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Published: June 24th 2009
I slept like 12 hours last night and I am still exhausted, but I just thought I would add some photos from the 4 day excursion we took into the back country of maranhao. I will add more later and talk a little about things then.
Friday June 19 2009
Drove in a bus today from sao luis to bareirinhas today. 4 hours on some bumpy roads. About 1.5 hours into the ride I had a talk with my antibiotics and decided to share my breakfast with some ants in a violent and unpleasant manner. The highways are pretty run down and there are alot of houses and communities along them in the middle of nowhere. its hard to imagine how isolated these people must be and yet they see so many people pass everyday from all over the world. For all the houses I could see from the highway I wonder how many more I could not. i imagine being a child growing up here and only knowing other locals and seeing people all the time. Of not knowing any other life nor having an opportunity at any other life. Our guide told us that some of the people
in the area don't understand the size of the world and think that all foreigners come from one other place as if there were only two places in the world: here and there.
Brasil is a strange and wonderful place often full of so many injustices and unfair practices, corrupt politics as well as a resilient and strong loving people. They say that colonialism is long gone in brasil, but many of the poeple disagree when they look at modern slavery and a socioeconomic gap that is absolutely astounding in sao luis. An example is that a typical family collectively makes about $R400-500 per month and a typical judge here on his own will make $R16,000 per month. And this money is usually spent elsewhere to prove the luxury and status they hold. The streets, buildings, etc. are rundown and holding politicians accountable for anything is near impossible. When survival is the ultimate goal for most people being politically active is out of the question. There is supposedly democracy and an end to slavery, but the politicians still hold all the cards and do whatever they want. I am not saying that we are much better in america, because
we aren't. Its just hard to wrap your mind around things here.
We went to Lencois Maranhese today . It was 1.5hours through the jungle in jeeps to get there. On the way our guide pointed out a tree I want to look up called the Jatoba tree. It is a healing plant of which almost every part is used to heal various ailments. WE climbed a tall sandy hill with trees growing out of it and when we reaching the top it was nothing but sand and water as far as the eye can see. . It was astounding. Nothing but sand dunes and fresh water lakes forever right flush against nothing but jungle and villages forever. No transition from one to the other at all, just all of a sudden there it is. Our guide said that the first time she arrived here she cried and realized how insignificant people really are, I can appreciate this sort of realization after seeing it. I don't think it really sunk in about the sheer size of it though until I walked ro a half an hour and it was just and and more sand and I could still see
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the prison. This does NOT look like a pleasnt place to bewhere I started. its so silent too. I went out by myself and found a place to sit by the water. All I could hear was wind, sand and waves. Unexpectedly there is alot of life in the dunes: lily pads, algae, water plants, fish, bugs, the occasional plant growing in the sand by some water. Our guide told us that these dunes are advancing on the land at an incredible rate and during the windy season everything is rearranged by the 80 km/hour winds.
The rest of the time out there.
We switched hotels riding in a speed boat down river for 1.5 hours to another hotel in a small village, where we slept in open air huts with mosquito nets. It was fucking awesome! This was exactly the break I needed from the constant shock of living in Sao Luis Historical Center, which is flat out exhausting. It was paradise, they had coconut trees everywhere, cashew trees, lemon and orange trees a lush garden that didnt seem to require a great deal of care in this climate full of vegetables and herbs and fruits for both cooking and healing. They had a swimming pool, a fish
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the jungle we crossed to get here pond full of talapia, chickens, peacocks, pigs, cats, dogs, wild iguanas and birds. Kate saw a flock of parakeets while we were kayaking (yeah a few of us went kayaking at the hotel.) And they are even constructing a room right now for energy massages by one of the hotel girls. Apparently alot of foreigners come to this village and fall in love and stay. Some argentininans have a really great hotel here that is only $R35 per night per person with is like $US 17.50 including breakfast. the website is here: http://pousadazionhill.blogspot.com/ . i hope to one day come back here and spend some time. Then we all pitched in and went horse back riding for three hours through the village and into the dunes and swimming in one of the lagoons. The horses were only $R40 per person for the whole trip or about $US 20 in case you were wondering. Then we rested and enjoyed the rest of our stay before taking jeeps through the village back to the river where we met our boats and took the long journey home 1.5 hours in boat up river to a bus where we road for 4 hours back
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when I turn around away from the jungle to our hotel in sao luis. this is where the sleeping for 12 hours comes in.
