The metro is one of the wonders of Sao Paulo. It is the third largest in Latin America, after Mexico City and Santiago, Chile. It is not as large as Beijing or Tokyo or Cairo, but it is about the 12th largest in the world. Currently moving something less than 900 million riders a year, it is has a major expansion in progress that will bring even more of the faro-flung city into the network.
This is a bit daunting when you realize that metropolitan Sao Paulo already has some 20 million inhabitants and is one of the fastest-growing cities in the world.
The first of five lines, each named by color, was inaugurated in the 1970s. Line 1 — the Blue Line — connects the center of the city with outlying stations with indigenous names — Jabaquara and Turucuvi. The four other lines cross-cross the city, and a fifth is being built to add more of the city’s sprawl to the network.
It is fast, clean, modern and well-managed. Stepping from the train to the street is often a bit of a surprise, since the areas around some of the stops seem a bit sketchy, particularly at night. But at peak times it moves hundreds of thousands of passengers. Its stations are fitting for a large industrial city — busy and pretty efficient.
It does not have the vast commercial network that the Japanese subway does. The metro in Tokyo has stops that are named for the department store there, and there is a feeling of being in an underground city at times. No so in Sao Paulo. This is a huge mover of people through the city, a no frills transit machine to carry people through its capillaries as quickly as possible.
For an older rider (over 60) the metro is free. This means that showing some form of identification with your face and birthday will get you through a special access gate where an attendant will swipe a special magnetic card that will open a gate for you. If you are unsure how to do this, you can usually identify the access point by the short line of older folks, or a large swinging gate marked for handicapped access.
This was a ride up and down the Blue Line, spending time in Santa Cruz, Praca da Se, Liberdade, and various stops along the way.
The first of these images depicts the European colonizers and the bandeirantes who opened the interior of Brazil and challenged the Spanish for its possession. Enslavement and displacement of the indigenous population following them, as did the slavery of Africans and African descendants.
This mural overlooks one of the busiest metro stations along the Blue Line, which runs some 20 kilometers between Jabaquara and Turucuvi, both stops ironically honoring indigenous names for parts of present-day Sao Paulo. The colonizers and adventurers kept the land, but they gave back the names.
In the tradition of progressive muralist art, this work shows the iron hand of the Portuguese colonizers and the adventurers/explorers (bandeirantes) who opened the Brazilian interior.
This subway mural is another example of the ambivalence in portrayals of Brazilian history. An earlier post describes this ambivalence in other public art: In Sao Paulo’s Ibirapuera Park there is the Afro-Brazilian Museum which honors the Africans and their descendants. At one of the entrances of the park is the Bandeirantes Memorial which honors the adventurers who defied the 15th Century Treaty of Tordesillas in which the Pope tried to divide South America between the Spanish and the Portuguese. The bandeirantes crossed that imaginary line to create the modern outline of Brazil, displacing and enslaving indigenous people along the way. The Pope didn’t know where they were, and perhaps neither did they.
The indigenous people proved not to be good slaves. They died in captivity or escaped into the forests they knew better than the invaders. By the 16th Cenury Brazil turned increasingly to the Azores, then to Africa, to provide slaves to power its agricultural economy.
Three trains running, Praca da Se metro station. Above ground is a cathedral square that gathers tourists, downtown workers, galleries and stores, and a small army of street people and sketchy touts for buying gold and selling, well, all sorts of things.
Metro, Praca da Se. The display above warns of the Aedes Agiptii mosquito that carries dengue fever and a host of nasty diseases (including the Zika and Chikungunya viruses and possibly microencephalitis). This is the underground traffic for most of the day.
Urban geometry
Even in the age of cellular telephones, the Sao Paulo metro actually has rows of colorful telephone “ears”
The Luz metro station is a Victorian train station that carries the trademark style of the British engineers who designed and built it. The British guaranteed Portugal’s dominance and Brazil’s existence against various European powers, but it extracted a high commercial price. The early rail lines were a British contribution and Luz Station is a symbol.
It houses the Museum of the Portuguese language. One of the most interesting museums in Sao Paulo, it burned on December 21, 2015.
During the Christmas holiday the Sao Paulo Museum of the Portuguese Language burned down to the building shell. The museum was in the building of the Victorian-era train station, Estacao Luz, which was able to continuing functioning. This was one of the most popular museums in Sao Paulo, and its loss brought attention to long-standing deficits in fire protection
Street vendor, in front of the now-dead museum and a closed subway entrance. There were almost no customers on the street now — just the police, wrecking crews, and photographers. The shell is intact, but at the upper right of the building you can see the charred timbers. The “Big Ben” clock allegedly never stopped running during the fire — a symbol of Victorian engineering, perhaps as the fire itself is a reflection on Brazil’s stewardship of its artistic institutions (there is an investigation of lapsed and unenforced fire codes).
