“I, Gilberto Gil, Brazilian citizen, world citizen and Minister of Culture of Brazil, develop my work in music, in the ministry and in all the dimensions of my existence under the inspiration of hacker ethics; I am concerned about the issues that my world and my time pose to me, such as the issue of the digital divide, of free software and also the issue of regulation and development of audiovisual content production and distribution, by any media, for any purpose”.

At that moment, there was a highly charged debate over the proposal of Gil’s team for creating a National Cinema and Audiovisual Agency (ANCINAV) to ‘deal with audiovisual as an integrated and convergent economy, following the evolution of new technological platforms‘. The powerful media and TV networks were quick to react, violently.

‘Xenophobic, authoritarian, Stalinist, Chavez-like and soviet-style’ were items included in the name calling Gil had to bear. At the time, Juca Ferreira — the sociologist designated by Gil to be his successor as head of the ministry — managed to clarify the context that called for a regulatory agency in Brazil:

“In the audiovisual sector, the economic environment is being rearranged and the ownership concentration is growing. Big telecom companies are acquiring smaller companies from the movies, media, journalism and entertainment sectors, generating mega corporations eager to conquer new markets. These companies are able to maintain powerfull relations with their own rich governments, while also promoting interest-based relations with its poor countries hosts. They perform political strategies to take down what they call barriers, and fight against ownership concentration regulations in their home countries. It makes sense… It is important to mention those strategies are performed by highly competent and proactive State bureaucracies making use of all kinds of resources.”
Juca Ferreira in ‘Brazilians debate regulation and media convergence’ - Global Voices Online

Googling for English content on ANCINAV leads you to a protected article which allows enough reading for us to understand the drift and recognize the style of attack. “The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) threatened Brazil with commercial retaliation if the government continued its plans to create ANCINAV…”

Amidst heavy artillery, and although having already compromised in the creation of the agency, Lula felt the pressure and backed off, asking Gil to continue studying other alternatives.

All this occurred during Gilberto Gil’s first months as a minister, and he learned a lot from the ANCINAV episode. The goals stayed the same, but the strategy was to be reframed.

Lessig with Gil @ Porto Alegre’s WSF05:
Is this what democracy looks like?

Perhaps calling himself a hacker while being attacked as a ’stalinist’ by local mainstream media right on the occasion of his very first major venture as minister was the grand overture of the Tropicalia movement vibe from his podium in government.

The tropicalist visionary perspective is a legacy of the late 60’s when Gil and his group were discovering a new global audience and experimenting with all kinds of cultural fusions. Here for the first time was the recognition that the same pulses of modernity were resonating from the cosmopolitan electric guitars from abroad and from regional groups from the hinterlands of the Brazilian Northeast. The urge to communicate and mix across cultures was the key to what came to be known as tropicalism.

Gil’s focus on the hacker ethics of openness for the digital culture today, forty years later, was instrumental for a similar mixing of cultures, peers, rhythms, codes and complexities. In his own way, he managed to creatively introduce new conceptual layers and nuances to his political discourse, thus breaking open new ground for the political debate over mass culture, the market, technology, the tensions between the contemporary and the traditional, intellectual property regulation, and more.

At that moment, the seeds of what would become some of the main projects of Gil’s tenure were tossed into the air. There was the pioneering push to port Creative Commons licenses to Brazil, which were displayed as Gil’s first moves toward the process of revising Brazilian copyrights laws. The fruits of such a debate were surely reflected in Brazil’s recent stiff (and successful) positions at WIPO — the World Intellectual Property Association, and in the realization of a National Forum to debate revisions on the copyright law which is now underway.

Another significant move came from Gil’s engagement in bringing back to life the UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity. While opponents were keen to label the convention as a “deeply flawed” treaty, overly protectionist, and a threat to freedom of expression, Gil worked on the possibility that the initiative could result in a counterbalance to the World Trade Organization (WTO) rulings when deciding conflicts between trade and culture. In June 2007 the Brazilian Ministry of Culture sponsored an International Seminar to debate practical implementations and tools to activate the powers of the convention in each country.

The launch of the first ‘Pontos de Cultura’ (Cultural Hotspots) as a concrete program and as a showcase for Gil’s vision for digital culture was broadly recognized as a great idea in terms of cutural policy. It all starts with the selection of a project, an existent cultural process developed by groups such as indigenous tribes, quilombolas, cultural groups in favelas, academic centers at universities, or the like. The “architecture” of a hotspot is both structurally simple and broadly innovative. It is established with a broadband connection, infrastructure made of recycled equipment and, most important, technical workshops on open source audio and video editing software, enabling the cultural groups to digitize their creativity and publish it under alternative licenses. The project mixes (1) free software, (2) advanced concepts on copyrights and (3) an awareness that the appropriation of technology by the people is the emergent social movement which supports the generative dynamics of the digital era. According to Gil:

“We need to relocate what is now centralized in the hands of few. The majors of the cultural industry haven’t left anything for the peripheries. That’s why today the role of the Brazilian state in formulating public policies is to empower the micro manifestations so that they become able to occupy the public spaces while being protagonists of the promotion and protection of diversity”
[pt] Brasil lead American countries on policies for artistic expressions - o Abismal

The one complaint made by Gilberto Gil on the day he presented his departure to president Lula was related to the low budget for his ministry. While Gil’s critics from different positions generally talk about good ideas being poorly implemented, on the website of the media giant Globo network — where they use to represent Gil the minister as a cartoon mumbling esoteric nonsense — 53% of readers voted ‘terrible’ in judging his term. His achievements were in the face of much hostility.

But, the final assessment that is yet to be made about Gilberto Gil’s term at the helm of the Brazilian Ministry of Culture is whether his achievements are enough to lead us to believe that culture can be trusted as a locus for activism and progressive change in the global networked society.

Like managing to jam with widely different musical partners, anywhere, under all conditions, Gil seems to embody the ‘use of culture’ as a communication tool that both enables and invites broad participation. The invitation for cultural exercise is to be found mixed into the tropicalist vibe of his speeches on digital culture:

To act upon digital culture is the concretization of this philosophy, which open spaces to redefine the form and the content of cultural policies, and transforms the Ministry of Culture… Digital culture is a new concept. It comes from the idea that the digital technology revolution is cultural in its essence. What is at stake here is that the use of digital technology change behaviors. The plain use of the Internet and of free software creates fantastic possibilities to democratize access to information and to knowledge, to maximize the potential of cultural goods and services, to amplify the values that form our common scripts, and therefore, our culture, and also to potentialize the cultural production, generating new forms of art.

In a recent speech, Minister Gilberto Gil affirmed that Digital Culture initiatives present a built-in revolutionary device, and are able to play a fundamental role in shaking away the inertia of the traditional politics that has excluded much of society from public life. He talked about a bottom-up unrest happening everywhere, which he sees as a very positive sign of the emergence of a non-governmental political movement that he believes to be a direct and evolved result of recent cultural and counter-cultural forces which have been increasing their ability to influence public policies. He talked about ‘Peer-acy‘.

For those of us who worked with him, the loss is big. For him, I think it will be great to feel free again to dedicate himself to music. And one thing is for sure: Gilberto Gil’s tropicalist term has transformed the Brazilian Ministry of Culture.

The tones and rhythms of his leadership will live on.

Here I am in Budapest, interesting city, with beautiful people all around speaking a peculiar language. The whole environment exhales history, but the streets are full of young and interesting people who seem well tuned to the beat of the moment. I could sense many similarities with Brazilians.

The Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2008, which gathers managers, editors, authors, Lingua sites coordinators, collaborators and other fellow communities that somehow are linked to the Global Voices Online project, is happening here.

As I arrived here, I thought it might be important to mention some aspects of my relationship with GVO — something I’ve never described before. With many simultaneous projects on my plate, it is difficult to properly document the interconnections of what I’ve been developing and implementing, especially when it comes to the “cross-layering” where aspects of one project contribute to other ones.

My collaboration with the GVO community has been invaluable to me, and some aspects are quite present in many other things I’ve been doing. The use of Wordpress at the Brazilian Ministry of Culture wesite, for example, resulted from what I saw happening within the Global Voices community. It’s a wonder that so many collaborators from all parts of the world, remotely contacted and trained at a distance, are able to master the collective use of a common open source publishing platform. I realized that this must be a damn good software solution.

