Rapidinhas

Gisele and the President

Fashion

Naughty Überbelle

Despite repeated statements by the supermodel herself about how ephemeral her career would be, Brazilian Gisele Caroline Bündchen, 20, continues to shine in the rarefied firmament of super stardom. After gracing hundreds of magazine covers and appearing in fashion shows and ads, the model, who leapt to international fame in 1999, was chosen as the entrée for the 2001 Pirelli calendar, a free, limited edition publication (40,000 copies) that is sought after the world over. Giselle was chosen for the month of January. Having started as a staple of greasy auto shops, the Pirelli calendar today is a luxury item, an object of desire that few people ever acquire.

Gisele needs no introduction. She is the world's most famous übermodel today. The beauty, who won Vogue's Model of the Year Award last year, was discovered at the age of 14. She was born July 20, 1980, in the little town of Nova Horizontina (pop. 17,000), in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, in the south of Brazil. She told French magazine Paris Match: "I was called Olive Toothpick, after Popeye's wife, or even The Skeleton. I looked like a little mosquito. My legs were the same size as my arms. And I was never allowed into the group of girls who tarted themselves up to go dancing and entice the boys."

Gisele has been the talk of the world: dozens of websites with her pictures have sprouted and magazines write about her romance with Titanic's Leonardo Di Caprio. One of her latest assignments was to model in provocative poses for lingerie maker Victoria's Secret. The Brazilian president received her at the end of November and Globo TV wants her in the cast of Porto dos Milagres (Miracles Port), a new novela (soap opera) on the dominant network TV in Brazil, which is rumored to be the most expensive serial Globo has ever produced. Each half-hour episode is expected to cost $100,000 compared to today's per episode cost of $75,000.

Four months ago the model went through a screen test for the leading role of Jacobina, a movie by director Fábio Barreto, whose O Quatrilho (1995) was nominated for an Oscar as Best Foreign Movie. Gisele never thought she would become famous for her beauty. Now British tabloids say that the Brazilian model is the first name on Revlon's list to replace Cindy Crawford, 34, who was fired after being the symbol for the cosmetics company for 11 years.

Gisele was the target of criticism recently for having posed for the British men's magazine Arena. Controversial American photographer David LaChapelle took the pictures that some people called "depraved." While the model is not shown totally undressed in the 25-page photo essay, her poses have provoked furor. In one of the pictures Gisele is shown lying on a kitchen table with her right leg raised as she holds a rolling pin in her left hand touching her black panties. On the table there are an empty egg carton, a pan with flour on it and a just baked phallic-shaped cookie. Standing on a chair facing Gisele is a child with closed eyes and raised arms.

In another picture she holds a nightstick while wearing a police cap, black bra and panties. Another page shows her holding a green snake while gardening on all fours. On the cover of Arena, in which the model appears for the third time since 1998, she is washing a red car. Once again the image recalls sexual fantasies with the Brazilian belle clutching a water hose with one hand while holding a sponge full of soap in the other.

Brazil's bevy of beauties doesn't stop with La Bündchen. The Pirelli calendar itself has three other belles in its pages, all of them (including Gisele) shot by Peruvian photographer Mario Testino in Naples, Italy. They are Ana Cláudia Michels, Fernanda Tavares and Mariana Weickert. Four nods from Pirelli to Brazilian charm and good looks. While only 40,000 privileged individuals throughout the world will get the calendar everybody is able to see the four Brazilian beauties at http://www.pirelli.com.

They are all there together with beauties of other countries: January: Gisele Bündchen; February: Aurelle Claudel; March: Karen Elson; April: Rhea Durham; May: Mariana Weickert; June: Fernanda Tavares; July: Angela Lindvall; August: Ana Cláudia Michels; September: Liisa Winkler; October: Noemie Lenoir; November: Frankie Rayder; December: Carmen Kass.

Fernanda, 20, also started early as a fashion model. She was still 13 when she starred in her first TV commercial. Born in Natal, capital of Rio Grande do Norte, the model moved to São Paulo with her family when she was 14. She got her big break three years ago when she went to work for the Marilyn Agency, which invited her to live in Paris. Within a few weeks her career took off. Soon she was modeling for Chanel and Chloé and appearing in Europe's main fashion magazines.

