Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

March 23, 2018 By Fausta

The US’s latest export to Brazil: sperm

Brazilians want blue-eyed babies so they’re buying sperm from the US:

Demand for American Sperm Is Skyrocketing in Brazil

Over the past seven years, human semen imports from the U.S. to Brazil have surged some 3,000%, with most buyers selecting donors whose online profiles suggest they will yield light-complexioned and preferably blue-eyed children.

Blond, blue-eyed guys are in demand,

The preference for white donors reflects a persistent preoccupation with race in a country where social class and skin color correlate with glaring accuracy. More than 50% of Brazilians are black or mixed-race, a legacy of Brazil having imported more than 10 times as many African slaves than the U.S.; it was the last Western country to ban slavery, in 1888. The descendants of white colonizers and immigrants—many of whom were lured to Brazil in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the ruling elite explicitly sought to “whiten” the population—control most of the country’s political power and wealth.

In such a racially divided society, having fair-skinned offspring is often viewed as a way to provide a child with better prospects, from a higher salary to fairer treatment by the police.

And don’t forget market forces:

Imports are rising in part because many Brazilians simply don’t trust the national product. Unlike in the U.S., it is illegal to pay men to donate their sperm here, so domestic stocks are low and information about Brazilian donors sparse.

I see a marketing opportunity for Scandinavians, too.

You can calculate the odds for eye color here.

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Filed Under: Brazil, Fausta's blog

February 15, 2018 By Fausta

Brazil: Corruption rat wins the Carnival

This year’s Rio Carnival has been won with a lurid attack on social ills and corruption in Brazil.

The Beija Flor school showed the country with a huge rat in charge, while politicians were seen holding briefcases lined with gold.

Beija Flor beat 12 other schools to win the top prize at the carnival for a 14th time. Preparations for the parade begin months in advance.

Entrants in the competition often adopt a political theme.

The second-placed school also criticised Brazilian leaders in their entry, depicting President Michel Temer as a vampire.

Photos at The Sun.

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Filed Under: Brazil, Fausta's blog Tagged With: Carnival

February 12, 2018 By Fausta

Brazil: Carnival week

It’s that time of year again, and Rio de Janeiro’s top 13 samba schools are ready:

Brazil’s samba schools go political as funding cuts bite (click on the link for the BBC photo essay)

Beija-Flor samba school says it has been “inspired” by Brazil’s dirty politics. Corruption has dominated the country’s news, with former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva being sentenced to 12 years in prison and top business executives and dozens of politicians under investigation over a huge graft scandal.

Beija-Flor, which has won 13 championships, has chosen to portray the country’s troubles by placing a huge rat on one of its floats.

Beija-Flor has also built a colourful polystyrene version of the headquarters of Petrobras, the state-run oil company at the centre of one Brazil’s biggest corruption scandals.

But instead of it looking like a gleaming, modern building, it has been made to look like a collection of ramshackle huts.

The school’s artistic director, Marcelo Misailidis, says it is meant to show how corruption drives Brazilians into poverty and life in the favelas, the sprawling neighbourhoods where many of Rio’s poor live.

There’s a Hieronymus Bosch Garden of Delights theme party al Leme beach (link in Portuguese). More Carnival at O Globo.

Meet Samantha Mortner, the UK woman leading the dance in Brazil

at the Imperio da Tijuca samba school, she’s best known as “musa gringa” the first non-Brazilian dancer to take a lead role at “the biggest party on earth”.

Rio Carnival 2018
Nice UK Jewish Girl Queenhttps://t.co/cK6N2b4BWp

— CJ (@CJsTweetsUSA) February 8, 2018

Here is last year’s show,

Last, but not least, you may want to watch Black Orpheus, the luminous 1959 classic.

UPDATE
Linked to bY The Other McCain. Thank you!

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Filed Under: Brazil, Fausta's blog Tagged With: Marcelo Misailidis, Samantha Mortner

January 29, 2018 By Fausta

Brazil: Lula’s passport seized, runs for president again

What does a former president do after losing an appeal, having a prison sentence extended, and his passport seized? Run again!

I didn’t have time to update on Lula’s legal troubles last week:
A federal judge in Brazil has seized the passport of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and banned him from leaving the country.

Judge Ricardo Leite is investigating allegations that Lula illegally lobbied on behalf of a Swedish firm that sold military jets to Brazil.

On Wednesday, an appeals court unanimously upheld his conviction for corruption in a separate case.