The Afro-Brazilian Museum (Museo Afro-Brasiliero), Ibipuera Park (Sao Paulo)
Sao Paulo has many treasures among its museums. One of the most unusual — unique, perhaps — is the Afro-Brazilian Museum. There are other museum in Brazil with this emphasis, but even the one in Salvador does not have the resources or scope of this one of this massive and insightful collection.
The museum reputedly houses more than 6,000 items, some 70% of which are said to be permanent with the remainder being temporary exhibits (the last photo below shows a traveling exhibit from the Smithsonian Anacostia on Lorenzo Dow Turner and the gullah language in the North American sea island.
The mural below draws simultaneously on Sao Paulo’s tradition of bold wall are, on youth culture, and on the museum’s goal of honoring the contribution of black Brazilians to the nation.
Mural on the outside wall of the Afro-Brazilian Museum
Afro-Brazilian Museum, mural evoking indigenous people
Mural on the exterior of the Afro-Brazilian Museum. Its symbolism is ambiguous, but it seems to evoke the mystical elements of African Brazilian spiritual practice.
The interior of the museum is a vast and sensitive display of the African heritage of Brazil. Many — perhaps the most interesting parts — are still closed to photography, so I cannot show some of the displays and special exhibits. There are rich descriptions of slavery and there is a model of a slave ship, photos and art work on (and sometimes by) Bahian mulatas — sometimes mistresses of slavers and sometimes entrepreneurs in their own right. There are also: a display of African-Brazilian spiritual practice with a guide to orixas in Candomble, including photos of famous spiritual leaders; art work by Brazilians of African heritage; crafts and artisan work of all sorts; and photographic displays of famous Afro-Brazilians (see the photos below by of Madalena Schwartz).
The Museum, established in 2004, is in the Manoel Nobrega Pavillion designed by Oscar Niemeyer and built in 1959. Signs in the entryway emphasize that its opening was attended by representatives of the African nation of Benin attending. the symbolism is important because Benin is the nation whose current territory include many areas of West African slave exportation. The area around the Bight of Benin was a major port for exportation of slaves, but it was also an area rich in natural minerals. The Portuguese gave their word — minas (for mines) — to the area because of its rich mineral deposits. The term “minas” became a shorthand Portuguese name for the diverse African people imported from that region. There were often referred to in bills of lading and slave sales simply as “Minas,” further obscuring their original African origins and identities. This is one of the practices that makes it difficult to trace the origins of African descendants (another of which was the systematic destruction in the 19th Century of bills of lading and sales lists of Africans sold at auction).
Photography of Madalena Schwartz
Many of the museum’s thousands of items,and most of its displays are not available for photographers, but the images below give some of the flavor of the museum.
Schwartz’s portraits show famous Brazilians of African heritage. The most recognizable face is that of Pele (lower right), the brilliant soccer who also played in the United States later in his career
More portraits of Brazilian with African heritage by Madalena Schwartz
Photography of the Bumba-meu-boi of Northeast Brazil
Our own research in the Northeast of Brazil includes the Bumba-meu-boi celebration, which is featured in the museum as a significant cultural form of African-Brazilians. These photos below are from that celebration in Sao Luis. The first photo in the image is of Mestre Apolonio Melonio, an iconic figure who founded Bumba-meu-boi da Floresta. We have met him many times, and were saddened by his death in June of 2015.
The second photo is a Cazumba, an evocative forest creature in the Baixada tradition of celebration (see earlier posts for more on the various rhythmic forms of the celebration). The mask is not identified, but we believe it is early work of Abel Texeira of Maranhao, whom we have gotten to know over the years. An earlier post in the series shows Abel, who is now retired. His wife continues his masking style.
An example of the elaborate embroidery work done in Maranhao and worn by performers (brincantes). This an older example and now a museum piece, but the style and artisanship continue into the present. More examples of current embroidery can be seen in earlier posts (including that of Dona Tania, Sao Luis’ best known embroider).
An ox (boi) wearing an embroidered “skin” (couro) over a frame of native woods (notably buriti palm which is tough and light). Earlier posts describe and show current versions of this distinctive practice.l This, of course, is the “boi” in Bumba-meu-boi.
A major surprise was the North American exhibit from the Anacostia community museum of the Smithsonian. It features black cultures in the South Carolina sea islands where Lorenzo Dow Turner found strong linguistic connections between “gullah” and West African languages (especially, we understand, Mende which is a language from Sierra Leon). Turner is honored as the founder of African linguistics in the United States.
In one video segment, words from the language as spoken in the U.S. are compared to nearly identical words in various African languages. Turner showed that gullah was not a corruption of English as a dialect with strong African origins.
