How to cross the street like a Brazilian

Every city has at least one intersection where the eternal clash between cars and pedestrians comes to a head, where each one’s determination to reach point B collides—sometimes literally—with one another. There are many such flash points in Iowa City, though none greater than the T-intersection at Iowa Ave. and Clinton St. There, airhead sorority girls and oblivious frat boys—9 out of 10 likely hailing from the Chicagoland burbs—scurrying off to class see a green light in front of them atop a bright orange don’t walk sign and somehow deduce that it is indeed their right to cross, predominantly when traversing east-west between downtown and the Pentacrest. What results is a city planner’s nightmare: traffic on Iowa Ave. gets backed up two blocks because only two cars at best can find a gap between the tide of ignorant jaywalkers in order to finally turn left or right onto Clinton St. It’s any wonder why the third car from the front, the one unable to get through, doesn’t see the white walk sign like a pedestrian sees the car’s green light and justifiably floor it onto Clinton. The problem, of course, is that pedestrians can’t kill cars.

Brazilians would find themselves right at home at the corner of Iowa and Clinton. Even in a car and bus happy city like Belo Horizonte, walk signs—while indeed ideal—are optional. All that matters when crossing the street in Brazil is timing. Rhythm comes natural to Brazilians, and thus it’s no wonder that so many Brazilians can just look at a stream of oncoming cars and know just when and how fast to hit a hole in between them, a la Frogger. Usually this timing is respectful of drivers’ right of way, though often it can be subjective. For instance, in a steadily crawling line of traffic, many a Brazilian will dart in between cars, buses and motorcycles, giving each the standard thumbs up to thank them for unwittingly—and most likely unwillingly—halting their crawl in order for him or her to cross the street.

Really, crossing the street in Brazil is a metaphor for being Brazilian. City-dwelling Brazilians are almost always on the go, and they’re better than even an “I’m wolkin’ heah!”-screaming New Yorker at fending off any impediment standing—or moving at 40 mph—between them and their point B. This culture of disregard goes for fellow pedestrians as well as moving vehicles. When getting on or off a bus along with a dozen other people, you don’t form a single-file line and politely offer to let someone who arrived within a split-second of you to your position in that single-file line to pass in front of you. Instead, you jostle shoulder-to-shoulder, bottlenecking up or down the steps of the bus so quickly that you’re in your seat or a few stops away from your stop before you realize exactly how you got into your eventual single-file position. On crowded streets and even more crowded shopping malls, when you’re about to cross paths or bump into someone, they move out of your way, you keep on truckin. Indeed, life in Brazil is a contact sport.


It’s not just with physical point B’s that Brazilians practice this culture of disregard. In fact, such a culture is at its finest when Brazilians are trying to reach some agenda that they’ve made up their mind cannot be left unfulfilled. To be Brazilian is to have a sense of malandragrem, which translates into something not so wicked as wickedness, yet not quite as innocent and childlike as mischief. To be a malandro is to have a willingness to take advantage of or in someway profit off of your fellow human being. For instance, a few days after I arrived here I mentioned to the Vice-President of the BH Rotary Club that I’d like to teach English somewhere if I could. She told me she had a friend who ran a small school that needed a teacher to start that next week. She said it was very close to where I lived and it would be really easy—hardly any real teaching would be involved, I’d just have to follow along in the book with the students, who would buy books of their own. Turns out the school is 45 minutes away by bus, and the students still haven’t bought any books, which means I have to improvise out of my teacher’s manual for each hour-and-a-half class twice a week. Don’t get me wrong, I love doing it! The point here is that to help out her friend get to his point B, the club VP softened reality a little bit.

Another example of Brazilian malandragem is piracy. Yes, just as in the U.S., piracy of CDs and DVDs is illegal. The difference is that here the law is hardly ever enforced. A block from my apartment, right in front of the PUC-Minas campus, on a main street that sees a police care drive by at least once or twice an hour, a woman has set up her shop of a vast selection of pirated CDs and DVDs. A few blocks down the road, another guy has done the same. They were there the day I arrived. They are still there. One day I walked by the female pirate with some friends from my class, and they both stopped and pawed through her wares for a few minutes. They didn’t buy anything, but they treated her business as they would any other normal business that legitimately acquired its stock. Here, the Point B of the Brazilian people is to be entertained, and they won’t let the $20-30 pricetag of a retail store stand in their way. Last week I watched the recent smash hit Brazilian film Tropa de Elite (“Elite Squad”) with Ricardo in the apartment of our sweet old nextdoor neighbor Dona Dirce. This sweet old woman, who wouldn’t harm a fly and who wouldn’t think about robbing anyone, had bought a pirated copy of the film. Ricardo later told me how much he detested this aspect of Brazilian culture, and how he believed that by undercutting the entertainment industry through this broad daylight black market, the country would be hamstrung from ever experiencing vast growth in this sector. Really, I shouldn’t be so critical. CD ripping and burning has become just as institutionalized in U.S. culture as it is here. The difference is that the average American will rip and burn to give to friends freely, and buy movies and music through either online or instore retail outlets. Only a small fringe delves into the black market to either buy or sell pirated movies or music. Here, if you want to buy Tropa de Elite, you don’t go to the video store, you go down the block and visit your friendly neighborhood pirate. Deftly dodging traffic along the way.