Sympathy for the Devil - São Paulo

Yesterday morning I was trying to catch up with all the exciting events in São Paulo that I had missed by being in the US last week. And of course, Folha de São Paulo is my first and favorite source. Top of the front page was dedicated to more bad news about Petrobras and corruption, plus a giant photo of Ituano players beating Santos in the state futebol championships. Who is Itauno? No clue, but one of their players is named "Esquerdinha" or "little left". Hmmm, either he is a member of the Partida de Trabalhadores (PT) or the socialists or something on his left side is little. Never mind.

Below the fold, we got a photo of a singer at Lollapalooza Interlagos, la de da, and the Ukraine. But what's this official looking box at the bottom? It is an Open Letter to the Population. That's me. Let's read.

The Association of Police Investigators (Civil or Investigative Police) of São Paulo state would like to state the following (more or less, okay? This is my rapid-fire translation).

1. Only 40% of the minimum necessary number of police investigators are "active" to investigate (huh? Are the rest on vacation? Read on).
2. The majority of these active investigators are taking care of police stations rather than investigating (you know, I heard this from the Military Police as well. They actually have to clean their own police station). 
3. The investigators are detailing crime reports because they have the "Fé Pública" or public faith (I am lost on this one--isn't that their job?)
4. Absurd operations like "operação flanelinha" or the dudes that want a buck to watch your car (see blog post on this here), and operations to prevent mass crime should be the province of the military police (note that they are saying the operations are absurd, so might as well hand them off).
5. Long shifts
6. They've lost their will to investigate
7. They've lost self-esteem and professional motivation
8. Low salaries
9. Police stations that are falling apart.

And then the coup de grace--the association of investigators congratulates the Civil Police of São Paulo because they are "Real Heroes".  And it's signed by Vanderlei Bailoni, the president of said association.

Wow, I have never seen this before. It would be like the police union of  Connecticut (my home state) writing a letter on page one of the oops, no state newspaper--let's go with the Hartford Courant--saying that in spite of the terrible conditions, our police men are heroes. And so they are. 

All irony aside, you know I am sympathetic to the police here. I have the luxury of not having been here during the military dictatorship and seeing what bad stuff happened. What I do see today (though I have better knowledge of the military police than the civil) is that these guys are undertrained, underpaid, overworked and very much underappreciated. Maybe I'll write a letter.

A walk through murder & mayhem - São Paulo

As everyone knows, my favorite section of Folha de São Paulo is one titled "Cotidiano" or Daily Life. Also referred to by me as Murder & Mayhem -- this section is filled with the bad stuff of the city. Okay, some good stuff but mostly bad.

I am going to take you on a little walk-through of yesterday's paper so you can see why it's my favorite.

C1: Front page. Here the story is about how the police has discovered a plan to rescue "Marcola", the leader of São Paulo state's biggest gang, the PCC. Marcola, it seems, was sentenced to 160 years in prison in 2013 and is currently locked up in Presidente Venceslau Prison, 611 kms from São Paulo. That is close enough for me. So, yes, apparently the PCC paid for some members to get pilot licenses and they were going to use two bulletproof helicopters painted like Military Police helicopters then get him to an airplane and from there across the border to Paraguay. Poor Marcola: they are now trying to transfer him to a Regime Disciplinar Diferenciado--known as solitary confinement for 22 hours a day. Yikes.

C2: Weather and an opinion article. Plus a view of this week's traffic messes from construction. Never mind.

C3: Ah, this is fun. There was a blackout at Cumbica, also known as Guarulhos International Airport, the international airport for this city. Twenty minutes of power loss, no one knows why, but no one has been sued yet. The security line looks bad. Good thing I am not traveling. Anyway, I subtitle this one "Imagine during the World Cup."

C4: An ongoing story about an actor who was wrongly identified as committing a crime and spent 16 days in jail before being exonerated. He forgives his accuser and said with a great deal more sympathy than I would have " it could have happened to anyone." And yes, we do have a big racism problem in Brazil. I saw it first hand when a young black man who worked for me in 1998 was pulled out of his expensive (corporate) car and frisked by one cop while another watched him over the barrel of a gun. That was not in the paper. That is engraved in my brain.

