not the motorcycle diaries

I fear I am in some kind of 80’s technicolour vortex. Every night I have been watching Roda a Roda, or ‘Spin the Wheel’, that is, Brazilian Wheel of Fortune. I think I’m addicted. I even guessed the special final five-second word last night and cursed the contestant who didn’t. I woke up this morning and flicked on the TV and watched Mais Voce for about 48 hours. Mais Voce is one of those hideous mid-morning housewife handy hints kind of programmes. It is hosted by an 80’s haircut and this really creepy parrot which is kind of like a tropical version of Winky Dink but not really. It was only the smell of coffee brewing below that aroused me from my palmistry-for-you-at-home-while-you-wash-the-clothes televisual reverie.

I really need to start my interviews.

Speaking of Australian political apathy, I hadn’t realised until I had made this little Journey To Another World just how much I was affected by it. I stopped engaging substantially in ‘political work’ (I was involved in campaigns against things like the Youth Allowance and Third World debt, I worked as a research officer for a youth organisation, and then for a student organisation, and then again for the same youth organisation, not to mention a whole lot of other leftesque bleeding heart type things) at the great age of 23 - chiefly, I now believe, because I really needed a rest. I needed that rest because of how demoralising it is to do political work when the vast majority of the population you are working with is not just resistant, which at least would imply some kind of position on the matter, but completely and utterly uninterested (or perhaps disdainful, if pushed). This was the clincher - I could cope with the small and oft-threatened income, the overwork and the strenuous negotiation of the moral imperative (after all, like any good activist all of this just adds to my sense of heroic self-righteousness ;-)) - but to organise public forums that nobody comes to, to write letters to the editor that nobody reads and to have dinner guest conversations tactfully re-directed from detention centres to the footy score - well, there’s only so much of that any leftesque do-gooding sort can handle, at least when they’re young and earnest and idealistic as I was (and still am, to an extent ;-)).

To put it simply (and in so doing not wanting to deny any of the manifold problems associated with this reality), it is different in Brazilian culture. For better or worse, it is a politicised culture where political participation is a firm value. Take, for example, the recent Worker’s Party (Partito Trabalhisto, or PT) corruption scandal, which goes all the way to President Lula, the long-time working class hero. This has done little to weaken people’s faith in the PT’s actual vision. As was pointed out to me a few weeks ago, more members than ever turned out to vote for the PT President this month. Whilst the upper eschelons of the party have been exposed as weak (is this not the story of any large political organisation?), the grassroots members which made the PT such a political force (such as the participatory budgeting process initiated during their 12 years in local government in Porto Alegre, which still continues even though they are no longer the governing party) continue to bring this vision forward. It is no reason for apathy or hopelessness - just for returning to the roots of the vision.

This cultural thoughtfulness about politics and governance was pre-empted for me in a conversation in the kitchen at the seminario. I spent a lot of time hanging out in the kitchen because that’s the only place I could talk to other women, who worked in there of course (meaning that I felt all the while like The Idle Rich as I watched them cooking and cleaning, and they continually asked me if they could get me any more bread rolls and coffee). One of them asked me one day about the Australian government - is it a military dictatorship, or a democracy? (I was surprised by this, but of course this is a really normal question to ask if you’ve grown up in Latin America!). I paused. “It’s a democracy, but….”. I tried to think of a way to explain myself further in my limited Portuguese and ended up saying “Well, our Prime Minister and George Bush are good friends!”. She said, “Oh, a democracy“, doing the inverted-commas sign at the same time. I wondered how many Australians would be politically cluey enough to make that kind of analysis off the top of their heads.

It is in being amongst this sensibility that I have realised how much the apathy of Australians had gotten to me. I had unconsciously decided that there was no point in political work, because no-one gave a shit, and I might as well redirect my efforts to solely thinking and writing about it (and enjoying a few years of a decent stable income and a community that shared my values, like reading books and going to anti-war rallies). Being here has taught me that it does not have to be this way, that the Australian comfort-eating culture of political stupefication has been manufactured as much as the next culture, and that therefore it can shift.