I recognized that such a tool would facilitate the fostering of collaborative environments for content production inside the Ministry of Culture, even in cases where the users held highly diverse levels of computer knowledge. The result of this adaptation of GV’s concept of using Wordpress for the management of an institutional portal has grown and prospered into a full set of plug-ins that we are sharing at Xemelê. We will soon be launching the first Wordpress theme complete with all the Xemelê plug-ins preinstalled, which will consistently help all who feel like implementing the same solution.

Another important lesson I learned as a Global Voices editor was how to make good use of remote networking. I understood that it is possible to transform a wide variety of people from different cultures and languages who have never met into co-workers which is something that you have to see happening in order to believe that it’s possible! Based on this experience, I have conceived and helped implement some projects at the Brazilian Ministry of Culture, among them the Rede Web Mercosur website, which links participants in several South American countries.

There is a special kind of magic behind each of the accomplished online communities, and GVO is no different. Indeed, the GV Summit is great exactly because of what it inspires: it shows (and illustrates) how to enliven the spark that unites bloggers worldwide around these strong words: “The world is talking. Are you listening?“. In fact, global collaboration requires more than inspiration. Such a dynamic global structure operating 24 x 7 demands a lot of work — 90% of which is perspiration, I should say.

It’s been great to meet again dear colleagues like David Sasaki, our fantastic co-manager Georgia Popplewell, and precious teachers like Ethan Zuckerman and Rebecca MacKinnon.  Today was the first day, centered on advocacy for free speech online and coordinated by a great pal: Sami Ben Gharbia.

It was especially interesting to learn about how Internet censorship can be countered with different approaches, using many tools like technical, political and legal aspects, but what emerged as a revelation was the more intimate power of cultural and social censorship. Like when one participant complained that “it is one thing to resist an authoritarian government, another is to confront your own father”, in a case where the local culture is built on censorship. I thoroughly suggest the reading of the ‘live blogging‘ pages for a fascinating discussion of the issue. (photo by Luiz Carlos Dias, click for more)

The author, Monteiro Lobato, is very famous in Brazil for his tales for children and teens. The set of books ‘Yellow Woodpecker Ranch‘ was turned into popular TV series that reigned supreme on Brazilian tubes through 5 different remakes — the first in 1952, and most recently in 2001. But, in this case, the book is an obscure and rare incursion of Lobato into adult science fiction. The resurgence of interest in it now is totally connected with what stands out as an incredible intuitive guesswork on what has come to be our present situation, but 80 years ago (!) almost unimaginable.

Most of the Brazilian readers of Monteiro Lobato (1882-1948) know him for the episodes of the ‘Yellow Woodpecker Ranch’ series, and few are acquainted with his ‘adult piece’… Originally published in 1926 as a ‘feuilleton‘ in the newspaper ‘A Manhã’, (but then titled as “The Clash of Races”, which today stands as the subtitle), “The Black President” is a doubly curious book: first for being a science fiction piece, an uncommon genre among Brazilian writers, and second because the plot anticipates the current scientific and intellectual debate during the first decades of the 20th century.
Monteiro Lobato’s Black President - ALPHARRÁBIO - por Viegas Fernandes da Costa

The huge coincidence with the US elections was enough to turn “The Black President” into ‘cult’ reading, although some other of Lobato’s predictions, such as his description of the Internet, have also attracted the attention of commenters. The contorted political psychology of the triangle that binds the white male, the feminist, and the black candidate is also apparent.

‘The Black President’ is a scary book. Frightening in many ways. Firstly, by the prescient character of the piece. In 1926, Lobato forecasts the invention of a kind of data radio transmission that would make it possible for human beings to accomplish their tasks from their home, without having to relocate to work. He also anticipates the disappearance of the printing press, for the news will be “radiated” directly to the houses of the individuals and will appear in bright letters on a screen — exactly how it is happening with whoever is reading this very text. [It is] in one modern word — the Internet. But the premonitions don’t stop there. By the time he was moving to the US as commercial attaché at the Brazilian embassy, Monteiro Lobato foresaw the election of a black president in the US. The specific political moment in the year of 2228 that bore such a situation would be due to the split that occurred in the white race, between a candidate from the Masculine Party (Kerlog) and a candidate from the Feminine Party (Evelyn Astor). The neo-feminist Evelyn Astor has the victory almost guaranteed, but then the black leader Jim Roy surges and ends up being elected President.
The Black President. A Scary Book - Acerto de Contas

The wars were also finished, as soon as the War Ministries were replaced by the Peace Ministries. Despite that, the US is on the verge of descending into chaos and bloodbath on the eve of the election of its 88th president, such was the disruption caused by the contest. On one side, the millions of black voters are gathered to support Jim Roy, from the Black Association. On the other side, the white women who follow the Feminine Party candidate, long for Evelyn Astor. And finally, there are the white men, who prefer the reelection of Kerlog, from the Masculine Party, which surged from the merge of the Democrat and Republican parties. Here is the essential part of the plot: it is not only a clash of races, but also a war between the sexes. The white men, in order to get a ‘whiter’ America, plan to send the blacks to the Amazon, which is not part of Brazil anymore [!]. Our country was divided in two independent nations: the north, of atavistic malemolencia, and the prosperous South, the “big Republic of Paraná”, which also includes Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.
Monteiro Lobato… A Prophet? - Resistência Democrática

Even in some of his far-out references, Lobato [caricature with the rag doll Emília, his creation] seems to keep throwing light on images that, if not real, are quite recurrent to say the least. But, on a closer inspection, his plot reveals clearly that, although getting it right on the surface, his interpretation of the signals were often projections of weird concepts. In fact, what previously called attention to this book — prior to the current historical coincidence with the US elections — was the evidence of Lobato’s sympathy with Eugenics, a racist social philosophy that acquired some followers in Brazil during the 20s and 30s, and advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention, mainly segregating races.

Miss Jane, Benson’s daughter, is the one who gives voice to Lobato’s ideas: “What is America if not the happy zone which right from the start has attracted the many elements from eugenics of the best European races? Where is the vital force of the white race located if not there?” While defending American segregation, he also has something to say about the Brazilian miscigenetion: “Our solution was shabby. We ruined both races, by merging them. The blacks have lost their admirable wild physical qualities, and the whites have suffered the inevitable worsening of character as a consequence of the crossings among different races”.
Racismo à Brasileira - Bravo Online

Indeed, Obama is definitely not the black candidate of Lobato’s tale, but rather the result of a political, cultural and genetic mix with whites. There is a core difference between the societal position of African descendants in Brazil (more mixed) and in the US (more separated), but Obama’s surge is perceived by some Brazilians as the result of the 70s US affirmative action policies in which these social programs appear now as the game changer.

From a Brazilian perspective, the inevitable question that Afro-descendants are asking themselves now is what has made Obama’s success possible in the US — with their ’segregation’ and separatism — while an analogous situation in more mixed Brazil still looks like a distant dream, far from becoming a reality.

Against all the expectations that already have been here more than a hundred years, “blacks and mestizos will surpass the number of whites in this year of 2008″ in Brazil — “the country with the largest Afro-descendant population outside Africa”… These observations, followed by the finding that the country “does not have any black politician of national projection”, comes with reference to the campaign of Senator Barack Obama for the Presidency of United States… Lagging behind around fifty years in relation to the social conquests of the US black people, we heirs of the same plunder that permeated North American society (and from which Obama, we should make clear, is not a direct victim) are being forced to believe for more than 120 years that this country is “happily mixed and de-racialized”. There has never been segregation or any ku-klux-klan and [therefore] our inferiority is due only to economic problems and can be brought to nil with good schools and good school lunches for all.
OBAMA, HIS ERA AND THE DREAM - AldeiaGriot

In the developing debate over affirmative action and the different perspectives on quota schemes in Brazil it is quite natural to see Obama’s sucess in terms of long-standing tensions, but the effects of his possible election may reverberate differently in the many different layers of culture. If he is elected, the deep psychology that underlies the appearence of such an archetypal persona in history will become a part of the social-political-cultural debate.

Some bloggers are aware of this Obama inherited complexity that is helping to transcend the obvious polarities.