The Bandeirantes Memorial (just outside Ibipuera Park, Sao Paulo)
The Afro-Brazilian Museum honors the contributions of African descendants to the culture of Brazil. In doing so it evokes ambivalent feelings because of the slavery system that brought those African cultures to Brazil. The memorial to the Bandeirantes also evokes ambivalent reactions — it honors the early explorers who fought their way into the interior of Brazil, but who also enslaved or eliminated the much of the indigenous population they found in their way.
Memorial to Bandeirantes, just outside Ibipuera Park, Sao Paulo
The Bandeirantes were explorers and adventurers of the 17th century. They were often Portuguese born in Brazil, but there were also Spanish and Italian and other nationalities. Many in the entourage were of mixed birth, having European fathers and indigenous mothers.
This part of the memorial emphasizes the leadership of a mass of men by powerful Europeans.
What is was all about: The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas
After Columbus’ landing in the Americas in 1492, he apparently returned to Spain by way of Portugal to announce his discovery. This is ofen described by historians as a triggering event in the competition between the two Iberian nations in a race to colonize the New World. However, whatever the incidents promoting the rivalry for colonies, the Spanish and Portuguese contest the interior of Latin American.
The Pope attempted to settle the competition by negotiating the Tordesilla treaty which divided Latin America — even though Latin American geography, and particularly its interior, were largely unknown and unmapped.
In the 17th Century various explorers carried the Portuguese flag (bandeira, hence their name “bandeirantes“) and extended the claim of Portugal far into the western part of Brazil that the papal treaty had granted to the Spanish.
The treaty was silent on the French and Dutch, both of whom made attempts at colonizing Brazil in the 17th century. The northeastern city of Sao Luis (Maranhao), for example, has the distinction of being the only Brazilian city to be founded by the French. The French colonization of Sao Luis (beginning in 1612) was disputed by the indigenous population, the Dutch and the Portuguese for the next four decades before Sao Luis and Maranhao becoming more or less securely Portuguese.
This map engraved n marble shows the line drawn by the Pope in the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) which was designed to divide South America into the Portuguese section (to the right of the vertical line in the photo) from the Spanish side (left of the line). The points indicated on the map are the explorations of the Bandeirantes who opened the Spanish side for the Portuguese and essentially nullified the papal decree.
In classic heroic style, the Bandeirante troops are depicted as heroic and in great suffering. These soldiers and adventurers are regimented behind the European leaders on huge horses. This kind of monumental art seems to be universal, with similar massive figures depicted as workers in the American Depression, 1930s Germany, the heroic workers of Stalinism, and many similar monuments throughout the world.
The ethnicity of the foot soldiers is a bit ambiguous, but many of the faces carry traces of indigenous and perhaps African heritage.
A heroic Bandeirante. It is actually unclear whether these are willing followers or slaves captured along the way. A major goal of the Bandeirantes was capturing land and slaves. Later they turned their attention to diamonds, gold, and other natural resources.
The artistry of the memorial is a powerful representation of the arduous march into the interior of Brazil, as this and the following photos show.
The ethnic identities are often unclear, but Caboclos — the Portuguese name for persons of mixed indigenous and European parentage — were an important link between the two cultures. According to anthropologist Darcy Rebeiro they typically belonged to neither culture, but their knowledge was instrumental to the Bandeirantes. Ribeiro calls them the first real Brazilians.
Another engraved stone on the monument seems to praise the Bandeirantes for having made Brazil as large as it is today. There is an ambiguity in the story, and in the monument, between the aspirations of the adventurers and the largely indigenous populations they found in their way.
Sao Paulo is a busy, highly concentrated city with constant traffic and endless high-rise apartments. In the outskirts of the city there are underserved neighborhoods with tenuous infrastructure, struggling families and serious water problems.
Unlike many American cities where the suburbs ring the center urban area and tend to isolate themselves from the central city, Sao Paulo’s situation is just the reverse. Even now Brazil’s seemingly inexhaustible water supplies are scarce in the suburbs and the city’s program for getting more water to them is stalled In some neighborhoods there may be only two or three hours of water a day and this may, or may not, correspond to times when people are able to be home. (I’ll post more about this later).
Much of my walking and feet-on-the-ground experience is in a more central part of the city where the infrastructure is generally good and the sidewalks walkable, if not very even. It is still safer to keep your attention on the sidewalk rather than higher up — you can walk fairly comfortably but with concentration.
On these walks you see an increasing number of bicyclists, shoppers, commercial businesses, dog walkers, and schools for suburban young people. The amount of privilege varies from one street to another and the disparities of Brazilian economic and social life are almost always visible.
