Caipigringa Does Carnival in Pernambuco

 

My first Brazilian Carnival by far exceeded all my expectations. What can I say? It was...well... To give you some idea of what it was like, imagine the best Halloween party you've ever been to, combined with the best music festival, where everyone is happy and hyper and all about making merry, set in a beautiful colonial city on Brazil's Northeast coast for four days straight. Take what you just imagined and multiply it by 10, because this is something that you really can't imagine unless you've been here. Its that amazing. Brazilians of all ages appear to have endless amounts of energy and love to party like no other people I've ever met in my life. Really, its the people that make Carnival. The openness and gregariousness of Brazilians means that you make hundreds of new friends during this time. Meeting up with old Brazilian friends on the street, you find that Carnival brings out a whole new side to them as you dance down the cobblestone streets together with the thousands of other revelers, singing along with the frevo band you're following behind, howling in joy as you're pelted by water guns or rain, and just totally loving life. Of course the incomparable talent and creativity of Brazilian music and dance is also what makes Carnival so special and unique, along with the incredibly creative costumes and famous giant dolls that parade throughout town.

Particularly here in Pernambuco, where Carnival is much more traditional than the other famous Carnivals such as Rio's and Salvador's. The people of the twin cities of Olinda and Recife like to say that they have not only the best and most traditional (almost all music here is live folkloric music played without any sort of electrification/amplification), but also the most democratic and participatory Carnival. This is because here you are not charged entry fees to see the best shows or blocos; it is rare (only in some places in Recife) to see anyone standing in some roped off area or sitting in bleachers that they paid for to be out of the crowd. Here, if you want to go to Carnival, you better be prepared to be fully in it with everyone else. You can try to find a shady place to stand on the sidewalk and watch the action go by, but you'll spend a lot of your time joining the throngs of thousands of people following a bloco through the streets of Olinda. In Recife, whose main Carnival events are at night, once Olinda's have ended, there are multiple stages set up with big shows, in addition to the parades of blocos. All of these are free of course. On any one night in downtown Recife and Recife Antigo during Carnival there is likely at least one million people out in the streets. During Carnival there is so much going on in the culturally rich twin cities of Olinda and Recife, not to mention the smaller towns in rural areas with their own traditional Carnival, that it is difficult to decide how to spend your time during these four days in order to see and experience the most. You can forget anything resembling sleep and rest, at least beyond the absolutely necessary amounts. And eating? Well unless Pitú has recently been declared a member of one of the food groups (its made from sugarcane, does that count for something?), than the ingestion of food during this wild week is limited to things like deep-fried pastries that you can find on the street. So as you can imagine, Carnival is hard on the body. 

 

Yet during these four days I seemed to somehow have boundless energy and rarely felt hunger or fatigue. No, I was not using drugs, and my alcohol consumption was moderate compared to many a Carnival reveler. It was the manic energy out there in the streets. It got into me. I loved it and felt more alive than ever, grinning from ear to ear as I danced  along with the other costumed and ridiculously happy and excited merrymakers. One night when I had decided to try and get a good night's sleep, I wasn't even able to due to my addiction to the energy and rhythm of Carnival. I woke up in the middle of the night literally singing the most famous and oft played frevo song, and I got up and started trying out my newly acquired frevo dancesteps (taught to me early that evening by an indefatigable 9 year-old frevo champ named Jessica) in the kitchen as I made myself a pre-sunset breakfast. I just couldn't wait for the day's revelry to start up again!

So what all did I do during those four days of Carnival, you ask? I'll lay it out for you here, as this is my chance to describe some of the beauty that is the Pernambucan Carnival. I just hope I can do it justice.

Because I live in Olinda, Carnival actually began for me long before the official starting date in mid-February. My Recifense friends Mariana and Diego took me to my first Carnival preview back in November. I sambaed the night away with members and supporters of Olinda's "Eu acho é pouco" bloco. That night I learned that this Carnival thing was something I was going to love... When I moved to Olinda shortly thereafter I learned that every Sunday from December until February would be a Carnival preview in the streets of the historic center. On my afternoon jaunts through town on these days I would catch some maracatu groups warming up in the park, and occasionally follow along behind a frevo group for a while up or down one of Olinda's steep hills. By 6 pm thousands of people would have flocked into Olinda's historic center for the Carnival preview, and together we would march and dance behind the bands and blocos, warming ourselves up for the events to come in February. By the beginning of February, two weeks before Carnival, it might as well have already been Carnival. The energy in the streets, and not just the historic center, had definitely changed. You could feel, and most definitely hear, the excitement and anticipation in the air. I partook in my fair share of pre-Carnival activities in Olinda and Recife, and found myself having to spend a couple of days resting up before the actual week of Carnival. 

On the Friday before Carnival I received five guests in my apartment, all of whom would spend the week there with me. These folks hailed from France, Israel, Canada, and Alaska. An international bunch, all Carnival virgins, all ready to make the most of this experience. That night a few of us went to a concert in Recife where we saw some of the state's best maracatu groups perform, and where I, while wearing an afro wig with a yellow feather in it, met up with some of my Brazilian colleagues, including a 60-something priest whose enthusiasm for this region's culture was unparalleled, and who expertly and calmly navigated the crowds. 

On Saturday I woke up by 8 ready to hit the streets of Olinda. The Carnival festivities here begin early in the day and mostly end by around 7 pm. If you want to keep going into the night, you have to either go to the concert held nightly two blocks from my apartment (you could see the stage from my bedroom window) or head to Recife, where the shows would go until the wee hours of the morning. So upon waking up and hearing the sound of drums in the distance, I made breakfast, which included a round of caipirinhas, and hit the streets with my glittery feather headdress. I watched the blocos go by with these ladies for a while: 

 

As I wandered around Olinda, checking various maracatu and frevo groups out, and eying all of the awesome costumes, I made some new friends, which included Batman and Robin. 

