Brazil Archives - Fran Moreland Johns

Optimism Collection

December 16, 2024December 17, 2024

Political Vibes from Brazil

by Fran Johns

A LOVE STORY, A FILM AND A FEW FEARS ABOUT THE FUTURE

(Warning: Sometimes I just can’t help but talk politics)

Photo by Samuel Costa Melo on Unsplash

A century ago two young people met and fell in love in Brazil, a continent away from their homes — his in Texas, hers in Virginia.

The story was that he’d been standing with a friend on a Porto Alegre hillside, watching the arrival of a ship full of newcomers that included a few fellow educational missionaries like themselves. And that he spotted her, a slender young woman with auburn hair woven in thick braids around her head, and said to his companion, “Saunders, I’m going to marry that girl if it’s the last thing I do.”

We had our own opinions about that story — my three older sisters and I — but we learned to smile politely and just let him tell it. The girl in question, who had come to teach music and folk dance to preschoolers, would answer our derision with her own smile and the response, “Well, that’s what he says . . .” Which may explain their long and happy union.

Remembrances are heart-warming; but reading about Brazil today can be scary.

“I’m Still Here,” the award-winning film by Director Walter Salles, has been nominated for a Golden Globe for best foreign language film, with leading lady Fernanda Torres, 59, up for best actress and generating talk about the Oscars. All this follows a failed bid, a quarter-century ago, by Torres’ mother Fernanda Montenegro for the best-actress Oscar that went to Gwyneth Paltrow.

As I’m not much of a movie buff, what I know about I’m Still Here is mostly what I read in the New York Times: “Set in Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s,” writes reporter Ana Ionova, the film “tells the story of Eunice Paiva and her five children, whose lives are upended when the family patriarch, Rubens Paiva, a former congressman played by Selton Mello, disappears at the hands of the military government.” Ionova quotes director Salles as saying “The personal story of the family is the collective story of a country.” And this is what, to me, is scary.

My family returned to the U.S. for good in the mid-1930s, when I was not yet two (yes, I’m sailing into my 90s now) and the winds of war were stirring around the globe.

Brazil, though, was forever my parents’ happy place, Portuguese the language they spoke to each other all their lives. They had been young enough to believe their schoolrooms were helping make the world better. Porto Alegre featured free opera and symphony in the city center, and they made lifelong friends whom I often met in later years. Though the politics of the country were tumultuous — my parents were friendly with the good-guy/bad-guy leader Getúlio Vargas (whose roots were in Porto Alegre’s state of Rio Grande do Sul) — those were joyful years for my family.

What I remember about my father’s politics — other than his policy disagreements with Ronald Reagan, whom he dismissed as “that cowboy in the White House” — was his ferocious opposition to any electorate that handed too much power to one man. He had watched the worst example of that with the rise of the Third Reich (born the same year as I) and had worked against more than one U.S. politician who had authoritarian inclinations in the last half of the 20thcentury.

The political forces behind the troubled 1970s of Brazilian politics were concentrated in a military junta (supported by the U.S.) rather than a single person; but I remember my father’s sorrow over what happened to freedom and democracy there, and his joy when the dictatorship fell and democracy was restored. He was then in his mid-eighties; he would go on to live, active and engaged, into his 90th year.

My father did not live to know Jair Bolsonaro, who aspires to be dictator of Brazil, and whose supporters stormed the capitol when he lost his last attempt to reach that goal. But I think I know what he’d have to say about Bolsonaro and friends.

I have beloved friends and family members who voted, in the recent U.S. elections, for the not particularly truthful or generous man who has said he would be dictator “on day one,” who demands absolute loyalty, and has been given extraordinary power in advance by the courts that he put in place. I claim no superior knowledge and do not question the many reasons why they, and a slim majority of my fellow citizens, chose to send him back to the White House.

But still. The spirit of my father is omnipresent these days. I remember the loss of democracy in Brazil that I’m Still Here is bringing to light once again. And I know enough about autocracies not to want to live under one.

America Collection/crime/Family and Friends/General interest/Holidays

May 1, 2021October 19, 2021

Mob Violence – Is it here to stay forever?

by Fran Johns

A TALE OF TWO CENTURIES

Her name was Joyce Almeida. An 18-year-old student, she was killed instantly by one shot through her lung. Joyce had been on the edge of the downtown crowd with her parents, who had fled for cover behind their car and at first failed to notice Joyce’s soundless collapse onto the pavement. One man in uniform, though, was seen at the exact same time, on horseback, galloping away but firing behind him in all directions at the crowd of mostly civilian men, women and children.