Ana Cláudia, 19, is from Blumenau, state of Santa Catarina. Her face and body should be recognized everywhere since she is starring in the new Calvin Klein's jeans campaign. She's being called the new Twiggy by fashion writers for the way she looks at you. She became well known in Brazil after appearing on billboards for M. Officer, a clothes manufacturer.

Mariana, 20, has been called Barbra Streisand due to her likeness to the American actress and singer. She is what can be called an exotic beauty with freckles and a not very appealing nose. In a recent ad campaign for Ellus she appeared as one Charlie's Angels—or Ellus Angels as they are called in the promotion of the Brazilian clothes manufacturer. Mariana has been living in New York City for the past three years.

People

Cold Empire of Law

João Herbert, 22, has been in Brazil since November 16. Although he doesn't speak any Portuguese and has lived 15 years in the United States as the adopted son of an American couple, Jim Herbert and Nancy Saunders, being deported to his native Brazil was the only way he found to get out of jail. Despite being legally adopted, Herbert was considered a foreigner because his parents never applied for his naturalization. Herbert, who lived in a Brazilian orphanage his adoption, was imprisoned after falling into a police sting while trying to sell 200 grams of marijuana to a plain-clothes policeman from Ohio.

The youngster's case became a cause célèbre because the Brazilian government, on humanitarian grounds, argued that he shouldn't be returned to Brazil as he was not a Brazilian anymore, didn't speak the language and had no family to go home to. Brazil—together with his adoptive parents—also claimed Herbert didn't come to the U.S. of his own volition and that adoption is an irrevocable act. Useless arguments. The Yankee intransigence won and again, on humanitarian grounds, the Brazilian government granted him a Brazilian passport. The only alternative left was for Herbert to spend the rest of his life in American prisons.

The return of Herbert moved Brazilians and after staying a few days in a São Paulo shelter for the poor he accepted an invitation from a pastor to live with him and his family in the interior of São Paulo. On his first day in the streets of São Paulo, Herbert said that he was feeling like a foreigner. "I feel moved and confused," he told reporters: "I studied about Brazil in school. Everything seems very different from the time I left. But I think this is a beautiful and kind country. As for my situation, many other people in the United States are suffering the same thing I did and unfairly as it happened to me." His priority now, he said, is to learn Portuguese. He is already saying some words like muito obrigado (thanks a lot).

The youngster also confided that he wants to study law and become an attorney specializing in International Law. His intention, he says, is to be able one day to show Americans the need to change their immigration laws and the way they treat immigrants in the United States: "There are some laws that are being changed, but this is not enough. The way they do things there hurts not only the immigrant, but also the whole family."

While not as dramatically as Herbert, Brazilians are increasingly being rejected and deported all around the world. According to a story published at the end of November by daily O Estado de S. Paulo, there was a dramatic 667% increase in deportation of Brazilians this year compared to 1999. Numbers from the Federal Police show that from January to October 1,359 Brazilians were barred from entering other countries and were returned home from the foreign airport. By comparison, for the whole year of 1999 there were 177 cases of deportation of Brazilians.

In a single day in November there were 20 instances of banishment. There is an average of six such occurrences a day. Most times the customs people suspect that the person with a tourist visa wishes to remain in the country. Most of the deported come from the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais. The United States leads the countries that send more Brazilians back, followed by England, Portugal, and more recently, Mexico.

Not every one that is sent back was thinking about living illegally in the foreign country, but the deportation experience is always humiliating and many times cruel. Some are kept incommunicado for hours or days in the airport and are taken in handcuffs to the plane. Their passport is confiscated by the police and given to the plane crew who gives it then to the Brazilian federal police.

USA

Better than Thou

Like the rest of the world, Brazilians had a raucous and a mirthful time following the post-election fiasco conducted by its northern neighbors in the United States of America. Besides repeating jokes told around the world Brazilians had a chance to deal with their own inferiority complex and for a change felt superior to the Americans.