 And even DuffMan. 

Once my Israeli friend Dana and I met up with this group of ladies weilding a water gun, our Carnival fate was sealed. We would spend the rest of the week in water fights day and night, and this turned out to be one of the most fun parts of Carnival. With a water gun you manage to make all kinds of new friends- as if that wasn't already easy enough at Carnival in Olinda!

Later on Saturday I met up with my Recifense friends Mariana and Diego who have been talking non-stop about how excited they are for Carnival since the day I arrived in Pernambuco back in October. They are experts when it comes to Carnival in Olinda. They took me around town, found us a great shady spot to hang out at and watch the craziness go by (while shooting some crazies with water guns of course), and then took me to see the "Eu acho é pouco" bloco with their wild dragon and throngs of thousands of wild people dancing in the street behind them. It was a great time!

I ended that night dancing at the concert near my house, and turned in somewhat early. Before the concert that night the vision of caipigringa was dreamt up by a fellow caipirinha lover and me while I prepared a round of what I boldly called Olinda's best caipirinha.

By Sunday morning I was more than ready for another big day in Olinda. I was desperate for a costume, so I cut up my white New Year's Eve dress, pinned some flowers to it and to my hair, and bought a set of fairy wings, with wand and headband included. So I spent Sunday as a fairy, or fadinha in Portuguese.

Some people thought I was a butterfly (maybe because I had butterflies on my headband?), and from one old man I got a "A butterfly like that deserves a nice garden!" I received quite a few comments as a matter of fact, but that one was by far the sweetest, without nearly as dirty of undertones as some of the others (yes Carnival is famous for being quite sexual, although its not at all sleazy). After purchasing my fairy accessories we made our way up through the crowded streets to the Alto da Sé, which is the highest point of the historic center, and where one of Olinda's famous blocos would be meeting up and leaving from. This bloco "Enquanto, na Sala de Justiça" is apparently based on some cartoon that I have no recollection of ever watching, where all the cartoon superheroes (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, etc.) would meet up and work together to fight crime. Needless to say, there were a lot of superhero costumes at this bloco. And they were great! My favorites included Penguin and Catwoman, the      Ninja Turtles, the Borats (okay, maybe Borat can't be classified as a superhero, but this was a really popular costume), and this French guy dressed up as some kind of Super Cheese man (hilarious and oh so French, in a good way!).

 

  

 

Later that day we found ourselves in many more water fights, dancing lots of frevo and some maracatu, and somehow inside Alceu Valença's house. Alceu is a quite famous singer from Pernambuco who happens to own two beautiful homes in Olinda. His dog jumped out of a window and into my friend's arms, and before we knew it Alceu's caretaker was inviting us in for the grand tour. He gave us beers and showed us the place, including Alceu's bedroom, his closet (full of crazy costumes), and his lovely outdoor bathroom that I was quite jealous of. We even got a screening of a movie that Alceu directed and the caretaker played a role in. The movie is not yet out, but it sure looked good. We ended up visiting both of Alceu's houses, and in the second one we watched the Carnival procession on the street below from a second story balcony. While it was fun to watch from above, after only a few minutes I was dying to be back down there in the lively crowds again. Once things had died down in the historic center, my group and I headed to the nightly concert, where I received my frevo       dance lesson from Jessica, my 9 year-old idol. My legs were so sore afterward (frevo dance has its roots in capoeira, so the moves are quite gymnastic) that I barely made it up the stairs to my apartment (to my credit its an intense staircase!) and I was feeling it for the rest of Carnival.

 

Frevo dancers (too bad there's not more action in this shot to show you just how crazy dancing frevo is)

 On Monday morning I had barely slept after waking up in the middle of the night craving frevo. Nonetheless, I fought fatigue and headed out with my housemates on a long hot walk to the bus stop. We were determined to make it to Nazaré da Mata, a small town in Pernambuco's forest region, for an encounter of rural maracatu groups. This was something that I was particularly interested in due to my research in the region. Rural maracatu is rooted in sugarcane plantation culture- the very culture that I am here studying. So I had to spend at least one day of Carnival there. Getting there was quite the journey, but I'm glad we made it. We spent the day in Nazaré watching dozens of highly talented, often hilarious, and beautifully costumed maracatu groups parade through the streets with a procession of African kings and queens, caboclinhos de lança, clown-type characters threatening to hit observers with blown up cow bladders, and characters on paper maché horses cracking their whips as they played the role of the slave driver. Pernambuco's rural maracatu was developed by slaves on the region's sugarcane plantations centuries ago, and the influences from Africa, Brazil's indigenous groups, and slave and plantation culture are all obvious. While the aggressiveness of the whip-cracking slave driver character seemed quite harsh, I realized that this is one way of reconciling with a difficult past that is in fact not so far in the past. The maracatu mestres stood on stage improvising lyrics to their songs while the caboclinhos danced in their hand-stitched sequined ponchos and giant brightly colored streamer wigs. 

A caboclinho de lança acting out resistance to the slave owners in Nazaré da Mata

Once night fell in Nazaré we decided to head back to the city. We arrived in downtown Recife just in time to catch the much acclaimed "Noite dos Tambores Silenciosos" (night of the silent drums), which is an impressive show of traditional afro-Brazilian music and dance, complete with parading African kings and queens. 

