Brazil Blog #2
Yesterday Ray and I left Sao Paulo and came to Belo Horizonte. This is the city where I served my mission almost 5 years ago and it is good to be back. The city is the 3rd largest in Brazil, but still small enough to feel like I can put my finger on it and know my way around a bit. The friend with whom we are stayed, Schirlei, was kind enough to let us borrow her a car a bit last night, so we cruised around BH for a while. We stopped by McDonald´s (which I *never* eat when I´m in the states) and had a McDuplo — the double-patty burger — with fries and guarana. McDonald´s was the coolest place we could find to hang out — not by our opinion, but theirs — and there were indeed dozens of high school and college aged kids there.
I´ve seen so much while I´ve been in Brazil, and I wish I could bring it back so you´d all know what it´s like. I wish I could take pictures of everything I see. There are academic projects in progress around the country with this goal — I think Microsoft´s research lab has a fellow working on this — and I believe that will be nice. I don´t know if that will mean wearing glasses with a tiny embedded camera, or what, but the day I can take pictures of what I see without any overhead will be a cool day. It´s just not convenient (or safe here) to bring a camera with me everywhere I go and snap pictures of everything I see.
Anyway, my point is that there are so many things here that you wouldn´t know exist because they don´t exist in the middle-class American life. And though I´ve seen it before, it´s easy to forget after you leave.
For instance, the middle class here is much, much less affluent than the middle class of America. That might be obvious to most people, but being here reminds you how nice life is in the U.S. The average American — or even the college-aged “poor student” has much, much in the way of comforts than the middle class here. Cellular phones, Internet access, telephone service, microwave ovens and washing machines, for instance, are all things they have here. Brazil isn´t all jungle with “backwards” people. Brazilian know what all these things are, and the upper-class has them, but the middle-class often doesn´t have these things and when they do, they are expensive and not commodities like we consider them.
I´m reminded of the Heckscher-Ohlin theorem that I learned in Econ 110 and Econ 257 — that countries, for instance, with a relative advantage in manual labor will specialize in products and services that are labor-intensive. That´s definitely the case in Brazil. Manual labor is so cheap that it makes for a different economy than in the U.S., for instance. Everything is available for delivery — pizza, prescription drugs, bottled water. Most of the time, the deliverymen ride motorcycles outfitted with equipment to hold pizzas, water bottles, etc. Cars are expensive, but labor is not, so motorcycles fill the streets like flies. At big intersections, it´s not uncommon to see 8 or 10 motorcycle riders (deliverers, with goods) who have come to the front of the intersection between all the cars to wait for the light to turn green. At small intersections they don´t wait for the light to turn green.
When building large buildings (even 20 story apartment buildings) labor is the dominant ingredient. They don´t use large, steel beams put in place by cranes, but rather, brick upon brick laid by an army of pedreiros.
There is strong anti-American sentiment here. Even our friends whom we´ve stayed with in Sao Paulo and here in BH dislike President Bush. I prefer not to bring it up to much, but we´ve talked a little bit about the reasons behind Bush´s decisions. The U.S. is in a unique position of being the enemy of many nations, so when we act unilaterally, it´s hard for others to understand what we´ve done and appreciation the difficult decisions our leaders have to make. I guess I can´t expect that everyone will perfect understand our rationale for going to Iraq.
When we arrived at the airport in Sao Paulo, we had to go through a second immigration line for being Americans. Notwithstanding, the customs agent that stamped my passport was very friendly.
I´ve seen a lot of Nextel phones down here, especially when we arrived in the airport, which makes me wish I still had mine. I saw a few people talking on their Nextel phones in Chicago and then again in Sao Paulo, so the Nextel network must be pretty well equipped in Brazil. I also heard that annoying Nokia ringtone that comes standard on all Nokia phones — that´s one thing I wish hadn´t been globalized.
richard miller