Our English immersion students got their tour of Brasilia. Fewer than half of them had visited their nation’s capital before, so we had an opportunity to introduce young Brazilians to Brasilia, which was fun. The weather, as usual, was brilliant as you can see from the photos.
The central government area, the “Plano Piloto” has remained much as it was designed. It is supposed to be modern with clean lines. Because the high plains (planalto) were flat and empty, this place provided a blank slate for the architects and planners. You can see the model in the picture above.
Building a new capital in the interior of the country was a dream of Brazilian leaders for centuries. They understood that moving the capital would draw development into the country. They identified places, like Brasilia, with near perfect climates, but they were just too far away from existing infrastructure. Beyond that, many officials and politicians were unenthusiastic about leaving their pleasant coastal cities and there was significant bureaucratic foot dragging.
President Juscelino Kubitschek decided to just do it – finally. You can see the man at his memorial above. He was the son of Czech immigrants and he always reminds me of Victor Laszlo. Building Brasilia was a truly audacious move. Juscelino or JK* pushed it through by force of will. He was criticized because of the expense and the inefficiency related to the urgency of the endeavor. There were no good roads to Brasilia and no infrastructure to build a city. They had to bring in everything: materials, workers, even water. They had to make a lake. Bulky and heavy materials, such as concrete, were sometimes flow in by airplane at great expense. JK understood that if it were not done fast and the construction pushed beyond the point of no return, it would never be done at all, so he accepted the cost and absorbed the criticism (Critics called him Pharaoh Juscelino).
It has now been more than fifty years since this spot of the high plains was turned into a city and we can see that it was an idea that worked. Much of Brazil’s growth in recent years has been in the central region. Having the capital in Brasilia helped pull interest, people, resources and development into the region, just as JK thought it would. JK’s slogan was “fifty years of development in five years.” It didn’t work out like that. But in the fifty plus years since his time, the region has achieved his dream. I think he would be content.
The picture above shows a couple of the English immersion kids becoming part of the celebration of Brasilia long before they were born, standing in front of a picture of a crowd of the time. You can read more about this here and here.
Let me just add a few more pictures. Brasilia was very beautiful. Below is a bust of Tiradentes, a national hero who fought and died for Brazilian independence.
Both pictures below are of the National Assembly. In behind you can see the building that house the various ministries.
I think that the Brasilia cathedral looks like a standing rib roast or maybe one of those things Fred Flintstone used to eat. Ostensibly it is reminiscent of Jesus’ crown of thorns. No matter what you think it looks like, the building is attractive within its landscape. You go down through an underground entrance, which is supposed to remind you of the catacombs presuming you had memories of catacombs to recall, but the effect does work well as you come out of the darkness into the light. The glass roof gives the whole place an open sky, maybe heavenly, aspect as you see in the photos. With all due modesty, I like my photo more than many others I have seen because I took them near midday on a sunny day. You can see the intensity of light that you might not get on a cloudier day or a time of the day when the sun was not as intense. The photos in the guides I have make it look a little dull. It really is very bright or at least it can be.
The photo above shows workers fixing the stained glass. The cathedral was being repaired when I visited. I have noticed that monuments all over the world are almost always being restored when I visit. It is rare to get to see anyplace w/o some kind of scaffolding or work barriers. I have been riding my bike past the Jefferson Memorial for more than twenty-five years and I don’t think I have ever seen it entirely w/o some work being done. This creates a minor dilemma when I take pictures. Do I put in the renovation, which is omnipresent, or do I take pictures around the repairs and show the “spirit” of the place. I usually opt for the prettier picture. I justify philosophically that I am getting the essence of thing, the true nature, instead of its ephemeral & corrupted temporal state.
This picture shows some of our students as a “whispering wall”. The shape and the smooth hard surface create an acoustical anomaly. Sound follows the wall, so that a person whispering dozens of meters away can be heard clearly at other points along the wall.
Above is the presidential residence. It is a long way off in the distance behind the emu. They had a few of these birds grazing in the grass. A different angle below shows the Brasilia landscape and the sprinklers that keep everything green during the dry season. There is plenty of water in Brasilia, enough to keep everything lush and green the whole year, but it actually falls only during half of the year. There is no reason to “conserve” water, as you might need to do in a desert. In fact, for half of the year there is too much water. Half of the year it rains every day and the other half it doesn’t rain at all, so they have to manage water to make it available all year around. This land in its natural or semi-natural state is a very difficult place for to live. That is why it remained sparsely settled for so long. But with infrastructure and improvements, it is be very pleasant. I suppose it is like southern California or parts of the Mediterranean in that water way, except that here the water doesn’t need to be moved from a long way away, but rather has to be moved in time of availability.
Below is an arm of the man-made lake, Lake Paranoá. W/o this lake, life in Brasilia would be a lot harder. The lake supplies water for the city and electricity through its hydropower at the dam. So much standing water also changes the local climate, adding a little much needed humidity during the dry season. It still gets very dry, but near the lake it is less so. The lake also provides wildlife habitat in otherwise desolate seasons and it looks good, as you can see from the picture.
