Brazil’s Giddy Convergence

By ROGER COHEN
NYT

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL — Tom Jobim is famous for having written “Girl from Ipanema,” the sensuous, playful anthem of a sensuous, playful land. He’s almost equally famous for having said, “Brazil is not for amateurs.”

I lived a quarter-century ago in that Brazil where if you didn’t have the “jeitinho,” or insider’s knack for circumventing rules, you were toast. It was a Brazil of hyperinflation and runaway violence that mocked the words on the national flag: “Order and Progress.” I went down to the city morgue one day, researching a story about poor kids who “surfed” the tops of trains for kicks, and an official idly lifted the lid of a garbage can in which a young man’s body was twisted like a corkscrew. I asked what had happened. He said he’d been murdered by fellow inmates at a prison and stuffed in there.

No, Brazil was not for amateurs.

Today, in the Brazil of the “Ms. Continuity” leader, President Dilma Rousseff, I’m not so sure. Certainly a lot of people suddenly fancy themselves as Brazil pros.

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