TSE's (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral—Electoral Supreme Tribunal) Information Secretary, Paulo César Camarão, called the American model for voting archaic. "The U.S. electronic ballot box is the size of a refrigerator," he said, amused. "Our system, besides being uniform across the country, is also inviolable, fraud proof, and we are able to announce the results faster." We can almost see him laughing while saying this. After all, Brazil has just had national elections in which every vote—around 110 million of them—was cast electronically in a computer terminal a little bigger than a shoebox, which showed the pictures of the candidates so voters could confirm he or she was the correct person before casting their votes. In less than six hours (5 hours and 42 minutes to be precise) after the end of the elections the TSE already had the official results from 325,000 ballot boxes throughout the nation. For the president of TSE, minister Néri da Silveira, it's amazing that the U.S. doesn't have a national roster of voters and its system has no antifraud security.

Forums on the Internet opened their pages so people could talk about the U.S. election. Hundreds of messages were posted at the Globo portal. "Do you see what happens when you are outdated technologically?," asked Celso Poletto (veneza@naves.com.br). "Not only in elections but also in their banking system Americans are behind compared to Brazilians. Contrary to what happens in the U.S., the Finance Ministry, for example, accepts tax returns via the Internet." Lúcia Maria de Lima (lucialima8@ig.com.br) wrote that Brazilians could teach something to Americans regarding voting: "When the subject is elections the U.S. is a Third World country. It's unacceptable that a country that exercises its power over the world, that goes to space, that keeps secrets, bungles it so terribly when it's time to elect the planet's 'most powerful' man."

Some people were mad to see their fellow Brazilians so worried with what was happening up north. "I think this discussion is a total waste of time," wrote Eric Souza dos Santos (orubronegro@bol.com.br). "I'd like to know if these two American citizens are going to be elected president of the world or of a single country? I can't understand why Brazilians are so worried with an election in which whoever wins will not change at all the imperialistic relation of the U.S. towards the rest of the underdeveloped world. Do you think they discuss the fights between our Rio Governor Garotinho with mayor César Maia? Or the fights between senator Antônio Carlos Magalhães and President Fernando Henrique Cardoso? They don't even know what the capital of Brazil is. Stop this buffoonery and come back to reality. Beware Uncle Sam."

Elói Teixeira (eloi_vicente@hotmail.com) says that Brazilians should pity the American people for having such an outdated way of voting and invites Brazilians to be solidarity: "Besides the huge fiasco of showing the rest of the world an election in which the results came so late and which was subject to mistakes and fraud, there is something even worse: the indirect election, which can elevate to the presidency a candidate who the majority has not elected. In face of all of this, we Brazilians, who recently got rid of a regime of oppression, have to offer our solidarity to the American people. Let's lend them our slogans: "The people united, will never be defeated! Democracy in the USA! Direct (elections) now!""

For Christiana Bueno (christianabueno@ig.com.br) the American embarrassment and humiliation is a good lesson for the country: "They are finally tasting what it is to be underdeveloped with their primitive system of elections. We should send a committee of observers and share with them our technology in electronic ballot boxes, which is perfect for the exercise of a true and fair popular election by direct vote." And Ismenia Albuquerque (ismenia_albuquerque@hotmail.com) went a little further: "The mask has fallen. The U.S. has shown what in fact it is: a fraud." "The problem is that Americans are too dumb," concluded Ronaldo Fontoura (fontoura.voy@terra.com.br).

Echoing the feeling of other quarters, Mauro Simões (divcil@rffsa.gov.br) made fun of the U.S.: "Due do our interests in that country, I think Brazil should send observers to follow the ballot counting. Is this a new idea or have I heard it before in a reversed way?" To which Wilmor Henrique (whenriqu@brasilnet.net) added: "The U.S. is having the election it deserves. This way Americans will learn they are not superior to anything or anyone. They are always interfering in questions of other countries but are unable to hold an election with openness and competence. Don't you think there ought to be an international intervention in the American elections? Didn't it happen in Peru, Venezuela…?"

