Chasing Bohemia (29 page)

The inequitable structure of land ownership was further compounded by the introduction of mass slavery — an integral part of the Portuguese stronghold in Latin America. It is broadly held that by 1850 Rio de Janeiro had about 80,000 slaves in the city — about 40 per cent of the population, and some three times more than the slave populations in comparable ports such as New Orleans. (In fact, despite the heavy political focus on the United States slave trade, Brazil was the recipient of the largest number of African slaves. The country received about four million slaves over this period, in comparison with about 700,000 in North America.) Some two-thirds of all the arable lands of Brazil are now in the hands of only 3 per cent of the population, while vast tracts of land lie unproductive, and homeless rural workers line the roadsides. The application of capitalist democracy to this hierarchical, almost caste-like, structure was destined to leave a wide overhang. It looked about as right on Brazilian society as a tango danced by a fat American tourist. Or a sari worn by a white English woman. Or… hmmm, samba danced by me.

It is true that the kneading of democracy into Brazil in the last twenty years has gone some way to readdressing inequalities. Introducing the bottom rung of a welfare ladder to poor families (cleverly linked to sending their kids to school); giving a cheap facelift to some of the more prominent favelas of Rio, turning a blind eye to the invasions of the landless peasant movement (resulting, in turn, in the settlement of 300,000 homeless families across the country); and the introduction of affirmative action quotas in universities have all been gigantic steps in the right direction, with tangible impacts. The inequality ratio of the richest 10 per cent to the poorest 10 per cent has fallen from an index of 65 in 1998 to 57 in 2006, followed by even greater falls in the number of Brazilians under the poverty line. And despite the image presented by the media, homicide rates have also fallen — by nearly 30 per cent in the state of Rio de Janeiro — even if lighter crimes such as the number of stolen vehicles went up 60 per cent, and the number of street muggings nearly doubled, over the same period.

But it is the tip of a very large iceberg. Corruption scandals come and go without consequence, the state remains fat and bloated, and violence still terrifies the citizens. In 2006, São Paulo ignited into violence, the city came to a standstill, and nearly 200 people were killed as their local criminal faction waged war with the police over conditions in prisons. Close on their heels in Rio, traffic groups attacked some fifteen police stations across the city in retribution for the state sponsoring of militia groups in the city. A bus was torched, killing eight innocent people. Corruption scandals that would sink an Australian political party for a decade, if not for life, occurred on a quarterly basis — 2006 being the year of the ‘mafia of the leeches', the ‘scandal of the mail', and the disaster of the ‘monthly graft'. In 2007, four hundred military police were under investigation for selling drugs and arms to the traffic factions, and a decorated commander of the
BOPE
elite was arrested for extortion.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the ‘five-year-plan'-style purges ebbed and flowed like the waves on Copacabana, taking out today's flotsam and bringing back yesterday's jetsam, with everyone hoping that a change of scum would quell the masses for another year. Garotinho, the corrupt and overweight ex-governor of Rio de Janeiro, was out after he went on a Monty Pythonesque hunger strike against poor treatment by
O Globo
, which earned him taunts of ‘starve, you son of a bitch' across websites and newspaper letter columns. Apparently he didn't see the irony of his actions. Or maybe he did. Maybe he was taking the piss out of all the poor, hungry people in Rio who had voted for him. Passing him on the way out was ex-president Fernando Collor, recently given a backslapping welcome back into the Senate after being forced from office on some clearly not-so-disgraceful charges of bribery and corruption some fourteen years prior.

‘How do these people get back in?' I cried to Fabio.

‘Democracy is new,' he shrugged. ‘We only got the vote in 1985.'