Twenty-five English language students from Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo, Rio de Janeiro, Tocantins, and the Federal District came to Brasilia for a week of full time English immersion sponsored by the Casa Thomas Jefferson and the American Embassy in Brazil. Their kick-off event was an American style picnic at the home of the U.S. Marines. Here they ate typical American foods, like hamburgers and hot dogs, played basketball and volleyball, participated in contests such as sack races and generally got to know each other.Ambassador Thomas Shannon opened the program along with long-time Case Thomas Jefferson Director Anna Maria Assumpçaõ.
The American Embassy in Brazil has sponsored immersion courses like this since 2006 and hundreds of young Brazilians have enjoyed the benefits. This year five binational centers will participate, drawing participants from all the regions in Brazil. Besides the Casa Thomas Jefferson, ICBEU in Londrina, ALUMNI in Saõ Paulo, CCBEU in Belém and ABA in Recife will participate. The immersion programs are part of the now ten-year old youth Ambassadors program, which brings young Brazilians to the United States. On previous visits, they have toured the U.S. and met many Americans including First-Lady Michelle Obama. This year, for the first time, American students will come to Brazil on return visits.
In the pictures you can see the types of activities this year’s students experienced in Brasilia. We cannot take pictures of the learning taking place, the understanding being shared or the friends being made, but we are sure that these will be the best parts of the program.
The event was covered by a reporter from the Correio Braziliense and the local TV Globo affiliate.
The English immersion and the youth ambassadors programs are very competitive and require a high level of English-language ability going in. But they are all kids from Brazilian public schools and most are from interior small cities. It make you optimistic about the future to meet and talk to kids like this.
We hold the July 4th Celebration on various days because the Ambassador and others must attend various celebrations around the country. We held ours in Brasilia yesterday. I had nothing to do with the planning or implementation, so I think that I can say with some credibly that the planning and implementation were superb.
My future colleagues also prepared a poster exhibit showing photos from all the visits by American presidents to Brazil. Almost all the presidents of the twentieth century visited Brazil. The first was Theodore Roosevelt. He was no longer president at the time. He visited the Amazon rainforest (then called jungles) along with the Brazilian explorer and anthropologist Cândido Rondon, for whom the Brazilian state of Rondônia is named. Together the explored the “River of Doubt” now named the Rio Roosevelt, so both men contributed their names to the wild land. I didn’t know many people at the party. Next year I will. The most interesting discussion I had was with an old guy who had been an engineer in the construction of Brasilia, more than fifty years ago. It was really barren then and the big lake was just a marshy river. The old guy told me about the time when Eisenhower came to help inaugurate the new city and the U.S. Embassy here. That was also recorded on our poster show, but it was interesting to get the story from someone who could speak of it from living memory.
We had all sorts of interesting food, including little hamburgers, about the size of a silver dollar, and fries and little pepperoni pizzas. I stayed away from the booze (we are working at these things) and drank a lot of Guarana. For those unfamiliar with it, it is a sweet drink available mostly in Brazil. It is a precursor to some of the energy drinks. It is supposed to give you more vigor and I suppose it does, but no more than a Coca-Cola or a cup of coffee. It tastes good and kind of looks like beer in the twilight.
We had two bands playing. The first was a kind of rock band. The lead singer seemed to think he should channel Jethro Tull except with a harmonica; it was interesting, but not really my sort of music. We also had the Brazilian Marine Band. They played patriotic music, including the American & Brazilian national anthems as well as a lot of Sousa music. I liked this much better.
The Ambassador gave a good speech in Portuguese and English followed by recorded remarks by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton. After that came the fireworks, while the Marine Band played the “Stars and Stripes Forever,” “The Thunderer” & “Semper Fideles”.
You can see the various pictures. They are very high resolution, since I didn’t shrink them because of the darker exposures. Click on them to look at the whole picture at a bigger size. I think they are very good and all taken with my little camera. Ain’t technology wonderful?
It was a great celebration. I am looking forward to the weekend when I can explore Brasilia a little more. Unfortunately, I have to wait for the technician to come and install my cable and Internet. I have a “window” of 12pm – 6pm on Saturday. It is a bit of a problem, but I will be really happy to have internet access at home.
I arrived in Brasilia after the overnight flight on American. I got to go through that new scanning machine. It really is not a good thing. I don’t mind if they see me in my natural form, but the machine is even more sensitive to stuff in your pockets. They gave me a hard time because I forgot to take my little notebook out of my back pocket. Maybe they should just install showers at the airport and make everybody do through them, as they used to do as municipal pools when I was a kid. I also found a note in my gear that they had opened my luggage and inspected it. I pity those guys. Everything in my luggage was reasonably clean, but it might have been a different story on a return trip.
