German versus Irish Pubs

What in other countries have become the Irish Pubs, it seems that in Brazil are the German bars or pubs.

The concept of an Irish Pubs (a rustic, cosy and charming place for socialization around good beers) has been highly sucsessful all around the world and it is possible today to find (more or less authentic) Irish Pubs in as unlikely countries as Tadjikistan.

In Brazil though, with its long history of German immigration, the "equivalent" of Irish Pubs seem to be the German Bars.   They can found in almost all major cities around the country.

This already pre-existing and relatively similar culture of "German bars" might be one the reasons why the concept of an Irish Pub, has caught on less in Brazil than in many other countries.

Brazilians spend their money abroad

As an addendum to the last post on Globo's telenovelas:

At the end of July, came out a report that Brazilians spent over two billion US dollars abroad, while foreigners spent less than 800 million Us dollars in Brazil:

http://www.valor.com.br/brasil/3626596/turista-brasileiro-gasta-us-2-bilhoes-no-exterior-em-junho

It seems that Brazilians just love to spend their money abroad.   This is not surprising, given that the Brazilian media seems to incessantly promote foreign tourist destinations, be in telenovelas (see above) or in documentaries: only the other day I saw a documentary about the history of cycling in the Netherlands (documentaries about European countries usually only show positive aspects).

Are Globo's telenovelas with their back turned to Brazil?

I saw the ending of the telenovela “EM FAMÍLIA” which ends in a classical music concert in PARIS.

I do not think the FRENCH TOURIST AGENCY could have done a better job at promoting tourism to the French capital. Since the telenovelas are often sold to DOZENS OF COUNTRIES, I am sure Paris will see a boost of tourism.

Why is not a BRAZILIAN DESTINATION featured? There are plenty of chique, luxurious and sophisticated ones.

Why not pick a luxurious resort in the Brazilian northeast such as Trancoso, BA, why not feature Campos do Jordão, SP or the charming town of Lavras Novas, MG?

(And if they think there is no equal to “Paris” in Brazil for the purpose of a romantic ending in this telenovela, then this is marvellous opportunity to CREATE / DEVELOP A BRAND.   Hollywood at some point in time was also just a sleepy Californian town.)

If you do it well, you might find THOUSANDS OF CHINESE TOURISTS wanting to visit this or that brazilian destination, featured this or that telenovela.

Same thing for FOOD.   Why not feature people consuming Brazilian food (like PÃO DE QUEIJO) and drinking GUARANÁ?   This would also be an opportunity to popularize uniquely Brazilian brands in Brazil and abroad.

But instead the rich main characters in the telenovelas live in NORTH-AMERICAN STYLE HOUSES, dress like NORTH-AMERICANS, live in MIAMI if the really have enough money, and travel to EUROPE whenever they can.

It almost gets to point of BRAINWASHING Brazilians into believing that: The richer and more sophisticated you are, the less Brazilian want to be and the less you want to have to do with Brazil.

But all this is also true in general, valueing foreign culture and overlooking local culture is also true when it comes to the SOUNDTRACKS.

Take for example the telenovela “CORDEL ENCANTADO”, a French/Northeastern (nordestina) fairytale.

The (Brazilian) soundtrack features songs by Brazilian artists, many of them Northeastern. But it is definitely NOT REPRESENTATIVE of Northeastern music in any way:

1) The artists are often more "neutral" Brazilian artists, guitarists and singers, with an affinity with more international musical genres such as ROCK, JAZZ and BLUES (take Lenine, Maria Gadú and Zé Ramalho for example).

2) And most importantly, where is the ACCORDION?

If there is an instrument that REPRESENTS Northeastern music, then it is the ACCORDION. But there are only TWO soundtracks out of SIXTEEN that feature the accordion:

a. Saga of Felipe Catto (which is by the way a tango!) and

b. Xamego of Luiz Gonzaga - after all he COULD NOT BE COMPLETELY IGNORED...

The Northeast has a great number of marvellous accordion players, from DOMINGUINHOS to Mestrinho, from Oswaldinho to MENINÃO.

WHERE IS THEIR MUSIC ON THIS ALBUM?

ANY ONE OF THEM is more representative of Northeastern music than 90% of the artists on that album together!

What is even worse, when it comes to the INTERNATIONAL SOUNDTRACKS, often any little bit of genuine Brazilian music (that could identify the telenovela as being Brazilian) is removed.

