Doce de Leite (Part 1)

There’s not much to do on a Friday night in the Coração Eucarístico. Seniors mostly populate the bairro, and those of bar-going age in the Coreu (as it is affectionately called) that do go to one of the four local bars are mostly well out of college. Unlike at American universities, where students live in dorms or apartments or Greek houses close to campus (and thereby equally close to a wealth of drinking establishments), in Brazil it’s rare for college students to do what Ricardo and I are doing: start a república and live on their own. The vast majority of students still live at home throughout college, commuting to class everyday by bus, car, or (to quote the Southern comedian James Gregory, “for those that’s got money”) taxi. Any going out is done as close to home as possible, though every now and then you’ll treat yourself by going out in one of the several downtown bairros. However, doing so means taking a bus there and, if you’re lucky, back; few bus lines operate in the late night/wee morning hours, so more often than not the return trip is made by taxi, whether you’s got money or not.

The last couple Friday nights I went out to the theatre and then drinks afterward with some friends from school, being fortunate enough to catch one of the three buses per hour that make the witching hour trek back to the Coreu. (Theatre is very big in Brazilian culture, and it shows in BH, a city that enjoys dozens of houses and one of the most famous Brazilian companies, the Grupo Galpão. This craze for the stage is definitely something worth delving deeper into for a future post.) This past Friday night, however, I wasn’t in much of a going out mood. Yet at the same time I didn’t want to just be stuck at home in front of the TV or the Net. One would think that the Coreu would have a movie theatre at the very least. To my knowledge it doesn’t even have a bingo parlor (or its Brazilian equivalent) for its large contingency of seniors. So then, what to do?

Suddenly it hits me. I get the desire to “mexer na cozinha,” which I’d translate (aptly so, in my case) as “mess around in the kitchen.” I figure I’m here to experience Brazilian culture, so why not try to reproduce that culture right here right now in the form of something edible? I run through the list in my head of possible dishes I could make. I’ll probably have to start with something easy, something that requires relatively few ingredients and little preparation. Then I remember Dona Dirce telling us how easy it was to make Doce de Leite (I think in the U.S. we use the Spanish Dulce de Leche, but for those who aren't familiar with it, it's a decadently sweet, thick cross between pudding and caramel). According to her grandmotherly advice, all it takes is milk, sugar, and a pinch of salt (which keeps the milk from separating), which you mix and boil until it reaches caramely goodness. It’s settled. I grab some cash and head to the local bakery/convenient store just down the street to get what I need.

I can’t remember exactly how much milk and sugar I need, so I grab a couple liters and a kilo of sugar. (I apologize, this is going to sound very ethnocentric, but to me the metric system belongs in the laboratory, not the kitchen, as much of a lab as it may be. When I’m told I’m getting 300mL of juice and a burger with 150g of meat I feel more like a lab rat being experimented on than a human being that drinks 12oz. and eats a quarter-pounder. Maybe herein lie the roots of so much misunderstanding between our worlds.) Also, of course, the ingredients are only half the battle, so when I get home I pull up a recipe for the dessert online to get to know the cooking process in greater detail. According to the culinária mineira section at www.bussolanet.com.br, I need two liters of milk and 750 grams of sugar. I have to put the milk in a large saucepan and place on the burner to boil. Once it reaches boiling, I add the sugar, turn down the heat, and stir. For 45 minutes. For some reason I had assumed the magical Brazilian climate would intervene and 5 minutes after the mixture is made the milky-sugary mass would turn creamy. But, I figure this is above all a learning experience, and so if the lesson takes 45 minutes, that’s not a minute less than it has to be.

I boil. I mix. I start to stir. And stir. And stir.

And stir.

30 minutes stirring in front of a stove. I look over at my laundry hanging up in the next room. I imagine what it must have been like for housewives on Brazilian farms at the beginning of the 20th century. Or (who am I kidding?) today even. Slaving away all day long to keep the domestics duties of the fazenda in order. Or what about even one century earlier, when the person slaving away all day long was, in fact, a slave? I can’t begin to imagine what that must have been like.

I keep stirring. My YouTube Generation self is bored out of its mind. This calls for a beer. I open the fridge and pull out the last of our stock of Bohemia, a brand that makes nicer deck chairs than beer. Our next 12-pack will be of Itaipava, a crisp, unpretentious, Mexican-like beer. I take a drink and turn back to my stirring. Still liquid.