In the midst of this we made a remarkable discovery on one such walk. There are always unusual species in fairly expected places — small decorative plantings outside apartment buildings and in the park. But we are also discovering an unusual form of urban gardening with “exotic flowers” in unexpected places.
This is an example of a flower that seems to be an iris, but has tigerish center blossoms that are unusual. Having grown up in in a place where there were two kinds — white and blue — these tiny irises are a revelation.
These blossoms are not exactly on the street, but in a botanical section of Ibirapuera Park.
The orchids below are different, though. They are “planted” on a street so busy that drivers can scarcely see them and pedestrians may not think to look up to see them.
These orchids are placed in packets of moss attached to trees and are obviously cultivated. This is not just one tree, but there are dozens along this street. Like all the streets in this neighborhood it is named after a Brazilian bird. This one is called Inhambu, named after a brownish ground bird that no longer has any habitat here.
Actually the orchids do not have a natural habitat here either, but there seem to be urban gardeners who care for them. Astonishingly, the flowers seem to reach maturity safely on these busy streets.
An urban planting on a busy street — orchids placed in a moss packet attached to a tree
Another tree orchid on Inhambu street in Sao Paulo
City orchids
Orchids are not the only plantings. This huge staghorn fern also grows in mossy packets attached to trees. The size suggests that this one has been here for some time.
There are other unexpected urban pleasures. There is a street in this area named after the bird called Bem-te-vi. The name mimics the cry of the bird who calls (in Portuguese) “Bem-te-vi,” “good to see you.
On my balcony this morning, and yesterday as well, a Bem-te-vi appeared. We watched each for some time. It is about the size of a large North American robin or smallish pigeon, but elegantly gray-brown with two white strips along its crown and a brilliant yellow and white belly. When it flies it flashes the yellow-white which also spreads across the underside of its wings.
Somehow it finds me on this rail on the 9th floor among hundreds of city apartments.
This is not as mystical as the morning three eagles joined me at the edge of a Wisconsin lake, but it is an unexpected blessing among the high-rises which, for a moment, transforms the urban morning.
On this same balcony there is also a hummingbird nest. At the moment it does not seem to have a tenant. In the past the nest was occupied and I could watch the parent bird feeding the young. One day I watched one of the young birds perch precariously on a small branch. It teetered and shivered for some time, and then flew away. I hope one of them will come back to nest.
This last orchid is a special favorite
City orchids are not far from Ibirapuera Park along the street named after the Inhambu bird.
Ibirapuera Park, September 2015 (around the Spring Equinox in the Southern Hemisphere)
Just outside Ibirapuera Park, juggling in traffic
A refuge in the middle of the city, Ibirapuera Park
Ibirapuera Park is the 2nd largest in the city and was inaugurated in 1954 with architecture by Oskar Neimeyer, the founding architect of the Brazilian capital of Brasilia (founded in the 1960s).
It is my favorite refuge in the city with about 2 square kilometers of space. It is free, democratic, and quiet (except for the determined weekend joggers, soccer players, crammed playgrounds, busy exercise course, and the new bicycle rental section just outside). In years past you had to bring your own bicycle — and most still do. But urban bicycle rentals have caught on here and now make the park more accessible to day riders.
Just outside the middle reaches of the park is the memorial to the Bandeirantes, the explorers and adventurers who penetrated the interior of Brazil. They opened territory and took slaves. One of the main thoroughfares in Sao Paolo bears the name Bandeirantes in their honor, a gigantic statue near the park memorializes them. The statue is so rich in historical ambiguity, embarrassment and pride that I’ll talk about in another post.
Seringuera (rubber) tree — your living room rubber plant might look like this if you let it grow for a century or two.
This auditorium was designed by Oskar Niemeyer, the architect of Brasilia.
Even the bathrooms are not immune from Sao Paulo’s ubiquitous wall
Another public bathroom in the park. This one is not far from Neimeyer’s art museum, but much of the park is an art project.
This mural seems to invoke both indigenous peoples but also a kind of playfulness in the smaller face to the center-left. On this day there were several young people sitting in front of the mural, just looking.Trees in Ibirapuera Park
When trees are taken down they often become benches or other artistic installations.
A bench from an old tree
There is a large cormorant population in the park. This was the first time I have been able to watch cormorants up close. Beautiful as they are in the air and water, they are grumpy and territorial where they roost. They seem to be the only natural predator for the countless fish (mostly perch and carp, I think) in the park’s lakes.
Yes, there are black swans here
Suffering through a college course in logic I recall the famous syllogism that goes: “All swans are white, this is a swan, therefore it is white.” This was contrasted with the false syllogism: “All swans are white, this bird is white, therefore it is a swan.” I think a major point was that axiomatic statements were not empirical ones that were principle verifiable by observation. But they did mention that only one black swan was enough to invalidate the proposition. So, decades later I find that all the swans in Ibirapuera Park are black.