Take for example FLOR DO CARIBE, which only features English and Spanish songs in its international version!

If it is sold to SPANISH speaking countries, why would the viewers prefer an ENGLISH song to a Brazilian song?

If it is sold to ENGLISH speaking countries, why would the viewers prefer an SPANISH song to a Brazilian song?

And in ANY OTHER foreign country it makes EVEN LESS SENSE to swap Portuguese language songs for English and Spanish ones.

The bottom line is:   WHY IS GLOBO SO AFRAID OF BEING BRAZILIAN OR TO SHOW THE REAL BRAZILIAN CULTURE TO PEOPLE?

Thoughts on the opening and closing cerimonies of the FIFA world cup

First, congratulations to the organizers of the opening ceremony for not showing a half-naked woman dancing samba.

This stereotype is doing today as much harm to Brazil as it is doing to one of its most important "trademarks" : SAMBA itself.

But there are some things the cerimony could have done better:

The opening ceremony showed parts of brazilian folclore, such as FREVO, DANÇA GAÚCHA, COCO and CAPOEIRA.

Among these, what came across rather nicely was (the internationally already well-known) CAPOEIRA, with its acrobatic moves.

Unfortunately though on the other hand the less famous FREVO wasted this opportunity to impress the spectator: The dancers did not show any of the sometimes acrobatic, sometimes subtle, but always spectacular and unique moves that are so characteristic to FREVO. I do not know why, this might be due to the difficult surface on which the dancers had to perform, or simply, the dancers selected for the show were not good enough.

This is a shame, because without these moves, FREVO is reduced to some "hopping around" in circus-like costumes - in short, it looses its essence.

The last part of the show featured three singers (two american and one brazilian): world famous JENNIFER LOPEZ, rather little known PITBULL (whose most brazilians learned about during the cerimony) and CLAUDIA LEITTE.

The choice of PITBULL and JENNIFER LOPEZ for the official song has already surprised most brazilians, even more the choice of the opening song.

After all the song was an american song with an american rhythm, instrumentation and sound, sung by two americans, with only “a participation” of a brazilian singer at the end.   (The only attempt to relate this song to the host nation, by the way)

There was some attempt at giving it hispanic flavour as two of the singers had Spanish surnames, and one of them even sang part of it Spanish.

But even with this Spanish touch the song is deeply rooted in the musical culture north of Miami:

One should not confuse Hispano-American culture with Hispanic-American culture born in the U.S. The latter has a strong influence from other popular currents of U.S. american music (such as afro-american hip hop). PITBULL is such an example, after all he is a rapper...

I do not think this was an attempt to approximate brazilian music with north-american hispanic music. FIFA knows very well that hispanic-american music and brazilian music are two different pairs of shoes, such as FRENCH CHANSON and BRITPOP.

I also do not think it was an attempt to produce a song with internationally well-known artists or with an international flavour (in this case FIFA could have asked MICHEL TELÓ or GUSTTAVO LIMA).

I assume that it was simply a concious choice to feature two U.S. artists, with a song aimed at the U.S. public. After all the U.S. is very large market and “soccer” has a lot of potential to grow there.

Similarly the closing cerimony featured two non-Brazilian artists, WYCLEF JEAN and CARLOS SANTANA and ALEXANDRE PIRES.

Again the U.S. american influece in the music of WYCLEF JEAN was very obvious. He is called a haitian artist, but I do not know what of haitian music remains?

I think it is only dangerous selling U.S. music for music from other countries, it can kill diversity.

Exaggerated Punishment for Suarez

The punishment of a suspension for nine matches and four months of no activity linked to football for Suarez is highly exaggerated.

What about Neymar elbowing Modric?   He just received a yellow card.   But by elbowing Neymar could have hurt Modric much more than Suarez could have hurt Chiellini with his childish biting.

The biting fetish is indeed very weird, whether you call it childish or primitive.

But in the end you risk hurting somebody much more by all these fouls which normally are committed during a football match.   And for these, players usually get at most a yellow card.

By biting somebody you do not inflict more than a intense, controlled and momentary discomfort.   Suarez's obviousloy does not bite to maliciously inflict injury on an opponent.   Neither does he carelessly put the physical well-being of an opponent at risk, as is done so commonly during football matches all the time.

This punishment is simply ridiculously disproportional.