The flight itself was not that uncomfortable because I got into the exit row, with a little more leg room, but discomfort is a matter of degrees when you are flying. The flight left Miami at 11:05 pm and arrived in Brasilia the next morning at 7:15 (losing one hour, since Brasilia in an hour ahead), so it almost exactly overlapped normal sleep time. I slept some, but not too much. But since today was a travel day, I didn’t have to go into work and had a chance to get some rest.
My house is nice with a big back yard. There are a few little good details. For example, some of the outlets are wired for 110, which means I could safely run American appliance. This is less crucial, since I currently to not have any American appliances, but it is nice to know it is there. The place comes with a microwave, but no dishwasher, which will be a bit of a problem. I am not fond of doing dishes and, besides, they are never as clean as the dishwasher makes them.
The neighborhood is very pleasant, as you can see from the pictures. All the things you see are within easy walking distance. It is also a safe area, since lots of important politicians live here about. We are protected by a guard both at the entrance to our area, which is also bounded in by Paranoá Lake, usually just called Lago Sul. I took most of the pictures as I walked along a running trail that literally goes right past my house down to the lake and back up the other side. It seems to be around two and a half kilometers round trip. This is less than I usually do, so I figure I can run to one end then turn around and do it backwards, this will get me to five kilometers, about three miles, which is good enough for the routine runs. I am not far from some larger parks, so there is ample room for longer runs.
The city is much as I remember it, although there are some very impressive new buildings and lots more cars. The cars are also much better. When we were here twenty-six years ago, there were lots of Volkswagen beetles, locally produced and called Fuscas. They seemed to have a propensity for flip over, much like a real-life beetle, and start on fire. It is good that they are gone. Biking may be a problem. Although there is not much traffic, the roads are narrow and built specifically to facilitate non-stop driving, so there are lots of ramps and turn around, and almost no left turns. These things make it hard for a bike. I saw some people riding and you can see there is a bike trail on the picture below. It doesn’t go everywhere and also notice the drive casually violating it. I will figure something out.
Brasilia was created for the car and still has not compromised very much with the fact that many people around here still do not have cars and others might prefer to walk sometimes. If you are on foot and want to cross the road, you have to wait by the roadside and then run across when there is a break in traffic. The city was designed in the 1950s, when architects and planners were still infected with that socialist planning paradox of flattening and specialization. Each area of the city was designed for a particular activity. There are residential areas, shopping areas, recreation areas, business areas, government areas etc. You are supposed to drive from one specialty areas to the other.
This kind of zoning was popular in the middle of the last century. We suffered from it in the U.S. too. It is the logic that gave us all those housing projects that became such problems. It makes some logical sense to concentrate activities, but it goes against human nature. Most of us do not compartmentalize our lives that way. As I wrote above, it as part of that early-middle 2oth Century belief in planning and perfecting human beings, even if they didn’t like it. Most people really don’t want to be “perfected” & fortunately, human nature has modified the plans, hence my running trail pushing through the residential area and restaurant/shopping that I can walk to, even if I have to make a run for it across the road.
Cities require some planning, otherwise chaos reigns. There are also many things that must be done in a city for the common good. If such things are not planned, they probably won’t get done. But a city is really a living human organism. Planners can and should set initial plans and condition, but after that a city will grow and develop in ways that no planner or group of planners can anticipate. The combined intelligence and information of the people living in the city will always be greater than that of the planners and administrators. I love history. I revere the past and seek to preserve much of its good. But the past is dead. We, the living, must decide which parts to keep and which to shed. We can revere the past w/o being in thrall to ideas and plans that were conceived when people, by necessity, didn’t know as much about what they called the future than what we know as the past. The best planners can do is help create conditions that allow people to make good decisions for themselves. Planners should do their work and then leave, maybe revel in the fact that the people have so much improved on the original design.
Well, I am finally here in Brazil, the country that some called the perpetual country of the future, but now seems to have created a good present. I look forward to exploring it.
The pictures are all from a walk I took this afternoon. This is my neighborhood, not bad. Everything is still green. As the dry season sets in, most of the natural places will dry out and turn brown. The weather will be monotonously pleasant, sunny with cool nights, warm days, lots of sunshine and no rain for the next couple of months. The cool, dry conditions are deceptive. We are still in the tropics and the sun is powerful. I was reminded of that today. Despite my floppy hat and a low dose sunscreen, I got a little burned walking about two and a half hours in the noon-day sun. I spend a lot of time outside in Virginia and I am moving from Virginia summer to what they call winter down here, but the sun is still stronger.
Above is what the place looks like absent improvements. This part of the country was mostly grass and scrub. The rainforests are farther north and the Atlantic forests were farther east. Those are termite mounds in the picture. I like the improved version better, the one you saw in the other pictures and below. I am not sure what kind of pines those are, but all true pines are introduced here from somewhere else. The lake, BTW, is also man made.
