A Brazilian Summer

Contrasts and Blends

As I boarded a flight from São Paulo to Brasília at 6 a.m. on a Tuesday, full speed toward the Brazilian Congress, I reflected on my past few weeks spent in Brazil. I started this article with a lying sentence. Not completely, but you can be sure I did not reflect about a thing at the airport at 6 a.m. except that the plane was freezing cold and that in a few hours I would have to be fresh and ready at the Congress (maybe the cold was good to preserve the freshness). What is true is that I did board that flight and that, more than once, on other occasions, I have reflected on my summer experience in Brazil. So let’s start from the beginning.

Ibirapuera Park, in São Paulo.

When I received the decision that I had been accepted into the Brazil SIP program, I was ecstatic. I was going to spend the summer in Brazil, meet new people, eat new food, be in a foreign city, intern at a children’s rights organization—that all seemed perfectly fine for me (my family, sometimes not so much). At the beginning of June, I embarked on a plane from Lisbon to São Paulo, where I would spend the following eight weeks. 

Four days a week, I left my host family’s house, put one earbud in—I do not find it very advisable to wear two earbuds in the biggest city of Latin America –, and walked to work, the office of Alana Institute, an organization focusing on children’s rights. I was integrated into the legal team, working mostly on international issues, being involved in United Nations initiatives and contributing to Alana’s presence in international spaces. At this point, you might be wondering what exactly this means. I worked on several projects, from the General Comment 27 of the Committee on the Rights of the Child to the Summit for the Future—happening now in September, to projects related to children in armed conflict, European Union exports and their impact on the Global South, the impact of gold exploitation in indigenous communities, and prevention and correction of violence against children. My tasks ranged from doing bibliographic research and review, legal research, analyzing and synthesizing documents, creating databases, organizing Alana’s contributions and representing Alana in meetings with external partners of the organization.

Then, I would get out of the office, admire a pink ipê coloring the street, have lunch with my supervisor, Letícia Carvalho, and co-workers at a nearby bright yellow self-service restaurant with Brazilian delicacies, and return to work. I spent a few weeks in this dynamic work, variable from day to day, where I learned a lot about how children’s rights, particularly in Brazil and the Global South, relate to several issues, and gained insights into the work of civil society in the United Nations system. 

One Friday, my supervisor told me there was an opportunity for me to participate in another field of action of Alana. Four days later, I was on a plane with a blazer in my suitcase and a blank expression on my face, flying toward Brasília, the city that made Oscar Niemeyer an extremely lucky architect, awarded with the opportunity to design a whole new city to be the capital of Brazil. In Brasília, a city inhospitable for walkers and people prone to nose bleeding due to its dry atmosphere, I went to the Congress. There, I directly observed how Alana brought the research and work done in the office to the center of national power. Tayanne Galeno, government relations analyst for Alana in Brasília, scheduled individual meetings with each senator or deputy who needed to be convinced of the importance of the bill Alana was endorsing or proposing to, first, show up to the voting meeting, and second, vote in Alana’s favor. The first task itself proved to be quite difficult, with meetings constantly running late, being rescheduled, deputies and senators having commitments replacing others, all in a general atmosphere of chaos. I was supposed to observe the approval or non-approval of a change in a policy relating to artificial intelligence regulation on my first day there. However, the industry and technology lobby was too strong to let the voting happen. This was just a common-day example of how the agenda changes and how different interests determine Brazilian politics. I learned that the pace of domestic politics dictates the pace of children’s rights in Brazil, and with a highly volatile domestic political agenda, the human rights agenda is also unstable and without a clear, defined path. Progress, if done, happens slowly and with many backward and forward steps, during long days in Congress, with unexpected meetings, cancellations of meetings and talks with deputies and senators with their own agendas. 

View of the Burle Marx Garden from the television tower in Brasília.

My time in Brasília was not just walking around the Congress, but also walking (or attempting to walk) around the city, just like I did in São Paulo. I found São Paulo to be a place where everything happens all at once. It is a city of contrasts, work and improvisation. It is a city where the beautiful may not be right in front of you, but rather a city where you have to find the beautiful. Outside, there is loud traffic, chaos, buildings that most people would not consider the most stunning and a dense, busy atmosphere. However, it is easy to find a spot where you find the beautiful, in a particular street or building. It is a city for many likings, of which you can make what you want. It is a city of possibilities, where you choose your own reality. Within intentionality, there is room for spontaneity and São Paulo can be a city of the unexpected and the new.

It is easier to find the beautiful if you are intentional about where you are going. However, sometimes what ends up being the most striking is not what you thought would be, but something else that happens in that place or the journey that takes you there. On one day, you can be working in your neat office or walking through a very nice residential neighborhood, the next you can be on a dirt road visiting a community project in a favela. In one moment, you can be in Avenida Paulista on a Sunday squeezing between tourists to see the souvenirs one seller is selling—which look exactly the same as what the previous one was selling—, caught up in a Bolsonarist protest with an inflatable Lula da Silva, and stopping to watch a rock band. In the next moment, you can find yourself in Parque Ibirapuera drinking coconut water and biking with your friends, dancing forró at a train station, or being in one of the biggest food festivals of the world trying a very spicy acarajé because you thought you could handle the spice when the seller asked if you wanted spice or not. Somehow, all these experiences blend into each other and the city makes perfect sense.

Paraty, when we were on a trail to reach a beach.

My experience in Brazil was one that mirrors the city of São Paulo—it was an experience of contrasts, discovery, exploration, intentionality and randomness. If I could change one thing, it would be none. Not even the red dryness of the soil of Brasília. Nor the loud construction sites in São Paulo. Nor the calm boredom of Paraty. Nor the overpriced food at an Italian restaurant in Rio. I would not change any of this because that is what made my experience in Brazil. They were integral parts of my experience and showed me the Brazil that it is, they made Brazil more real for me. If all I remembered was the interestingness of the architecture in Brasília, a painting of Tarsila do Amaral in a museum, the green paths to beaches in Paraty or the sunset at Ipanema beach, my experience in Brazil would not have been as full, as round as it was. I recognize I saw only a very small part of Brazil and in a very specific way, but within the possibility limits of my experience, I saw it in the splendor of its contrasts and blends.