When, years later, [Obama] condemned the Iraq War, his arguments where based on the conclusions he arrived at through his life. His parents tried to reinvent themselves by abandoning their traditions and, in the process, they lost their identities. Tradition is what binds a society together. Facing change, tradition will allways resist. Change, in history, comes in slow steps. For him, there is some naivety in the idealistic American dream that ideas, by themselves, will cause big changes. Ideas are not enough. Barack Obama, as described by Larissa MacFarquhar in a New Yorker Magazine profile, ‘is deeply conservative’. Democracy could never be simply imposed in a country where it never existed.
Who is Barack Obama, and what does he think? - Pedro Dória Weblog

From Lobato’s black president prevailing in a context of separation to the complex profile of Barack Obama in a world of emergent possibilities appears now as the measure of political change.

Here is the Brazilian GLOBO video of the engineer’s encounter with the Indians.

Since the gathering in Altamira, the Brazilian media have focused mostly on the issue of violence. GLOBO included a special report in its extremely popular weekend TV magazine FANTASTICO and here’s the text (computer) translated into rough English. As you can see, the focus is on the engineer and the Indians associated with the confrontation and there is very little about the many consequences of building the dam. While the Brazilian mainstream media are preoccupied with the “hot” story, various blogs and NGOs have been struggling to deliver the deeper messages. Encontro Xingu ‘08 provides great coverage of the whole event with in-depth analysis by David Cunningham and lots of wonderful photos by Sue Cunningham. The Xingu Encounter was also reported by International Rivers along with English translations of the declarations of the Xingu Peoples. And here’s the (computer) translated final statement of the broad coalition of Brazilian grassroots organizations that are opposing building of th,e Belo Monte dam.
Violence - Vision Share

How interesting that that in the midst of this debate over the proper focus when presented with such strong images of a violent event, Altino Machado, a famous blogger from Acre state in the Amazon region, presented to the world the first images of what could be one of the last isolated tribal groups in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest — the so called, ‘Invisible Indians’.

If you’ve seen Wade Davis’s unforgettable 2004 TED Talk — where he evokes the magic of the world’s cultural diversity, and speaks so eloquently about the alarming rate with which cultures and languages are dying — then you might find this photo as heart-stopping as I did. It’s so surreal, I thought at first it must be a hoax. But Reuters just picked the story up, and I’m going to assume they did my fact-checking for me. The photo shows members of one of the world’s last uncontacted tribes, who were spotted and photographed from the air in a remote corner of the Amazon rainforest near the Brazil-Peru border. Survival International, an advocacy group for tribal people, released the photos on their website and quotes Jose Carlos dos Reis Meirelles Junior, who works for the Brazilian government’s Indian affairs department: “We did the overflight to show their houses, to show they are there, to show they exist …This is very important because there are some who doubt their existence.” “What is happening in this region is a monumental crime against the natural world, the tribes, the fauna and is further testimony to the complete irrationality with which we, the ‘civilized’ ones, treat the world,” Meirelles said. Apparently, more than 100 uncontacted tribes remain worldwide, with half living in Brazil or Peru. Extraordinary.
Unbelievable photo of one of the world’s last uncontacted tribes - TedBlog

Extraordinary indeed. It was reported as breaking news at GVO on May 23rd, translated into Portuguese and Chinese, and launched into global awareness via the blogosphere. It took a week for the mainstream media to wake up to the “old news” but the pictures were still amazing and blogs were quick to point out that the media launched its stories without respecting the elementary rules of attribution.

What a miserable class. They wait until some time has passed (five days) and then they publish as if the scoop was theirs. They keep treating the Amazon as an exotic land, as they do not go deep into the issues and that worries the backcountry expert José Carlos dos Reis Meirelles Júnior. [This ignorance] is “The Begin of an End to the Peruvian Amazon“. Read the message I received today from journalist Tom Phillips –The Guardian’s correspondent in Brazil — “My dear Altino, everything right with you? Is there a chance that you have the contact for José Carlos dos Reis Meirelles Júnior? A big hug.” There were many other contact requests with the explorer, which I have attended because of the report on the uncontacted Indians. The Russians are honest. Check it out. Or the Brazilian José Murilo Júnior, from Global Voices.
Miserable Class - Altino Machado

Altino, even the media from Acre! This Renata Brasileiro, from Página 20 [read it here], is an amateur. She wrote “the news came to light through the BBC agency and made headlines in almost all of the online news portals yesterday afternoon. According to the agency, the pictures were made during a FUNAI [Brazilian National Indian Foundation] mission that included a “flight over the isolated region”. I am offended by the omission of the correct source by the national and international media, but I could never suppose that your neighbors would act this way.
I am with Altino all the way! - Site Chico Bruno

Who will or not earn dollars with the disclosure of the “Invisible Indians” from Acre? Don’t fool yourself, Altino Machado. I understand your journalist’s frustration with not being properly attributed in the articles which are now running around the world. In the same way, I see that the backcountry scout José Carlos dos Reis Meireles is happy that his work is being recognized as he gave interviews to dozens of global newspapers and magazines, etc. But what has the [NGO] Survival International (SI) to do with the pictures and with FUNAI’s missions? Nothing. Even then the NGO won the jackpot, and with their marketing techniques, they succeeded in pasting the organization’s name over the pictures of the uncontacted Indians, without putting out a cent to make what we saw happen first in your blog and in Terra Magazine happen.
Turn back the dollars, Survival! - Ambiente Acreano

Altino’s blog is really a special source of information on the Amazon, and it is not by chance that his posts are now featuring in Terra Magazine, an innovative online editorial project that also claims a scoop for the pictures of the ‘Invisible Indians’. But while the online media environment still struggles to reach balanced business models, having to deal with so many new webnative variables, we may be witnessing the emergence of a time where ’scoops’ of the old exclusive kind may not be what really matters. The discursive and flowing conversation of many voices in an open debate with mainstream authoritative media sources may be the kind of collaborative “scoop” we all are seeking right now.

The first steps to build this new open media environment may be the recognition of the value of all those voices, which could start with simple and easy respect for attribution netiquete by the mainstream media… and bloggers.

The journalist Carlos Marques, who is today an adviser at UNESCO living in Paris, was 20 years old when the managers of Manchete magazine decided to send him, accompanied by a photographer, to do an article about the distant city of Rio Branco, capital of Acre state, in the year of 1969. [1] Among the many interviews, Marques talked with the Italian bishop Giocondo Maria Grotti, who two years later (1971) would die in an airplane accident in the region of Sena Madureira.

When asked about the problems he was facing in the region, the bishop complained about the Santo Daime Doctrine, which was founded by a black man from Maranhão state, Raimundo Irineu Serra.

Marques decided to meet Master Irineu Serra, who was working in the cut field on his property when the journalist arrived.

- That meeting was the most extraordinary experience in my whole life. Master Raimundo said he knew I would come, and that he was waiting. He said my name, that I had recently been released from prison, and that I had a scar on my leg.

Marques also said that he spent 3 days at Alto Santo and drank Daime, but he did not reveal details of his experience.

- He told me I would some day come back to Acre, but I never believed in this possibility.

During his farewell to Master Irineu Serra, surprisingly he was offered a bottle of Daime with the recommendation to drink its contents along with his sensitive friends. [2]

Back in Rio de Janeiro, Carlos Marques handed the bottle and its contents to the tropicalismo musician and composer Gilberto Gil, describing it as “a sacred indigenous beverage that produces gorgeous visions and the highest states of soul”. [3]

On that same day Gilberto Gil took a dose of the drink, and soon afterwards he went to Santo Dumont airport, in Rio de Janeiro, to take a flight to São Paulo.

Once he was in São Paulo’s Congonhas airport lobby, where a military exposition from the Brazilian Air Force (FAB) was being launched, the effect of the Daime fully came on, and Gil “caught indescribable contents from the presence of the military”. [4]

It was during the time of the military dictatorship and the Brazilian artistic and intellectual class was being brutally persecuted, and these very artists — Gil and Caetano from Bahia state — would soon be arrested and “invited” to leave Brazil.

