Month: February 2012

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Ripples

It is often not the person who you touch but the person touched by that person who really makes the difference.  This I noticed when we talked to a guy at a reception at our political counselor’s house last night.  He had not been on one of our programs but had a close friend who had been.  This friend visited reconciliation meetings in Manhattan as part of a Voluntary Visitor tour. 

He told us that he did not get the idea from us – reconciliation meetings are an old idea after all – but knowing that such a model was working so well in the U.S. inspired him to go ahead with his push for an expansion of the reconciliation system in Brazil.  

As background he told us that the general idea of a meeting of reconciliation had been around during the time of the Empire in Brazil, but had largely been abandoned with the advent of the republic, when many were animated by Positivist ideas of clear regulation applied everywhere the same.  Results of a reconciliation meeting are more like common law. They are agreements among parties and specifically do not require the close exercise of specific rules. 

Brazilians like to make laws, he commented tangentially, but sometimes don’t think enough of how these laws will be implemented.  For example, he joked that he would not be surprised if there was a law against floods.  This sometimes overweening love of rules, even if they won’t be followed, impedes sometimes messy but effective institutions such as reconciliation meetings. 

These bodies are specifically NOT courts; a judge is not involved in the actual sessions.  A judge can legally sign (and enforce) an agreement that comes out of the reconciliation session, but does not intervene in the formation of the agreement itself.

He admits that the meetings are not uniform throughout Brazil and that there is significant resistance by lawyers and judges.  Some of this is principled – they don’t think justice is properly served, but some is probably just that they see the meetings as eroding their privileged position. Many people prefer the alternative to the court system, which is very slow and can be very expensive to use. 

When somebody used the term arbitration, our friend pointed out that this was specifically not what the reconciliation meetings were doing. Arbitration, he thought, would not fit in well with Brazilian cultural norms.  They either decide by themselves or go to the judge. Judges are involved in the reconciliation meetings, however. They record the agreement which becomes legally enforceable as a contract.

We have been sending IVLP and VV groups of Brazilian lawyers and jurist to the U.S. for some time and it seems to have a positive effect. Brazil’s legal system is based mostly in code law and so resembles continental Europe much more than a country like the U.S. which leans on common law. However many commercial and regulatory rules are based on similar principles in our countries. We can learn from each other.

Another guest at the party gave me the two minute version of Brazilian legal history. Brazil started off as a code law country, with Continental European style laws with roots in the Napoleonic or even the Justinian codes. But in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, Brazilian elites were fascinated by the U.S. experience. They thought that they could learn from the other large republic in the Americas. So some Brazilian legal practice acquired an American accent.  He mentioned specifically Ruy Barbosa. This is a name I knew from streets named after him, but I learned that he was a great figure in Brazilian political, legal and literary circles. I was a little embarrassed not to know more. He is certainly someone I should get to know better.

My picture is unrelated to the story.  It is left over from my recent trip and shows a dock on the Amazon.  

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Manaus (Again)

This is my second visit to Manaus and the place doesn’t get any prettier.  The nice area is near the opera house, as you can see in the pictures nearby. The rest is just a fairly crowded city that could be anywhere in the world that is hot and humid.  We did save a lot of money, however, by staying in a downtown hotel called the Go-Inn rather than the more expensive Blue Tree. I like Go-Inn better anyway.  You can walk to some of the appointments.

We have two overlapping streams of connection in places like Manaus or Belém.   Those are the alumni of our programs and our BNCs. I visited both during my trip.  One of the big relatively new sources of connections and friends is our Youth Ambassador Program.   We choose some of the smartest kids in Brazil, so they are already on the road to success.   The YA program helps them get even farther ahead.  We don’t have a massive number of YA, but after ten years there are hundreds and they are proving to be excellent contacts.  Even in an out-of-the way place like Macapá, we found young people eager to talk with us.

Unfortunately, we don’t have BNCs in every city.   We cannot easily found new ones because of the logistical challenges and the competition from other English teaching organizations.   We can nurture the ones we have and encourage them to establish branches in other cities. The BNC in Belém has a branch in Santarém, for example, and maybe the BNC in Manaus could sponsor something in Boa Vista in Roraima.  

The BNC in Manaus is our most remote.  It teaches about 5000 students and their building is fully booked during the peak times, i.e. Saturdays and evenings.  To get more students and to help alleviate the crowding, the BNC is working with UNINORTE, a local Laureate affiliate.  The BNC will have access to UNINORTE.  

