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Inspiration and nationality: a brief overview of Brazil as described by Brazilian poets.

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Poetry was introduced in the 17th century in Brazil by the Portuguese people who had settled here. Our first poets date back to that time, but there wasn’t an organized movement and it wasn’t really focused on Brazil.The first approach to Brazilian culture in poetry as an organized literary movement occurred in the beginning of the 19th century, during the first generation of Romanticism, a movement called “Indianism”. This generation is known for the exaltation of Brazil and its nature, and valued the natives as national heroes. One of the major exponents of this movement is Gonçalves Dias, famous for his poem “Canção do Exílio” (“Song of Exile”), which has the widely known verses “Minha terra tem palmeiras/ Onde canta o sabiá./ As aves que aqui gorjeiam/ Não gorjeiam como lá” (“My land has palm trees/ Where the thrush sings/ The birds that sing here/ Do not sing as they do there.”) and also for his epic narrative poem “I-Juca-Pirama”, the history of a Tupi warrior.

Later in that same century, still within Romanticism, there was the movement called “Condorism”, or the third generation, which received this name for having adopted the condor as a symbol of freedom. This movement was highly influenced by the political ideas which were appearing in Brazil at that time. Castro Alves is one of the most famous poets of Condorism, and he is also known as “The Poet of the Slaves” for his participation in abolitionist movements. He’s well-known for his poem “O Navio Negreiro” (The Slave Ship).

Romanticism in poetry was followed by the Parnassianism. It appeared in France and strongly influenced Brazilian poets to the extent that it became the “official” Brazilian poetry. Its most notorious poet is Olavo Bilac. His participation in civic activities and his strong defence of mandatory military service led to his nomination by the Brazilian Army as the “Patron of Military Service”. His most notable works about Brazil are the Brazilian Flag Anthem (Hino à Bandeira do Brasil) and the poems “O Caçador de Esmeraldas” (The Emerald Hunter) and “A Pátria” (The Homeland), and he’s widely known among military people for his poem “Ardor do Infante” (The Infantryman’s Ardour).

The next literary movement in poetry to focus on Brazil was Modernism, which started in the beginning of the 20th century. Its first phase is characterized for its endeavour to establish a national poetry, rejecting European influences and adopting the free verse. It’s considered that it started in 1922, during the “Semana de Arte Moderna” (Modern Art Week), held in São Paulo. This movement is marked by the “Manifesto da Poesia Pau-Brasil” (Brazilwood Poetry Manifesto), the “Verde-Amarelismo” (“Green-‘yellowism’”) movement, the “Manifesto Regionalista de 1926” (Regionalist Manifesto of 1926) and the “Revista de Antropofagia” (Anthropophagy Magazine). Famous poets from these movements are Manuel Bandeira (and his poem “Os Sapos“, or “The Frogs”) and Mário de Andrade. Its second phase starts in the 1930s and lasts until about 1945. The poetry of this time is more focused on religious and philosophical unrest, and some poets wrote socially critical-oriented poems. The major exponents of poetry in the second phase of Modernism are Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Vinícius de Moraes, Jorge de Lima and Cecília Meireles.

Vinícius de Moraes was also a musician, and I personally consider him one of our greatest poets. He was able to perform with both singers of “old guard” movements and young and prominent poets/musicians, like the great Toquinho, Miúcha and Chico Buarque, and he is one of the founders of the musical movement Bossa Nova in the 1950s, along with Tom Jobim and João Gilberto. It was through Bossa Nova that Brazilian culture spread intensively among foreigners, although it reinforced the stereotype that Brazil is just Rio de Janeiro.

The post-Modernism has been the current literary movement since the 1950s and it is marked by the art of word, thus diminishing the social, political, philosophical and religious focuses which were recurrent in the previous movement. The most known poets of this movement are Ferreira Gullar, João Cabral de Melo Neto, Haroldo de Campos, Décio Pignatari and Augusto de Campos. I especially recommend the three latter ones for being part of the movement Concretism, which values visual poetry and different displays of words around the poem.

This is an attempt to introduce you, readers of this blog, to Brazilian poetry. I hope it’s worked. Any questions and concerns? Feel free to comment here or  e-mail us at thisbrazilianlife@gmail.com

— João Paulo

Reflections on Brazil’s Education Challenge

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Along with our podcasts, we intend to post some reflections on Brazil-related articles and/or news in order to express our point-of-view. We want to enrich current discussions and present counter-arguments. And we want your feedback too! Today, share a little bit about a BBC article written by political scientist Eduardo Gomez, who’s a specialist on International Development and Emerging Economies. We know this article is a little old (oops!), but it’s an interesting topic! Hope you enjoy it! Feel free to common on the blog or send us questions to thisbrazilianlife@gmail.com

Here’s the link to tonight’s article and this reflection is by Douglas, one of the members of the TBL Team:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-17688560

Approximately 3 years have passed since Eduardo Gomez published this BBC article on challenges Brazil is facing when education is the issue. Some information needs to be reconsidered, though. Even though the political scientist discussed Brazilian education in general, I was most interested when he mentioned federal government sponsored program Science Without Borders. According to Gomez:

“Given the comparatively greater number of hi-tech industries and research institutions in the US and Europe, students may decide to stay or ultimately base themselves  abroad. This potential loss could be encouraged by the fact that there is no penalty for those students opting not to return.”