I feel it in my bones, more and more - the crime of the love-in between capitalism and neo-liberal governments in the First World is the production of lymph-like apathy in the veins of its rich publics. This love-in produces a dictatorship of its own - it doesn’t imprison and kill bodies, but it makes its populations completely uncaring about the dictatorships that do. The logic is to keep ‘em comfortable, soporifically consuming their KFC in front of 98 cable TV channels, buy their compliance for the price of a few fictitious interest rate points. And the stunning beauty is that at the end of the day there is no-one to blame for this but themselves.

Can you tell I’ve been reading Eduardo Galeano? ;-)

Going through my inbox of mostly e-mails from Sydney and Adelaide is a daily treat I must say. There is something excoriatingly delicious about receiving ‘local’ news from a distance, such as the good fight against the ridiculous corruption of my postgrad association, and the ongoing epic discourses between my old band mates from the Wyld Stallyns from the Planet of Regret. I had totally forgotten about that line in ‘Discoursin’ in the Dark’ that goes, “I wanna change my gaze, my prose, my stare!”, as well as the third verse that was penned upon the death of Jacques Derrida (not to be confused with the WSFTPOR’s drummer, Little Bobby Derrida).

These gems of familiarity are all the more delightful in the midst of the aforementioned smelly teenage boys and their cowboy forebears, who are slowly coming round to the fact that they currently have a ‘no-tail’ among them. The sixteen year old guy who runs this place and I even had a little banter this morning about how I always forget my code. Such things make quite the difference in my day, as I am currently engaged in a Beckettesque waiting game for commencing my countryside tour of duty. It’s ‘Setembro Vermelho’ (Red September) in the MST universe. There are daily occupations of banks, government offices and of course land, and Jose Rainha Jnr has been released from prison (again). Coming as I do from a culture of utter apathy towards the political, it continually amazes me that events like this are a completely normal part of the social landscape in Brazil.

Reasons why the anonymous internet hovel across the road from the hotel should be avoided, even though its the only internet outlet you know of in PP, and you can write e-mails to your loved ones whilst listening to Australian radio and maybe even work on the article which you have 4 days left to draft :

1. You leave with teenage boy smell, which is a universally distinguishable scent, on your clothes, and it will not wash out.
2. You can’t save anything - the floppy disk drive is boarded up, and the desktop is only for games like ‘Gulf War Avenger’, ‘Cheating Death’ and ‘Napalm Sex Romp II’ (there was a first?!). You will discover this after you have written for a solid half hour.
3. The guy next to you is in his fifties and passively consuming some horrible pornography, which just reminds you of how last night you put the TV on and there was this programme on called ‘Criança Show’ (i.e. Child Show, sooo imaginative), with these five year old girls in skimpy outfits lip-synching to a Portuguese version of Aqua’s ‘Barbie Girl’ and hosted by a sleazy guy in his fifties who says he wants to be Ken.
4. The guy who runs the place is approximately sixteen, and assumes that you are retarded, which is obviously the only explanation for those bizarre personality quirks in your possession such as as ‘not Brazilian’ and ‘female’.
5. The combination of continuous grey drizzle, the rattle of cars going past on the street outside (about 20 metres away), the scraping of chairs on the slate floor and the barbaric yawps of the headphoned punters makes you write about yourself in the second person in order to pretend that you are not actually experiencing this.

The town of Presidente Prudente is nestled into many a rolling green hill, in the far north-west of the state of Sao Paulo. It’s pretty, grungey, small and provincial - it seems particularly apt that I am reading Middlemarch at the moment. I am staying in a ‘hotel’ which is populated by large groups of starey men (what a surprise), across the road from the Mercado Santa Teresa (which couldn’t be any more unsaintly). So far, I am spending my time checking out archives and talking to academical types at the State University of Sao Paulo, Prudente campus, aka UNESP (not to be confused with UNOESTE, or UNIESP, which the taxi driver did on my first day here, thanks to my superb Argentinian/French/Italian/American accent - no-one ever guesses that I am Australian, something that is perversely pleasing to me). I get out to assentimentos in the region next week, and I really need to finish drafting an article I’ve been working on for about 48 years now. Can anyone give me a ‘for dummies’ rundown of Hans Joas’ ‘The Creativity of Action’? and anything more recent than 1994 by Scott Lash and/or John Urry?