Tuesday, the last day of revelry before we would all have to repent for our sins, finally arrived. It was bittersweet, really. The energy had only continued to build over the past few days, so I was more excited than ever to join in the merrymaking again, but already sad that it would soon be over. I woke up on Tuesday morning with these thoughts, and trying to figure out how to make the most of this final day of Carnival. The most important thing for me was to have a good and creative costume. Caipigringa came to me quickly, and it was a natural. I had plenty of limes around, and I just so happened to possess a lime green tank top and some cachaça (sugarcane liquor- key ingredient in the caipirinha), so all I had to do was figure out how to pull off putting these things together and turning myself into a caipirinha. With the help of some safety pins it was in the bag. I made a round of caipirinhas for the house and soon we were off.

  

Caipigringa is born, and Dana borrows the fairy costume (might as well get some use out of it!

Caipigringa received quite a bit of attention, and it was hilarious to watch people look from my lime-covered head to the Pitú label on my shirt, to the bag of sugar on my shorts until they finally figured it out. I got a lot of laughter, and of course a lot of people volunteering to help me out with the bottle of cachaça I was carrying around. 

As a huge fan of costume parties, this is a strong statement, but I'm going to make it anyway: Caipigringa was one of my top 3 favorite costumes ever, due to the appropriateness of it for the event, the amount of positive attention and laughter it brought out in people (I took lots of photos with strangers, at their request), and just how damn fun it was to dress up as my favorite mixed drink. This was such a great day! I was in the Carnival spirit more than ever. One of my favorite moments of this day, and of all of Carnival, was when I was walking/dancing down the street in a group of hundreds of other people following a frevo bloco, and it started to pour. As the rain hit the crowd started to howl and jump with joy. It was exciting, fun, and a welcome relief from the heat of the mid-day sun and all those bodies pressed together. The energy of Olinda's Carnival seemed to manifest itself more than ever in that moment as people howled, danced, jumped, and sang. I didn't want this day to end, but alas, it did... 

  

 My Carnival crew, in which the water gun played an important role.

To see a photo album with more highlights from my Carnival experience, check out: http://picasaweb.google.com/lynn.m.schneider/Carnaval#

Sugarcane, Bees, and Agrarian Reform

What do sugarcane,bees,and agrarian reform have in common you ask? Well that is what I set out to discover on my recent week in the field. For my research on the impacts of sugarcane ethanol production on rural livelihoods in Northeast Brazil, I have decided to conduct a case study of one municipality in the sugarcane-producing Northern Forest Region of Pernambuco. In this rural municipality, Tracunhaém, the majority of the land is dedicated to producing sugarcane on large-scale plantations; the sugarcane is turned into sugar and ethanol in factories located on the plantations themselves. Such large-scale sugarcane production has persisted in the region since the sixteenth century, when colonial Brazil became an important producer and exporter of sugar for Europe. For over three hundred years the production was driven by brutal slave labor, and while in the century and a half since abolition the system of labor on the plantations has changed significantly, slavery and quasi-slavery still exists, and even where it doesn't, the sugarcane-producing regions are some of the most impoverished in this highly unequal country.

Brazil, a nation with the world's tenth largest GDP, one of the world's highest levels of concentration of land and wealth, and therefore one of the most highly unequal societies. Here, I can dine on excellent sushi in an air-conditioned restaurant with my friends who own nice cars and live in luxurious condos, and the next day help another friend tend to her two goats (i.e. her bank account on hoof) after a lunch of homegrown cassava and beans in her 12" x 12" adobe hut. And this is precisely how I live here, between the two worlds that coexist in this corner of Brazil.

However, the focus of my research is not inequality or the contrasts between the up-and-coming urban middle class and the rural poor, although it is of course highly related to my research, as it is related to virtually all phenomena in Brazil. The ethanol that fueled my friend's car to take me out to sushi could easily have been produced by the sugar-ethanol factory whose plantation butts up against my friend with the goats' family farm. Just last week I saw the damage done to nearly a third of their small farm when the fire set to the sugarcane plantation got out of control and went onto my friend's land, burning a number of fruit trees and a large pineapple crop. As a rural peasant who fought against that sugarcane baron for six years for her right to own land to farm, she knows very well just how powerful he is and that filing any sort of complaint about the damage will get her at best nowhere, and at worst hurt or in trouble. That's Brazil, folks. And this is the "green" fuel that is lauded the world over.

My friend Ena and her mother on their farm (the part where fruit trees are still standing, untouched by the fire)

 

Ena with her bank account

So back to the story of sugarcane, bees, and agrarian reform, and my week doing fieldwork in the rural municipality of Tracunhaém. I chose this municipality as my case study in part because I had already begun to develop relationships with people there, and also because I think that as one slice of pie out of the whole sugarcane-producing Forest Region, Tracunhaém seems to encompass many of the typical ways of life and relationships that exist there. In other words, I hope that by studying this municipality I can to some extent speak to the conditions throughout the region, thereby providing a useful portrait of how rural livelihoods in the sugarcane-producing region are affected by sugar-ethanol production, and how an increased demand for ethanol in Brazil and internationally might affect their lives and those of future generations, as well as people who are currently landless and seeking to realize their right to own and farm land via agrarian reform. Where do the bees come in? Keep reading. You may even get to see yours truly in a bee keeper's suit.

For my week in the field I headed to an agrarian reform settlement where I had stayed on previous shorter trips. An agrarian reform settlement is a rural community of previously landless people who occupied land that was privately owned by a large landowner (in this region that means sugarcane plantation owners), and after years of struggle, camping out in tent cities, facing violent evictions and intimidation, the land was eventually expropriated and divided up amongst the settlers so that each would have around 23 acres of land upon which to farm, have a home, and make a living off the land. The land is only expropriated if it meets the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform's (INCRA) qualifications for being considered "unproductive" and/or not meeting social and environmental regulations of land use. Of course meeting those qualifications does not mean that it is automatically expropriated. It takes years of the landless occupiers and the NGOs and social movements that support them lobbying INCRA. It usually takes 5-8 years for the land to be expropriated to the landless, thereby realizing their right to land and ensuring that Brazilian land is productive and fulfilling its social function.