Under the influence of the Daime, Gilberto Gil in the fashion of Glauber Rocha [a famous exiled Brazilian film maker also from Bahia] felt “as if he had understood the ultimate meaning of our people’s historical moment as a nation under authoritarian oppression”… and even influenced by the fear that the military evoked then… he felt that he could “love — beyond the terror and his convictions or political leanings — the whole world in all its manifestations, including the oppressive military”. [5]

There was the Christian message arriving in the heart of the artist, despite all the persecution and fear: “Love your enemies”. [6] That was the Daime operating…

After this solitary experience during a Rio-São Paulo flight, Gilberto Gil gathered a group of friends in the apartment of the musician and composer Caetano Veloso and he proposed that they all should make a collective trip. Following Carlos Marques’ recommendation, Gil serves to each one a little more than a half glass. [7]

Caetano narrates: “the thick and yellowish beverage had a taste like vomiting, but it did not cause any nausea”. [8] From now on, the poet’s inspired prose transmits a compelling report of the visions and perceptions of what he saw and felt, from the life he could perceive from inanimate objects, “the story of each grain of matter” from a prosaic nylon carpet in his apartment, for example…

Listening to the sounds of Pink Floyd’s progressive rock, in the tiny limits of the twentieth floor of a São Paulo building, the experiment unfolds:

“Sandra (Gil’s wife) was coming in and out of the bedroom with hard eyes and serious face. She was scared. I thought she looked like an Indian. Gil had his eyes full of tears and was saying something about dying, having died, I don’t know. Dedé (Caetano’s wife) was circulating around the living room saying that she was seeing herself elsewhere. I was very happy to observe that the people were so clearly themselves… Some colored points of light surged in the infinite space of darkness… Circular forms were composed by beautiful dancing points of light. Little by little I knew who each of these illuminated points was. And soon they were showing themselves as human beings. There were many of them, from both sexes, all of them naked and resembling Indians. These people were dancing in complex circle designs, but I could not only understand all the subtleties of this complexity but also had a calm concentrated awareness to know about each person the same amount I know about myself and my close and loved ones”. [9]

It is said that it is from experiences such as with the Daime, particularly the peak experiences like this one — from Gilberto Gil (”Gil… was saying something about dying, having died”…) — that there came about beautiful songs from his repertoire, such as “If I would speak with God”.

Here it is being sung by Elis Regina:

If I would speak with God
I have to be alone
I have to turn off the lights
I have to shut the voice
I have to find the peace
I have to unfold the knots
From the shoes, from the necklace
From the desires, from the fears
I have to forget the date
I have to miss the count
I have to have empty hands
To the soul and the body naked

If I would speak with God
I have to accept the pain
I have to eat the bread
That the devil stretched
I have to turn myself into a dog
I have to lick the floor
From the palaces, from the castles
Magnificences of my dream
I have to see myself sad
I have to see myself as scary
And despite an evil so big
Rejoice my heart

If I would speak with God
I have to adventure myself
I have to climb to the skies
With no ropes to hold
I have to say farewell
Turn my back, walk
Decided, along the road
Which in the end reaches nothing
Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing
Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing
Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing
From what I thought I would find. [10]

And, in ecstasy, Caetano would watch his “Indian angels” in this “celestial experience”.

“I would alternate — while opening and closing my eyes — the observation of the external world and the experience of this [internal] world of images that would become each time more dense… soon I started to recognize that the beings I watched with closed eyes were undoubtedly more real than my friends who were in the room, the sound, the room’s walls and the carpets”.[11]

With awareness expanded by the miração [vision], Caetano acknowledges a new conception of space, different from the standard and precarious “conventionality” — the “time was equally criticized by this higher stance in my lucid consciousness: Benevolently and with no anguish, I knew that the fact of being experienced in that moment was irrelevant in front of the evidence I already had — or would have — of being born, alive and dead — and also never being — even though the perception of my ’self’ in that situation was an inevitable illusion”. [12]

[Caetano] the artist from Santo Amaro [a city in Bahia state] continues this inspired narrative of his experience — which we recommend to be read with care, because it is not possible to transcribe all of it here. And remember the one who speaks is also the philosophy student from the University of Bahia: facing the representation of the “idea of God” declares not knowing that he had the “sudden retraction of one who had learned that the face of the Creator cannot be viewed….” There comes the doubt in the heart of someone who was experiencing an extraordinary ecstatic moment, and while being taken by Dedé to look at himself in the bathroom mirror, to see his ‘everyday’ face after the whole experience… he then was certain that “he was mad”. But “this ’self’ who was certain was indestructible — this one does not get mad, does not sleep, does not die, does not get distracted….”

What a beautiful experience… We see that the light of the Daime was revealed to this sensitive poet and composer from Bahia with the merit to see himself as spirit, discerning his own essence — which is Divine — as it happens with all of us.

Inebriated by the divine and marvelous which is God, playing with the philosophical doubts in a Rogério Duarte style, the future Hare Krishna devotee says, “I don’t believe in God, but I saw it!” or “It’s obvious that God doesn’t exist, but the inexistence of God is only one of the many aspects of its [God's] existence” … Parodying Nietzsche, Caetano will cry out to all Brazil, “God is released!” under the boos in the festival presentation of his “It is prohibited to prohibit”.

From this transcendental experience, Caetano reflects: “…for more than a month I felt like living one palm [floating] above every existing thing. And for more than a year some remnants were maintained. In fact, something of an essential kind changed inside of me from that night on”.

Miracles From the People - Caetano Veloso

“The one who is an atheist,
and has seen miracles like I did
Knows that the gods without God
Don’t cease to blossom,
and don’t get tired of waiting
And the heart that is sovereign and is the lord
Doesn’t fit in the darkness,
doesn’t fit in his ‘no’
Doesn’t fit in itself of so much ‘yes’
It’s pure dance and sex and glory,
and floats beyond history
Ojuobá would go there and watch
Ojuobahia
Xangô ordered to call
Obatalá the guide
Mother Oxum cries tears
Tears of happiness
Petals of Iemanjá
Iansã-Oiá would go
Ojuobá would go there and watch
OjuoBahia
Obá
The one who is an atheist…”

(Miracles from the People - Caetano Veloso) [13]

Going back to the start of our story… can you believe that journalist Carlos Marques returned to Acre after 40 years? At the end of an audience with then Governor Jorge Viana, he was asked if he already knew Acre. Marques reported what we have just narrated, and to his surprise the Governor showed him the invitation he had received to participate in the celebrations of the 50 year marriage anniversary of Master Raimundo Irineu Serra with Madrinha Peregrina Gomes Serra, the leader of the Center of Christian Illumination Universal Light - CICLU Alto Santo, on the next day, September 15th, 2006. And [thus] he convinced the journalist to stay in Acre one day more.

Marques again met with Madrinha Peregrina Serra, Irineu Serra’s widow, to whom he apologized for the offensive content that his report carried in the edition of Manchete magazine, because many pages were published with the prevailing version of the bishop that we were speaking about a diabolical sect. “That was the first among many other [reports] to annoy Irineu Serra and his followers”. [14]

- “I could not reveal that I had found God” - said Carlos Marques.

On the night of April 30th, 2008, in the headquarters of CICLU Alto Santo, there was an official event where the Elias Mansour Foundation from Acre state, the Garibaldi Brasil Foundation from the city of Rio Branco, and representatives from the centers that integrate the three branches of the Ayahuasca doctrines (Santo Daime, Barquinha and União do Vegetal), made a request to the Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil, that the National Artistic and Historic Heritage Institute (IPHAN) begin the process of recognizing the use of Ayahuasca in religious rituals as a Brazilian Non-material Cultural Heritage.

The event was a full success and a milestone in the Brazilian Ayahuasca universe. In the closing speech of this religious work of the April 30th, 2008, when the authorities (Minister, Governor, State Secretaries and politicians in general) had already left, the official speaker of CICLU - Alto Santo recalled the unique story of the journalist Carlos Marques, concluding that (in my words from my memory’s account): Master Irineu, knowing about the past, present and future of the journalist Carlos Marques, gifted him exceptionally with a bottle of Daime so that he could make it reach the singer Gilberto Gil, in a way that he could take it and get acquainted with it, so that, 40 years later, he could come to Alto Santo as a Minister of State to mediate the request of recognizing ayahuasca as a non-material heritage of Brazilian culture.

NOTES

[1] The information was extracted from Altino Machado’s blog: “40 Years Later”
http://altino.blogspot.com/2006/09/40-anos-depois.html
Viewed in September 15th, 2006.