The bitter smell of too-warm milk—an easily recognizable smell for any ex-barista—wafts up from the cauldron in front of me. I wonder if maybe there really is too much milk in the mix now. Time for a taste. I bring the wooden spoon to my mouth, blow it cool, and dab my tongue on it. Sure enough, sweeter than God’s breath. So when the @%&! does it turn brown and creamy?!

I keep stirring. I take another swig of Bohemia and make another bitter beer face. I look at my watch. 45 minutes on the dot. My caveman logic determines that what I need is more solids to go with the bubbling liquid. I dump another small-glass-cup-full of sugar (100g? 150?) into the mix. Half expecting this to be a catalytic action, my spirits drop when I don’t see a change in state after another five minutes.

In light of the excess amount of fossil fuel used in this experiment, and the fact that this is just that, an experiment, I decide to turn off the burner and let the pot cool. Maybe it’s in the cooling process that the syrup slowly changes to goo. And if not, at the very least I’ve made a luxurious mating ground for Dengue mosquitoes.

I decide to upgrade my beer-break and take my mug into the living room and turn on the TV. It’s a Friday night, so the quality is pretty sparse. I flip through the dozen or so channels about three or four times before deciding to head back to the kitchen and meet my fate. Miraculously, the mixture I find, while still quite warm, has started to congeal. I bring the pot into the living room and continue to stir it while watching TV. Slowly I begin to feel more resistance as I stir. When I pick up the spoon, a thin, tan strand falls back into the mix. I ask myself, if all it takes is for the hot mix to cool to finish the process, then why can’t I just mix cold milk with sugar, stir, and be done with it?! That would save so much time and energy, both my own and that in the gas tank. But that would be too easy I guess.

When the saucepan has cooled enough I decide to stick it in the fridge to expedite the cooling process. It’s late anyway and I’m tired and Ricardo wants to show me some (what else?) YouTube videos and quite frankly I don’t want to have to look at this goop until tomorrow morning. I put it on the top shelf and shut the door. Out of sight, out of mind.

I wake up Saturday morning and take what has become my routine walk down to the bakery to get some fresh bread and rolls for breakfast. Upon my return I open the fridge and pull out the now ice cold saucepan. I stir the beige mass. Not the sticky hard I had hoped for, but not liquid either. At least it’s not a total loss. At least by look and feel. Now for the taste. I put a couple spoonfuls on my plate next to a couple rolls, and soon the gelatiny mass pools around the solid forms like the Blob. Looks like I’ll have no choice but to eat the rolls with a bit of frosting on them. I break off a piece of the roll and take a bite. The cold granulations are perhaps, yes, a little too sweet, and together with the roll I feel like more like I’m eating a caramel-frosted Krispy Kreme Donut than the creamy Brazilian delicacy I had begun Friday night hoping for. But it’s edible. What’s done is done. There’s no use crying over spilled milk. Or poorly made sweet milk. I know I’ll have a second chance to experiment and hopefully come up with something closer to what I had hypothesized. And probably a third and a fourth. (Who am I kidding, probably a 34th.) In the meantime, there’s still a liter-and-a-half of industrial strength Krispy Kreme frosting in the fridge.

Dessert anyone?

Anti-Americanism in Brazil

Not quite four years ago, I studied abroad for a semester in Murcia, Spain and got the chance to live the “Erasmus experience.” Erasmus is a government-sponsored exchange program offered to European university students who wish to study in another European country. Some European universities have recently opened up the program to students from around the world, offering the opportunity for pockets of international synergy to take shape across the Continent and the British Isles, whether in the classroom or the pub. So, à la L’Auberge Espagnol, I studied, lived, and partied with students from all over the European Union, Russia, CIS countries, Japan, and, of course, the United States. With so many people from so many different backgrounds concentrated into so small an area, the logical question asked after meeting a fellow international student was, “So where you from?” Europeans, I found, have a general notion of where a fellow Continental (or Brit or Irishman) may come from solely by appearance. My neon whiteness could have made me hail from anywhere north of the Alps. “Estados Unidos,” I’d reply to this question, “¿Y tú?” More often than not, before I’d get an answer in return, I’d be greeted with a shocked, indignant, and standoffish, “Oh…”

Such a welcome should have come as no surprise. Most of my European acquaintances had likely seen—or participated in—lots of anti-war (read anti-U.S.) protests in the year-and-a-half since the United States invaded Iraq. Many Spaniards took American foreign policy personally, as it was unquestionably Spain’s linkage to it that cost the lives of 198 people in the March 11, 2004 train bombing in Madrid. Thus their disdain toward the U.S.-led war in Iraq, along with that of many of their European brethren, became equally as personal, directed toward my fellow Americans and I as if we had beat the war drums ourselves. The anti-Americanism we faced from our peers reached its climax in the days following George W. Bush’s re-election as president in November, and then tapered off as many Europeans, their hopes for regime change vanquished, resigned themselves to the fact that they would have to endure another four years of the Bush Administration’s folly.

