Posts Tagged ‘Brazil’
“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination”*…
A remarkable true tale from the always-illuminating folks at Planet Money…
This is a story about how an economist and his buddies tricked the people of Brazil into saving the country from rampant inflation. They had a crazy, unlikely plan, and it worked.
Twenty years ago, Brazil’s inflation rate hit 80 percent per month. At that rate, if eggs cost $1 one day, they’ll cost $2 a month later. If it keeps up for a year, they’ll cost $1,000…
“How Fake Money Saved Brazil,” from @planetmoney and @NPR.
For an even more complete telling, listen to the podcast: “How Four Drinking Buddies Saved Brazil.”
* Oscar Wilde
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As we follow the money, we might recall that it was on this date in 1941, in his State of the Union Address, the president Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined the Four Freedoms— the fundamental values of democracy: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear. These precepts were furthered by Eleanor Roosevelt, who incorporated them into the Preamble to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“History repeats itself, “the first as tragedy, then as farce”*…
The First Mass in Brazil, by Victor Meirelles, oil on canvas, 1860
On the day of Jair Bolsonaro‘s inauguration as president of Brazil, Felipe Martins, a political blogger close to the Bolsonaro family, tweeted his personal celebration of Bolsonaro’s victory: “The New Order is here. Everything is ours! Deus vult!“
Observers would be forgiven for wondering why “Deus vult”—Latin for “God wills it,” a medieval battle cry associated with the First Crusade—is reappearing in 21st-century Brazil. In recent years, the “Deus vult” line has been appropriated by the far right in Europe and the United States, and has now become a slogan for the far right in Brazil. Indeed, Martins had already explicitly linked this battle cry to the Crusades when he tweeted on the day of the second round of elections, “The new Crusade is decreed. Deus vult!” On January 3rd, Bolsonaro named Martins as presidential special adviser for international affairs.
In Bolsonaro’s Brazil, the new government and far-right groups are propagandizing a fictional version of the European Middle Ages, insisting that the period was uniformly white, patriarchal, and Christian. This reactionary revisionism presents Brazil as Portugal’s highest achievement, emphasizing a historical continuity that casts white Brazilians as the true heirs to Europe. In this way, through a genetic view of history, the far right frames Brazilian history as essentially linked to Portugal’s own imaginarily pure medieval past…
In Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil, the new government and far-right groups are propagandizing a fictional version of the European Middle Ages to legitimize their reactionary agenda: “Why the Brazilian Far Right Loves the European Middle Ages.”
Pair with this piece on Bolsonaro’s first 53 days.
* Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon
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As we resist (opportunistic) revisionism, we might recall that it was on this date in 303 that Roman emperor Diocletian orders the destruction of the Christian church in Nicomedia, beginning eight years of Diocletianic Persecution, the last and most severe persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire.
“The Christian Martyrs’ Last Prayer,” by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1883)
230 years later, on this date in 532, Byzantine emperor Justinian I ordered the building of a new Orthodox Christian basilica in Constantinople – the temple that became the Hagia Sophia.
Show me the money…
Throughout history, artists have tended to cluster around centers of power and wealth… which is simply to observe that they’ve honored Willie Sutton’s wisdom: “that’s where the money is”; they’ve set up their easels (or pianos or footlights or whatever) where they can find patrons and customers. But those centers of cultural gravity tend to be expensive places to live– increasingly, so expensive that aspiring artists can’t even afford a garret in which to starve. E.g., aspiring artists who want to join the community that migrated from Greenwich Village to Soho to Tribeca, then to Brooklyn, and on to Hoboken are beginning to find even that Jersey shore too pricey…
At the same time, new centers of wealth and power are emerging around the world, and with them, new communities of artists and performers. Indeed, as Richard Florida and others suggest, there’s a symbiotic relationship between the growth of a “Creative Class” in a community and that community’s ability to innovate and succeed commercially. A rich artistic and cultural life doesn’t assure a city’s commercial success, but its absence is a pretty good indicator of commercial mediocrity (or worse).
