The Second Book Posting Chapter 1-2

Chapter 1 – September 21, 2012

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Buildup

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It was daybreak in Brasília, and the cloudless sky promised high temperatures as the capital of the Federal Republic of Brazil was beginning to come alive.  There was less traffic than usual as the inhabitants, who for the most part, were involved in government or in the support of government did not have to work today.  Today was a national day of mourning and the special ceremony to bid farewell to the assassinated president, Telma Machado, whose body was lying in state inside the Chamber of Deputies of the Brazilian Congress.

Brasília still carried some of the artificial postcard image that had been its calling card since it was built in the 1950s, the dream of the then President, Juscelino Kubitschek and the famous Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer.  It had always been a strange city, even for Brazil.  Most Brazilian cities clearly demonstrated the influence of tiny Portugal with its narrow streets and homes called sobrados that were as narrow as the streets in Lisbon and usually two-story.  Brasília had been designed with wide avenues and immense green areas, situated on an open plain.  It was only in the last few years that it was beginning to take on some of the character that was uniquely Brazilian.  President Kubitschek’s dream was to build a capital in the center of the country and thus initiate a great western expansion that would eventually integrate the entire nation that was larger than the continental United States, eventually turning it into a world power.

 But even after the construction of the city was completed there remained individual aspects that took decades to change.  Brasília became the divorce capital of the nation.  Actually it was not divorce, for in the days of its construction there was no legal divorce in Brazil, so the correct term would probably be the ‘legal separation’ capital of the country.  When the legislators were finally forced to remove themselves from the former capital in Rio de Janeiro and settle in Brasília, whole families were uprooted.  In those early days there was no social life in Brasília.  There were few clubs and restaurants and the former residents of Rio, called Cariocas,[1] were not impressed with the quality of the food or the entertainment.  And of course there was no beach.  Most Brazilians, at least seventy percent of the nation’s population, lived within two hundred kilometers of the Atlantic coast and the beach culture had become an ingrained part of the national identity.  But in Brasília, husbands and wives were forced, maybe for the first time in their married lives, to actually relate to each other and many found that they had nothing in common without the beach, the sidewalk cafes, the private clubs and nightlife.  Wives were bored, while the men went about the business of government and children had little to do. The airline companies discovered an incredibly lucrative business ferrying legislators and their families back and forth to the other Brazilian cities on a weekly basis.  Some wives refused to stay in Brasília and returned to their old haunts and their husbands became the quintessential commuters.