A sadly familiar story today. I was stunned to discover it, reported in a familiar script, in a letter written by my mother to my father on November 1, 1923 in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

In the midst of digging through files of documents, mostly letters, that remain un-sorted even after countless moves and major downsizes, surprises keep showing up. On the date of this letter my parents were not yet engaged – that would happen the following spring, and they’d marry on November 18, 1924 – so where my father was is a mystery; probably just somewhere else in Porto Alegre. Phone calls were rare; notes and letters were the preferred means of communication. My mother had been in Brazil a little over a year, under the auspices of the Methodist church; her job involved teaching music and folk dance to preschoolers and young children while also teaching English at all age levels. She and her roommate Mary Sue lived in the girls’ dorm of a school that housed students from elementary grades into the equivalent of junior college. I think neither of them were trained to deal with protest mobs.

“I ran a couple of blocks,” my mother wrote, “to catch up with the Red Cross people.” The Red Cross people had come to notify them of a student being wounded, but given the name Joycelina; moments later the two young teacher/chaperones realized it might be Joyce. “She had gone with her family to welcome Setembroio the Minister of War from Rio. The mob lost itself while he was making his speech and firing began. A stray shot struck her in the lung and killed her instantly. All this we learned later at her home.

“Immediately then Mary Sue and I went to take home the few other externs who were here. All we have is a great deal of hearsay centered around a core of fact. It seems now, after things have quieted down, that 50 or more people were wounded, a number fatally, and one rumor says 18 killed.

“Of course the children were all very much frightened. Before going out, Mary Sue talked to them about the need for calm, and of the comparative safety of the college compared to other places. They took it all very well and after dinner settled down quietly to sewing – after calmly taking a collection to send flowers to Joyce. Only Mary Sue and I went to the Almeidas. It is very sad. Mr. Almeida looks so crushed. Igaleilita’s dress was still spotted with blood from the wound.

“Yet with all this the people continue to move to and fro on the street just as they have been moving to the cemetery all day. The federal soldiers have taken charge, and they have asked for an Estado de Sitio permission from Rio. Things are apparently quiet now – 10 PM. The school children went to bed calmly. Mary Sue and I are really more nervous than they – after the stress of going to the Almeida house and then carrying the news to many of the school mates. I folded up all the costumes of the ‘May Festa,’ to have come off on Tuesday, and laid them away.”

My mother – a ferocious seamstress who could whip up a dress or costume in minutes – had started “May Festa,” a May Day celebration that continues to this day. It involved all-day singing and dancing and unfortunately had been scheduled for a few days after the shooting. “Joyce was to have a new white net dress for the festa,” my mother wrote – “and it was her shroud.”

The discovery of this century-old letter is fascinating on more levels than I can count: some things change; some never do. But it’s tempting to reflect on the similarity of mob violence whatever the century, and the difference of news reporting in the days before TV (or effective radio, for that matter.) Possibly the biggest difference? News transmission via pen-and-ink paints pictures of a singular sort. My mother’s letter concludes:

“Strange – Mary Sue and I sat taking coffee instead of dinner, and discussed the use of the basement of the other building in case of necessity – of barricading the spaces between the pillars at the back – you don’t think about being afraid when you are actually in it. Most absurd of all, I loaded the revolver – in case we should have trouble on account of absence of police.” I am satisfied that my mother never fired a gun in her life.

No amount of internet searching can confirm the details, so please don’t consider the above to be historical fact. Some things I don’t know – the correct name of the Minister of War, what the riot was about, how the students and families coped. But some things I do. My parents exchanged letters every day they were apart (a LOT of days) throughout their long and happy marriage – 1924 until my mother’s death in 1970 – and this story fits with their lives in Brazil and the low-key but thorough communications they exchanged. I am struggling over what to sort and what to keep, but I believe this story contains truths worth keeping.

Brazil’s history is not unlike our own – various European countries conquered and abused the indigenous people for centuries (beginning in the 16^th.) The young Republic was established in 1889 and its democracy is still fragile. We’ve had better luck holding off dictators and autocrats than have the citizens of Brazil, but recent years have shown us all – north and south of the equator – how easy it is to distort or snuff out the Voice of the People.