So one indicator of areas that are contenders to be “the next hot region” is the sprouting of the arts there. Consider, for example…
Brazil’s most creative neighborhood is far from the beaches of Rio, in loud and brash São Paulo, South America’s answer for New York City. And you can expect one thing from this loud, raw urban metropolis — a lot of really colorful, politically-charged street art. Large neon pieces of work show up everywhere from dilapidated buildings to enormous billboards, and in the ultimate nod to creativity, esteemed museum MuBE, the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture, hosted actual gallery space for some of São Paulo’s most well-known graffiti artists to promote their work. Unlike certain places, this is a city that fosters young talent.
If digital is your medium, you won’t find a better place to be right now than Jakarta. Indonesia has more Facebook users than Canada has people, and internet cafes are a daily visit. Investors from the West have their eye on mobile, broadcasting and start-ups, all growing trends across the country that make it easy for youngsters to take to their own businesses. Creative collectives like Askara, a bookstore where the hip commune, Serrum, a community for arts education, and Kampong Segart, a student art union, give the space and inspiration for this new wave of Indonesian trend makers.
Visit six other candidate cities– including two, Macao and Las Vegas, that are better known for shilling than selling– at Flavorwire’s “The Best Cities for Young Artists.”
As we get in touch with our inner expatriate, we might wish an elegantly-laid out and well-groomed Happy Birthday to Frederick Law Olmsted; he was born on this date in 1822. A journalist, social critic, public administrator, Olmsted is best remembered as the greatest American landscape architect of the 19th century. While the title “Father of American Landscape Architecture” probably belongs to Andrew Jackson Downing, Olmsted was unquestionably the primary agent of the discipline’s growth and adoption. Olmsted’s most famous commission was Central Park in New York; but he also designed city parks in St. Louis, Boston, and many other cities; the grounds around the Capitol in Washington, D.C.; the Niagra Reservation, one the countries first planned communities; the master plans for universities including UC-Berkley and Stanford (among other universities); and private estates like George Vanderbilt’s Biltmore House in Asheville.
Olmsted at Biltmore House, by frequent house-guest John Singer Sargent (source)
What’s in a (sur)name?…
From National Geographic:
for larger, interactive version, click on the image above, or here
A new view of the United States based on the distribution of common last names shows centuries of history and echoes some of America’s great immigration sagas. To compile this data, geographers at University College London used phone directories to find the predominant surnames in each state. Software then identified the probable provenances of the 181 names that emerged.
Many of these names came from Great Britain, reflecting the long head start the British had over many other settlers. The low diversity of names in parts of the British Isles also had an impact. Williams, for example, was a common name among Welsh immigrants—and is still among the top names in many American states.
But that’s not the only factor. Slaves often took their owners’ names, so about one in five Americans now named Smith are African American. In addition, many newcomers’ names were anglicized to ease assimilation. The map’s scale matters too. “If we did a map of New York like this,” says project member James Cheshire, “the diversity would be phenomenal”—a testament to that city’s role as a once-and-present gateway to America.
As we ruminate on roots, we might recall that it was on this date in 1654 that the Portuguese issued the Capitulation Protocol, giving Jewish and Dutch settlers three months to leave Brazil. Approximately 150 Jewish families of Portuguese descent fled the Brazilian city of Recife, in the state of Pernambuco. By September, twenty-three of these refugees had established the first community of Jews in New Amsterdam (now, of course, New York City).
These “Sephardim” (Jews of Spanish-Portuguese extraction) had followed a tortured path. In December 1496, following Ferdinand and Isabella’s Spanish example, King Manuel I of Portugal had expelled all Jews from Portugal, driving many to flee to more tolerant Holland. From there, some migrated to Pernambuco, a colony of the Dutch West India Company in modern-day Brazil. That community flourished until the Dutch eventually surrendered Pernambuco to the Portuguese– and the Sephardim were again forced to flee.
After being driven ashore in Jamaica by Spanish ships, twenty-three members of the community, along with a group of Dutch Calvinists, made their way to New Netherland (New York)– another colony run by the Dutch West India Company. Even then, the trials were not past: Peter Stuyvesant governor of New Netherland, feared that the indigent newcomers would burden the colony; but when he motioned to eject the Jewish newcomers, the Company (many of the shareholders of which were Jewish) refused his petition… and the wanderers found a home.
Accuratissima Brasiliæ tabula
[Inset of Pernambuco.]
by Hendrik Hondius, 1630
(source: Library of Congress)
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