We were able to give the BNC that good new that they could host an English immersion program for our runner up youth ambassadors this year.  BNCs really don’t make any money on these things, because they always offer scholarships to the students, but getting to host some of Brazil’s best and brightest young people is worth the effort.    

The BNC in Manaus is doing well.  There are no serious problems; in fact they have been able to expand operations.  Their only complaint was that the area around Manaus does not produce enough quality applications for programs like Science w/o Borders.  In the last group of more than 650 students, the whole of Amazonas sent only five.  By comparison the city of Londrina, which is a little smaller than Manaus, had seventy students go on the scholarships.  One problem, they told me, is the TOFEL.  Many people cannot get the scores and it is even a problem to take the tests.  Last year there were not enough slots for all the applicants.  This problem was compounded by a power failure that affected all of Manaus on the day of the test last semester.

Below is a lonely preacher. He talked about the Bible for as long as we were in the square. He was talking when we came and when we left, so I assume he was there a really long time. He got no takers that we saw.

We noticed lots of Haitians around Manaus.  The BNC folks told us that there were now around 5000 in Manaus.  There were around 1000 school aged children who are in the public schools, w/o Portuguese.  The BNC is trying to help the local schools teach Portuguese, but this is not their primary area of expertise.

We also went over to Instituto Tecnologico Alternativo de Petrópolis where we met the director and his staff. He gets international volunteers. In the group were two Peruvians and a German volunteer.

This organization aims to provide practical education to the people of the neighboring poor area. It is a challenge, but Jonas has managed to organize community resources enough to become a local institution for thousands of people.   They primarily learn English, computers and business related skills.  The Mission has donated books for their library.  While most people in the area appreciate the education, we were told that robberies are a problem.  Much of their computer equipment was stolen not long ago and now they have a security system.  It is too bad that an organization trying to help has to do something like that.

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A Foot in Both North & South

Macapá sits on the equator and they have a modest monument marking it.They say that the sun shines right through the hole in the tower during the spring and autumn equinoxes. I don’t know what time it would be.  At high noon the sun should be directly overhead.

This monument is on my list of things that are worth seeing but not worth going to see, but since it was on the way to the boat it was worth stopping and officially putting one foot in each hemisphere. There are lots of myths about the equator. Some people think that an egg can stand up straight on the end on the equator. This is not true. 

A more persistent myth is that water drains in different directions in different hemispheres. This is also is not true.  The idea is based on the Coriolis force, which deflects the air to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere. This only affect phenomenon that are spread over very large areas, like hurricanes. In physics weak forces make large extensive things and strong ones make small compact ones. There is no Coriolis affect exactly at the equator, which is why hurricanes can’t cross the equator, probably a good thing. Water going down the drain is too small to be affected or more correctly it is much more affected by other factors such as how the water hits the drain or the shape of the vessel holding the water.

I walked down the rail marking the equator. That was my ritual to the place.

The pictures are all from Macapá. Up top is the equator monument. Below are kids playing soccer in the Amazon. This part is tidal; the river withdraws from the dock at low tide exposing the soccer field. Next is downtown. Not very exciting. And just above shows how little red peddles fall from the trees. It is kind of like the pink snow in the “Cat in the Hat” or maybe like candy. It is pretty in any case.

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When Worlds Collide

It is as if one world lassoed another and pulled it closer. That is what this bridge across the Rio Negro did.  It is the first bridge you encounter as you come up the Amazon system. The river is just too wide everywhere else and besides there is nothing much to connect.

There is nothing much to connect here either – yet. The long high bridge now ties the unremarkable village of Iranduba with Manaus might seem like a waste of money. But it is changing things. You used to have to take a ferry for a couple hours to get to Iranduba & there were few reasons to make the trip; you can now drive in fifteen minutes.  This has the practical effect of creating new land in Manaus and you can already see what will happen in the next few years. As you cross the bridge into this formerly distant peninsula between the Solimões and Rio Negro, the first thing you notice is all the real estate signs. It reminded me of Northern Virginia in the boom times. This will soon be suburbs and exurbs, probably mostly high end from the looks of the pictures advertising the new developments.

