed to the Supreme Court to have his rights reinstated so that he may run in the 1998 national elections.
"Fernando Collor has been accused of everything imaginable, but nothing has ever been proved against him," said Rony Curvelo, the ex-President's spokesman. "I am sure that if his political rights are restored, there is a good chance he will run in the 1998 elections, although I am not at liberty to say for what office."
Collor has hinted in several recent interviews that he would like another chance to run the country. Brazilians will be going to the polls in October 1998 to choose governors and congressmen, as well as the president.
If presidential elections were held today, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the current president and favored candidate for the presidency, would come in first, but not with enough votes to avoid a runoff.
To guarantee the presidency in the first round, Cardoso would need more than 50 percent of the votes. A recent survey by DataFolha showed that the President would get from 34 percent to 37 percent of the votes, depending on who his opponents are. This despite the fact that Cardoso's popularity has risen in the past few months. In June, 39 percent of the respondents said that his administration was very good, while that number rose to 43 percent by mid-September.
Tough Love Sporting red cards inspired by those used by soccer referees to expel unruly players, tens of thousands of Brazilians took to the streets on September 7, Brazil's Independence Day. They were all participating in the "Cry of the Excluded", a protest action organized by the Catholic Church together with other activist organizations such as the MST (Movimento dos Sem Terra—Landless Movement) and CUT (Central Única de Trabalhadores—Unified Workers Federation).
Some 800 towns across the country joined in the movement, but the action did not always draw crowds. In Florianópolis, capital of Santa Catarina, for example, no more than 500 people participated. The most expressive concentration occurred in Aparecida do Norte, site of the largest Marian shrine in Brazil, a place that is normally packed on weekends and holidays.
Talking to a crowd of 150,000 people in Aparecida, Bishop Angélico Sândalo Bernardino scolded the government: "Authorities bend their knees before the golden calf, smiling to the nation, saving currency and bankers while millions of people lose their employment and are crushed under the ruins of the bankrupt public health and educational systems. The land given by God for the use and ownership of all has been taken over by a few who have turned it into an object of negotiation and speculation and not as something to be used for planting and for living on."
And he went on: "The nation assists, scandalized, in acts such as the buying and selling of votes and other spurious bargains. The justice system continues to serve only the rich and powerful. With our presence here we are saying 'enough' to the neo-liberal wave responsible for the unemployment, hunger and despair of so many people. We want to say 'enough' to corruption, impunity and the lack of a firm political will to bring about a solution of the social problems which afflict our people."
We Are Game Brazil has started its uphill battle to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Brazilian Foreign Minister Luiz Felipe Lampreia launched Brazil's official candidacy to the still-to-be-created post during the opening session of the U.N. General Assembly on September 22. Brazil wants to represent Latin America and the Caribbean, but it only has the backing of Chile in the region. Argentina's President, Carlos Menem, has irritated the Brazilian government by recently defending a rotating system among the Latin American countries.
Lampreia said that Brazil was "willing to accept the responsibilities of permanent membership if called upon by the international community to do so." Addressing the Argentinean position, the Brazilian minister said in his U.N. speech: "The identification of the new permanent members must be an exercise of realism and pragmatism." And responding to U.S. proposals that the new partners be denied veto power, the foreign minister declared: "We must not create a third or fourth category of members" which would weaken the power of Third World countries in the United Nations. Lampreia stressed Brazil's repudiation of "all discrimination in the conception or assignment of new seats."
The Security Council now has five permanent members: United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom. Most U.S. congressmen are apparently against new council membership and would not ratify any treaty that would create new U.N. members with veto power.
White Coup Pope John Paul II has once again shown that he puts his veto pen where his mouth is. Angry at the Society of St. Paul's publishing company for releasing a book on sexuality by a renowned Brazilian educator, he decided to name people he trusts as temporary administrators in Rome, as well as in Brazil where the publishing house is known as Paulinas. The sinful book: Educação Sexual na Escola (Sexual Education in School), which was written by Maria Helena Matarazzo.