Concurring with many of these opinions and pointing to the good example of Brazil, The New York Times wrote in its op-ed page on November 24: "One very important lesson of the 2000 presidential election, regardless of its outcome, is already clear—you get what you pay for when it comes to tabulating ballots. America's unwillingness to invest in a reliable, up-to-date system for casting and counting votes has helped produce the chaos that now clouds the outcome of the presidential election.

"Brazil, a country larger than the continental United States, held the first national election conducted entirely on an A.T.M. system, with resounding success. More than 100 million people voted on 186,000 machines. Alas, in America, the land of rapid technological change, the act of voting remains a nostalgic one. In New York, we use the same machines our grandparents did, and a third of Americans attempt to punch out chads that were state of the art the year the Beatles appeared on 'The Ed Sullivan Show.'"

Disenchantment

Luís Fernando Veríssimo, who lived and studied in the United States and is one of the most respected writers in Brazil, couldn't resist going back again and again to the American fiasco in his daily column in the dailies O Globo (from Rio) and O Estado de S. Paulo. In one of them, after explaining the reason for the electoral college (it was created to maintain the balance between the agrarian Southern states and the North that was growing demographically) he concluded: "With the present mix-up it is even possible that the Americans may reform the Constitution and put an end to the electoral college, and the popular vote—preferably registered on trustworthy machines, as it happens in developed places like Caruaru (a little town in the backlands)—becomes decisive. And, more than 200 years afterwards, the spirit of the admirable document in which for the first time it was put on paper that common men are equal to kings, will prevail over their hypocrisies."

Veríssimo returned again to the same topic on November 15 in a piece called "Disillusion, Disillusion": "Nothing else was serious; we couldn't trust anything else but the American democracy. There it was a society that, say what they might, could give the world lessons of how an electoral system of free choice by direct suffrage works, and frequently gave. Now we find out that all the recent American elections, done with the same confusing methods and obsolete mechanisms as this last one are under suspicion—and that the suffrage, after all, was never direct. Nothing is serious anymore, there's nothing we can trust."

And when Florida had already certified the victory of Bush, Veríssimo came once again to the theme writing: "The United States should propose a UN emergency meeting to discuss sanctions against Florida, that weird place in the shape of an appendix in which the presidential elections were defrauded more shamefully than in Yugoslavia. An armed intervention by the NATO forces to end the ethnic cleansing of votes for Gore wouldn't be advisable, since there would always be the possibility of the bombs missing their target and killing Mickey Mouse, with international repercussions, but an economic blockade like the one they have against Cuba and Iraq would be justifiable. In the recent unacceptable elections in Yugoslavia the fraud was more discreet. At least the authority in charge of saying if the votes could be counted or not had not participated actively in Milosevic's campaign, as the State secretary of Florida did in Bush's campaign."

Writing at Folha de São Paulo, Ricardo Freire had a good time making fun of the U.S. in an article entitled, 'America Doesn't Know how to Vote.' "The United States might have asked for help from their technologically advanced neighbors like Brazil. We would send immediately a load of electronic ballot boxes—used ones for sure but in perfect working condition. The Quixeramobim (a funny-named village in the interior of backward Ceará state) ballot boxes for example. Our election ended and they are there, inactive, waiting for the next. This way the Palm Beach folks could vote without any mistakes. Because all they had to do was to punch a number, wait for the picture of George W. Bush or Al Gore to appear and then press the CONFIRMA key.

"To make things easier, instead of the candidates' pictures, the electronic ballot boxes loaned to the Americans could show little drawings of the running parties' symbols. If the Palm Beach voter punched the Republican candidate's number, the image of an elephant would appear. If the Palm Beach voter punched the Democrat candidate's number, the image of a little donkey would appear. I know that by now you don't believe anything I write, but I SWEAR the Republican Party symbol is an elephant, and that the Democrat Party symbol is a little donkey. A little don-key!!!!! It is obvious that a country that allows the alternating of power between little elephants and little donkeys can't really go far in life…

"How long will our brothers from the North put up with being at the technological rear end of the continent? How long will they allow their elites to shroud themselves in their own backwardness, boycotting high-end technology developed overseas? The United States cannot insist anymore in its provincialism, in the illusion that they will be able to continue immune to globalization. Fat chance. Sooner or later the free market will take care of bringing to the Americans technological innovations from the outside world. Things like direct elections, the metric system, football (soccer), sunga (short swim trunks), avocado with sugar."