The community I stayed in, we'll call it NC, is one of these settlements. Its residents are mostly people who previously lived on the impoverished outskirts of small poor cities throughout the region, renting small homes, selling their labor on the sugarcane plantations, and barely scraping by. Most of them had lived on sugarcane plantations during the period when the plantation owners housed their workers on-site, or they lived on small farms near the plantations. But with the value of sugarcane increasing, and plantation owners only wanting to intensify and increase their production, most small farms in the area have been bought out and plantation owners have evicted their residents/workers. This has of course caused cities throughout the region to swell with people from the countryside. This phenomenon occurs throughout Brazil, which explains the millions of people in favelas and the millions that have joined the landless movement in search of a dignified life in the countryside, where they can make a living as a small farmer.

I had already made numerous contacts in NC through the Brazilian NGO that I am collaborating with. I was welcomed there by my new friends, who have also become invaluable informants, contributing their wealth of knowledge about life in rural Pernambuco, both on and off the sugarcane plantations. During my week in NC I stayed in families' homes, ate with them, chatted with them, went to their farms with them, watched novelas with them, and asked lots and lots of questions about their lives. I conducted informal interviews with nine community members, filmed, and took hundreds of pictures. I also went to a nearby community, BO, which is not an agrarian reform settlement. BO is another alternative for those people who left the land in past decades but didn't want to live on the outskirts of cities. BO is a small rural town where a plot for a tiny house can be bought cheaply. Located in the middle of a sea of sugarcane plantations, in BO around 90% of men work either cutting cane or performing some other service on the plantations. No one in BO owns enough land to even plant a garden in. They go to the city on the weekends to buy all of their food. When the sugarcane harvest ends (it only lasts 6 months, meaning most families only have steady income 6 months of the year), BO residents enter the hungry season. The government provides assistance with buying basic food stuffs and cooking gas. Only those households with a family member who has employment outside of the sugarcane plantation escapes the hardship of those 6 months. I conducted interviews with 8 community members in BO to learn more about their lives, which are in many ways drastically different from those on the agrarian reform settlements. One thing I learned is that the conversion of the old sugarcane plantations that had become unproductive into agrarian reform settlements has actually helped the residents of BO. While sitting fallow, those plantations provided no employment and produced no food for local communities like BO. Now that that the agrarian reform settlers have converted the plantations into small diverse farms, many BO residents work for part of the year on the farms in exchange for money and/or food that they help to plant and harvest.

One of my informants from NC, Espedito, is an enthusiastic farmer and artisinal beekeeper and honey producer. While many of my new friends here are extremely passionate about their work and lives as small farmers (not to mention as revolutionaries, which is what they truly are and what many of them consider themselves to be after occupying and fighting for land for 6 years), Espedito's passion is above and beyond most others. He is currently conducting numerous "experiments" on his farm, seeking ways to make it more productive, while maintaining its diversity and adhering to the "agroecological" methods of farming promoted by the landless movement. Yes, as it turns out, the landless movement is pro environmental conservation and sustainable agriculture as well. Its opposition to large-scale agricultural is not only framed in terms of social justice; it is also about living sustainably off the land, living well, and reducing dependency on agribusiness. What's all this about the rural poor being one of the main drivers of environmental destruction? Come visit my friends in Pernambuco and they'll show how their takeover of the land from sugarcane barons has led to diverse, carbon-rich farms combining standard small-scale agriculture with agro-forestry, reforestation of the almost totally devastated Atlantic Forest on parts of their settlement, and preservation of ground and surface water sources. They take pride in being the only farmers at their local market to sell organic fruits and vegetables.

 

Espedito, working hard

On Espedito's farm, numerous acres are dedicated to an agro-forestry experiment, where he is letting native vegetation grow in amongst his fruit trees (papaya, banana, passionfruit, guava, jackfruit, and many more), and has planted several native species throughout. He also has an organic vegetable garden and medicinal plants garden for his family's use, all fertilized with his experimental home-made organic fertilizer, the secrets of which cannot be revealed here. ;) His latest experiment is his fish ponds, where he is attempting to raise tilapia and one native Brazilian species. He took an interest in raising fish in part because it has less of an impact on the land than raising livestock. Under the hot sun Espedito excitedly gave me a tour of the farm, and sent me off with a bag full of fresh fruit and an invitation to harvest honey with him the next day.

That's me, suited up and ready to harvest some honey.

Of course I took him up on the honey offer! The next day Ena, Espedito, Espedito's nephew Charles, and I all got suited up and headed out to  harvest honey at his 15 bee boxes spread across the 23 acre farm. When I had initially accepted the offer I hadn't really been thinking about what it would feel like to be covered with bees. We've all seen video footage of those guys in bee suits covered in hundreds of bees, and most of us (however not scared of bees we may claim to be) have probably thought that we would never be caught dead doing that, right? Yes, I was one of those who never liked the idea of being covered in bees, protective suit or not. Once I got into the astronaut-like suit in the middle of the afternoon, however, I found myself suddenly more concerned with the heat than the bees. Maybe it was the adrenaline that kept me from collapsing from heat stroke. Or the fact that I felt like above all I needed to keep up with this crew of hard-core farmers that I had gotten myself into this adventure with. In order to be able to film and photograph part of the experience, Charles gave me a pair of yellow rubber dish-washing gloves (as opposed to the thick canvas gloves usually worn), saying that he could not guarantee their integrity. Nice. So of all the times that my heart really got beating, it was mostly when dozens of bees started to land on my hands, and at one point one tried to sting the fuzzy velcro of my video camera strap (they're always looking for hair or skin to try to sting, I guess this felt more like part of my body than the rubber gloves). Throughout the long afternoon of honey harvesting, I found myself mostly either holding a camera, with both my hands and the camera covered in bees; carrying boxes of fresh honeycomb, with hundreds of bees following me and trying to eat the honey as I took it away; or at other times in charge of smoking out the bees (see picture at top of post- Ena on left is holding the smoke-maker), and covering others in smoke to try to get the bees away from them. One time I had to do an emergency squirt of smoke into the hole in Charles' pants, which the bees had found and mercilessly attacked. It ended up being more fun than scary, once I got used to the bees. Turns out I love bees! And I love harvesting honey!

