Changes in Latitude

Brazil’s best ambassador may be Paulo Coehlo, author of The Alchemist, Manual of the Warrior of Light, The Flowing River, and the most translated novel in the world. Does anyone know which title that would be? This beloved Brazilian said, “Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time”.

This seems especially true as we plan a reunion tour for a journey across Brazil, at the request of clients who met on our last excursion. What is so fascinating about Brazil that always takes us back?

1. First of all, Brazilians are among the warmest people on earth.
2. Brazil’s economy is 2^nd only to the USA’s in our hemisphere.
3. Cultural Contributions: Bossa Nova, Samba, Carnival.
4. The diversity of her nature is unrivaled.
5. Portuguese, the language of love.

And that is the short list!

So where does a journey in Brazil begin?  In Rio de Janeiro, of course. Rio is only half the size of Brazil’s biggest city. Why not stay in her sexiest neighborhood, Santa Teresa?  Then, get in the spirit of Que saudade! … by visiting Rua Montenegro, where Antonio Carlos Jobim first saw the Girl from Ipanema and penned the classic song of longing. Que saudade! describes intense longing.

Pele has as many fans as Paulo Coehlo.  The world’s foremost soccer hero is from Minas Gerais, our 2^nd destination, Brazil’s heartland, home of historic coffee plantations, mining villages, and romantic hideaways far from the beaches.  Here we visit the charming villages of Olimpio Noronha, Tiradentes, and Ouro Preto.

Nobody returns from Brazil without a bit of a tan, so our final journey is to beaches that are the favorites of Brazilians, found on the island of Floripa.  Here we enjoy carefree sun-soaked days walking beaches with stunning beauty, far from the chaos of Brazil’s major cities. This island embodies the spirit of Brazil, a perfect complement to its dynamic economy, a diverse culture united in warmth, sincerity, simpático.

Cacao was brought from the Amazon Basin to Central America by the Maya 2,600 years ago, according to analysis of residue in Maya pottery.  Aztec royalty drank cocoa all day and night to fuel stamina for attending to their many wives and concubines.

Cacao was introduced to Europe by the Spanish around 1585, the date of the first recorded commercial shipment of chocolate from Veracruz, Mexico to Seville. Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus named the tree ‘Theobroma’ which means “food of the gods”.  Cacao beans were historically used as a currency, serving in the place of small coins as recently as 1840 on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula.

The largest producers of cacao in the Americas are Brazil, Ecuador & Venezuela with a combined market share of 10%.

The best quality cocoa beans are from the Criollo variety. Criollo cacao can be enjoyed directly from the pod and, properly fermented, maintains natural sweetness. When used commercially, the Criollo variety requires less sugar which is why 70% – 85% cacao dark chocolate bars are possible.  Gourmet chocolate represents roughly 4% of the world’s annual cacao production, a market of 160,000 short tons per year.

The main source for Criollo beans today is Venezuela’s Hacienda San José, www.cacaosanjose.com , with representatives in France, Switzerland and Spain. This hacienda has 200 hectares of Criollo cacao with an average density of 1,000 trees per hectare.

Criollo cacao is prevalent throughout C. America, with crop development occurring from Guatemala to Panama, where it thrives in rain-forested regions to an altitude of 2000′.

In Panama, cacao cultivated by indigenous growers produces a superior product preferred by chocolate aficionados over products produced by newcomers to this exotic crop, according to French Cacao Broker Mathilde Grand of Isla Colon’s Starfish Cafe.

Grand’s “Citizens Chocolate” markets tribal cocoa spheres, a hand-crafted organic product from a cooperative in Bocas del Toro on the Caribbean coast of Panama.  This region is home to the Ngobe-Buglé whose autonomous lands stretch between International Park Amistad to the coast of the Caribbean Bastimento Nature Reserve.   In the shade of their jungles, cacao is cared for and harvested using sustainable indigenous traditions.  After collecting the ripe pods, the seeds are removed, brought to fermentation then put out in the sun to dry for several days.  Once dried, the seeds are roasted over a fire, ground and rolled into spheres that are perfect for baking or melting into water, milk, and spices for a delicious drink.