Amazon

The Jungle Is Ours

Everyone in Brazil independent of political affiliation seems to be interested in the defense of the Amazon these days. With American troops training in neighboring Colombia fears of an invasion have increased. Villas-Boas Corrêa, a well-known political commentator for Rio's daily Jornal do Brasil has raised the issue recently. In Congress, Mozarildo Cavalcanti, senator for the state of Roraima, also touched on the matter of a possible American invasion.

Brazilian borders with Colombia are 1,700 km (1,062 miles) long, an area sparsely populated and with an insignificant Brazilian military presence. It is a wide open border where guerrillas, drug traffickers, weapon smugglers, and bio-pirates all come and go freely.

Cavalcanti does not embrace the old idea of massive occupancy of the border by stimulating internal migration. Disorderly occupation by crowds of peasants ignorant of local cultures and habits is not something he accepts since past experience showed it to be predatory. He also has no illusion that it is possible to maintain the Amazon untouched. He believes, however, that the Amazon should be occupied according to well-prepared ecological projects that have shown viability and efficiency in the past.

In his own state of Roraima, as well as in the stare of Amapá, self-sustaining projects were established with excellent results and were internationally recognized as such. Careful occupation does not destroy but protects forest reserves, teaches the senator.

The senator also warns that the military should modify ancient concepts, abandoning their old colonial strategy that concentrates the defense of the country on sea borders as if to defend Brazil from foreign invasion by sea. While there is a concentration of 44,000 military men in Rio, in the Brazilian Amazon, which occupies over two thirds of the country's territory, there are only 22,000.

Cavalcanti believes that the United States intervention in Colombia will not end soon. He says that Brazil has to accept the facts and protect its territory near seven bordering South American countries. The geopolitics of the Amazon must change, he argues, pointing that natives who live along the border feel more like Bolivians and Venezuelans than Brazilians,

Among the senator's solutions are the rearranging of the Brazilian territorial division in order to assure more efficient administration, and better territorial defense and geographical equilibrium of the country. Cavalcanti is the author of three projects proposing a referendum, as the Constitution determines, to create three new states: Solimões, on the west side of the Amazonas state; Tapajós, on the west side of the Pará State; and Araguaia on the north side of Mato Grosso state.

Approved with a few changes by a special senate committee, the matter will be voted on next year in the Senate and then by the full Congress. The Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration likes the idea; the Ministry of Defense approves of it. Despite the odds in his favor, Cavalcanti is not overly optimistic. He says, "This is a long and difficult struggle, but this is the only way we will be able to prevent the risk of foreign interference in the region."

Souvenir

Sky Cowboy

Fifty years ago this December 2001, a Brazilian cowboy roped a small plane and almost dropped it to a ranch pasture. If his rope had not broken, Euclides Guterres of Arroyo do Só, from Santa Maria, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, might have been with the first lasso kill of a flying object. As a result, Irineu Noal, a young member of the Santa Maria Aero Club, lost his flying license, paid a fine, and was barred from taking up any aircraft belonging to the Club.

The penalty was imposed on Noal for his conduct "unbecoming a gentleman and a pilot" by harassing cattle and people with his joy rides—repeated dives and low level passes that, according to the Club records, had "jeopardized the plane and threatened life and limb of the pilot and of people on the ground.".

It took international news services some time to find out whether the "COWBOY LASSOES PLANE" item was legitimate. Of course, most not even knew where Rio Grande do Sul—Brazil's southernmost State—was located. After verification, Time magazine did print a 36-line story in its February 11, 1952 edition.

Guterres, never known for more than his liking of dark eyes women and his inclination to join fist free-for-all, later moved to Uruguay where he traded in cattle. A few years later, he returned to his home pagos and sank back into obscurity. Today, nobody even knows when he died. As to the foolhardy pilot, Noal—now a seasoned senior member of the Santa Maria society—dismisses lightly his adventure: "It was a little boy's joke," he says.