It was as rotten as last month's fallen mangoes. Even down at the Lapa quadrangle, the selection of our very own local ‘Queen of the Batteria' was tainted with corruption and nepotism. Fabio, part of the selection panel for the best composition —
Lapa! Nova Capella! Asa Branca!
... What splendour has our Lapa! — had to agree that Queen I and Queen II were not quite up to the job with their chubby white legs and waddling samba. In contrast to the more typical parliamentary injustices, though, at least the jilted locals didn't go down without a fight. Five magnificent black goddesses, who had been smashing up the cement floors with a samba from times forgotten, took their revenge and invaded the winner's circle with a war dance. When they broke through the linked arms of security with one synchronised swing of their enormous hips, the security fell back, the crowd roared, the organisers cowered, and the fat little white queens had to flee with their crowns. If someone from parliament had seen them, they would have given them a job on the spot. The queens, that is. At times like that, it was easy to understand why every now and then people just exploded and lynched someone.

ANARCHY WAS
a confusing environment. On the one hand, I was flourishing with creative impulses; writing poetry and short stories, and playing music, not to mention the great sense of importance I felt in turning up late and finding that people were still waiting for me. On the other hand, I was starting to get a little uncomfortable about the consequences of extreme personal liberty in a less-than-perfect world. Violent or corrupt gangsters got to live in the best houses. Good kids got murdered without trials. Illegal house-building was destroying the beautiful Tijuca forest. Vigilante justice didn't always get the right guy. Judges didn't always know intuitively whether someone was guilty or not, and Fabio, for his constant unreliability, lost a lot of gigs. While I was enjoying my new-found freedom, I was also discovering that the freedom of other people could be quite irritating.

As the days wore on, I began to see the merits in more than a few of the laws that govern Australian society. The Anglo-Saxon adherence to turning up on time, for example, our respect for other people's right to own property, to a safe and pleasant environment — even the existence of an orderly queue took on a new value. More and more, I found myself longing for control, stability, and organisation. For a little enforcement of the law. For the traffic police to say, ‘No, you cannot use the bus lane.' For the police to shut down the electro-punk party next door. For the police to stop beating up street kids. I wanted a system, and a little equality, goddammit.

When I found myself at the post office barring the way of the fifteenth queue-jumper who had pushed in, claiming that he knew the post office manager, with a threatening, ‘You can just wait your bloody turn, sonny Jim,' I fell back in shock. Did those words of middle-class conformity really come out of my mouth? Had I not rallied against that sort of conformity my entire life? Didn't I love the chaos? The madness? Was the disorder of Brazil not its very attraction?

‘Our lawlessness is a symptom of
corruption
, not of our love of personal freedom,' Fabio argued as we smuggled our way into a Banco do Brasil gallery exhibition opening to drink free champagne. ‘Personal freedom is only for people with money or connections in this country.'

‘And malandros,' I added, as I handed him another glass of free champagne.

‘But of course.'

‘Would you trade your freedom for a society free of street kids, corruption, and inequality?' I asked Fabio. ‘Would you prefer to live in Norway, for example?'

‘I don't think I should have to trade my freedom for a fair and humane society,' he replied.

‘What if you could?'

‘No.'

I was in no position to criticise. Australia and Italy may be two societies that are better at reconciling the elusive objectives of order and freedom, and yet the fact remained that both Chiara and I were in Brazil. Maybe a reconciliation was not even a desirable outcome — something that would be, as Chiara pointed out, ‘a compromise that left you neither offended nor pleased in that nether region of nothing.' Or maybe it was simply a case of wanting the best of both worlds. It was just that the rules
applied
to us in Australia and Italy. They were
our
societies, with laws and responsibilities and ‘deep complexities' that we were obliged to understand. Maybe the truth was that Brazil was, in fact, a highly ordered society, even more so than our own ‘nanny states', where freedom was really only for the rich Brazilians, just as Fabio had said. Maybe the chaos of Rio was no more than the loosening of the rope at feeding time.

And if that was the case, then we and all the other tourists running around South America could hardly look down our noses at the Brazilian elite. At least they understood their responsibilities, however inadequate they were at fulfilling them. We were free. Tourist. Traveller. Voyeur. We could judge without the risk of being judged. Take without the peril of suffering retribution. That's why we all loved it so much — simply because the rules did not apply.