C5: Ah, there's a story I can't really read. It's about two kids who were inside a school van when it was hijacked by two bad guys. This stuff makes me ill. At the bottom of the page is an article about the house of representatives here considering legalizing marijuana.

C6: Agh, now this story makes me crazy. It's an "Anti-rationing plan" to use the unclaimed water in the reservoirs. The water that is below the tunnels. The plan would take 6 months to put into action. Meanwhile the water level has dropped to 16.8% full. Yep, even after the rains a couple of weeks ago.  Now here's my question, same as then: "why are we not panicking yet?"

C7: A woman loses her arm after being pushed in front of the train at the metro station Sé.  Or not. It seems that maybe she was trying to get away from two security officers and threw herself at the train. She had said she was pregnant and got into the special line but an intern said no, and then things went from there. There is nothing to be learned here. Later on the page is a small story about how facebook erased a Folha post on facebook that was themed "Flying penis." I am sorry I did not finish this article but you can find out more online. Or not.  Ah and finally a note that two Brazilians who dressed like women in Dubai have been deported.

C8: The final page of Cotidiano before going into the Health section talks about how the Carnaval parades are going to start in the rain on Friday. And where to buy tickets. And how to get out of the city in all this traffic. The final story is about a bar that was closed for thirty days for selling alcohol to minors (under age 18 which is legal drinking age here).

It's been a busy day in Murder &Mayhem.

Buemba! Buemba! - São Paulo

José Simão - "In the country of the easy joke"

When I moved here for the second time, more than five years ago, we started received the Folha de São Paulo, the largest circulating daily in Brazil. In general I would flip through the first section (world) but mostly skipped it because I got most international news from US newspapers, read the business section, get shocked by metro life in the local section, peruse sports and then breeze through Illustrada (Arts & Entertainment, I suppose). I would never stop to read a daily column by José Simão which is always filled with exclamation points and inside (Brazilian) jokes about politics or sports or daily events. I couldn't understand the jokes and I really thought the guy was borderline nuts.

José Simão is now my favorite Brazilian columnist. By far. The BH has a preference for a man named Helio, but he's far too serious. And correct, by the way. Helio, not the BH. Anyway. I won't be able to show well most of why I love José Simão because of course he writes in Portuguese, the jokes are about Brazil and heck, it's taken me five years of living here to understand roughly 70% of his jokes.  Okay, 50% if I have to be honest. But let me share what I can.

He always starts his columns with "BUEMBA! BUEMBA! Macaco Simão Urgente!" Buemba must be jungle drums because a macaco simão is a Simian Monkey, and of course a play on his last name.  And he always ends his column with "Nóis sofre, mas nóis goza! Que eu vou pingar o meu colírio alucinógeno!" which I translate as "We suffer but we enjoy it. I am going to go take my hallucinogenic medicine." I can't help more with this but that's where it is.

He also ends many of his paragraphs with Rarará which is "ha ha ha" in English (the "r" in Portuguese is pronounced as an "h"). There is something about this Rarará that makes me laugh every time.

Here's a column of his from 22 November 2013 where he spends 2 paragraphs making fun of the huge Mensalão corruption scandal. What made me spit out my coffee were his comments on house arrest for the bad guys. He says he too would like house arrest as long as it was in Maluf's house, where everyone is rich and no one gets sent to prison. Maluf is one of the most corrupt politicians ever to "grace" São Paulo streets, yet lives out his later years in complete freedom and huge wealth. 

Then he goes on to talk about the São Paulo vs Ponte Preta soccer game where SP lost to Ponte Preta. Apparently Ponte Preta's nickname is the Macaca, or female monkey, and Bambi is the nickname of São Paulo. Now if I read the title without knowing Brazilian slang, I would have thought that a monkey had eaten a deer. But that is not exactly right. At all. You don't want to know what the title of the whole thing means but needless to say, it is more than a little racy.  

If you are one for political correctness, this is not going to be the columnist for you. And yes, I do think he goes over the line more than once in a while. Fortunately for his lawyer bill (incidentally he was a law student at USP before dropping out), he attacks everyone and anyone so it's hard to say you are singled out.

One of my favorite things about being fluent in Portuguese: understanding José Simão. Oh, you can run him through google translate if you'd like but I'm guessing that's not going to get you anywhere...