[2] Speech from journalist Antonio Alves in the CICLU Alto Santo headquarters on May 30th, 2008.

[3] VELEOS, Caetano. “Tropical Truth”. São Paulo, Cia das Letras, 1997, p. 308.

[4] Ibid, p.308.

[5] Ibid, p. 308.

[6] Luke 6:27.

[7] The old ones say that this was a recommendation of Master Irineu.

[8] VELOSO,, 1997, p. 322.

[9] VELOSO, 1997, p. 324.

[10] Listen to “If I Would Speak With God” - Elis Regina -
http://br.youtube.co/watch?v=tWuQc7W0O-A
Viewed on May 26th

[11] VELOSO, 1997, p. 324.

[12] Ibid, p. 324.

[13] Listen to the videoclip Milagres do Povo - Daniela Mercury, at
http://www.losacordes.co/videoclip/daniela-mercury/milagres-do-povo
[note: a different version is presented above because of the youtube code allowing it to be embedded in this post]

[14] MACHADO, Altino. “40 Years Later” http://altino.blogspot.com/2006/09/40-anos-depois.html
Viewed on September 15th, 2006.

By leaving the ministry, the ex-rubber tapper and ex-domestic worker, who learned to read only when she was 17 years old [and later to become Brazil's youngest senator at the age of 36], has generated — inside and outside the country — a reverberation that overshadows those that eventually occurred with the fall of former powerful finance ministers. She hopes that her replacement in the ministry, Carlos Minc, will be able to assure the continuity of the government environmental policy, resisting the pressure that comes from Blairo Maggi, the governor of Mato Grosso State who is working against retaining the National Monetary Council resolution that will oblige the financial system to require conforming with environmental regulations as a precondition for access to rural credit in the Amazon…. Marina Silva has declared that when you are in a position of power, even if it is something small (the editor of a newspaper column, for example), we suffer the temptation to look at people from the top down. — “I’ve learned, and it was not now but with many people I had the opportunity to meet along my life, people like Chico Mendes and Dom Moacir Grechi, that we have to look from the bottom up. From the bottom up we are able to watch what is above us. The Amazon is above us. And with such a look we are able to see that, in order to do something that is really good, we have to put ourselves in the perspective of service, which can also mean the gesture of cleaning the path so that another person can take your place. I’ve said before that it’s better to see your son alive on someone else’s lap than to see him dead on your own lap.”
“The Amazon is above us” - Altino Machado

Hey colleagues, get ready! Minc is coming. The new environmental minister will land in Brasilia to have lunch today with ex-minister Marina Silva, and later meet with Lula at the Planalto Palace. From now on, the ministry will not be a sole source of news. Minc is media-minded. He tends to use the Internet, as Marina leans to, should we say, the radio (no disregard here for the radio, on the contrary). He will bustle every single day, and the media will have to appoint reporters to follow him around. On one day, as it happened last week, he is capable of chastising his future colleague Mangabeira Unger from the Special Secretariat for Long Term Actions, the man designated by Lula do run the Sustainable Amazon Program. On another, he is ready to suggest the name of Jorge Viana, an ex-governor from Acre state, to take Mangabeira’s post. Next day, he is ready to praise Unger saying that he is apt to do a great work. Minc is good at manipulating words, ideas and concepts, just like his new boss, Lula. Take a good look at what he said yesterday when asked about the record number of environmental permits to big infrastructure projects granted by him as environmental secretary of Rio de Janeiro State: “You can be fast and rigorous. It is not because it took 3 years that a permit will guarantee protection to the ecosystem. You can wait 3 years lost in bureaucracy and obtain a loose licensing.” The reporters just took note of what he said, and nobody contested. Reporters have little time to think about what they hear, and many of them just don’t know what to think. In this case, Minc has limited himself to banter the provocation addressed at him.
The Amazon is ours? Bullshit! - Blog do Noblat

With his loose vest and long hair, although those are under the risk of extinction, the man is a media event, a machine gun of bombastic sentences. Compared to his predecessor, the discreet Marina Silva, someone who reminds us of an orchid in its fragile exuberance and a very symbol of the cause, Carlos Minc is closer to a mad chainsaw sweeping a soybean plantation.
A matraca solta de Minc - Luis Nassif Online

There has been much speculation about the reasons that led Marina Silva to resign. She has mentioned the lack of political support, and some commenters talk about clashes with Lula’s powerful cabinet chief Dilma Roussef, responsible for the government’s flagship program for accelerated growth. Another strong rumor tells about the designation of Roberto Mangabeira Unger to coordinate an Amazon sustainable development plan as a last blow to the former minister. In fact, the role of Mangabeira — a former Harvard law professor — in the Brazilian environmental policy decision making has become a whole issue unto itself for bloggers.

There are two versions offered for Mangabeira’s designation [to coordinate the Amazon Sustainable Plan - PAS]. The current version inside the PT [Worker's Party], tells about Lula intentionally pushing the former minister [Marina Silva] out with the move. But in the surroundings of the Planalto Palace another tale is being told, which does not completely contradict the other version, but shows signs that the move came as an ‘insight’ from Lula… after all, Mangabeira was not directly involved in the dispute [for the PAS coordination] (among the ministries of Environment, Agriculture, Agrarian Development and National Integration). Lula would have claimed that he could not designate one of these ministrys [to coordinate the PAS] because they would “draw the embers next to their sardine” [put their interests first]… Marina’s ministry has never paid any attention to Mangabaeira’s talks. He tried to have her attention but was ignored, and the Agrarian Development Ministry also showed no enthusiasm for his ideas. Nevertheless, Mangabeira had his allies and reached out to the Amazon — an issue under international scrutiny — to find inspiration for his first writings…. The speech articulated by Mangabeira about the Amazon though, is the speech adopted by the government for the region…. Mangabeira has earned points with Lula when he presented a project which proposes a new relationship model between capital and work.
In less than a year, Mangabeira has amplified his scope, but he is still not confirmed at PAS - Acerto de Contas

Managabeira’s new model asserts that the Amazon must be saved from disorganized economic activity, that it needs a planned relationship between preservation and development. “The only way to preserve the Amazon is to develop it.” And, of course, it is the role of Brazil to do this. Interestingly, a NYTimes article published last weekend (’Whose Rain Forest Is This, Anyway?‘) played an interesting role in the debate, bringing back things like an Al Gore 1989’s remark saying that “contrary to what Brazilians think, the Amazon is not their property, it belongs to all of us”. Bloggers, as expected, respond and comment.

Now, after Europe and North America have polluted the planet as they wished, and that the US refuses to sign the Kyoto Protocol that would help the protection against its polluting industries, they want to land their hands on “the lungs of the Earth”. Which is our Amazon.
NY Times criticizes Brazil for defending the Amazon - Aos Quatro Ventos

If the Amazon Region, from a humanist’s point of view, has to be internationalized, then we should internationalize the oil reserves of the entire the world as well. Oil is just as important to the well being of humanity as the Amazon Region for our future. Nevertheless, the owners of oil reserves feel it is in their right to increase or decrease oil production and to raise or lower the price. The rich of the world, feel they have the right to burn this valuable possession of humanity. Similarly, the financial capital of the wealthy nations should be internationalized. If the Amazon Region is a natural reserve for every human being, then it could not be burned down by the decision of a landowner or a country. To burn down the Amazon Region is so tragic, as the unemployment provoked by the arbitrary decisions of world wide speculators. We cannot permit that the world΄s financial reserves serve to burn down entire nations according to the whims of speculation…. We could internationalize the children treating all of them, regardless of their birthplace, as a posession which deserves the care and attention of the entire world. Even more so than the Amazon Region. When the world leaders attend to the world΄s poor children as possessions of Humanity, they will no longer permit that these children work when they should be studying, that they die when they should be living. As a humanist I accept to defend the internationalization of the world. So long as the world treats me as a Brazilian, I will fight so that our Amazon Region will be ours. Only ours. [this is a re-blogged piece of a classical article by former Brazilian Education minister, Cristovam Buarque]
Cristovam Buarque: Internationalization of the world - Cristovam Buarque - Vi o mundo