I am intermittently entertained by local TV - particularly the Futura channel, with programmes such as ‘Notas 10′, gorgeously dedicated to educating the peeps on the difference between racial prejudice and racial discrimination, interspliced with right-on ads like this one for AfroReggae that shows a reggae artist, chalk in hand, transforming gunshot marks on the wall into musical notes. I am confused at how Petrobras (petroleum company) appears to be sponsoring everything social (including the government’s Zero Hunger campaign) and Bradesco (a bank) does everything cultural (including free arthouse theatre in Consolocao, Sao Paulo city). And finally - 24 hour evangelical Christian TV would be pure hysteria if it wasn’t real.

Sitting in full sun atop the plaza near MASP, I watch the busy street below. On the roundabout in the middle of the street is a man, weatherbeaten and limping, trying to hitch rides. He takes a break from this to undo his pants, take his penis out and urinate in an impressive arc, to a cacophony of car horns and giggles. He sits down*, and a flash of green and red materialises on his head. The colours and the logo look familiar. I squint.

It’s an MST cap. Heh.

*Notice that he does not appear to do his pants up again.

Me: Hello, these are all to be sent to Australia (hands over stack of envelopes and postcards)

Post man (nodding, takes out international mail code book): Austria.

Me: Australia (Post man nods, gets out a different book). And can I have a large envelope to send this (gestures to letter) in?

Post man: We only have envelopes in this size (shows me A5 size envelope)

Me: You don’t have anything bigger than that?

Post man: Only these ones (shows me a suspiciously large, plastic, express mail envelope)

Me: OK, can I buy it, but send it via normal air mail?

Post man: Ummm here you go.

Me: Ummm thanks. (leaves counter, deposits letter in said envelope, seals and addresses it, lines up again)

Post man: (weighs every envelope and postcard and enters every address into his commodore 64)

Me: How much is all this?

Post man: 89 reais [about $60].

Me: What?!!! Why is it so expensive?

Post man: Because of the distance.

Me: I don’t understand.

Post man: (gesturing to stupid large plastic envelope) This one costs 70 reais, because it is going to get there quickly.

Me: Umm I don’t want it to go via express mail.

Post man: (reluctantly pulls out a stack of A4 envelopes!) OK. Here you go.

Me: Er, thanks (leaves counter, re-addresses and re-seals envelope, lines up again)

Me: How much?

Post man: 40 reais.

Me: Sweet, here ya go [rough translation].

In First World activism, neo-liberal globalisation is regularly criticised for putting ads in our face all the time, from TV to billboards to the backs of toilet doors . In Sao Paulo, the people selling a moment’s gratification on the street, on the trains, at the bus stop - everywhere there is space, everything for sale - do so in a kind of of tragicomic imitation that is also the true face of this ideology.

I think I have figured out the system of exchange at work re my stay at the seminary. I get a room and food, and they get a collective daughter. They all call me ‘menina’ (little girl), and someone has put a sign on my door saying ‘Ana’ (my name in Brazil, due to Ann being un-pronounceable), which I found pretty gorgeous and touching, particularly in view of the somewhat inhospitable size and shape of Sao Paulo. In an attempt to ameliorate my aforementioned crisis of being taken seriously, I said “bom dia meninos (good morning boys)!” at breakfast this morning, which just resulted in more doting chuckles. I don’t have the heart to tell them that I found myself locked out at 10pm on Saturday night (the un-scaleable gates being locked at 9pm every night) and had to wander aimlessly around a hipermercado for a while trying to work out what to do and eventually got a grumpy taxi driver to take me to a gloriously two-star hotel (not to be confused with a motel, which exclusively refers to the previously discussed dens of love with names like Stallion).