© Mathilde Grand

For more details, enter a comment below!

This post is comprised of excerpts from the article “Cacao: a crop ready for new investment?”, written for Alternative Latin Investor‘s next issue. Photos by Mathilde Grand ©

Consider Seattle, once a Puget Sound paradise, now a concrete jungle subdivided by highways bathing once-pure air in smog seven days/week, pumping poisons into the lungs of everything that breathes.  Cement trucks pouring new parking lots daily. What interstate freeways did for Seattle, they could do for Glacier National Monument, the Amazon and the Andes.

Just such a freeway is being built from Brazil to Peru, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, across ravines filled by waterfalls and over gorges fed by the Andes Mountains, the source of the mighty Amazon River.  This freeway could be completed in 2010, giving birth to numerous other highways feeding off the mother road, increased illegal logging, burning, and poaching.  Why pave the last great undivided rainforest? 

Such a highway creates new horizons for Brazil’s continued growth, bypasses the Panama Canal, and opens up new oil and gas fields. The road has been called “The Road to China”.  Never mind that sea freight through the Panama Canal costs one-quarter the amount that land shipments will cost.  Never mind that this road spells doom for places like the Manu and Pacaya-Samiria National Parks, places where the biodiversity will be remembered as staggering.

This is where the automobile has brought us.  Corporations have no shame as they colonize nature and pump poison into the atmosphere.  Diesel trucks will soon harvest once-protected tropical hardwoods in order to line North American closets.  The highway is to be a private toll road, operated by a those with friends in high places, those willing to pimp their grandchildren’s legacy for today’s luxuries.

Our planet’s last un-colonized indigenous peoples will be displaced by this highway.  They will no longer be able to live in voluntary isolation from the material culture of consumerism.  Cultural, ecological and environmental factors were not evaluated prior to the granting of this no-bid contract to pave yet another paradise.  Former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt recommends countermeasures to offset the devastation of the Trans-South American Highway; namely, cooperation to create international conservation areas such as Amistad on the Costa Rican/Panamanian border.

Unfortunately, this solution will be “too little, too late” once the first toll booth opens in Peru near the headwaters of the Amazon.  Visit Northeastern Peru soon in order to know the immensity of what will soon be lost at the hands of the “Initiative of the Regional Infrastructure of South America” (IIRSA – an organization content to bypass democratic processes involving citizens).  Visit very soon.

At present, U.S. tourists enjoy Argentina without paying an entry fee or applying for a visa. That is about to change.

Barack Obama is now the presumptive Democratic nominee and is likely to defeat Republican John McCain in this year’s race for the presidency. What type of friend will Mr. Obama be to our neighbors in the hemisphere? It is a good time to consider Mr. Obama’s positions and statements concerning Latin America:

(Photo Credit: Alex Brandon/Associated Press)