Let’s hear it for the Voice of the People. Surely there’s still time to set things right in THIS century.

America Collection/Family and Friends/General interest/Politicians/Politics & Causes/Travel/USA

November 3, 2018October 7, 2021

No Birthright Citizenship? EEEeeek!

by Fran Johns

This birthright-citizenship-ending business is getting personal. Surely Mr. Trump has nothing against me exactly – although one can never be sure. I don’t follow his tweets (until they are reported on real news,) but he may have access to my emails. Still, how does he feel about us birthright outliers? And where will we wind up? Stateless?

Birth Certificate - Portugese — They don’t write ’em like this any more. I mean, who even learns cursive?

Here’s the whole story. When I arrived on the planet my mother (along with my father and three older sisters) happened to be in Porto Alegre, Brazil. They’d actually been there for a little more than a decade, my dad helping start a school and my mother teaching music to preschoolers. A dozen or so of the latter were her bridesmaids in tiny matching dresses she made and oh, how I wish I could put my hands on that photo. But back to the birthright.

Since my mother (a legal, if temporary, immigrant) happened to be in Porto Alegre, I was born in the German hospital there. Brazil, being a friendly sort of country, immediately granted me citizenship.

Birth Certificate - US Parents — Will this do, if we axe the birthright citizenship?

Not to be outdone, the USA simultaneously granted me citizenship, under the “American Parents Abroad” act. And that, for a number of years, was that. (But is the APA still OK? Should we trust those babies born in shit-hole countries not to be inherently terrorist?) My family came back to the States when I was too young to have started learning Portugese – more’s the pity; it is a beautiful language. I grew up hardly even noticing my dual citizenship.

Then I reached voting age. When I registered to vote there appeared a mildly ominous-seeming document stating I must renounce my Brazilian citizenship (no dual citizenship allowed in the scary 1950s.) So with hardly a passing thought to my birthright country I renounced it. This might make me okay with President Trump, I guess, though in hindsight it makes me a little sad. And conflicted. Dual citizenship is now possible, and I might want to relocate if things keep going south (or alt-right) in my chosen country.

Fast forward about a half-century. My irreplaceable Final Husband, learning I had never revisited the country of my birth, suggested we should go back. Five minutes later I was on the phone (this was the 1990s, but pre-email) making arrangements and reservations. My favorite exchange was with a hotel reservations clerk in Rio who said, “Oh, you cannot stay one night in Rio. You must stay two, three nights in Rio.” (Which we did.) The primary plan, though, was to visit Porto Alegre, and the Instituto Porto Alegre where my father had famously served.

Initial plans made, we set out for the Brazilian Consulate to obtain visas. “Oh, you cannot travel on a visa,” the nice lady said to me – after granting my husband a visa. “You were born in Brazil; you will need a Brazilian passport.” Which was a little startling, but as it turns out the passport is cheaper than the visa. Small victories. In time, my new passport arrived – in my birthright name, which is not exactly the name on my US passport or airline tickets, but who’s worrying about details?

Me, actually. I figured I might get into Brazil and never get out. But all was well. We visited Iguacu Falls, surely one of the most beautiful spots on the planet (after spending the requisite few nights in Rio and taking photos ostensibly of me but really of the gorgeous girl(s) from Ipanema in the background.) Mostly, I went around smiling at everyone, displaying my passport to sales clerks and waiters and saying muito obrigada – essentially the full extent of my Portugese. Nobody didn’t smile back.

Brazil - Ipanema — Girl from CA; girls from Ipanema

Safely home, things rested for another decade or two. But now our president is saying – constitution be damned – that he might just delete that birthright citizenship. Does he mean just all those murderers and rapists storming the border, or since every immigrant except Melania is a potential terrorist, is he going for retroactive non-birthers? I.e., yours truly?

A quick call to the Brazilian consulate yesterday informed me I am welcome to reinstate my Brazilian citizenship, even if my passport has expired. But now with Mr. Bolsonaro down there wanting to chop down the rain forest – not to mention his political opponents – my alt-birthright country isn’t looking so great either. Still, hedging my bets, I’m hanging onto all these documents. And praying a lot for the whole planet.