There’s a few questions coming up viz. my research project. Will I have enough time and language resources to conduct useful interviews? Is this something that really ought to be done as a six-month-or-more, live-in, anthropology-esque project? I am particularly concerned that if I can’t speak Portuguese well (which I can’t), and I don’t have an in-depth, detailed, situated understanding of Brazil, then whatever I produce in an ethnographic context (ie the proposed interviews with assentimento participants, at an actual assentimento) will be half-hearted at best in the absence of a more situated knowledge of the history and culture of landlessness and landless activism in Brazil (although in theory some of this could come later, and I could get an interpreter).

Another major issue is the way that I am being perceived and related to. Mostly because my Portuguese sucks, I am chiefly vulnerable and in need of extra help. On the whole, I am more an object of curiosity than one to be taken seriously. This is clearly compounded by the fact that I look even younger than my stately twenty-five years, am female and small and so on. All of this stuff (though mostly the foreigner/low Portuguese factor) is really impacting on my being taken seriously. And if I am going to get in-depth perspectives from people via research interview, then I need first of all to be taken seriously - unfortunately it’s a minimum requirement! I sat on the metro (which is awesome - SIYJ Sydney!) and tried to think of other foreign, non-party-aligned, unmarried, childless women under forty-five who have done something akin to my research plan - and could think of zero (and in fact, only two foreign women full stop). This is not to say that I think I am experiencing some sort of wildly abnormal prejudice - I think it’s just the complexity of my project panning out in reality and I am having to mull it over a fair bit - and speaks more of my initial naivete than anything else (which I have learned to embrace as a potentially useful personality trait ;-))

In view of some of these barriers it seems that some kind of interpretive observation is the medium I choose over structured interviews (which I only said I would do so I could get ethics clearance anyway), and I think that this is something which can be conditioned more unproblematically by the factors mentioned above - said factors could be more productive vantage points than serious barriers (I wonder if this is what I meant by ‘researcher sensibility’ that time in the department seminar when one of the staff asked me how exactly I was intending to carry my little project out?!). But is ‘observation’ sufficient, especially if it’s only for eight weeks? How would I go about structuring this, and then legitimating it for thesis purposes? And overall, what is the point of all this? Who benefits, what makes it worthwhile in the grander scheme of things? I’m preoccupied with these questions, amidst exhausting and continuing dealings with the Federal Police and the consulate (I thought my visa woes were left firmly back in Sydney!), and the thrill of hanging out with Ben and speaking Australian for a whole day on the weekend.

I am principally compelled to go to France sooner rather than later, and am consequently building up a potentially useless database of articles about Jose Bove. I keep thinking, is it really necessary that I stay in Brazil until the end of November? Would I be blowing or strengthening a carefully planned opportunity? Sigh … some of this will surely be clearer after a few meetings this week. And there are a few instances that are/will definitely yield something worthwhile, such as:

1. the absorption from generally being here, among people - especially taxi drivers, newspapers and street corner conversations. Everyone I have talked to knows about and has a firm opinion about the MST (and has a best friend’s cousin’s brother who is the president).

2. going to Presidente Prudente (about a days journey from SP city I think) to check out the MST archive.

3. The lovely immersion I had in Porto Alegre which set the scene somewhat: including specifically meeting with the staff of 2 NGOS directly allied with the MST and 2 academics.

I still want to write about power differentials, solidarity and critical reflection; within an activist milieu that defines itself by autonomy, de-centralisation, ethically just solidarity, non-violence, direct action, etc. And I’m wondering - can my research plan as it currently stands ask these questions for sufficient answers?

Within this, I guess it’s about keeping my focus on the global justice/global alliance question and not getting too concerned re: writing and researching the MST specifically. This is partly why I am leaning more towards Via Campesina as a more logical ultimate case study (using information I get from MST research) - as an organisation that is perhaps more broad-based (though perhaps less grassroots?), more ‘international’ and potentially more accessible?