From my public affairs angle, I thought this would be the ideal time to connect local leaders with Americans who have experienced similar growth in the not very distant past. Development is inevitable, but it can be done well or poorly. There is a lot of wetland and nature that should be properly protected. If done well, they can avoid the damage caused by rising water and erosion.  I say avoid the damage, because they cannot avoid the water and can avoid damage by not building in some places. People like to build on low areas near water. They shouldn’t do it. Beyond that, I hope that there is better planning. Manaus is not an attractive city. Just spreading it across the river would be a bad idea. Maybe some of these guys should visit Curitiba. They plan right down there (although this week’s “Veja” indicates that not all is well in Curitiba’s suburbs.)

The village of Iranduba evidently has only two claims to fame, or did before the recent Anschluß with Manaus. It was a place that produced bricks and natural rubber condoms. The brick making is the one that the town fathers choose to emphasize but the monument they chose to erect could be appropriate to both, as you can see from the picture above. Below is the other factory Lam-Latex.

Besides these industries, there seemed to be a lot of fishing and cattle ranching. I don’t know what will happen to the former ferry port on the Solimões. My first thought was that it would atrophy and fade away, but if the town grows I could envision it becoming a kind of tourist attraction.

We visited a big marketplace where the locals could buy all they needed.The fish were very fresh, many were still alive. I could not identify them, but they said some were piranhas. Besides fish, there were butcher shops, produce stands, stands selling clothes etc.

Farther down the road are more tourist attractions in transition. You can see in the pictures. It reminds me of those little resorts on small lakes in Wisconsin. Most of them have now become bigger, moved high-end or faded away. I think the days of the little lakes lodges are fleeting. 

The beach you see in the picture is on the Rio Negro. The water is very warm and shallow. This is a high water time on the Rio Negro, as you can tell from the submerged trees and bushes. Our Brazilian friend told us that the beach had gone out another twenty meters a few weeks earlier.   

Below is the characteristic we environment near Iranduba. I joked with our Brazilian friends that I expected alligators. They pointed out that this was not true, since this was anaconda habitat. I expect people moving into new subdivisions won’t be able to keep small dogs and cats … at least not for long.  I thought my colleague Justen should wade into the water and see if he could scare up a couple of the big snakes, but he was unenthusiastic about the idea.

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Rolling on the River Amazon

I spent two days and two nights sailing up the Amazon with the Semester at Sea. Most of my waking time was spent talking to students. They kept me fully scheduled, which is how I like it. It was lots of fun to interact with the clever students and professors. They also have a group called “lifelong learners,” who are retired people who want to cruise in a learning environment.

But I did have some time to myself and I spent lots of that free time just looking at the river and thinking about how interesting it was just to be on the Amazon. You can see my balcony in the picture above. It was nice to sit out there. It is humid, but fresh on the river. The Amazon – the word conjures up all sorts of feelings and images. It was interesting and a little scary to look out over the river in the midnight darkness. It is so empty out there, as I mentioned in an earlier post. The picture up top shows a beautiful scene. Beautiful from a distance. That green in the front is not grass. It is a type of reed. You could not walk through it.

During the day you can see that the water is the color of coffee with cream.  The silt does not sink out.  There is a lot of other stuff floating. It is mostly branches and floating weeds, but I also saw whole trees and what looked like a dead cow. The dead cow made me feel more confident about the water. I figured that if a dead cow could float unvexed down the river there could not be that many piranha.

I was told that the water was low, even though it looked like the forest came right to the shore and was only a few feet above the water. Evidently in the high water time the river goes into the forest and you can see the tops of the trees reaching out of the water. That would be interesting.  It is hard to believe that the river could be much wider, but it can.

As far as famous rivers go, however, the Amazon is a little monotonous. The land along-side is almost uniformly flat. You get a lot more variety on the Rhine. The Nile has cataracts. I don’t know the Mississippi except in Minnesota & Wisconsin, but it also has more bluffs and variety. The interesting thing about the Amazon is the water itself not only the sheer amount of it but also its composition.

The Amazon is formed when the Rio Solimões meets the Rio Negro outside Manaus. The Solimões is cloudy and coffee & creme colored, as is the Amazon downstream. The Rio Negro, as its name implies, is black. Above is Manaus from the Rio Negro. Below is a ferry stop on the Rio Solimões.You can see the difference. The waters meet but don’t immediately mix, instead running side by side for several miles. I did not see this, since the ship crossed this at night while it was still dark. I woke up to see that the color of the water was black, as we were heading up the Rio Negro toward the Port of Manaus. It was also dark when we passed Santarém the night before. This is where the Rio Tapajos meets the Amazon. The Tapajos is supposed to be turquoise colored. I will have to wait to see that some other time.