Once we got back to the house and unsuited, far away from the bees that had followed us and were still trying to eat their honey, I had the opportunity to chat with Espedito about his new career as a beekeeper. He told me that his beekeeping and honey-making is merely "artisinal" and that he plans to keep it that way. He has a niche market; people even pulled up to his house while I was there asking to buy a liter of his honey (for those who know about it this stuff is in high demand). He enjoys raising the bees and selling their honey, and it provides a welcome boost to the rest of his farm income. However, he's not trying to get rich off the honey, that's for sure. He hopes that his entire farm will eventually become more productive, and thereby more lucrative, but he very much considers himself a small-scale agroecological farmer, and for this reason will not compromise his values to make a profit off the farm. For example, he plans to make his agroforestry system more productive, and to be able to market his organic fruits at a higher price, rather than clearing the native forest and planting a monoculture of bananas. And, to be blunt, he has no illusions of getting rich. I am not trying to romanticize the lives of these people, but am merely being honest when I say that almost all of the agrarian reform farmers that I have met have told me that they are content with the simple life and relatively low income of a small-farmer. It is worlds better than the life of the landless urban poor that they held before, and they aspire mainly to enjoy being able to grow their own food and live off the land. They have a passion for this life. They hope their children will get an education and get good jobs, but they also hope that the farm will stay in the family, and that at least some of their children will be able to know the joy of living off the land.

Small-scale beekeeping and agroforestry are two ways in which the farmers on the agrarian reform settlements are opposing the dominant model of large-scale agriculture. By owning land, and partaking in these sorts of agricultural activities, residents of NC and similar communities have, from what I can tell, managed to make a living that is often more lucrative and, perhaps most importantly, more rewarding than the living made from cutting sugarcane for six months of the year, and spending the other six months unemployed. Sugarcane plantations are the predominant source of employment for this region, and as long as they continue to expand and limit the expansion of the agrarian reform, it is difficult to imagine the human development index (or any other indicator of human well-being) of the Forest Region improving. And forget about reforestation or reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Sugar and ethanol both may just be products that the world's population needs (?), but how can we find ways to produce them while ensuring more sustainable rural livelihoods, more rural happiness, and less environmental degradation?

Delicious fresh honey from Espedito's farm

Link to my Picasa album with more photos from my week of fieldwork in Tracunhaém:  http://picasaweb.google.com/lynn.m.schneider/FieldworkTracunhaem#

David’s Eventful Holiday in Brazil: A Mugging, a Trek, an Engagement, and Much More…

David visited me in Brazil for two weeks over the holidays, and we enjoyed 14 days full of Brazilian adventure of all kinds. And, most importantly, we got engaged! That's right, David and I are going to tie the knot! We have virtually no plans as of yet, but are thinking that we'll hold some kind of ceremony somewhere in the Pacific Northwest in either late 2010 or 2011. The story of the engagement and our other Brazilian adventures follow below:

I picked up David at the airport in Salvador, the Afro-Brazilian coastal city where I spent my first few weeks in Brazil, and where we would together launch our holiday extraordinaire. We spent a couple of days there staying at a cute little hotel on the beach, and enjoying the city's cultural, gastronomic, and natural wonders.

On our first day we stuffed ourselves with crab and moqueca at a beach side restaurant and lounged and swam the afternoon away at my favorite beach in Salvador- Praia do Farol. That night, celebrating being in Brazil and being together for the first time in over three months, we headed to Pelourinho for dinner, drinks, and dancing. Pelourinho is a fun and beautiful neighborhood in Salvador's historic district; it is also famous for pickpockets, muggers, and the like. It was a wonderful setting for a romantic dinner of bobó de camarão and caipirinhas outside on the cobblestone street. We were so content after dinner that as we began to walk down the street we didn't even notice the two boys coming up behind us. A couple of teenagers pretending they had guns by putting their hands in their shirts in a gun shape mugged us right there in the street, with plenty of people around. We quickly realized that they were not actually armed, and luckily only lost a cell phone. No one was hurt. Not too bad, considering. We were still startled and bummed in a big way, and for some reason I thought it seemed like a good idea to file a report at the police station two blocks from the mugging. The officers lounging around the station acted annoyed that we were interrupting their novela and late night snack. Why bother reporting a stolen cell phone when these things happen every day and there will be no investigation? Besides, we are just a couple of gringos that will be gone tomorrow. Who cares? So maybe we wasted our time with the police, who are notorious in Brazil for being corrupt and linked to local crime gangs. And anyway, we were lucky that this was a non-violent mugging where no one was hurt. In a way I even felt relieved (not that night, but a couple of days later) that I had been mugged and it had been mostly painless. Anyone who spends a significant amount of time in Brazil is bound to get mugged at some point, right? And I was really just waiting in dread for the day it would happen to me. Whew! It's finally over with.