As a matter of fact, that’s just partially correct.  When we access several Science Without Borders public notices, we realize one of the requirements is that students must declare that they will stay in Brazil twice as many as the number of months spent abroad. The exception is when students apply for a graduate program and are accepted while in a foreign country. In general, however, applicants who break the contract may have several troubles receiving their diplomas. Other data Gomez may not consider is that the unemployment rate in the US was 7.9% and in Europe was 10.8% both in the same year according to US Bureau of Labor Statistics and Eurostat, respectively, while Brazil presented an unemployment rate of 5.6 % in the same period (IBGE). Even the skilled workforce is negatively affected in post-industrial economies in a year of economic crisis like in 2012.

Nevertheless, in this article Gomez urges the country to invest in primary and secondary education and although he didn’t display further quantitative data, his assertions could still be confirmed two years later (2014) when Pearson and Economist Intelligence Unit published a report assessing education in 40 countries (in Europe, Americas and Asia) based on results in international tests like Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and ranked Brazil 38º, ahead of Indonesia and Mexico only.

A proposal like Science Without Borders (CsF) can be seen, for sure, as a great long-run educational and economical strategy in which Brazil can benefit from a larger portion of highly skilled professionals who have had the opportunity to bring helpful scientific ‘know-how’ from abroad. However, the general national socio-economic scenario may not contribute to the effectiveness of CsF. After the fall of Brazilian military dictatorship in 1985, Brazil experienced  a great national economic crisis, leading to an mass getaway of better-off Brazilians to Miami and cities in the Northeast of the U.S. In order not to have the same experience again, we can say that huge investments in primary and secondary education could result in an ample literacy and functional literacy, leading to a less severe social imbalance when emigration happened.

Unfortunately, huge investments on education are not currently being proposed. Since last year, the Brazilian federal government has implemented unpleasant economic adjustments by cutting 22.7 billions of reais from various  ministries. The Ministry of Education, since it’s our topic here, has gotten a cut of 7 billion (the largest of all ministries although with only the third largest budget of all them). Science Without Borders was not able to escape from that. Some newspapers have since exposed undergraduate and graduate students who are not getting their scholarship money regularly and having to take loans in order to live adequately. The federal government, on the other hand, says that this information is not true and the late repayments were due to “technical problems”.

In spite of that, we have good reasons to believe that higher education is getting more investments now. As a kind of alternative to Science Without Borders, we can see some banks investing in areas that the federal program does not contemplate. One of them, for instance, publish annually notices where even students from humanities majors (the ones who strongly disagree with the limited areas of SWB) who are proficient in English or in Spanish (depending on the project involved) get a grant of some thousands euros to live on during a semester and have to develop real projects to deserve grants (what it is not clearly applied to SWB).

If that kind of initiative start spreading we can expect clear and effective results not just for students abroad but for Brazil’s population. The latter can benefit from that because they do not have to spend so much money on undergraduate students who, is most contexts, have a high living standard and, in most cases, have a negative perspective toward welfare but do not see any problem in heavily taxing poor people in order to maintain a program available to a scarce minority.

Allowing fiscal incentives for the private sector to invest in higher education would result in a larger budget to enhance primary and secondary public education. This would not mean, in any way, a shortage of highly skilled professionals. A healthier socioeconomic scenario would lead us to a country where Brazilian students would not use tertiary education to get a better prospect in Europe or Anglo-Saxon America but to improve national economy.

Hello world!

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Welcome to This Brazilian Life! You may be asking yourself, “what exactly is This Brazilian Life?” This project was started by a group of students at the Federal University of Ceará in Fortaleza, Brazil with some help from a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant. The purpose of this blog, and our podcast by the same name, is to share a little bit of our life with you. Similar to NPR’s “This American Life,” we, and our fellow UFC classmates, will be sharing personal narratives related to a variety of topics about Brazilian life over the next six months. Our goal through this podcast is to dispel, or maybe confirm, any myths about life in Brazil, and, more importantly, to let our voices be heard.

Thanks for stopping by and keep an eye out for our first podcast on “what being Brazilian means to me” coming out this week.

Abraços,

The TBL Team