Space: The Final Brazilian Frontier

It’ll be a shock getting behind the wheel for the first time only a few months from now. To get around here in Belo I’ve been walking, taking buses, the metro, or taxis, or getting rides from friends. We’ll have to see if driving a car is “just like riding a bike.” I’ll come home out of practice to say the very least.

There are certainly times I’ve missed having a car here in BH. Just read my last post and you’ll understand why. While I’m all for a greener world—politicians, if you’re listening, the time is now to invest in efficient and clean public transportation, even in sub-100,000-population cities like Iowa City—there is no beating the freedom a car can give us. (Meaning politicians, if you’re listening, the time is now to invest in more fuel-efficient cars and raise CAFE standards well beyond the provisions of 35mpg per fleet by 2020 set by last year’s Energy Independence and Security Act).

Anyway, yes, though it'll mean increasing my carbon footprint, I’ll thoroughly enjoy having my car back. And not only because I won’t have to worry about catching or missing a bus that comes only twice an hour. I’m certainly not going to miss the Brazilian ritual of getting on a bus.

Bus stops in Belo are laid out about every hundred meters or so on main roads throughout the city. Some stops only serve several lines, and sometimes only one line in more remote areas of the city. Others, like most in the heart of downtown, serve 10 to 20 lines. These stops tend to be packed with people. When a desired bus approaches, those who want it to stop stick out their arm to signal it to do so.

The elements in this ritual that are certain: which lines stop at which stops, and how to make the bus stop.

The uncertain element: exactly where the bus will come to a stop, due to a combination of the driver’s speed and the volume of both bus and car traffic around the stop at any given time.

Thus, when worn brakes squelch a bus to a stop, chaos is destined to ensue. Let’s say I, along with 7 other strangers, want to get on bus 9410 at a major downtown stop in order to head back toward Coração Eurcarístico and PUC. The bus stops about 10 feet away from where the 8 of us are huddled in a bunch. From here, it’s survival of the fittest: whoever has the quickest reflexes that start her off toward meeting the bus door by the time the bus stops will more than likely get on first. Behind her the rest of us group up. And it really is group up, not line up. You don’t line up in Brazil to get on a bus. You get in a cluster and anarchically clamber into the door and up the steps. And if you want to assure your place in the cluster, you can’t give up an inch of space. If you do, that’s just a window for another to jump in front of you. Kindergarteners would cry if someone “cut in line” in such a way. Here, that’s not the case.

Just as with time, as I wrote in the post below, you can’t claim that Brazilians don’t have “respect” or “regard” for filling space in an orderly fashion. Order might be on the Brazilian flag, but it's not necessarily in their cultural vocabulary. Or, better, we don't share the same idea of order. Like time, space is a cultural impasse between Brazilians and Gringos. We Gringos like our personal bubbles, and we don’t like it when they’re burst. We march through elementary school hallways in straight lines, and we’re scolded if we jump out or cut in front of someone else. When we line up at a lunch counter or to get on a rollercoaster, we will deride and then shun someone with the nerve to jump ahead of those of us who had been patiently waiting.

The first shall always be first, and the last last in America. And perhaps not just physically speaking…

The orderliness of our persons translates into the orderliness we Gringos practice—generally—on the roads. If someone cuts you off, he’s apt to get a horn and a finger. Lane lines are strictly obeyed. It's illegal for motorcycles to pass between lanes of cars. We may not always come to complete stops at stop signs, but only crazies fling themselves halfway into an intersection before proceeding through or making a turn.


In the end, our behavior in going to great pains to order ourselves amongst ourselves within a given space, be it walking, driving, or riding a motorcycle, is based on our mutual respect for one another’s personal bubble, and on our shared manic fear of anarchy.

In Brazil, that personal bubble lies about a millimeter off the surface of your skin. Men and women great each other with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Both friends and strangers commonly touch you on the arm to emphasize a point their trying to make with you. When I first met my friend Adriano shortly after arriving, I thought that he was gay because of how much he touched my forearm while talking to me. Now that I've become acculturated, I touch him, and other friends, back. Beware friends back home…

Instead of being subconsciously focused entirely on not bursting another’s bubble or wasting time with the formality of lining up for anything, Brazilians are tuned into making efficient use of every last shred of space. That juicy inch in front of me, which I’ve grown up conceding the person just ahead of me, would go to waste if someone just to my left didn’t pounce in to claim it, whether at the bus stop, the copy counter, or the lunch line.

I won’t lie, it’s hard to keep my blood from boiling when this happens, accustomed as I am to my own country’s version of “order and progress.” Two deep breaths and reminding myself about the values of cultural relativism usually do the trick to calm me down. It’s not disrespect I’ve been the victim of. It’s ingenuity. Forming a line immediately before getting on a bus takes twice as long as the Brazilian method. We may actually be too stuffy on this one. The Brazilian way may not be pretty, but it appears to get results.

We're like the Red Coats who quickly learned that they couldn’t fight a war marching in a single-file line, beating drums and blowing bugles, after French and Indians hiding in trees picked them off mercilessly and with ease.

So, when it comes to space, Brazilians may have the edge. But there is one sense of spacial consciousness that I cannot give Brazilians even the slightest bit of cultural relativist sympathy: their practice of filling space vocally. I already wrote about this phenomenon in a previous post.

No other manifestation of my Brazilian culture shock has been so shocking as the impunity with which students converse with one another while a professor or a peer is addressing the class, or when grown adults overtly show that they’d rather not listen to you speak by talking amongst themselves. Professors may hold up a hand and shush the class if the noise gets out of control, but almost always to no avail. Even when one of my most vocal professors screamed over the din of a particular class, pleading for silence, not everyone took her seriously. Some still continued to talk in the back of the room, the so-called fundão. Of what they’re discussing I have no idea; I’m too busy straining my ears to tune into the one channel of Portuguese that actually matters.

Sometimes students will shush their peers when they have an interest in hearing what a prof or another student has to say. But then and only then. These students are just as likely to talk to one another when they don’t have the slightest interest in classroom material.

I am currently taking a course on the political economy of Africa with a professor who is half Greek, half American, yet conducts the course in nearly perfect Portuguese. I gleaned from him that he did his undergrad at Denver University, and so he’s most certainly used to the American classroom behavior of respecting your teachers with silence. If you don’t want to pay attention, you tune out, and the loss is yours alone. You don’t keep fellow students who do give a hoot from enjoying an atmosphere conducive to learning. Hence my empathy for Professor Yeros when he has to clap his hands and scold students a good half-dozen times per class for talking in the back.

Really, that vacuum of silence is to Brazilians students (not all of course, but certainly most, and, as I mentioned above, adults are just as apt to do this) as that inch-wide vacuum of space is for that person next to me wanting to get on the same bus. It has to be filled. Keeping quiet right next to your best friend in the fundão would be a waste of precious talking time. Indeed, life is short, so we should tell the ones we love as soon as we can that we love them. Or that it’s their turn to buy the beer this weekend.

Thus, because this behavior shares cultural roots with the practice of piloting your body around in space, I should probably just accept it as it is. Yet, I can't in all good consciousness do such a thing. I’m sorry, but just because you could do something like talk in the middle of class does not always mean that you should. That’s why we have no smoking signs in certain public areas. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, but don’t pollute my lungs along with yours. You smoke in designated areas. You talk to your friends when class is over. The classroom is meant for learning, and any talking should be directed to that purpose alone.

But then again, what do I know? I'm just a Gringo sem graça.