That night, despite being a bit shook up, we decided to continue our night out and make it one to remember for something more than a mugging. So we headed to a bar with an outdoor stage and a live samba band. We enjoyed some draft cerveja Skoll and sambaed it up. I looooovvveee samba!!! I think David started to love it too. ;) Most of all we enjoyed watching the locals dance up a storm. Samba is such a joyous, high energy dance. When dancing samba people move their feet and hips at lightning speed, all the while maintaining a huge grin on their face. It's fantastic to watch and partake in. The energy that Brazilians bring to the dance floor, and to life in general, is just so impressive! Once that bar closed we headed to the streets, which were filled with hundreds of locals out looking for more samba. We joined a street party taking place outside another samba club until we were too pooped to samba and deal with the pressing crowds anymore. We headed back to the hotel to hit the hay. And that was just David's first day in Brazil.

On our second day in Salvador we hit up the beaches again, which this time of year fill up with thousand of beer-guzzling, cheese and shrimp-munching beach-goers. It is a fun beach atmosphere, but by no means a relaxing one. 

 Praia do Farol

By that afternoon we were out of the city and on a bus headed into the interior of the state, toward Chapada Diamantina National Park. After a 7 hour or so bus ride into the night we arrived at our destination - a beautiful lodge in the picturesque community of Vale do Capão, on the north-western edge of the park. We did a day hike to the famous Fumaça waterfall on our first day, and spent a good deal of the day trying to call Copa Airlines from our guide's brother's house (thank God for the generosity and hospitality of Brazilians!) in what increasingly seemed like a futile attempt to track down David's lost bag. Copa left it behind in Panama City on David's layover there, and as far as we knew at this point the bag hadn't even made it into Brazil. So frustrating! In both Salvador and Vale do Capão we called all kinds of phone numbers for Copa in Panama, the US, and Brazil from any phone we could scrounge up trying to tack down that bag and have them send it to us. We do not recommend flying Copa Airlines! When we finally got a hold of someone who knew where the bag was, we asked them to send it to the Salvador airport. We had little hope, however, of any of the items of value being in the bag after its extended stays in airports in Panama City, Rio, and Recife. Oh the travails of international travel!

Looking over the edge of Fumaça waterfall

The next day we put our worries about the bag (and about anything else for that matter) behind us and hit the trail to Vale do Pati with our guide, Adelson. This was a three night four day trek through what is said to be one of the most beautiful parts of one of Brazil's most acclaimed parks. When the park was created the government paid people who lived inside the area to relocate, but several families who had lived there for generations, mostly as small farmers, remained. Those families now host backpackers and have small farms, but their main income is from the backpacker tourism. Our three nights in the park were spent in the homes of these friendly local families, eating their delicious dinners of rice, beans, pumpkin, and savory veggies, and enjoying huge breakfasts with spreads of four or five different dishes at least. Despite the miles we put in on this trip, I think I may have actually consumed more calories than I burned! The homemade food was so yummy and so plentiful, how could I not? It's always the food that makes a trip. ;)

One of the homes we stayed at in Vale do Pati

On day two of the trek, December 23, after climbing up the mountain known as Castle Rock and enjoying a SPECTACULAR view of the valley, David, Adleson, and I headed to a waterfall for an afternoon of swimming and sunbathing. On the trip we visited at least one waterfall each day, almost all of them great for swimming and some good for climbing and jumping. This waterfall was stunning, and the pool below ideal for diving and swimming. While sitting on a rock ledge in the water near the fall, David wiggled a ring out of his shorts pocket (thank God he managed to hold onto it!) and proposed to me. And of course I said yes. Thanks to David's scheming we even got pictures of the proposal. Adelson was in on it and took pictures of the whole thing from the rocks. 

The proposal

We were engaged in paradise, and spent our first few days as fiances in a honeymoon-like state, trekking through this paradise full of rainforest, waterfalls, orchids, swimming holes, and lush green canyons with steep rock faces. What a place to be in love!

Enjoying being in love in the Vale do Pati

After our week in Chapada Diamantina David and I returned to Salvador by bus, spent the afternoon on another packed beach, and then boarded a plane to Recife. At the airport in Salvador we picked up the lost bag, only later to discover that it was missing nearly $200 in gifts that David had brought down to Brazil. Some airport employee had a great Christmas. I repeat: We do not recommend flying Copa Airlines! Flying into Recife at night we saw hundreds of fires in the sugarcane fields East of the city, and David got a bit of an introduction to what the state of Pernambuco, and my research here, is all about. During the sugarcane harvest the fields are burnt at night, and laborers trucked in in in the early morning to cut in the burnt fields, where only the cane itself remains standing on the scorched ground. David didn't get to visit any of the sugarcane plantations or communities that I'm doing research in on this trip, but at least he got to see some of it from the air.

That night we arrived at my apartment in Olinda, and being a Sunday night in December, we had to take to the streets to enjoy the festivities at least for a while, even though we were exhausted from traveling. From December until Carnival in mid-February, on Sunday afternoons and evenings the streets in the historic center of Olinda fill up with Carnival performers rehearsing, and literally thousands of revelers following them, dancing, drinking, and enjoying the festivities. Basically, each Sunday is a mini-Carnival. This particular Sunday was the most crowded and lively I'd seen yet. A friend from my neighborhood adopted us for the night and guided us through the maze-like streets and throngs of people. Unfortunately we arrived too late to see any of the live performances, but at least we got to experience the atmosphere. David and I ended the night with tapioca, a fried manioc flour crepe that is a common street food here. Delicious! During our next few days in Olinda we hit up the beaches (those deemed safe from killer bull sharks), sampled Olinda's best restaurants and beach-front bars, and wandered the beautiful streets of the historic center. David fell under Olinda's spell, just as I have. It is an amazing place. 