I also remember vaguely that in England all swans are white and are the property of the Queen. In Ibirapuera Park they are black and not the property of anyone.
These probably have a name, but seem to my untrained eye to be in the azalea/rhododendron family
A tiny flower found on small bushes all around here, as if they were nothing special
This flower seems similar to the previous one, but a modest horticultural background in the midwestern United States doesn’t give you much to go on here. You only see these small flowers if you are ambling off the paved part of the park
There are large bushes (or small trees) filled with these. Technically the spring equinox in the southern hemisphere is about now (September), but with temperatures in the 90’s everything is blooming furiously . These these seem to be at the end of their cycle.
The 34 degree Celsius temperature outside the park works out to about 93 degrees Fahrenheit. This was the beginning of the Sao Paulo spring.
It usually doesn’t get much warmer than this in the summer, which includes the winter holidays as they are celebrated in the northern hemisphere.
It takes real dedication for Santa Claus (Pai Noel) to appear in full dress and beard in weather about like this.
Practicing yoga in the city has some special features, not the least of which is looking down from the 9th floor to the concrete patio below, or up to the Congonhas Airport flight lanes which cast a shadow on my practice balcony.
From our apartment in Sao Paulo. This national flight is on a descent into Congonhas Airport. Flights are suspended from about 11:00 pm to 6:00 am so that this area of the city (called Moema) can sleep. This was taken while practicing on the balcony.
The look down is lovely, and adds a bit of extra motivation to not lean too heavily on the balcony rail.
My studio and Brazilian yoga mat. It has a cheerful playschool feeling and tells me more or less where to put my hands.
The practice has to be modified a bit. Headstand and shoulder are a bit cramped and I don’t quite like the feeling of being upside down so high up. I’d like my head to be on the ground — the actual ground.
But there is no trouble doing a supported Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana, most standing postures supported on the rail, and a modified Chaturanga on the rail. Just don’t look down.
It is also a bit cramped for a floor practice. So I have an indoor space for wide-angle poses (seated and standing) and floor twists (Jathari Parivarttanasana and variations).
Supported Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana
In Sao Paulo there is support for Iyengar yoga, but travel through the city is a bit daunting. I haven’t found anyone in this area of the city that I might reach on foot, and the best-known Iyengar studio is about two hours away on foot, bus, metro, on foot again, and back.
Trikonasana precaria
A few years ago I found a teacher who had studied in Pune and had amalgamated some Iyengar concepts into his practice. It was helpful and he was a good sequencer, but the practice seemed like learning a dialect where all the pronunciations and movements were enough different to interfere with my own training. What is especially lacking is the sense of adaptive yoga and modifications for persons of varying condition and limitations. For that I especially miss my teachers at home.
But even though I miss the yoga at home, B.K.S always reminded us that yoga itself is a universal culture that we can carry with us anywhere.
A kiosk near downtown Sao Paulo. “Banca” here means a newsstand and “Caras” is a popular magazine that fawns on celebrities and royalty. It appears that you can buy it 24 hours a day.
Sao Paulo has remarkable tagger art. Two men – internationally known as Os Gemeos (The twins) – led the revolution in the city’s tagger tradition and made it into a unique art form. They even entered the contemporary modern art world. Not long ago Os Gemeos had a special showing at the Tate Modern art museum in London. The legacy is not theirs alone in the city, and there are many styles to be seen.
Here every available underpass wall and many buildings are beautifully — or at least elaborately — decorated. Much of the mural art is along the highways and freeway underpasses. This mural art is hard to see, though, unless you are In a car or bus driven by someone else. Traffic is too intense to gaze about, and the walls and underpasses are not pedestrian-friendly. Who knows how the artists got there, but the average citizen must have divided attention to enjoy the freeway art. To photograph it is even harder — most of these photos were taken from a car driven by someone else. Many interesting murals could not be photographed because of traffic. My favorite one is a long mural that appears to be a photo of historical scenes of city life. It goes on for many yards, but I couldn’t get a decent picture of this soccer-field sized photorealist mural because of traffic. This give me a reason — almost — to brave the traffic again to take another look.
A fairly conventional example of “preemptive” wall art. This one decorates one of the many children’s party centers to be found in middle-class neighborhoods. This painting probably preempted getting tagged with erotic pictures of aliens, or other popular themes.
Examples of the older, pre-Twins, wall art are still everywhere, but they tend to remain because they are not on prime viewing spaces.