We did cross the new bridge in Manaus across the Rio Negro. I will write a little more about that later. Suffice to say now that on the other side we caught up with the Solimões.  The Amazon takes its look from this river. The Rio Negro & the Tapajos just give their water and soon lose themselves.

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Star Forts

These forts really were impregnable. If you had a fort like this, you forced your adversaries to engage in some other sort of warfare.  Of course the problem with static defense is that it makes you rely too heavily on the bricks and mortar or on the technologies that were dominate when you built the structure. You don’t adapt to changing conditions both because you trust your existing protection and because you have so much invested in it that you really cannot easily change. Most of the great infrastructure of war is never conquered, but it is often bypassed or overtaken by changes. The smart opponent doesn’t attack your strength but searches for weakness.

They told me that the fort in Macapá is the largest of its kind. I don’t know if that is true; it isn’t that big but I have not seen many other star forts. I am also a little leery of the that term “of its kind.”  Maybe it’s the largest of its kind in Macapá.  I don’t know. Star forts have walls that point out like tips of a star. This was a response to artillery. Medieval castles have straight walls, since you could repel attackers from any point and they could attack from any point. The problem is that there are blind spots that cannot be adequately protected from any of the castles towers.  This doesn’t matter if your attackers are using swords, spears or pointy stick. It matters if you enemy can bring artillery to bear on your walls and if you have artillery of your own to direct against them. What the star fort does is fill the blind spot space so that anywhere that the enemy could approach is subject to interlocking fields of fire from the various points of the fort. The walls are also sloped so that projectiles will tend to glance off instead of just slamming in as they did with a medieval wall. The walls are also lower, since you can presumably put your adversaries under fire from a long way off. 

This type of fort worked well until artillery power, range & accuracy improved. It is the characteristic colonial fort of the Spanish and Portuguese. An example of a star fort in the U.S. is Fort Ticonderoga.

The fort in Macapá controls the main mouth of the Amazon. I didn’t know this, but the river that comes out at Belém do Pará is technically not the Amazon. It has the same water, of course, but in going around an island it gets a different name. The Amazon empties into the Atlantic at Macapá.  

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Instituto Geográfico e Histórico do Pará

We were nominating the Instituto Geográfico e Histórico do Pará for a grant to renew & restore their document collection, so due diligence required that we go there in person to look around. Things often look different on a paper proposal than they do when you see them in person. The need and the utility are there, as is the potential to make things better. They have a large collection of paper documents describing all sorts of transactions as well miscellaneous documents such as the sorts of notices they used to post for the general public, some centuries old. They are not in a terrible condition, but also not good and threatened. This is a very humid climate. Many of the documents look good, but it would not be good to handle them too much. The Institute will file, restore and most importantly make electronic copies of the documents. Documents that you cannot access are not more useful than documents that don’t exist.

The documents are not the only things that need restoring. The Institute is housed in a building that is still very elegant but in a “seen better days” way. The location is great as you can see from the picture above.The place used to be owned by a rich and influential local citizen and the Institute used to be the go-to place for records and research in Pará. The rich guy died; universities and other institutions took up most of the research work. But it remains one of those places that good cities revere and protect. It has a board of directors of influential local citizens and will one day – probably soon – again be a very pleasant local center. Restoration is being done on the building and the furniture inside, as you can see below.

All this made me think of how buildings and institutions work. Sometimes we would just like to preserve them and there is a school of thought that we should set these sorts of places aside, museum like, protected.  I disagree. IMO historical buildings are like Stradivarius violins. They have to be used or else they decay and lose their value. This means renewing, restoring and to some extent changing rather than preserving like a fly in amber. That fly is dead. It is important that cities be full of life. Homage to the past doesn’t mean giving up the future. Things must be constantly renewed and protected against the forces of destruction. Below you can see the evidence of one of those big agents of destruction – termites.

Cultural place often supplement their incomes by housing restaurants and cafes. This provides not only some needed cash, but also brings people into the venue and since people appreciate and value what they know and what is familiar, it builds a constituency for culture. The institute has plans for such a project and I encouraged them to pursue it with determination and vigor. We don’t nominate those sorts of commercial projects for grants; there is a kind of prejudice against the profitable, but in the long run a successful operation like that will be worth more than the kindness of strangers as embodied in a grant.