The most buzzed issue of the last days, in all news rooms in Brazil, is the Sunday report from the new New York Times correspondent in Brazil, Alexei Barrionuevo, which presents a suggestive title: “Does the Amazon Belong to Brazil - or the whole world?”. From the military base, we can almost hear the unease coming from old generals and colonels in pajamas. But, those who read the text free from prejudices and pre-conceptions, are able to find out one thing: it is an honest piece. It is the typical issue a foreign correspondent recently arrived in Brazil would catch. The article describes the always present local paranoia that someone, somewhere, wants to steal the Amazon from us. It does not speak about a real threat. Those who have known Brazil for a while are not surprised with this debate; those arriving from abroad get startled by the notion embelished in the conspiratory theories from the right….
Yes, Brazil does hold a responsibility before the world to preserve its forest. It is also a responsibility before ourselves. Without the Amazon, there will be no rain from the center-west to the south to irrigate the plantations that are supporting the economic growth, or to fill the hydroelectric reservoirs that lights São Paulo and Rio. So, from a pragmatic point of view, there is no doubt that preserving is good and sound business. How to preserve? Should we close it all and don’t let anybody in? How to distribute land titles to the ones already there? How to implement the law in a land where representatives or policemen kill people with chainsaws? How to develop Brazilian research centers to fixate top scientists from the region or from abroad? Nobody will take the Amazon from us — international politics does not fit such move. But behind the resignation of ex-minister Marina Silva there is just one simple fact. Brazil doesn’t know what to do with its biggest forest. While we do not know what to do with the forest it will continue to be destroyed, and some people among us, induced by this guilty feeling, will keep thinking that someone will take it by force. Maybe because, deep inside, way deep inside, they know that we are indeed guilty for all that.
The Amazon is Ours? - Pedro Dória Weblog

Along the spectrum that lies between preservation and development in regard of public policies, we can still find different aproaches focusing on the cultural richness that bonds the Amazon together in its full splendor. These aspects are shouting to be recognized by everyday facts, but they are not priorities in any of the available political discourses.

It is known today that the knowledge about great part of the Amazonian richness is deeply assimilated in the culture of its native people, addressing the issue of its rational economic exploration directly to the [need to] respect and preserve the ethno-botanical heritage of the forest and its dwellers. Such a concept associates the local wealth with the knowledge acumulated by ancestral cultures of the region, uniting flora, fauna and culture into an intimate connection that presents a synergistic relationship of knowledge, respect, use and preservation. But while the physical and tangible preservation of the ‘people of the forest’ entangles the natural, immunological and medical aspects, the preservation of the cultural aspect holds a strong political component, much more mild and manageable from the point of view of state intervention. Cultural preservation, in common language, means to maintain the conditions for the indigenous populations to keep following its proper way of life, based on ancient beliefs from its ancestors. At the foundation of all this sits these groups’ very ‘cosmic vision’, including their ‘teological myths…. We have the urgent need to conceive the Amazon, and its huge economic possibilities, as an amalgam of inseparable components which necessarily includes the natural and the cultural: the forest and the man.
The forest and the man of the forest, by George Felipe Dantas - Vi o mundo

While in some countries marijuana use is accepted with restrictions, in Brazil the debate on the issue is not even permitted. Talking about marijuana has turned into a taboo, as the march was prohibited by the Public Ministry a few days before scheduled date, leaving no chance for appeals due to the lack of available time. It becomes clear the country is unable to allow its citizens to debate their relationship with some of the problems we have around here. Should we label a demonstration for legal reform as drug use promotion? To debate necessarily means to influence? There are some terms that are not well defined in the heads of the justices, which results in hindering the citizens from claiming their right: the freedom to express themselves.
Tropical Fascism - Obrog!!!

Obviously, court decisions are to be followed, even the ones we consider as unconstitutional, as they hold the necessary presumption of legitimacy for the juridical safety of social and human relations regulated by the law — which is the higher value to be preserved in a legal system. But it does not mean that those decisions can’t be the object of academic and even political debate, under a critical perspective.The right to freedom of expression and to free gathering are guaranteed by the 5th article of our Constitution as fundamental values of the democratic regime. The democratic principle is the constitutional rule that determines not only the adoption of decision by a social or legislative majority, but also — and especially — the protection of the rights of minorities…. To subtract the right to protest against the terms of any law, criminal or not, from part of the citizenry is to injure to death the democratic regime. It subtracts its meaning, and becomes an imperial act, unsuitable for a Legal Democratic State…. If the postulation for the revoking of a law is not safeguarded by the presumption of the right to free expression, which behaviors could be protected by this right? Am I able to express that I am against the current laws, but can’t tell which of them and why?… Now a question starts: should pro-abortion demonstrations and other similar ones be also prohibited? Can it be understood as a promotion of abortion practice, which is a conduct listed in our criminal rule? If it can, the meaning of the Brazilian democracy will vanish.
The Marihuana March and the right to free expression, by Pedro Estavam Serrano - Última Instância

Cannabis was brought to Brazil by the first Africans arriving from Angola, and it’s use and cultivation was encouraged by the Portuguese, which resulted in it being culturally assimilated by the mestizos and by some Indian groups. Medical use was also common, mostly during the second part of the 19th century, and even advertised in Brazilian medical journals up to the first years of the 20th century. Some commenters focused on the cultural aspects of the censorship.

Such prohibition in a city like Salvador, insults the meaning of the ethnic and cultural use of this plant, which is part of the African cultural heritage. About this aspect, Gilberto Freyre [Brazilian sociologist, cultural anthropologist, historian, journalist and congressman] framed it this way: “the religious traditions, as other forms of culture, or black cultures, transported to here, along with the shadows of the sacred trees themselves, with the smell of the very mystical plants — the marijuana, or diamba, for example — are the ones that are resistent in a more profound way, in Brazil, to ‘disafricanization’. It is much more than the blood, the color and the form of the men. Europe won’t win over them.” (Sobrados e Mucambos, 2003, p.797). Could Gilberto Freyre be framed as a marijuana use advocate?
Cultural Democracy and the Marihuana March - Blog Oficial do Tio Tod

Recently, the Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil presented a proposal to register Ayahuasca, an psychoactive mix of plants that composes the Santo Daime and Hoasca tea, as a National Cultural Heritage. If the ‘small death‘ can, why not the ‘Manga Rosa’, the ‘Cabeça de Nego’ and the ‘Cabrobó’ [popular types of Brazilian marijuana]? …. While we don’t reach a consensus, and even less a solution to the problem, the President of the Brazilian Bar Association Federal Council, Cezar Britto, defends the freedom of expression as a fundamental asset of a democratic state: “The biggest evil we can impose to a country is to mute, to censor thought”.
The march that wont’ mute - Viva la Brasa

The 20th century brought about the spreading of the notion of the plant as a great danger to individuals and society, and also a surge of international agreements for the adjustment of national laws criminalizing the use of cannabis. Ecologia Cognitiva offers a good account and links showing how the the early Twentieth Century American movie industry played a key role in disseminating the new cultural references for the plant, and the ideological elements displayed by some commenters adds up to the notion that politics seems to play a role bigger than science when it comes down to defining how harmful cannabis really is.

If we take a closer look to the facts, we clearly perceive that the most common and dangerous myths and lies about the most used illegal substance in the world are conceived and spread by the US government, in total disagreement with the official scientific findings…. The 1936 film Reefer Madness (worth watching) started the persecution by portraying how just one inhale of the ‘damn smoke’ can lead healthy young people to an escalation of violence and extravagance that results in death and insanity. In spite of the declaration that the facts narrated in the film do not have any relation with real persons or situations, the film is aimed to ‘inform’ the ‘unprotected’ population about the ‘new number 1 public enemy’…. The famous 1972 research from the ‘National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse’, formed by specialists and congresspeople convened by then President Nixon, suggested in its final report that “we should de-emphasize marijuana as a problem” and affirmed that “drug uses for pleasure or other non-medical reasons are not intrinsically irresponsible”. These results did not gain attention in the political agenda at the time, and were totally ignored by the government and the following period was marked by great censorship of any research with psychoactive substances.
In 1988, after 4 years of study involving hundreds of testmonies and thousands of pages of documentation, Francis Young, DEA Administrative Law Judge published a report where he suggests reclassifying the dangerousness of cannabis, declaring: “it is reasonable to conclude that there exists safe uses for marijuana under medical supervision — to affirm the contrary is a clear error of judgement”. The official research was again not considered, and aproximately 10 years later President Clinton’s drug-czar (Barry Macfrey), declared to the press that “there is no trace of scientific evidence about safety or medical beneficials of marijuana use.” …. Meanwhile, in Europe, research ordered by the British government in 1996 registered an opinion that recomended the reclassification of the substance, indicating that “the negative aspects of the use should not be exaggerated: cannabis is no poison, and does not represent a high addiction level”. And the National Institute of Health (US) has promoted a workshop about the possible medical uses of cannabis, and among the conclusions it affirms that there may be some specific cases where the use of cannabis (smoked) surpasses the results of the medicines which utilizes the active principle (thc) in capsules.
Prohibited plant, denounced persecution - Ecologia Cognitiva

