Living in a Culture of Intimacy

By: Darren Espinoza

March 16, 2013

When I finally decided on my study abroad destination, I didn’t second-guess it. Something about the city of São Paulo, Brazil felt right, relevant, and refreshingly deviant. I looked forward to telling my family and friends where I would be spending the next six months of my life, but when the time came for me to spread the goods news, I was quickly met with a plain-spoken “Why not Rio de Janeiro?” or on a better day, “Is that by the ocean?” Even when my program began and I thought I had met people who had chosen São Paulo for all the treasured reasons I had learned to defend at family dinners and social gatherings, I still found myself confronted with questions akin to “Oh, your university must not have a program in Rio then, right?” when in fact Georgetown does have a thriving program there. This isn’t to say my colleagues chose São Paulo on a whim or as a consolation, but I would be amiss in saying these questions didn’t bother me at first.

I guess I shouldn’t have expected my peers to really understand the allure that had drawn me to São Paulo since the days of my freshman year Ignatius seminar titled “Race, Color, Culture” with Professor Timothy Wickham-Crowley. My fascination with Brazil had roots that went deeper than the warm weather, beautiful beaches, and sultry samba dancers I had seen on television. Learning about the syncretic nature of the Brazilian people, I wanted to witness firsthand the intersection of staunch Catholicism and African sects; the struggles and successes of its rising economy in the dawn of the upcoming 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympic Games; the dialect of Brazilian Portuguese that is markedly different than that found in the countries of Mozambique, Cape Verde, and mainland Portugal; and its growing ethnic diversity as host to the second largest Lebanese, Japanese, Korean, and African-descent populations in the world. I will admit that my study abroad checklist was detailed and meticulous, but perhaps the simplest and most important requirement of mine was to find a place I could call home.

In spite of my status as a foreign exchange student, it didn’t take long for me to find a sense of belonging and camaraderie amid the jeitinho culture of good deeds. As my last Portuguese professor described it to me, the system of relationships in Brazil are like a big onion with several concentric layers that represent degrees of intimacy. While some might be quick to stratify and distance a random stranger on the bus to school, acquaintances at work, or the doorman of their apartment complex, a Brazilian would likely take each classification one circle in: treating his elderly next-door neighbor as his dear aunt, the homeless man on the corner as his coworker, or his nephew as his own son. Nothing reminds me more of this cohesion than the teenage musical group, Meninos do Morumbi, who meet each week to celebrate the diverse styles of samba, maracatu, funk, and Aguere. The troupe also serves as an escape from the social inequalities that inundate the children’s neighborhoods on a daily basis. In the face of adversity, however, these dancers, singers, and instrumentalists raise awareness and funds from shows for their own peers in the periferias of the São Paulo state, who they perhaps will never know.

With such a strong focus on community, I was beyond ecstatic to hear that two of my best Georgetown friends were planning to visit me during their spring break. Although my parents have decided against a trek down south, at last I was going to see familiar faces in a city of almost 12 million people—the largest city proper in the southern hemisphere. Apart from this partly selfish reason, I was also excited by the opportunity to animate my own story of Brazil, a story of the often-overlooked big brother, São Paulo.

After two months of life abroad, I welcomed their visit because I knew I had the ammunition needed to defend the Latin American megalopolis and do it justice. Taking my friends to see the works of Monet, Van Gogh, and Rembrandt housed in the São Paulo Museum of Art, hiking to the top of Jaraguá Park for one of the most amazing viewpoints of the state, and riding a ferryboat from the coastal city of São Sebastião to Ilha Bela (Beautiful Island) were all part of an exhilarating and humbling seven day experience. On one hand, I took pride in my mastery of the Metro system and the hidden spots of the city I was able to share with my two American friends, but on the other, I realized just how much more there was to soak up in the Land of Drizzle. Although my ambitious itinerary did not adequately account for the grogginess of three 21 year-old college students, I know my friends left São Paulo with the hope of one day returning to its year-round warmth and excitement for life.

Being in the nucleus of the country’s economy has also given me exposure to various socioeconomic issues that round out my studies here. Walking down Avenida Paulista, I see a growing number of highly-educated female professionals who are opting out of intellectually mismatched marriages and facing the brunt of a patriarchal status quo, and I can ask just about any Brazilian passerby about the skewed secondary education system that awards admission to top state-financed universities for the highest-achieving scholars that come by and large from the most elite private high schools. As troubling as these issues are, they inspire me to engage in this type of dialogue and to do more than just bask in the wonders of the city.

Yes, I chose São Paulo over Rio, but life off the beaten path has never looked, tasted, and felt this good.

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