1. Mr. Obama recognizes that we have neglected our neighbors. “As has been the case throughout the world, our standing in the Americas has suffered as a result of the misguided policies and actions of the Bush Administration. The United States can ill afford this deterioration of our standing. With each passing day, we draw closer together to our neighbors to the south. This convergence creates new challenges, but it also opens the door to a more hopeful future.”
2. Mr. Obama will make Latin American relations a higher priority; he sees Mr. Bush’s declaration of 2007 as ‘the year of engagement with the Americas’ as too little, too late. “One year of engagement out of seven is simply not good enough. In light of the Bush Administration’s woeful record, creating false expectations does more harm than good. We must be realistic about the challenges we face, and what we are doing to address them. We must devote our full time, and our respectful attention to our relations within the hemisphere. “
3. Neither of this year’s candidates for President could have a weaker energy policy than Mr. Bush put forth. To his credit, Mr. Obama recognizes Latin America’s energy policy successes. “Brazil’s more than 30 years of renewable fuel technology investments allowed it to achieve energy independence last year. Ethanol now accounts for 40 percent of Brazil’s fuel usage. More than 80 percent of cars sold in Brazil today are flex fuel vehicles—capable of running on gasoline, ethanol, or a mixture thereof. Greater Brazilian production of renewable fuels could boost sustainable economic development throughout Latin America, and reshape the geopolitics of energy in the hemisphere, reducing the oil-driven influence of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. The more inter-hemispheric production and use of ethanol and other biofuels occurs, and the more such indigenously-produced renewable fuels are used to replace fossil fuels, the better it is for our friends in the hemisphere.”
4. Mr. Bush has been a fair-weather neighbor. Mr. Obama envisons a more altruistic approach to Latin American relations. “In Uruguay, President Bush has the opportunity to forge closer ties with President Tabaré Vázquez, and to show that the United States is ready, willing, and able to work productively with democratic-left governments. The United States is seen as supporting democracy when it produces a desired result. It is vital to reverse that trend.”
5. Intelligent people realize the war on drugs is a poor use of taxpayer resources, as is building prisons to house nonviolent drug users. Mr. Obama understands that billions of dollars in US aid has gone toward war profiteering and the spraying of poisons on villages in S. America to kill crops such as coca. These herbicides poison local water tables. Mr. Obama is against Plan Columbia. He is not the first candidate to use drugs, but he is the first to be honest about it. Mr. Obama proposes giving first-time, non-violent offenders a chance to serve their sentence in rehabilitation programs rather than prisons. He understands that monies would be better invested in reducing the market in the US through prevention and recovery programs. Mr. Obama has pledged to fund job training, substance abuse and mental health counseling to ex-offenders, rather than militarization of Columbia and Mexico. Bill Clinton answered a question about his drug use by saying he had tried marijuana, but “didn’t inhale.” When asked, “Did you inhale?” Mr. Obama replied, “That was the point.” It has been said that such honesty speaks to a generational change in politics, that new voters are more concerned with their leader’s truthfulness than with their youthful transgressions. (John K. Wilson, 2007)
6. Mr. Bush’s solution to the immigration question is to build fences between the USA and Mexico. This appallingly short-sighted and damaging act is a return to backward Berlin-wall thinking (and a billion dollar gift to Mr. Bush’s contractor buddies in Texas). Mr. Obama voted against the Coburn Amendment (SA 1311) to S. 1348 to increase border control by requiring construction of the border fence. He prefers a policy approach. “The relationship between the United States and Mexico is among our most important in the world. But our complex relationship with Mexico has become captive to a single issue: the immigration debate in our country. There is consensus that our immigration system is broken. It is past time to fix it, and I am proud of my own support for a workable solution.”

In summary, Mr. Obama will be a much better neighbor than Mr. Bush. He should visit Latin America early in his administration, and often. Mr. Obama has pledged to do so, adding… “We ignore Latin America at our own peril.”

What is the sense in ignoring our neighbors until they can help us? I submit that this is ugly behavior. Unlike Mr. Bush in Austin, Mr. Obama helped his neighbors in Chicago before being elected to office. I am confident that he will expand upon this neighborliness when he moves to D.C.

Goty Pataxó, originally uploaded by Kaká.

Up to 1000 indigenous peoples from tribes such as Goty’s are campaigning this week outside of Brazil’s Congress in Brasilia. Brazil turned 500 at the start of this decade yet its native peoples feel like foreigners in their own land.

The name of the event translates to “Camp Free Earth”. The goal is improving government policies toward peoples of the 20 Brazilian states represented. Brazil’s President and five of his ministers are attending today, hearing requests to develop a sustainable socio-economic model that offers an alternative to today’s globalization that puts profits before people and humanity.

There are more than 200 tribes with roughly one-half million people remaining from a population of three million at the time of first contact by Europeans. Some tribes in the Amazon continue a policy of voluntary isolation from the modern world. If you find this fascinating, read this bulletin from the world rainforest movement: www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/119/Brazil.html

For more information including opportunities for you to make a difference in Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, visit: www.mstbrazil.org/?q=about ; or, to learn more before cultural interactions with indigenous tribes during your travel, visit: www.socioambiental.org/pib/indexenglish.htm and www.povosindigenas.org.br/pib/english/whwhhow/index.shtm

“No matter where we go, there we are.” – Don Ronaldo