Backtracking It was a first in the 109-year-old Brazilian republic. President Fernando Henrique Cardoso went back on a previous veto and asked congressmen to override his decision. The issue in question is sterilization offered by the government as an option for those repeatedly returning to public clinics for family planning. Apparently, without reading the bill but advised by the Health ministry, Cardoso, had opposed legislation offering vasectomies and tubal ligation as a method of birth control.
The new law should favor the poorest people since sterilization is already a common practice in Brazil. According to a study by Universidade de Campinas, 40 percent of all Brazilian women between the ages of 16 and 49 have had ligations. The IBGE (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística—Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) has found that in the northern area of the country, 24 percent of young women between the ages of 15 and 24 have had a tubal ligation in the hospital while giving birth. The practice is so sought after that many politicians pay for the procedure in exchange for votes. "With legalization of sterilization, all this immorality will finally come to an end," says José Aristodemo Pinotti, a doctor, politician, and activist for family planning.
Double Pleasure The more he changes the more he stays the same. What good news for the fans of writer Rubem Fonseca, who are getting their favorite author on a double billing. His latest release comes in a box with two books: the novel E do Meio do Mundo Prostituto Só Amores Guardei ao Meu Charuto (And From Amid the Prostitute World I Only Kept Love to My Cigar), and Histórias de Amor (Love Stories), a selection of short stories.
Fonseca has always been considered better with the shorter than longer tales, and this last production is no exception. Curiously enough, two of the most famous characters of his short stories get together in the new novel. They are Gustavo Flávio, the writer from "Bufo & Spalanzani," and Mandrake, the attorney from "A Grande Arte" (The Big Art).
As usual, Fonseca's smoke-filled world is populated by corrupt characters, venal policemen and cold-blooded assassins. Using this same recipe in the past, the reclusive former police officer and enfant terrible of national literature has produced what some consider the best-ever short story in Brazilian literature: "Feliz Ano Novo" (Happy New Year).
Genius Touch His paintings had become too repetitive and banal, the critics said, and for more than a decade hardly anybody was talking about him. But when the diminutive Japanese but naturalized Brazilian Manabu Mabe, 73, died on September 22 some weeks after a kidney transplant in São Paulo, the media started to talk again about how great he was.
Born on September 14, 1924, in the town of Kumamoto, Japan, Mabe arrived in Brazil at the age of ten. His immigrant parents settled on a coffee plantation in Lins in the interior of São Paulo state. Mabe worked on the plantation, where in the middle of the coffee trees this autodidact started his first painting atelier. When he couldn't find a proper canvas, a coffee bean sack had to do.
It was in 1956 that Mabe started his abstract phase, which earned him the most respect and admiration. In 1959 he won the São Paulo Fifth Bienal's Grand Prize. He had to rush to get his Brazilian citizenship so he could accept the award. The painter received more than 80 awards, including one from the Paris Biennial. Until the end, this exuberant and cheerful artist was never comfortable speaking Portuguese.
He leaves behind some 3,000 paintings. The most valuable, painted between 1955 and 1967, are worth up to $120,000, the best price paid for contemporary Brazilian paintings. One third of this work has been taken abroad, mostly to Japan and the United States.
In-Fighting The PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores—Workers' Party) has lost one of its brightest stars, Luíza Erundina, former mayor of São Paulo and ex-minister during Itamar Franco's presidency. The fiery politician, one of PT's founders, had been clashing with other leaders of the party for some time. The decision to leave PT was made, she said, in response to the criticism she received from the so-called Shiite wing of the party during her 1996 campaign to retake São Paulo's City Hall.
The last few weeks—before the October 3 deadline for those wishing to change parties to run for the October 1998 elections—have seen a busy party realignment of politicians. Besides Erundina, who opted for the PSB (Partido Socialista Brasileiro—Brazilian Socialist Party), Paraná governor Jaime Lerner also changed party, provoking a big commotion. He moved from the PDT to the PFL (Partido da Frente Liberal—Party of the Liberal Front), a party from the right that has allied itself with the current liberal socialist administration.
