We pay close attention to events in Brazil, a country which seems to be inventing much of the future, when it's not busy falling apart. Here are the latest blips on our Brazildar:
Lula: "Brazil Is More Than Carnaval and Street Kids." It's also a growing economy, running a massive and successful microcredit program, investing in biodiesel as a strategic priority, making a big move into wind energy and opening its carbon emissions trading program.
''In a country where the elite have always held a stranglehold, it was never written anywhere that someone like me could become president,'' Lula told me as we sat aboard the Brazilian equivalent of Air Force One. ..."Brazil, so goes a common gibe, is the country of the future -- and always will be. With 175 million people, it is the world's fifth most populous nation, and its territory is slightly larger than the continental United States. In the 16th century, Portugal claimed this immensity as a colony, and the crown soon divided 2,500 miles of coastline into a dozen captaincies, some of them larger than the mother country itself. Sugarcane was introduced, and Brazil today still lives with the legacy of a plantation culture that consumed four million African slaves and left land ownership hideously askew. An elite 1.7 percent of the landowners continue to own nearly half the arable land; the top 10 percent of the nation earns half the income.
"In Rio de Janeiro, the poor have ended up with the breathtaking vistas of the ocean, having clustered their hovels onto the unstable terrain of the cliffsides. The value of swanky apartments down below often depends on whether a window faces these elevated slums, exposing the occupants to stray gunfire from warring drug gangs. Crime is rampant in Brazil's cities. During my stay, an out-of-work pauper in Brasilia climbed onto the ledge of the Senate's balcony, threatening a suicidal leap to punctuate his misery. After security guards wrestled the man down, tenderhearted legislators gave him some spare cash and wished him godspeed. He was robbed on the way home.
Lula's still the darling of the global Left for his serious diplomatic and trade mojo. The Left in Brazil is less enamored of the austerity measures he's put in place to keep the real stable and the IMF from doing an Argentina on their butts.
Finally, Brazil, I'm told, is going to be flavor of the month for the Spring fashion lines, with the Sao Paulo Fashion Week grabbing lots of spotlight. We'll see if that means telecentros, anti-hunger campaigns, popular science education and cheap, sustainable condoms are in, too, or whether the international environmental court is now hip.
Ordem E Progresso!