–15–

Regina

Man protesting to president at a political rally: I am just a simple man with four hungry children. I just want to work. I have a right to a job. I have a right to work to feed my kids.
President (screaming): Subversive! Arrest him.

–
A Land in Anguish
, a film directed by
GLAUBER ROCHA

S
ometimes I tried to lay low, but trouble just kept coming my way. No matter how hard I tried to pretend that things were normal, the ground kept on breaking up around me. Chiara came by on a Tuesday as Gustavo and I were watching the
Snakes and Ladders
soapie. It had been a trying three-hour session of soapies, and I was more than a little irritated by the collapse of a believable plot. It was getting too far-fetched even for the Brazilians: people coming back from the dead, black people portrayed in professional roles within a Brazilian corporation. Where would it all end? Only our Cleo Pires managed to do something predictable by playing the role of a brassy motorbike-riding teenager in designer-slashed Iron Maiden t-shirts, a move which was creating fresh waves of aesthetically motivated delight among her pseudo-feminist fan base. Gustavo had been praising the ‘natural' beauty of one of the older actresses, a sixty-year-old woman who had been botoxed and stretched so many times that she barely had a nose, when Chiara slipped into the room.

‘She is hardly natural,' I was protesting, as Chiara sat down beside me. ‘Are you seriously telling me she hasn't had a facelift?'

‘Oh, a facelift?' Gustavo dismissed me with a wave of his hand. ‘That's nothing! Everyone has that. She doesn't have
implants
.'

Chiara interrupted our conversation with a light touch on the top of my hand. I glanced over to her, saw her pleading eyes, and quickly pulled back my hand. She only touched people's hands when she wanted something that was not owed to her.

‘But it's an emergency,' she protested in advance.

‘What sort of emergency?' I asked, suspiciously.

‘Regina's going to die.'

But of course she was. What else could Chiara be coming to tell me on a Tuesday night? That she had a new job? That there was a new band playing on Saturday night or that her boss was giving her the shits? That would be far too trite for Chiara Rimoldi. Regina was going to die. Nothing less could justify an interruption of
Snakes and Ladders
.

‘She's camped under a bridge outside the Church of Our Lady of Gloria,' Chiara told me quickly, seeing her window of opportunity. ‘We have to go there. She's afraid they'll kill her if they see her on the street.'

THERE WAS LITTLE POINT
in refusing. When Chiara got an idea in her head, she'd virtually have to be burnt at the stake before she'd back down (it was no coincidence that she had a witch tattooed to her shoulder). Some call that integrity of perspective and others just call it stubborn, but that was of no consequence to the glamorous young revolutionary.

Regina had entered our lives as a result of Chiara's anthropological research. She was interested in the concept, as propagated by anthropologists such as Zuenir Ventura, of the divided city; of the existence of two cities, third and first world, beside each other. Only, Chiara wasn't like other anthropologists. For a start, she believed in copulating with her subjects. Second, she believed ‘you had to be one to understand one'. This had several implications for her, such as the adoption of skin-tight denim jeans, platform shoes, and white diamanté-emblazoned boob tubes, and the acquisition of a street vocabulary with phrases like
yai sangue bom
(what's up, blood?)
baguli e doidão ne?
(the shit is heavy, innit?), and
chapa-quente irmão
(the heat is on, brother).

When we went to Lapa she knew everyone on the street. They adored her. The thieves gave her clear passage through any area, the street kids lay around her in a protective ring as she sat drinking her beers, and even the most hardcore dealer would fawn shamelessly to her affections. She was named godmother to two babies, and crowned the Queen of Lapa by the caipirinha salesmen. Street kids would come begging for a coin, and she would take them in her arms and give them two. And then the next day, as they came to stroke her hair and sit on her lap, she would just as easily push them away and punish them with brooding silence. She was my Kurtz, and Rio was her Congo.