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Last Update: Saturday, December 11, 2004

Here is the home of Brazzil Classic in our traditional black and white colors. The place to find Brazzil articles from 1995 to 2004. Welcome. Don't forget to visit brazzil.com, brazzilmag.com and brazzilforum for articles, news and discussions on Brazil.

Brazil: The Media Is Not Beyond Suspicion
With the inevitable outcome, it is safe to say that the Federal Council of Journalism served the press an extraordinary purpose. Despite sentenced to termination on the shelf, the project and its mentors set off involuntarily the most important debate over the press in the last decades. Brazilian democracy, impawned, is grateful.
by Alberto Dines

Sorriso: a City Worth US$ 174 million
This is the GDP of Sorriso, a city in the midwestern state of Mato Grosso. The 13 greatest soy producers in the state are organizing themselves in order to export directly, in five years time, about 200,000 tons of soy. This is equivalent, in today's values, to an income of US$ 55 million per year. The city has the greatest soy productivity in the world, and a per capita income above the Brazilian average.
by Joel Santos Guimarães

Between a Saint and a Sinner in Laguna, Brazil
Brazil never felt more like Spain or Italy. At the present time in Brazil, evangelical Protestantism is making deep inroads into Catholicism. Everybody seems excited and amused. A local man tells a miraculous story about a sixty year-old retired teacher who had rather suddenly gotten married. "The real miracle was that she was a virgin."
by Terry Caesar

In Brazil, It's Three Beers or Your Life
Bribe fishing, is nothing new in Brazil, having been incorporated into Brazilian culture decades if not centuries ago. Things are getting worse, however. Being honest and not choosing to play the corruption game can endanger the life of anyone who defies the "system". The bribery industry is installed at all levels of society.
by Leila Cordeiro

In Brazil, All Is Allowed… After the Elections
There are those in Brazil who believe that the government will propose in November, after the elections, the infamous labor reform, extinguishing all remaining rights after the Cardoso sociological hurricane blew by. It seems the scale will tilt toward the economic team's side, which will certainly be kept in place if Cardoso ever returns to power.
by Carlos Chagas

What Brazil Lacks Is a Project of Inclusion
Over the decades we have created in Brazil the idea that economic growth is the road to building a solid nation. History has already shown, however, that the economy is a necessity but that, far from solving Brazil's problems, it can in some cases aggravate them. Growth does not solve social justice questions.
by Cristovam Buarque

Brazil Celebrates Pessoa. Woe the Poet!
In the last decades, literature studies have been the major propeller— not in literature—for tourism. A large literary conference is always a party for airlines, travel agents, and hotel and restaurant businesses. The one to profit the least is literature itself; after all, conferences generate a lot of hullabaloo and zero literature.
by Janer Cristaldo

Brazil's Latest Fad: the Narghile
The table pipe, which is very appreciated in the Arab countries, became popular in Brazil during the last three years. Today the narghile has become a way to lure Brazilian youths to the hip bars, and is used by many, not only Arab immigrants descendants. Importer Maxifour alone sells up to 300 units every month.
by Isaura Daniel

Arabs Love Brazil. They Are 7% of the Country.
They started arriving in Brazil in the nineteenth century. In their luggage was a great desire to work and dreams of riches. Today the Arabs, their children and grandchildren total 12 million people. Their culture, customs and entrepreneurship can be seen in the Brazilian industry, cuisine, music, and vocabulary.
by Marina Sarruf

Why Can't Brazil Stand Up to Bush?
Brazil's so-called Shoot Down Law was approved seven years ago by the Brazilian Congress, but it was never enforced because the US would not permit. By way of an imperial gesture, US president, George Bush, is now allowing Brazil to shoot drug-carrying planes as if he were dishing out a handout to a hobo.
by Carlos Chagas

Brazil May Be a Country, But It's Not a Nation
In order to be a country, only a territory and a president are needed. To be a nation, what is needed is a long-term project that unifies all the inhabitants. The small number of medals won in Athens and the many violent deaths in our streets originate from the lack of a project to build a winning and integrated Brazil.
by Cristovam Buarque

Can't Brazil Leave the NY Times Alone?
On giving in to the temptation of again confronting the powerful New York Times, the Brazilian government is issuing an affidavit that the Federal Council of Journalism is its own initiative, and not the journalists'. Brazil's National Federation of Journalists has behaved as a Brasília's godchild throughout this episode.
by Alberto Dines

Brazil Sounds: Stalking Veloso and Gil's Ghosts in London
During the years Brazilian composers Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil spent in London they lived in several different addresses. But it is the first house, the one in which Veloso and Gil lived in together which Veloso still recalls: "The recollections of the house in Chelsea, the inside of it, are more enduring than those of the other houses."
by Guy Burton

Brazil's Monica Gang to Take On the World
Brazilian comics creator Mauricio de Souza and his characters like Monica and Jimmy Five are already known in Italy, Portugal, Japan, Greece, France, and Indonesia besides Brazil. The father of the most popular comics in Brazil now wants to widen even more his universe taking his creatures to Arab countries and China.
by Isaura Daniel

In Brazil, the Poorer the Better for the Rich
Brazil is a very class conscious culture. The majority of politicians and the elite in control have little desire to change the lives of the poor. The lower class is viewed as a source of affordable domestic labor. Street children are seen as nuisances and favelas as crime areas which should be left to the police to deal with.
by Jennifer Grant

Kids from Brazil. How Cool Are They?
Life in Brazil and in Rio, in particular, tends to be more focused on the family than in the United States. The child is made to feel an important part of a larger unit. Brazilian parents find less occasion to discipline, and the families tend to be less authoritarian. Teenagers rarely rebel against their parents like they do in the US.
by Jennifer Grant