Stable Union vs Marriage

In Brazil there is something called "stable union" (união estável), which is best described as a "de facto marriage".

It differs from most European "civil partnerships", in the sense that you do not even need to declare it to some official authority or even sign some contract. You are deemed to be in a stable union, if you live together with your girlfriend or boyfriend, with a longterm perspective with the aim of founding a family - whatever that means in practice...

Recognition of a stable union is either through a judge or through a certificate emitted by a cartório, according to this "instrução normativa" of the CNJ (Conselho Nacional de Justiça).   It tells you essentially the documents you need to bring along to obtain this certificate.

This document seems to be first list of nationwide "objective" criteria of what documents are necessary to prove a stable union!   Before the notion of a stable union was even vaguer...

A notarized "stable union contract" is for example is helpful, BUT NOT ENOUGH to prove the existence of the stable union.   A few people I have to talked seemed to think that such a contract is enough.    It is not!

Being  in a stable union or in a marriage both give you the right to apply for a Brazilian residence/work visa based on family reunion.

But, in practice, if you have a Brazilian partner and you would like to live with her/him in Brazil, it is absolutely NOT advisable to apply for a residency/work visa based on a stable union.

This is the opinion shared by Danielle in her blog, where I first read first-hand how long and excruciating this way to obtain a visa can be.

Until this year the regulations for obtaining a visa based on stable union and marriage were completely different:
for example, the applications based on stable union were decided by the CONIg (Conselho Nacional de Imigração), who meets only once a month and the process for a marriage based visa was decided by the MRE (Ministério das Relações Exteriores), where the process seems to be much more streamlined.

(This seems though to have changed with the Resolução Normativa RN 108/2014 of February this year: Now it seems that the process is the same in both cases, and is taken care of by the MRE.)

Still the the vague juridical nature of the stable union seems to make the visa simply twice as complicated and possibly exponentially longer.   After all the Brazilian authorities, on top of having to decide whether to give you a visa, have to decide if they agree with you whether you are actually in a stable union or not!

So if you have a Brazilian partner and plan to apply for a visa to live with them in Brazil you should definitely consider this!

Marriage and permanent visa

One of things that went very quickly for me, was the permanent residence and the work permit (carteira de trabalho):   The first I obtained within 3 days of arriving in Brazil and the latter I obtained within 7 days.

Background story:   I was working in Europe, went to Brazil in my holidays and married my wife there.   After the holidays we went back to live in Europe.   I then applied in Europe for my Brazilian permanent residence visa (based on my marriage with a Brazilian citizen).

This visa was issued after one month.   With this visa I arrived in Brazil, and on the third day I simply went together with my wife to the Polícia Federal in my city to register.    I was immediately issued a SINCRE protocol with my new condition as permanent resident.   With this protocol I went to the Mnistério do Trabalho e Emprego (MTE) on the same day and applied for my work permit (carteira de trabalho) which was ready for me to collect already in the next week.

The only thing that really seems to take some time is the issuing of the Carteira de Identidade de Estrangeiro (CIE), but this is mostly only a formality and the protocol is a sufficient document for most purposes.

When I married my wife and when we decided to move to Brazil, I found on the internet a lot of discouraging stories (almost "horror" stories) of people waiting for months or for years for their permanent residence.

One advice I found, is the one to apply for your permanent residence visa FROM ABROAD, where you currently living and not to arrive in Brazil (on a tourist visa for example) and then ask for permanent residence.   Asking for permanent residence in Brazil takes just takes awfully longer and there is list is long list of documents you have to chase in from various Brazilian authorities to be able to apply for it.   Also, when you arrive already with your visa from abroad, there seems to be no home visit by the Polícia Federal:   you are simply registered.

I am not sure why this is so, but one explanation might be that Brazil (as any other country in the world probably) prefers to give permanent residency to people whose social and economic condition they understand:   when I applied for my visa from Europe I was asked for paychecks, work contract and other documents.

When a foreigner applies from within Brazil, often she/he is not working yet and it is much more difficult for Brazilian authorities to judge whether this person has the capability to provide financially for himself (or for his family) or if they are just somebody who did not manage to sort their life out in their home country...

Brazil might also want to discourage people coming to Brazil on a tourist visa and then marrying just to continue to be able to remain in Brazil.

In any case, the bottom line is, if you want to avoid hassle, apply for your permanent residency visa (based on "reunião familiar") from your home country.