…[F]ederal representative Marcelo Itagiba (PMDB-RJ), the former State Public Security Secretary who filed the suit against the demonstration — which resulted in its prohibition by the courts — declared that the march was illegal, as it promotes marijuana use: “The march was created to promote a crime, which is the consumption of drugs. I am not against freedom of expression, but this debate should not happen in a public space, but rather in the academic environment or in Congress. This is a movement of a dozen bourgeoisies who seek personal satisfaction through their own vices”. The representative Itagiba is fully right, but, poor man, he doesn’t know who he is dealing with, or he rather knows it well but dosen’t want to go deeper on the record: it is exactly amidst the academic “community”, and among the environmentalist NGOs, and in a disguised way, behind the scenes of the “progressive” — and radical — parties where the fight for drug decriminalization and further liberation is conceived. Ex-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the ‘vaseline’ [lubricant], and governor Sergio Cabral, a reader of “The State and the Revolution” (from Lenin), two typical byproducts of our ‘politically correct’ medium, are in favor of this move and work on its behalf whenever they find a chance. The thesis is that legalizing the production, commerce, distribution and control of the drug by the state, the violence around it would vanish in a magic touch…. The concrete fact is that in the last 50 years drugs have massively spread into an universal scale. Alongside, it has turned into one of the most lucrative businesses in the world, generating something around US$ 800 billion a year. International mobs and organized crime are behind it, but also the FARC’s guerrillas, the ideological and revolutionary interests of all kinds, not to mention the very police, the politicians and sectors of the justice system — exactly the ones who should fiercely combat the drug dealing.
A Marcha da Maconha - Blog sem Máscara

One thing is certain: this year’s edition of the Brazilian Marijuana March is to be remembered by activists from all the different positions of the spectrum. On one hand, it is the first time that the movement to legalize was spread across the country, and on the other, it is worth some reflection on what could be called a backfire in the repression strategy, as the issue earned even more visibility in the media. The two videos posted at Filipeta da Massa illustrate well the situation: the first is a brief documentary of the single legal March in Recife, Pernambuco and the other reports the negative reaction to the prohibition as shown on the main TV news program in Brazil.

Among the many different points-of-view, some people are just starting to approach the issue. For them, it seems illogical trying to understand something without having fair access to all sides of the debate. Kind of obvious, isn’t it?

About the march: I came to know about it kind of 2 or 3 weeks ago, and I must confess that I found it ridiculous. I imagined that it would be a bunch of people who do not want anything from their lives, people who think they are great because of the drug, and that they would be smoking with that superior stand like saying ‘arrest me if you can’. But when I heard that there would be no use of the drug during the march, I backed off. I did it because I had the sense that it would be a serious initiative, even though the kind of people I’ve mentioned above would be there anyway, managing to ruin the good ideals of the initiative. Deep inside I thought it would not work, ’cause marijuana is a great taboo and nobody — from the people connected to politics — wants to be the first to debate its legalization. I don’t have a formed opinion about this. I’ve read a little folder about the march and I am not convinced if this should happen or not, it has its problems, it could bring some benefits, but I really don’t know what to say about it. If we could guarantee that the legalization would decrease the drug dealing, I would go to the march in order to truly support legalization, but as it is just a deduction — though a logic one — and not a sure thing… Anyway, the prohibition was an awful authoritarian decision, and such a thing will never have my support. The worst thing in this whole story is that nobody knows how to debate and be respectful. Everyone has their own opinion on the issue, and they just want to impose it over the others, but nobody knows how to be peaceful and convincing enough for that.
The story of how I lost a teeth + The Marijuana March - Grão de Estrelas

The goal of Father Adelir Antonio de Carli was to break the 19-hour record for remaining aloft using only party balloons, in order to raise funds for the rest stop for truckers in Paranagua, Brazil’s second-largest port for agricultural products. Brazilian truckers often spend days waiting to unload in the port, especially during the busy soy export season now under way.

Planes, helicopters and boats from Brazilian rescue forces have been out along the coast of Santa Catarina state looking for the balloon-flying priest all week. Surely, a religious person gone missing during a charity stunt deserves the highest respect, but the lack of elementary safety features in Father de Carli’s plan to accomplish his endeavor has unleashed an unstoppable stream of humorous lines, although not without some guilty thoughts about them.

Would it be comic if it were not tragic? I say that it can be tragic and comic. Here we have the ‘tragi-comedies’ that won’t let me lie. Please, agree with me before I go on! — IT IS COMIC! (so here is a bold and gratuitous appeal to share the heavy weight in my consciousness for having seen so much comedy in all this).
Peter Pan Priest - Fossas do Ofício

So, the amount of jokes over this priest who decided to fly tied to balloons filled with helium is not contained in the sacred scriptures…. Moreover, the flying priest’s last feat was the topic-of-the-day in a debate I had with a friend who studies journalism and lives in Rio. The father’s imprudence, from being so bizarre, ends up as risible. How does someone wanting to fly with party balloons in completely unfavorable weather, without knowing at least how to operate a gps — really folks?
How to use a gps?Como usar um gps? - de tudo um pouco

Indeed, the last contact made by the priest through a satellite cell phone was a request for someone who could teach him how to operate the GPS he had taken with him, so that he could give his actual coordinates. Even the uber-geek folks at Gizmodo could not keep from gaily commenting the tech aspect in the case.

Sadly, nobody was able to explain to him how to do it correctly and, around 9PM—the time of his last contact—he disappeared. I see this sad event, which has ended in the tragedy of a missing person—obviously he’s a bit crazy and this is all his fault—as an example of all that is wrong with the design of machines today. Not because technology itself was the cause of him getting lost—it wasn’t. It was more bad luck and bad planning than anything else. After all, his first flight was a success without GPS, and men have been wandering through Earth without any help for thousands of years. The problem here is that I can imagine his frustration, trying to make sense of an infernal device so he could tell people his exact location, all the while knowing that he was going to get lost forever in the immensity of the sea.
Priest Takes Off Using Party Balloons, GPS to Find God (Literally) - Gizmodo

Searchers have already found many of the balloons stretched over an area 50 km away from the coast of Santa Catarina state, but no signs of the cleric, who was wearing a helmet, aluminum thermal flight suit, water-proof overalls and a parachute. Friends and relatives still believe that the priest was well prepared for unexpected events, and that there is big chance that he is still alive. Yet, other accounts tell about the priest’s daring and exhibitionist personality, that would disregard safety measures and trample upon any obstacle standing on his way to broad recognition.