Old fashioned tagging, before the art veered from cheerful vandalism to high culture
Wall art is so pervasive that many commercial buildings have special murals in the tagger form. People and businesses who don’t want their walls decorated late at night with science fiction, fantasy, revolutionary, or sexual art have found a solution – they hire a painter to decorate their wall with a theme of their choice (whales, ethereal little girls, pets, parrots and flowers have a following). Out of apparent artistic solidarity the street taggers normally leave such walls alone, even at the aesthetic cost of having wall after wall of butterflies and flowers on all the children’s party centers. The surfer shops and sports stores are also stylized with characters straight out of Japanese manga art — huge macho characters surfing in cosmic freefall or flexing cartoonishly powerful bodies (to alert you to what is avaiLable inside).
The most ingenuous, though, are the prime spaces on the endless walls that section off the many commuter thoroughfares. All the pictures below are from these astonishing drive-time art shows that commuters see everyday. I suppose they need to see them every day because each piece of art is in focus for only a few seconds, unless you are fortunate/unfortunate enough to be gridlocked in front of an interesting one.
Sao Paulo freeway art
A commuter’s view when traffic is not moving, which is much of the time)
A Sao Paulo bridge support along the freeway
A wall along the commuter highway. This might serve as well on a suburban party center
Cubist deconstruction is not part of the artistic vocabulary but the wall artist but the spatial volumes and colors have a fascinating diversity and originality
The sign in the lower may be the name of the artist. Now that this is a recognized are form the artists sign their work (and also hope for a Tate Modern exhibit like Os Gemeos).
Something to think about during drive time
In this wider perspective you can see how the art is concentrated on highway retaining walls. Sometimes the space above is also used for installation art.
Sao Paulo expressway/bridge underpass — a field of dusty and smogged flowers
Bridge underpass in Sao Paulo. The fish-eating monkey is something to think about during drive-time — if your life is not actually in danger at the moment.
This is the first post of our 2015-2016 research trip to Brazil. It is a somewhat rambling reflection on getting re-acquainted with Sao Paulo after an absence of two or three years. It talks about the things a visitor might see in the first week of experiencing the streets, walking the neighborhood, visiting the farmer’s markets, and puzzling out how to get across the street. Future post will be more focused on simpler topics, but this is my return to Sao Paulo and the first week on the ground.
Getting here: Milwaukee to Atlanta to Sao Paulo (September 2015)
After taking this route many times, this time was a remarkable but routine trip that involved three airports, two countries, and 20+ hours – remarkable in that all the camera gear arrived along with the rest of the clothing and such. No delays, no losses, and no real challenges except the 30 minute cab ride to get from the national airport (Congonhas) to the apartment where we are staying for September which is about 3 miles away. It would have been longer but we were able to show the Simone cab driver the shortcuts.
From our ninth floor balcony — flights land and depart from Congonhas airport. every 10 minutres or so from 6:00am to 11:00 am. This feels closer than it looks, though we can’t actually see the passengers through the window.
I normally expect to have to open the case of camera and video equipment, but this time the TSA only opened Simone’s bags (perhaps to check for the contraband diet supplements she brings to her parents). We normally allow extra time for airport security to skin-search me for weapons before they accept that I have steel shoulder replacements and not an assault rifle under my shirt. This search sometimes leads to conversations beginning with “cool,” or “did that hurt?” though normally they regard me as just another baggage to x-ray. Actually I did once have an airport TSA inspector say, roughly, “come over here honey so I can search you.” But I haven’t seen an inspector anywhere in the world with a sense of humor since — especially not in India where in the wake of the Mumbai terrorist attack a few years ago the airport inspectors searched my luggage to the bottom because they didn’t like the looks of my travel alarm.
In short, however, it was a normal trip.
Some useful things to re-learn about Sao Paulo driving: Don’t
Chicago has 2.7 million people. Sao Paulo city has about 11 million and the metro area about 19 million.
A view of Sao Paulo from the suburb of Moema. In the foreground are the low, fairly spacious properties houses of the past. They are gradually giving way to the high rises in the background. A major barrier to high rises here is the path of incoming airplane traffic.
View from our window in Sao Paulo. It takes a lot of boxes to house 20 million people.
Sao Paulo is roughly equivalent to several Chicago’s, with all the urban kindness and gentility that implies — including the fact that it has more arcane traffic management, street flooding, rough surfaces, and special driving rules. Here are some informal guidelines for the Sao Paulo driving culture:
First of all, be wealthy. The truly wealthy take helicopters to work to avoid ground traffic. The city reputedly has the highest per capital helicopter rate of any city (though I wonder who keeps statistics like this). There is at least one shopping mall with a heliport and is also inaccessible by foot. If you can’t fly or drive in you don’t need to be there. Take note, those of you who worry about the inequity of income distribution in the United States, and the ways an affluent elite tries to shelter itself from the rest. Some Brazilians trace this inequity to the era of colonialism, but observers of the U.S. know that a country can re-colonize itself even in the 21st An interesting example of building a modern moat around the castle — much like the medieval practice to keep out enemies, the poor and the plague — are the planned communities that include housing, schools, shopping and other services. All of this creates an enclosed space that emulates a modern village with medieval intentions. Readers of Camus’ Plague remember this intention, hopeless as it is in the long run, to seal oneself off from the dangers of the outside world. The advertising for these closed villages suggest that it is possible to avoid the broader society much of the time and only visit it by helicopter, an auto blindado, or television.