I finished my antibiotics today and I finally feel better. Now for some yogurt to replace the good bacteria for preventing disease. We also went over racism and racial issues today in class. It seems that in the states race is not only measured by skin color but also by cultural attitudes. here the culture seems rather homogenous but the racial differences are measure by socioeconomic status which is but isnt so different from the states. It is so hard to classify and discuss these things without first having the shared experience of them. Brazilians seemingly have a shared brazilian clulture and how this is so is certainly an unusual question. When you consider the shear size of brazil and the fact that it has just as many cultural influences here as anywhere else. French, Portuguese and German colonialism. African and Native slaves. Japanese and Arab settlements. In fact the second largest settlement of Japanese are is in brazil (the first being in Japan). And yet Brasil seems to share a collective culture of music, food, national pride, clothing styles, etc. Or at
least that is how it is in the books we read and the few places we have been. But for such a large country (comprable to the US) to have such a shared vision is extraordinary. The real differences seems to lie in the socioeconomic status of various colors of people. Also there is an interesting thing here versus the US as far as race goes. In the US any amount of black blood resulting in darker skin or more african features automatically makes you black for the most part. Here it is the opposite and amount of white blood seems to make you white which though in many places is the minority still holds the majority viewpoint by the public. Also here there is 134 different classifications for race that have been documented. many of the "white" people here would be considered black in the us and many of the "black" people in the US would be considered white here in Brasil. Many brasilians would have you believe that racism does not exist here since there is not a legality behind it. In the US we have many laws regarding racism. Out of date laws about what blacks can't
do and New laws about what blacks can do as well as newer laws about what whites can not do to blacks, etc. (of course there are similar laws in the US pertaining to different races other than black and white, but as an example lets go over slavery issues and post abolition laws for blacks). Here though there are no laws of this sort and so the government can claim that no racism occurs. Someone brought up in class today that slavery went on much longer here and that Brasil had a chance to learn from the errors of other colonial countries dealing with the issue before dealing with it themselves. Indeed racism certainly exists here, but on a much more subtle and difficult to deal with level. People get jobs not based on what they know, but who they know and who you know depends on the family you come from and who will talk to you based on your family and based on your appearance of whiteness. To cap this off though I will leave you with an excerpt from an essay by Jefferson M. Fish about his daughter and her boyfriend. He is an American Clinical
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from the boat looking at the dunes Pyschologist with an African American wife and a daughter dating a "white" brazilian boy darker than she is. His American daughter considers herself black, while her Brasilian boyfriend (who is darker than her) considers himself white. And indeed in their respective countries they are these classifications they claim, but when crossing borders their races change.
"There is no such thing . Race is a myth. And our racial classification scheme is loaded with pure fantasy.
Consider the avocado -- is it a fruit or a vegetable: Americans insist it is a vegetable. We eat in salads with oil and vinegar. Brazilians, on the other hand, would say it is a fruit. They eat it for dessert with lemon juice and sugar...
...If brazilians were forced to divide the range of tipos (types) into "kinds of whites" and "kinds of blacks" (a distinction they do not normally make), they would draw the line between morenas (tan skins or brown skins) and mulattas (mixed races), whereas Americans, if offered only visual information, would draw the line between brancas (whites) and Morenas (tan skin or brown skin)...
...Americans believe that race is an immutable biological
given, but people (like my daughter and her boyfriend) can change their race by getting on a plane and going from the United States to Brazil -- Just as, if they take an avocado with them, it changes from a vegetable into a fruit. In both cases, What changes is not the physical appearance of the person or avocado, but the way they are classified."
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Claudio Sarego
non-member comment
You got the point!
I'm going to Barreirinhas next week and dove into your text just to find some tips and even to get a foreigner point of view regarding the region, but reading your comments I can say you’ve got the point. You’re correct in your analysis; the concept of races in Brazil really mix the skin color (more than blood) with the socioeconomics status and depending on the region of the country one of those two components is stronger. All of your comparisons between Brazil and US made by you lead us to understand how unrealistic this “imaginary concept” of race is. Good text. I hope you have enjoyed your trip.