Much Better If the sheer number of laws and hours dedicated to Congress were the main gauge of democracy in action, Brazil would have a more perfect democracy than that of the United States. Walder de Góes e Consultores Associados put the numbers together and found out that last year the Brazilian House of Representatives (the Câmara dos Deputados) had 296 sessions, more than double the 140 held by the Yankee legislative corps. And this is just the beginning.
While the lazy American senators got together only 150 times during the whole year, their Brazilian colleagues met 260 times. And did you know that the Brazilian deputados approved 264 new laws in 1996 compared to a mere 192 from the American House of Representatives? While the U.S. senators dished up 53 new laws, the Brazilians put them to shame, inscribing 264 new laws on the books. The profusion of legislation, concludes the study, means that many wrongs are being righted.
Magic Bean An extract of guandu, a wild bean from Brazil, has revealed great potential in curing diabetes and tests with humans should start in a few weeks. Given to mice by a research team from Universidade de São Paulo (USP) in Piracicaba, the substance was able to reduce the levels of glucose in their blood from 400mg/dl to 92mg/dl. A glucose level from 80 mg/dl to 100 mg/dl is considered normal. The guandu extract, made with the vegetable when still green, also contributed to lowering the mice's cholesterol level. There are an estimated 7 million Brazilians who suffer from diabetes, half of which do not know they have the disease.
Hot Waters Known worldwide for its piracy of audio and videotapes, pharmaceutical products, and software, Brazil is also being recognized for the number of its real pirates, those who attack and sack ships. In its list of pirate-infested seas, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) cites the coast of Brazil as third worst, with 16 cases of piracy in the first semester of 1996, losing out only to the south of China (73 cases) and West Africa (19 cases).
Experts on the subject say that Brazil had many more than 16 episodes of piracy in the first six months of the year. "The numbers we have are all but fictitious," said Celso Paes Leme from Centro Nacional de Navegação Transatlântica (National Center of Transatlantic Navigation) in an interview with weekly magazine Manchete. In the Port of Santos alone, among 49 Brazilian ports, there were 17 cases of piracy registered by the federal police. Many more cases, however, go unreported due to the bureaucracy involved. To make a report of piracy to Brazilian authorities, ships must stay anchored several days, paying a $25,000 daily fee while the legal process drags on.
Pirates, generally using ultrafast boats, can act with impunity. In Rio, the federals in charge of the port don't even have a row boat. Foreign governments have been trying to help, but with very little luck. Rio received a $500,000 boat as a gift from Germany, but the donation was transferred to the port of Santos, where the situation seems to be even worse. Completely in the dark, authorities have been asking themselves if the pirates are not foreigners attracted by the total impunity and ease with which they can do their work.
Fast Indigestion The spread of the popular by-the-kilogram plates which feature a variety of choices at inviting prices (but on the other hand fuel totally unrealistic expectations), are killing the American fast-food industry in Brazil. An exception to this is the McDonald's chain, which continues to thrive and has become the seventh largest operation of the food conglomerate among the 89 countries where it has set up kitchen.
Subway Sandwiches entered Brazil in 1994 with ambitious plans. Six of its 57 restaurants closed their doors this year, and some, to survive—supreme heresy—are selling coxinha (fried mashed potatoes with chicken filling) and chicken soup. The whole chain has been put up for sale.
Kentucky Fried Chicken arrived in 1992 and planned to open 300 stores. Only 23 were opened and most of them will be closed soon. There will only be eight left, all in major shopping malls. Pizza Hut, which like KFC belongs to Pepsi, has been in Brazil since 1989. In April, all 18 restaurants of the chain in Rio were closed. The prospect for the 134 stores remaining is not rosy. Domino's, another pizza multinational, lost a lot of money in Brazil before its sinking.
Tune In Their life refrain has been a phrase from one of their songs: "To burn everything till the last butt." They have been declared Public Enemy Number 1 by the police and are forbidden to present themselves in the state of Espírito Santo and in the federal capital Brasília, as well as the cities of Salvador and Curitiba. They are Marcelo D2, Rafael, Bacalhau (Codfish), and Formigão (Big Ant), Rio's defying hip-hop band Planet Hemp.