Father Adelir de Carli (41) was expelled from the free flight course Vento Norte [North Wind] 3 years ago, in Curitiba [Parana State], for his exhibitionism and lack of discipline. This is what Marcio Andre Lichtnow — the instructor of the para-glider course attended by the priest — tells us… “He was undisciplined and would not attend the theory classes, which are basic for the comprehension of the meteorological issues. He was not humble at all, having an inflated view of himself, the know-it-all guy. He looked like a playboy”, says Lichtnow. The instructor says the Father attended 10 hours of practical lessons and 4 hours of theory. In order to complete the course, he would need 40 hours of practice and 30 hours of theory. Lichtnow tells also that the priest sought him to talk about his plans to fly from Paranagua. “I told him that if he flew from there, the only place he could land it would be South Africa, because there is where the winds blow to. But he said he had already figured out everything, and I thought he was joking”, he remembers. “I became much less Catholic after meeting this priest”, sums up the flight instructor, who is very clear in dissociating the priest from his flight school. “He tried to be my student, but he was not accepted”.
Another Brazilian in ‘Lost’ - Dona Didi

There is a possibility that the priest’s careless attitude for his own safety gave license to or even triggered the strong flow of comic responses seen in the Brazilian blogosphere concerning the unusual circumstances contributing to his disappearance. Last time we checked, Father Adelir had even acquired a fake blog called ‘Imaginary Diary of a Flying Priest‘, and Julio Vedovatto plays with the possible media headlines around the world reporting about the priest’s stunt:

- The New York Times: Priest goes up, the market goes down.
- O Globo: Aerial Chaos: Pilot confirms ‘near collision’ with priest.
- Bogotá Daily: Missing priest maybe a FARC prisoner now.
- Madrid Gazette: Zapatero Declares: If priest tries to enter Spain, he will be deported.
- La Paz Diary: Evo Morales talks with Priest, seeks adjustment on gas prices to refill balloons.
- Little Diary: Crazy Priest Gets away with the Balloons of Kids’ Party.
- Corrieri de la Cera: Vatican supports ballons, but keeps condemning preservatives.
- Washington Post: Hillary vs. Obama: Priest will decide the contest.
- Beijing News: Chinese government seizes images of the priest’s balloon landing in Tibet and affirms there was no violence.
- Beijing News (Extra Edition): Chinese government announces that the priest is already rehearsing for the opening of the Olympic Games.
- Israel: Hezbolah declares that the “flying priest” is a Moaomé mockery and promises new terrorist attacks.
- Correio Braziliense: Opposition talks about evidence that the balloons were bought with governement credit cards.
- Ecuador Daily: Government confirms that ballons were shot down by Colombian forces and demands explanations.

Newspapers around the world, about the balloon priest - Julio Vedovatto

In fact, the story of the Brazilian priest and his balloons has really echoed abroad, and the tragicomic results among bloggers seems to be the same. The event is already listed as a candidate for the ‘Darwin Awards‘, an initiative to ‘reward people who remove themselves from the gene pool voluntarily by accidentally killing themselves in stupid ways’, and ‘The spoof‘ has a headline that says: “Al Qaeda accepts responsibility for missing balloon priest“.

Almost a week after the disappearance the priest’s family still believes that he will be found, as the seat was lined with air-tight pockets that can be pumped up and there are several islands in the region that he could have washed up on. Indeed, one of the most circulated satires of the case toys with the fact that the priest might have landed on a very well-known island, where others are already Lost.

Another Brazilian in Lost
[Rodrigo Santoro, a Brazilian actor, joined Lost's cast during it's third season]

We hope and pray still for the success of the continuing search efforts and that we may have the opportunity to share stories about the viral media phenomenon triggered by his exploits and good laughs with the Father himself. Meanwhile, the blogosphere continues to balloon with the story.

Where is the priest?

Places the crazy balloon priest has visited

Father Adelir makes appearence on Google Maps

Petrobras officials quickly reacted saying that 3 months of further drilling would be needed before any meaningful estimate of volumes could be made. Yet, the day-after local media headlines took on the ‘announcement’ as a deliberate act to boost Brazilian markets and Petrobras’ share price, and speculated about the legal consequences the company could face for making such groundless comments. Meanwhile bloggers found a new gusher of opinions in the theme.

Haroldo Lima, director of National Petroleum Agency, has firmly denied having made any public announcement related to the Santos Basin’s find. He would have just made a comment based in articles published in a specialized American magazine. But the word of the director of a regulatory agency has weight not only over the sector regulated by it, but also over financial markets. Therefore it is not his role to make any inference. The weight of the word of an oil sector manager is much bigger than the opinion or an article of a journalist.
The weight of the word and the responsability - Leandro Vieira

The media, which in its overwhelming majority is opposed to the president Luis Inacio da Silva, the “Lula”, has tried to characterize Haroldo Lima as irresponsible, and the oppositionist CVM (Securities and Exchange Commission) says it will “investigate” him for having shared information with the public before an official announcement from Petrobras. That was an evident demonstration of spite, envy and hatred from the Brazilian right against the President Lula. That’s what we can translate from the attempt to disqualify the remarks of Haroldo Lima — a respectable public Brazilian figure. In its sordid ways, the media has tried to sensationalize the context of Lima’s comments, which were made in a closed event, as if he had made an announcement in a public plaza with a megaphone, aiming to reach the whole population. In fact, the information about the Carioca field was already known by oil specialists, and it had already been reported in the US by the “World Oil Magazine”.
Media roars against - Tribuna Petista

Lula: … tell Petrobras to make up another oil field,
so that I can get away from the latest scandals, heck!!!

The media hatred, which is infecting even members of the government, derives from the fact that Lima has revealed a big failure of the local press. Strategic information about our energy reserves, something hugely important, was circulating since February in the specialized media, and our local outlets were not aware of it. They were not reporting anything about it. What a colossal slip-up… The case of the mega-fields is emblematic. The right has become depressed about it! It has become depressed with the fact that Brazil has found oil! Now, it is depressed and revolted by the fact that ANP’s director has shared what the specialized media already knew, that there is a concrete possibility that the Sugar Loaf field contains more than 30 billion barrels and is the third biggest reserve on the planet.
In defense of Haroldo Lima: the media failed - Óleo do Diabo

It looks like the left-right bickering has once again thwarted media accuracy in reporting important issues, and the blogs are speculating about the hidden agendas in this case. Once again you will find different scripts for the same plot depending on which blog you read, but it is good to mention that the man in case, ANP’s director Haroldo Lima, is an historic leader from the left who is particularly known for his activism — he was jailed and tortured by the regime’s political police from 1976 to 1979 — through the traumatic period of armed resistance and military dictatorship in Brazil.

On April 2006, the government wasted 40 million reais to announce that Brazil had started to produce more oil than it consumes. But the bragged-about self-sufficiency has not happened until now. Petrobrás’ production has stalled, the usage has increased and the short-fall of the oil’s commercial balance has started to grow once again. The red numbers in 2008 may reach 8 billion dollars. There were fireworks also last year, to announce the discovery of the Tupi mega-field. At the time, the government declared that the Brazilian reserves, that reach today 14 billion barrels, could add up to 22 billion barrels. But it is extremely early to say if or when those reserves will be in fact explored. Last week, some data related to Petrobras was again used to feed political pyrotechnics. Haroldo Lima, National Petroleum Agency’s [ANP] general director has declared that Petrobras found a mega-field at Santos Basin.
Governo mente sobre a Petrobrás - Blog do Briguilino

It is possible that some speculators have made some money with the information that he [Haroldo Lima] has opened to the public. But these speculators would earn money one way or another. If the information turns out to be false, they will sell and win again. Haroldo Lima has no money or connections that would allow him to play at Bovespa [the Brazilian Stock Market]… Probably, almost certainly, Haroldo Lima’s goal was to denounce Petrobras’ contracts with foreign companies. This mega-field, which he called “Sugar Loaf”, it is not “ours” as it should be. Petrobras has only a 45% share along with the group of companies that will explore this field. The British BG has 30%, the Argentinian-Spanish Repsol has the remaining 25%. We should ask: why and for what Petrobras needs foreign resources for exploration and prospecting?
Helio Fernandes: Haroldo Lima, unsuspect and untouchable - à ilharga de uma geógrafa (blog incidental)

The one new element that the oil-rich dreams have brought to the Brazilian political arena is the government resolution to change its set of rules for oil exploration and production. Although assuring international partners that there will be no change to the rules of the game already under way, Mines and Energy Minister Edison Lobao said on Thursday that “the government has to have better terms in the sharing of natural resources”. Indeed, the withdraw of subsalt blocks from last year’s annual auction of oil concessions was seen as a move to keep the most potentially productive areas out of foreign hands, and a local sign of a growing global trend of a so-called resource nationalism spurred by high oil prices.

With the discovery of this subsalt layer, called Carioca or Sugar Loaf, and of the other extraordinary reserves already identified, the exploratory risk has practically ended, and as Petrobras’ president Sergio Gabrielli has remarked, it has become a prized ticket. That was the reason why the government and the company has decided, in time, to withdraw from the 9th round of concessions the subsalt layer blocks, and the plan is to change the 1997 legal framework. As expected, private businesses and the media are making their moves against this approach, but the current reality formed by high international oil prices, the energetic crisis in South America and in the world, and mainly, the recent discovery