I should make two points clear. First, not every European (or, better, non-American) received us so scornfully. My fellow Americans and I made lots of friends with professors, members of the community, and fellow students, and while several discussions on American foreign policy inevitably arose, they were always peaceful, and the moments of mirth we shared vastly outnumbered them.


Second, while the war in Iraq was the focal point of the anti-Americanism we faced, in the end it was “merely” a bloodstained banner behind which marched hundreds of documented atrocities committed, directly or indirectly, by American interventionism since the 1950s. Vietnam. Cambodia. Nicaragua. El Salvador. Israel and Palestine. Not to mention the numerous human rights abuses perpetrated by American-led multinational corporations that all too often fly under the radar of world media. And then there’s the U.S. Government’s stance on global warming. And the abandon with which U.S. soft power (Mickey Mouse, Coca-Cola, McDonalds) has so deeply penetrated cultures around the world. And I’m sure other grievances that I’m not yet aware of.

Brazilian anti-Americanism shares the same roots as the European variety above. Yet it has several other components that give it a distinctly autochthonous (and arguably more fervent) flavor. Che Guevara grew up and fought in Brazil’s backyard, the same backyard where the United States bullied left-leaning Latin American regimes for decades, beating them over the head with a Monroe Doctrine revitalized by the Cold War threat of communism spreading to the Western Hemisphere. Brazilians watched from the window as Salvador Allende was assassinated and replaced by the ruthless Augusto Pinochet in Chile during the Ford Administration. They continue to watch as U.S. aid dollars get funneled to Colombian paramilitary forces, arguably more brutal in their treatment of innocent Colombian civilians than the FARC guerrilla forces they’ve sworn to fight.

And now, after all that Brazil has witnessed from its window, could the U.S. be so crazy as to invade Brazil itself? Many here don’t believe such a scenario to be too far-fetched. In fact, they see U.S. military aid to Colombia as a precursor to an eventual joint U.S.-Colombia invasion and occupation of the Amazon Rainforest. The recent incursion of Colombian forces into Ecuadorian territory to kill a key FARC commander, which spurred the mobilization of both Venezuelan and Ecuadorian troops along their respective borders with Colombia, further justified many Brazilians’ fears of such an event. Where do their fears come from?

Much like the slanderous emails circulating in the United States claiming that Barack Obama is an America-and-freedom-hating Islamist terrorist linked to Al-Qaeda, here in Brazil many people have been forwarded an email showing “Page 76” of a purported American junior high geography textbook. At the bottom of the page is a map of Brazil that depicts the Amazon Rainforest as an “Internationally Protected Zone” that is principally under the governance of the United States. The text alongside the map lauds the U.S. for rescuing the endangered region from the grip of “bandits” and “drug traffickers” that inhabit the various “kingdoms” of South America. The text appears with a translation in Portuguese. The page is unquestionably false. First, such garbage would never have cleared reviews by textbook clearinghouses in the U.S., and second, words such as “explorate” used in place of exploit (from the Portuguese explorar) and “cert” for certain (from certo) clearly reveal the forger’s likely Brazilian identity. However, the average Brazilian citizen, with limited knowledge of English, is more than likely to believe this libel. The fact that the creator of the email declared that this page came from a textbook used in ALL American junior high geography classes only succeeds in fomenting greater mass fear, anger, and hatred among Brazilians toward the United States. Sadly, it should come as no surprise that such fear could spread like wildfire in this country. Brazilians witnessed the impunity in which the United States went to war in Iraq to secure its continued control of one of the world’s most important resources: oil. With one-fifth of the world’s fresh water residing in the Amazon, it’s perhaps not so unnatural that Brazilians would think the U.S. would have a hair-trigger pointed at such a vast source of an even more important resource. And according to “Page 76”, we’re not only crazy enough to do it. We already did.