Autos blindados does not mean cars for the seeing impaired. Some want increased security but still have to drive, so they will buy a $30-60k car and invest $20k more to armor it. For months I thought “blindados” in the metro station meant special services for the blind. Not so. It means that the clerk is behind bullet-proof glass. Thus, an auto blindado is one that has been prepared for extraordinary traffic problems like “lightening” kidnappers, carjacking, armed attack, and other normal Sao Paulo traffic hazards.
The internationally recognized zebra stripe that normally shows where pedestrians can walk safely has a more ambiguous meaning in Sao Paulo. Here it sometimes seems to merely concentrate the pedestrian targets into a more convenient place for speeding drivers. It often does not slow drivers down, and sometimes encourages them to speed up to show who has the most iron. This general rule is softened in residential neighborhoods where pushing a baby carriage or walking with a cane will often restore the Brazilians’ sense of warmth and sensitivity. Since I walk a great deal here I test this sense of amiability daily, though always with a heightened sense of mortality.
(This amiability, by the way, is latent to nonexistent for motorcycle riders who are anonymous behind their helmets and darkened visors. For the overactive imagination they can look somewhat like the riders in Cocteau’s Orpheus where they are the bringers of death, transporting people to the underground. (Sorry for the footnote, but we just saw a Sao Paulo dance theater last night doing a version of the Orpheus legend — though without motorcycles.)
Otherwise, in normal urban driving, drivers normally expect pedestrians to look out for themselves. For the macho and the helmeted, stopping for one means a loss of face, of time, and of nerve.
A typical view of anytime rush-hour, stopped under an underpass
The above rule about looking out for yourself is doubled for bicycles in this least-of-all-bicycle-friendly cities (though I hear that Lagos and Cairo are worse).
Here people load their bikes into vans and take them to the park for a ride. There is even a special bicycle park where children can ride their bikes on a closed course.
My favorite park is Ibiripuera near where I am living. In previous years I rode a bicycle through the city to get to the relative tranquility there, but I was considered foolhardy for riding from home to the park (“Don’t you have a car?”). Once at the park there are miles of inner roads with an exercise course, running track, soccer fields, places to hang a hammock, gardens, statues, fountains, and a huge lake with cormorants and black swans. People ride there, then load their bicycles into the van and drive home, having experienced as much nature as they might see that day. I now understand why my mother-in-law looked at me with such a sense of pity and farewell whenever I took out the bicycle for a ride to the park.
Recently the city has painted bicycle lanes to be used on Sunday only. It is possible to get to Ibipuera Park on these lanes (as long as you remember that not all drivers approve of, or and feel obligated by, this one-day-a-week bicycle-friendly policy). Getting to the bike lanes is still fraught with the everyday problems of navigating among cars, utility vehicles, construction of the new metro stop, rain grooves (bike traps), and other normal hazards. However, once in the park you can ride fairly peacefully, drink fresh coconut water, and sit with the black swans.
By the way, even the bicycle lanes are a source of political controversy. A recent newspaper article showed a potentially dangerous deviation in a city bicycle lane — bicycles have to turn across a busy traffic lane to continue on the path. Apparently the deviation was an alteration to the original plan — allegedly by the responsible transportation director in order to route the bicycle riders past his parents place.
Some other challenges: Rain grooves: Some predatory drivers joke about scaring bicyclists, but they are no more dangerous than the rain grooves cut in the pavement to carry off the flash flooding of streets. The grooves are about 5” wide and angled to defy you to get across them while you are dodging other traffic. You can be successful in avoiding cars, service vehicles, other bicycles, and the ever-present “motoboys” — and then catch a wheel in a rain groove.
A normal pattern for rain grooves. These are usually at street corners where you are most distracted.
Urban esthetics — a rain groove/bicycle trap with fallen blossoms from the beautiful Brazilian Ipe tree.
More about the “motoboys:” an urban species with a hazard rate roughly that of lumberjacks and sawmill workers. Because of the turgid pace of traffic and the general lack of parking in the city, the fastest way to get documents and packages across town is by motorcycle messenger. This is roughly equivalent to the bicycle messengers in San Francisco, but astronomically more dangerous. There are thousands of young people on motorcycles darting in and out of the clogged car lanes, totally ignored by the drivers who consider them an annoyance or prey. They are paid by the delivery, so speed is the key to any profit they make. I think for relaxation they must do something like shark hunting or skydiving.