David in Olinda

David also got to meet some of my colleagues and friends in Recife, including the family that I stayed with prior to moving to Olinda. It was fun for me to have them all finally meet. My friends Mariana and Diego even gave us a grand tour of the best sights in Recife- Boa Viagem beach and Recife Angtigo- followed by a dinner out at my new favorite restaurant, the all-you-can eat sushi place. We stuffed ourselves and enjoyed a fun bilingual dinner conversation.

On the porch of my apartment 

For New Year’s Eve David and I dressed in white (local tradition- David didn’t love it) and met up with Mariana, Diego, and other friends at the beach in Olinda. There were thousands of people out celebrating in the streets and on the beaches. Families had brought tables down onto the sand and covered them with feasts. There were bands playing frevo (a traditional music that Olinda’s Carnival is famous for) in the street, and at midnight there was a truly impressive fireworks show. It was slightly scary when the stand that the fireworks were being lit off of caught on fire, but the show went on, apparently without any unexpected explosions. After the show Mariana and I waded into the water and jumped over seven little waves, another local New Year’s tradition that is meant to bring good luck for the coming year. After our beach time we headed into town and to a house party. The highlight of the night was when we left the party around 3:30 am, apparently at just the right moment, because we were met by a frevo band marching through the street and dozens of people following and dancing behind. It was 3:30 in the morning and there were people of all ages having the time of their lives, with huge smiles and amazing dancing skills. The energy in that group was amazing. I think it was a highlight for David’s trip.

David and me in our white on New Year's Eve

Sadly, David had to leave. L We spent New Year’s day on the beach, and that evening enjoying seafood and beers at various beach side restaurants and bars. It was a fun farewell. David had to leave at 3 in the morning for the airport to head back to cold Washington, D.C. I miss him like crazy. He may be able to visit again, maybe even stay for a few weeks, later this spring. However, there is a good chance we won’t see each other at all until I return to D.C. in April. Seems really far away… I am so grateful that he was able to visit for two weeks and that we had such an amazing trip, during which David was able to get to know the Brazil that I have come to love.

I will provide updates on the engagement and wedding plans as they come into being!

Looking out my window in Olinda

Link to my Picasa album with more photos of David's two weeks in Brazil: http://picasaweb.google.com/lynn.m.schneider/ChapadaDimantinaHighlights#

Goiâs and Brasilia

I recently spent about a week and a half in Goiâs and Brasilia, in Brazil's Midwest. While in Goiâs I had the opportunity to travel to some rural areas and talk with people who have immigrated from northeastern Brazil, the region where I am conducting my research, to work cutting sugarcane or laboring in other types of agriculture. I learned that since the US-Brazil Biofuels Agreement in 2007, ethanol producing companies have begun to lease land from small farmers in midwestern states such as Goiâs in droves. The landscape, local economy, and culture are changing rapidly as more diversified small-scale farms are converted to large-scale sugarcane monoculture. This phenomenon is also inspiring increased immigration from the Northeast, the country's poorest region, to these rural areas where thousands of people can work in the sugarcane plantations making minimum wages.

Up until this trip I had not realized just how much the sugarcane industry and other forms of large-scale agriculture throughout the Midwest, South, and Southeast (Brazil's more prosperous regions) depend on migrant labor from the Northeast. Apparently the majority of the unskilled labor on the monoculture plantations in fact comes from the Northeast. This would include laborers working as registered workers as well as clandestine and even slave labor, which is in fact increasing in southern Brazil. People migrate from the Northeast because in that region there is simply little work, and laborers tend to be paid less and have fewer rights. In fact, on several occasions in Pernambuco I have heard sugarcane cutters talking about wanting to head to other states where they can make more money, be treated better by employers, and in general have greater security. That is, of course, as long as they are not duped into slave-like or clandestine working conditions.

While in Goiâs I visited neighborhoods which are almost entirely occupied by people from the Northeast who have come to search for work. It was an excellent opportunity to see the impacts of Brazil's expanding ethanol industry on livelihoods in the Northeast from this perspective- migration in search of a better life. They are still cutting cane, as their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents probably did, but in a different part of the country where they feel there is more potential for a future. While doing my research in the Northeast I have met countless people who have tried living in other states, or whose family members have migrated to other states to try to find a better and easier life. On this trip I got to see how those people actually live once they make it down here. The people that I talked with all work long hours in hard labor, but expressed that they are happy to have made the move to Goiâs. This is because cutting cane pays better here, and workers receive far more benefits. In addition, there are other types of agriculture which employ the migrant laborers once the sugarcane harvest ends. This means that here in Goiâs there is no hungry season such as that experienced by sugarcane-dependent communities in the Northeast. All of the people I spoke with said that they feel they have a better chance at a future in Goiâs than in the Northeast, even if they continue only to work in agriculture there.

Here are some pictures of the communities of migrant laborers and the great people I met there:

 

 

 

After leaving Goiâs I hopped on a bus to nearby Brasilia, Brazil's capital since 1960. It is quite unfortunate that this entirely planned city was planned during an era when suburbia-style car dependence was all the rage. Trying to walk around this city is hell. I managed to do a bit of walking though, in addition to taking crowded buses and expensive cabs. I didn't get to see too much of the city while I was there. I had a good time, but have no huge desire to go back. The purpose of this trip was to interview the Ministries of Mines and Energy and Agriculture on Brazil's ethanol program. The interviews went fairly smoothly, and they while they did their best to blow me away with the success of Brazil's "green" ethanol industry, I did my best to get them to talk about things like the impact of the expanding ethanol industry on food security and agrarian reform, so desperately needed by millions of landless people in Brazil. They didn't blow me away, but merely told me what I expected to hear. They didn't do much as far as answering my questions either. The meetings were still worthwhile though. Brasilia was an interesting experience. 