(This photo isn't mine, though who knows, maybe I'll get up there...)

I have been asked on many an occasion to whom I believe the Amazon belongs, even before I learned of the “Page 76 hoax.” I have always definitively answered, “Brazil,” with the caveat that if the Amazon does indeed belong to Brazil, then Brazilians should be fighting to protect it from being totally destroyed by rogue loggers on the bankroll of Big Agriculture. While in their hearts I’m sure nearly all Brazilians agree with me, to many such a comeback is tantamount to sympathies for military occupation and internationalization. The worst have been exchanges in which fellow students have asked my opinion on Global Warming, namely, if I believe it exists. Equally as definitively I have answered, “Yes, it does exists, and the U.S., along with China and India, need to do a better job of cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time,” I continue, “Brazil needs to stop slashing and burning the Amazon, as this has the doubly pernicious effect of releasing tons of carbon into the atmosphere while destroying the organisms that would otherwise absorb that carbon right back up. The Amazon is, without question, the ‘lungs of the world’, and while all countries are smokers, Brazil, the caretaker of those lungs, is cutting them away lobe by lobe.” Again, rather than opening up a healthy dialog focused on changing the world, my answer only further justifies Brazilian suspicion of American interest in the Amazon. The debate could go on. So far, it hasn’t.


The BBC World Service released the results of a poll earlier this month in which citizens of 34 countries were asked to assess the influence (positive or negative) that each of the same 34 countries has in the world.

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7324337.stm)

Indeed, while data pertaining to any country in such a poll are interesting and important, those involving the United States are always the main event (followed closely by those on China). According to the results, 39% of Brazilians believe the U.S. has a mainly positive influence in the world. 40% believe American influence is mainly negative, leaving 21% that 1) believe U.S. influence is neither positive nor negative, 2) think that whether it’s positive or negative depends on further qualification of the question, or 3) are undecided. On the ground, that seems about right, about half and half. The 39% has consisted of Rotarians, Ricardo and his family, close friends at PUC, and common working-class folk I’ve had a chance to meet—I’m perhaps the only American they’d ever met. Of the 40% I can count most of my professors, and most students in my history classes, many of these sporting dreadlocks, beards, and Che Guevara T-shirts. Indeed nearly the entire crop of young and budding Brazilian intellectuals falls into this second column.


It’s not hard to find stuff to justify criticism of the United States. I’ve already supplied an abridged version of the laundry list of global grievances. It is equally not hard to see how criticism can quickly become anti-Americanism among intellectuals in a country that has been such a close witness to the effects of American interventionism and is afraid it will soon find itself even closer. It is equally-equally not hard for me to dig up stuff on which to criticize Brazil. I’ve already mentioned the Amazon and the treacherous ground I walk on there. But what about social and economic inequality? Disparity in education? Overblown machismo and objectification of women?

“Let he who is without sin…”

Maybe it’s fate that once again I’ll be abroad during a presidential election. Whether founded or not, this election, as was the case 4 years ago, will be the grand litmus test in the eyes of many around the world of how much Americans wish to move closer to or distance themselves from the rest of the world. Although a Democratic candidate has yet to be officially established, Brazil has already declared itself a blue state. John McCain, while in many ways a moderate maverick in the Republican Party, will be unable to escape the shadow of George W. Bush in this election. His comment that the United States would stay in Iraq for 100 years if need be hasn’t helped his worldwide popularity. Should he win, it’s likely that 40% will grow.

While my political preference is now likely quite clear, I’m no political foot soldier. The vast majority of the rest of the world may see a vote for McCain as a manifestation of American ignorance, yet it's Americans who vote for the candidate who best appeals to their convictions, whoever that may be. That’s democracy. In the same vein, my bringing tidings of anti-Americanism is not a call for us Americans to drastically change our way of life. I love Hawkeye football Saturdays. I love road-tripping and roller coasters. I love barbeques. I love them just as much as I love traveling and learning about the rest of the world. We Americans need not and should not give up that culture that we identify with, that gives us a sense of home. Yet while we need not give up our culture, we must not be reactionary. We must reflect on who we are as American citizens. And we must do so with the knowledge that we are at the same time citizens of the world. Entrusted with such dual citizenship, we must look upon ourselves as Martin Luther King did, in an anti-war speech that he gave April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his death:

“I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation.”