They seem to relish the ban, and persecution has apparently helped sales. Their second CD—Os Cães Ladram Mas a Caravana Não Pára (The Dogs Bark But the Caravan Doesn't Stop)— is out now, and as on the first album, the band's main focus is the promotion of marijuana. They are proud of their bête noire status. "We are here to throw logs on the fire and make things happen," says D2, the group's lyricist and crooner, who comes from the favela (shantytown) and was a drug trafficker at age 14. Their ultimate goal is to have pot legalized in Brazil.
The band becomes very amused talking about all the times police have searched them, once even with sniffing dogs, trying to find the product they praise and say they use. All police efforts to put them in jail, however, have been in vain.
Se segura na cadeira Planet Hemp na área Se Liga
Marcelo D2
É bom ficar ligado que o gatilho não falha
O som é chapado e o lero vai na lata
Preste atenção, mermão, isso é ouro não é prata
Não faça o que eu faço, faça o que eu digo
Então se liga, se liga que aqui não ganha no grito
O nome é Marcelo, vulgo D2
O que eu tenho pra falar eu falo agora
Não tem caô, não vou deixar pra depois
Então se liga, na minha só cola sangue bom
Mantenha o respeito e só o que atinge é o som.Já disse e digo de novo, que o gatilho não falha
Planet Hemp, cumpadi, invadindo a sua área
É um, dois, três
O meu cartucho eu descarrego de uma vez
A mente é a arma, a voz é a bala
Sai tudo de uma vez, não tem parada errada
Não cola na minha, o flagrante já tá na mente
Não percebeu, cumpadi? Aqui é diferente.
Mas se eu tô com os camaradas então tá tudo tranqüilo
É bom ficar ligado e ver quem corre perigo.
Se eu saio na balada, o que eu quero é paz
Vamos direto ao assunto, deixa de leva e traz
Se você ainda não conhece eu vou apresentar
Esquadrilha da Fumaça, Planet Hemp
Não cola na minha, o flagrante já tá na mente
Não percebeu a fumaça? Então se liga,
Planet Hemp, presente.Hold on to your chair Planet Hemp's in the area Turn on
It's good to be on 'cause the trigger does not fail
The sound is full blast and the talk goes in your face
Pay attention, bro, this is gold and not silver
Don't do what I do, do what I say
Turn on then turn on 'cause you don't win by screaming
The name is Marcelo, AKA D2
What I have to tell you I will say now
There is no lie I am not leaving it for later
Turn on then, I will deal only with cool dudes
Maintain respect and all that will reach you will be the sound.I've told and I'm telling again that the trigger does not fail
Planet Hemp, buddy, invading your area
It's one, two, three
My cartridge I unload at once
The mind is the weapon, the voice is the bullet
It gets off all at once, there is no wrong stop
Don't stick to me, the conviction is already in the mind
Don't you get it buddy? Here is different.
But I am with my buddies and all's cool
It's good to be on and see who is in danger
If I leave in a zip, all I want is peace
Cut to the chase, stop the he-said-so
If you still don't know, I will present you
Smoke Squadron, Planet Hemp
Don't stick to me, the conviction is already in the mind
Didn't you notice the smoke? Then turn on,
Planet Hemp present
Fashion Priceless Front
Posing as Eve, with only a snake to cover her sculptural body, Brazilian model Luciana Gimenez, 24, has been making Londoners and Germans fall to temptation. Her naked anatomy has been plastered on billboards in the London subway, promoting goods for the Morgan store chain. Accompanied by her friendly boa constrictor, she has also been featured on the cover of German magazines.
Gimenez's main asset seems to be her natural, voluminous, and firm breasts, which have been praised by experts like Bella Freund and the late-Gianni Versace. So valuable are her round, ripe, gravity-defying boobs that she has insured them for a respectable $160,000. Her European success has made her a star in Brazil and she was recently invited as a top model to show her wares at Rio's Barra Shopping Style Week. Gimenez is using the occasion for a little vacation in her homeland.