Lula keeps saying, “I haven’t committed any crime.” Apparently his Workers’ Party believes him since they announced he’s their candidate for president. However (emphasis added)

While Mr. da Silva’s lawyers are expected to challenge Wednesday’s appeals-court ruling, many legal experts believe the verdict will ultimately prevent the former president, who currently stands at the top of pre-election polls, from running. Under Brazil’s Clean Record election law, politicians convicted of corruption stand to be barred from public office for eight years once the verdict is upheld by an appeals court.

Unfortunately,

The party has also failed to groom young leaders to take up its banner should Mr. da Silva be barred, which has been a possibility at least since he was sentenced in July to 9½ years in prison for corruption and money laundering. The appeals court this week lengthened that sentence to just over 12 years.

How’s Lula doing?

In polls taken last month, the former leader led the pack of presidential hopefuls by a healthy margin, with 36% of voter intentions, according to Datafolha. In second place was right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro, with 18%.

For now, Lula was scheduled to travel to Ethiopia to speak on world hunger, but had to cancel.

Brazil is Latin America’s largest economy.

Crossposted at WoW! Magazine.

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Filed Under: Brazil, Fausta's blog, Lula Tagged With: PT, Workers' Party

January 17, 2018 By Fausta

Brazil: Yellow fever outbreak

Mosquito-borne diseases, again,
The Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, the country’s most populous, is at risk of yellow fever, the World Health Organization (WHO) is warning.

Brazilian Health Minister Antonio Nardi said the WHO advice stemmed from “an excess of concern”.

Anti-Yellow Fever Campaign to Vaccinate 19 Million in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Bahia

Ever since July of last year – when the government declared that the worst wild yellow fever outbreak registered since 1980 had passed – 11 new cases have been confirmed: four fatalities in São Paulo, which registered a total of eight cases, and the states of Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and the Federal District each presented one case of the disease.

Another 92 suspected cases of the disease are being looked into.

The campaign is expected to last fifteen days. The shorter campaign period is part of a strategy to concentrate vaccinations.



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Filed Under: Brazil Tagged With: yellow fever

December 12, 2017 By Fausta

Brazil: North in crisis over Venezuela migration

Via commenter Old Timer,

Northern Brazil under State of Emergency over Mass Immigration of Venezuelans

The regional government of northern Roraima in Brazil has declared a state of emergency following the mass immigration of Venezuelans fleeing their country’s crisis over the past months.
. . .
The mass exodus of Venezuelans “has created serious difficulties for the teams in charge of providing logistical support (reception and shelter) at the border,” states the decree, and mentions health and safety concerns for both immigrants and Brazilians.

Campos recalled that Roraima received a third epidemiological alert last week from the Pan American Health Organization about the possibility that, as a result of migration, the region might experience a measles outbreak similar to the one that has affected the Venezuelan state of Bolívar for the last six months, where 38 cases of the disease have been confirmed.

It’s not only Brazil and Miami, there’s also Colombia’s Venezuela Problem

An imploding economy, marked by product shortages and hyperinflation, has driven almost half-a-million Venezuelans to live in Colombia. That number includes a 50-percent rise in the past three months alone as thousands of new migrants arrive each day in search of medicine, food, and work.

These are symptoms of a larger problem: Joel Hirst writes about The Arriving Ordeal

Fragility and conflict. Those were the words for the post-cold war period, which is now over.

Read the whole thing.

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Filed Under: Brazil, Fausta's blog, illegal immigration, immigration, Venezuela Tagged With: Joel Hirst

December 7, 2017 By Fausta

Brazil: Tiririca would rather be an honest clown than a crooked politician

The clown and politician who as been in the Chamber of Deputies since 2010 is calling it quits,

A professional clown in Brazil who ran for congress and won by a huge margin says he will not stand again in 2018.

Francisco Everardo Oliveira Silva, better known as Tiririca, is coming to the end of his second term in the Chamber of Deputies.

He complained that he was one of only eight out of more than 500 lawmakers who regularly turned up to sessions.

Tiririca said he was “ashamed” of his colleagues’ behaviour and would return to being a full-time clown.

Tiririca’s stage name means Grumpy. His 2010 campaign slogan was “It can’t get any worse.”

He would get my vote.

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

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Filed Under: Brazil, Fausta's blog Tagged With: Tiririca

November 2, 2017 By Fausta

Brazil: River pirates?

Missing American Family Found Safe in Brazil’s Amazon. Family, missing since Sunday, had been on a barge that was said to be attacked by pirates

Say again?

Piracy is believed to be on the rise on the rivers of northern Brazil, a vast and sparsely populated territory with a flourishing drug trade. In September a British tourist, 43-year-old Emma Kelty, was killed by a river gang known as the Water Rats while kayaking on the Solimões River, according to Amazonas state police.

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Filed Under: Brazil, Fausta's blog

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