In addition to my experience with the Ministries, I met some great folks working in agrarian reform and the landless movement while in Brasilia. These folks are always great to spend time with and learn from. They are passionate and driven, fighting relentlessly for social justice. Even if it is just from an office in Brasilia. Someone's gotta do it. They made for wonderful hosts during my time in the capital.

Brasilia's cathedral- interesting, huh?

 

Brasilia's version of the National Mall

Olinda!

I have moved into my very own little apartment in the BEAUTIFUL town of Olinda. I live about three blocks from the beach (where I unfortunately can't swim because all of the urban beaches here are polluted and shark-infested) and a ten minute walk from the historic center, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Here is a picture of the view from my living room window:

Link to my Picasa album with more photos of Olinda: http://picasaweb.google.com/lynn.m.schneider/OlindaBrazil#

Inspiration for the Weary Traveler

Today, while attempting to read about methods for doing research on sustainable rural livelihoods, I found myself on an amazing website called Matador Network (http://matadornetwork.com/), an online community of travelers, adventurers and such. My kind of people. I managed to spend a good hour or two procrastinating by reading several interesting posts from other travelers. One of these was the humbly titled, "The 50 Most Inspiring Travel Quotes of all Time." It is always fun to read travel quotes that discuss the experience, the purpose, and the effects of a traveling/wandering/adventuring lifestyle. Especially when you're in a mid-trip mini existential crisis like I am (why I am here again? what am I doing? what about this research I have supposedly committed to doing?). So I picked out a few that really spoke to me and what I'm feeling on this trip, as well as what I've felt during and after other extended stints abroad. If you're traveling, you'll love them, and if you're stuck at home right now they might just induce some travel fever. I know its not just me that's addicted to the rawness of life abroad.

From:  http://www.bravenewtraveler.com/2008/03/07/50-most-inspiring-travel-quotes-of-all-time/

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese

“When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.” – D. H. Lawrence

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard

“A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” – Tim Cahill

“What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do – especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.” – William Least Heat Moon

“The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.” – Rudyard Kipling


“Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” – Mark Jenkins

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

Thanksgiving in Goiânia...Alone

Written while drinking one large bottle of cerveja Skoll and eating a cheese "worm" pastry at a snackshop in downtown Goiânia in Brazil's mid-west, alone on Thanksgiving evening.


It's official: I'm addicted to being a gringa in Latin America. This life, as a traveler, as a foreigner, as someone who is more than a tourist but still always an outsider, has become my addiction. It is at times painful and humiliating, at other times liberating and exciting, and it always (as long as my eyes, mind, and heart are open to it) inspires personal growth, reflection, and- I like to think- wisdom. My world is turned upside down on a regular basis. I can be and do anything I want. I can go far beyond the boundaries of life, society, and self created by my culture.

I am an American girl, yes. Always will be. Many aspects of my culture are deeply ingrained in me (that's how culture works, after all), and I even have pride in certain aspects of my culture, despite the awkwardness and sometimes even shame that comes with having to explain that yes I am an American but don't eat hamburgers every day or any day at all, I didn't vote for Bush, I don't support the war, and the list goes on... Among the more radical of my new colleagues and friends in Brazil it has actually been extremely uncomfortable having to say where I'm from and answer questions about my culture and government. Usually when they talk to me for a while they say that I don't seem American. My accent sounds Spanish, I have a Brazilian face, and I don't eat hamburgers for crying out loud. But I am an American girl, and I am more acutely aware of it than usual today.

Here I am on Thanksgiving evening by myself, in a town where I have developed superficial relationships with a handful of friendly and generous people, drinking beer and eating a bad cheese pastry all by myself. And it's okay. I miss my family and all of my loved ones. I admit that I miss my culture and our celebration of this confused holiday that celebrates genocide, pretending (most of us very genuinely and with the best of intentions) that instead we are celebrating a sharing of cultures and the beginning of a peaceful alliance. All I can smell is the churrasco (barbecued meat) on the grill outside, and oh how I wish that I were instead smelling a pumpkin pie baking in the oven, and cranberries with a cinnamon and orange twist boiling on the stove top. My mouth is watering at the thought, and this cheese pastry just isn't cutting it. At least I have the beer to help numb the senses. It's not yet working though, and so I find myself longing for a house warm from the heat of bodies and the oven and stove going throughout the day.

As deeply as I am now craving that idealized Thanksgiving scene, I have desperately craved alone time for the past several weeks. Since arriving in Brazil two months ago most of my alone time has been while sleeping. Brazilians are such wonderful hosts, and due to this aspect of their culture and the fact that they hate being alone and therefore assume that all other sane people do too, I have been constantly surrounded by good intentioned Brazilian friends and colleagues since I arrived. Particularly since I arrived and started working on my research in Recife, where I have been extremely well received. The last time I had any alone time was on my weekend trip to Maceió five weeks ago. When I told my new friends in Recife about this trip, they were shocked to hear that I had gone to the beach town by myself. I think they pitied me more than anything. While in Maceió for a day and a half I received pitying looks from others as I ate lunch by myself, and more than once was invited to share a table, and even to share in food and beer. Brazilians never fail to impress me with their sense of community. They are so welcoming and so generous. Everywhere I have traveled, whether it has been for a few hours, days or weeks, they have taken me under their wings. This treatment has done wonders for my Portuguese and has truly enriched my Brazilian experience. At least 80% of the time I am ecstatic about how I have been received and treated in Brazil since arriving. There are other times that I feel stifled. When with Brazlians constantly, I must behave as a Brazilian. Or at least try. It is exhausting.

Today, however, I am free. It is Thanksgiving, and I have been left alone to wander the streets of Goiânia and wallow in my homesickness, enjoying every bit of it as only someone addicted to being an outsider can.