This motorcycle culture is so ingrained that you find riders with a passenger on date night darting through heavy traffic at speed. Date night is probably more exciting if you have to risk your life to get there.
This practice is unrelated to the American-style Harley Davidson riders. There is a nearby “biker bar” where you can find up to 20 Harley’s parked on a sunny Saturday. Having a Harley here is a major economic proposition, so the riders seem a bit more like the executive Harley riders in the U.S. These priceless machines do not veer and race about in city traffic, they park at a nice restaurant.
Sao Paulo “motoboy” in traffic (sometimes even the motoboys are gridlocked)
Another tip: Signalling other drivers with your headlight works in a way that might be unexpected for North American drivers. In the U.S. a driver may flash the headlights to invite you to cross or take the right-of way: “go ahead, I’ll wait for you.” In Sao Paulo it often means the opposite – “I’m coming through, and my car is more blindado than yours.”
Sometimes it can also mean a polite invitation to go ahead, but there is no way of knowing this without making eye contact with the drivers and making a guess about their intentions. Like many rules in Brazil the actual custom in practice is contextual and individual — it seems to require some deep-level intuition that may come with practice.
Lacking this special intuition, the basic tactics of timidity, concentration, and a bit of luck seem the best bet for the new visitor.
In spite of the traffic, I love the city when I am not actually hating it
In the Sao Paulo spring (which is autumn in the Midwest of the United States) you can sometimes hear unusual birds calling from somewhere in tropical trees that have been preserved in spite of the massive concrete of roads and sidewalks. Many are boxed with concrete borders that allow water to reach their roots and sometimes an old, struggling tree still pokes out through the side of a building wall where a space has been left for it. Others seem to be a century old and spread their roots wherever they like, crumbling the asphalt and showing the power they can still muster against the concrete of the city.
An ancient ficus — still holding its own against traffic and asphalt.
In many ways, trees are safer than bicyclists or motoboys. There are also amazing occurrences of tropical bird calls. In this area which was once indigenous territory, the streets are often named after birds of flowers in the indigenous language A nearby street is named Bem-te-vi, after the cry of a forest bird. The name mimics the greeting in Portuguese that means “good to see you.”
As these old trees break up the sidewalk, someone simply tops off the concrete a bit. The sidewalks here are very uneven and hard to navigate except in the most commercial areas, so this is actually an improvement.
Drivers and motoboys don’t hear this ancient invitation of nature.
The weekend markets. The concrete and rough sidewalks and streets eventually eventually lose their disconcerting character and become a simple fact of daily life. Then you notice the respect for old trees in the neighborhoods, the congenital politeness of most Brazilians, the richness of the city life around you, and even the city markets.
These markets shut down whole streets with lines of kiosks and tents erected for the day. If you can get through the dizzying array of streets and their unusual names, the markets are a wonder. The city of Sao Paulo is surrounded by the federal state of Sao Paulo which has rich agricultural lands. The area was once a primary coffee-growing center in Brazil, and what land is available is very productive. There is some sugar cane in the interior, but the farm products of fruits and vegetables are a culinary wonder. Those accustomed to farmers’ markets in the United States will find many things they have never seen — huge piles of mangoes, papayas, herbs without English names, mounds of tofu from farmers of Japanese descent, and unimaginable tables filled with fresh fish, dried cod, and parts of animals I’d rather not know about.
After bicycling in traffic, visiting the market is one of the most exciting things to do in the outer neighborhoods of Sao Paulo. Like the open markets in, say, San Francisco, there are occasionally tents with boutique cheese, nuts and condiments, but the real business is for picky shoppers looking for fresh avocados, melons, and a dizzying array of fruits and vegetables.
The only serious assault on nutrition here are the tents selling pastel (pl: pasteis)– envelope-sized pockets of thin dough containing cheese, meat, or various mystery substances. . For the finicky there is also a “vegetarian” option with escarole and cheese — deep fried in the same pan as all the rest. It’s very popular, but to eat it you need to catch it between the moment it is too hot to eat and when it cools and becomes to slippery to hold.
Market street food — the pastel — an envelope-sized, deep fried, pocket of dough. Hundreds are sold by the hour.
Fresh papayas in a neighborhood market in Sao Paulo
These tables of papayas are everywhere in the market, so you can amble about comparison shop for exotic fruits.
Cashews (caju) originally come like this. The actual nut is in a shell at the top of the fruit. Often only the nut is harvested and the rest is returned to the soil. However, the fruit is increasing used for caju juice as well.