While we may deserve the criticism we receive from abroad, we’re better than whatever skewed anti-American vision a PUC-Minas history professor may have of us. We have integrity. The world just doesn’t see it anymore. Whether with our vote, or with our actions at home or abroad, it’s time for us to prove the world wrong.

Ricardo

It’s about time I told his story.

I moved into my pensão universitária, my room in Dona Piedade’s apartment, on the day after I arrived in Belo Horizonte. Four days later, as I returned from the hardware store with the parts needed to fix the faucet I broke, I discovered I had a new flatmate. Ricardo Mallaco and his parents were discussing the rent situation with Piedade. “Aha!” she exclaimed when I walked in the door, “Here is your American roommate that I was talking about!” We exchanged greetings and they expressed their surprise that an American had actually learned Portuguese (lots of people find this surprising). Ricardo and his father, Nelson, then switched over to speaking English, though only for a few minutes so as not to keep Lígia, who spoke no English, out of the loop. Ricardo told me that he had been an exchange student for the 2006-07 American academic year at Aquin Catholic High School in Freeport, Illinois, a small town near Rockford. I told him that I was from Iowa City, in Iowa, that state bordering Illinois to the west. His eyes lit up. “Did you go to the University of Iowa?” he asked me. “Yeah,” I answered, “why?” He proceeded to tell me that his host brother during his stay in Freeport was a freshman at UI, and he had gone several times with his host family to visit him in IC, even going to a UI women’s basketball game on one occasion. He even had a shirt that read "Kinnick Stadium, this is sacred ground."

I was shocked.

How, 5,000 miles away from home, I could end up living with a dude that had set foot in my hometown, was completely beyond my ability to wrap my head around the eternal cosmic dance of fate and freewill.

As I have said probably several times before this post, Ricardo is an 18-year-old freshman (“calouro” in Portuguese, which means something like “young and inexperienced animal”) studying journalism at PUC-Minas. Unlike most university students here—who either live with their parents if they are from Belo Horizonte itself, or with a relative or close family friend in BH if they are from the interior of Minas Gerais—Ricardo has come to BH from Vitória, a coastal city of about 400,000, about 8 hours by car “due” east of BH (the main highway connecting the two cities is as winding as any in the Great Smoky Mountains). He, along with more than 1,100,000 other Brazilians, is Baptist. He is a descendant of Italian immigrants on both sides of his family. Besides our IC connection, he and I share passions for photography, international news, and learning about other cultures. When my Portuguese proves insufficient in any given circumstance, his English comes through in the clutch. Really, coming into this whole experience blindly, I don’t think I could’ve found a better Brazilian roommate. During my time here, we’ve played soccer and basketball together at PUC on weekends, we get lunch or dinner at our “dining halls”, and, as I posted earlier, I spent the week in Vitória with his family a couple weeks ago.


And now we’re going to become the founding members of a Brazilian “república”, basically an apartment inhabited only by college students, which, though nothing specially back home, is such a rare occurrence here with most students choosing to live at home that it warrants such an ingenious title. The idea is that the apartment is like a country, and every citizen has a duty to his or her country, to keep it clean and orderly, and to abide by the laws that they the citizens established by referendum upon the country’s founding. Thus, Ricardo, myself, and two other classmates of Ricardo’s will each become the president, the finance minister, and head of the environmental protection agency of our fledgling country, affectionately named “República 4111” after Ricardo found a mangled placard of one of the 4111-route buses on the street, which I guess will serve as our “flag.”

Though we will always be grateful of our colonial roots and all that we gained from them under the governance of Queen Piedade, we have hereby respectfully declared our independence, effective tomorrow, April the 4th, 2008. Like any nascent country, it will take time and perhaps a civil war or two before we become a dominant power, or at least able to stand on our own two feet. Over the next week we will be accumulating the necessary capital to invest in our country’s future. We are taking bids for a cheap combined cable-internet-phone plan through a local ISP, but our telecommunications infrastructure sadly may not be up and running for at least a week, maybe more. I thus offer my most humble apologies to you, my audience of foreign dignitaries, as I will have limited ability to correspond with you through this and other internet-based channels during this time. But not for long. And then you will all be global partners as our nation rises to glory. Long live 4111!

By the way, if you want to send diplomatic messages or foreign aid (☺ alright, sorry, this joke’s gone on long enough…), the address of our new republic is:

Rua Dom Modesto Augusto, 181, Apt 104
Coração Eucarístico
Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil 30353-630