South America has been a special part of my life for four decades. I have lived many years in Brasil and Peru. I am married to an incredible lady from Argentina. I want to share South America with you.
Dr. Maria de Punzio is the wonderful vet who treats Alfred and Alice. She also treated Copernicus in the final year of his life. She always does a wonderful job. She is competent, had good intuition, handles animals well and is wonderful when listening to the human companions and explaining complicated medical concepts. Yesterday she told me a fascinating and chilling story "In a past life," she worked for the California Utility Commission. She left and went to veterinary school. A colleague, Jacqueline Grieg, stayed behind and spent her career with the California Public Utilities Commission. She lived at 1670 Claremont Drive in San Bruno. She worked with natural gas pipeline safety. When the pipeline exploded on September 10, 2010 she and her 13-year old daughter Janessa were killed instantly.
THE latest revelations of wrongdoing in high places struck Brazil with the force of a Netflix release: they are riveting, but so far have left the real world undisturbed. On April 12th Edson Fachin, the supreme-court justice who is overseeing a vast probe into corruption centred on Petrobras, the state-controlled oil company, authorised prosecutors to investigate eight government ministers, 24 senators, 39 deputies in the lower house of congress and three state governors. He sent dozens of cases to lower courts; they will now consider whether to launch new criminal inquiries into nine more state governors and three former presidents. All the big political parties and most front-runners in next year’s presidential election have been tarnished (see chart).
This fresh scourging of the political class comes at an awkward time. Brazil’s worst recession on record has not ended. Michel Temer, who became president last year after the impeachment of his predecessor, Dilma Rousseff, hopes to stabilise the economy by enacting reforms. His approval rating is a dismal 20%; that of his government is ten points lower. Yet the storm of scandal has yet to capsize reforms or sink hopes of an economic recovery. The value of Brazil’s currency, bonds and the index of the main stock exchange weakened after Mr Fachin’s revelations, but only briefly. The extensive new inquiries “had largely been priced in”, says Cláudio Couto, a political scientist at Fundação Getulio Vargas, a university in São Paulo.
One reason for that is that Mr Fachin’s targets are only being investigated, not indicted. He based his decision on statements by 78 former executives of Odebrecht, a big construction firm, who testified as part of plea bargains with prosecutors. One testified that Odebrecht funnelled $3.3bn to politicians between 2006 and 2014, the equivalent of 80% of its net profits over the period. Most of this money came from padded contracts awarded to the company by state-controlled entities, including Petrobras. (Odebrecht has admitted to bribing officials in 11 other Latin American and African countries.)
The testimony disclosed by Mr Fachin, and analysed by Brazilian journalists, reveals how much money the politicians allegedly received, to enrich themselves, their parties or both. Guido Mantega, a former finance minister from Ms Rousseff’s Workers’ Party (PT), reportedly got 93m reais ($30m). Aécio Neves, a senator (and potential presidential candidate) from the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB), part of Mr Temer’s coalition, allegedly received 65.5m reais. Everyone on Mr Fachin’s list denies wrongdoing. Odebrecht witnesses claim that Mr Temer himself was present at meetings where illegal campaign donations were discussed, which he denies. He is immune from prosecution for any crime he might have committed before he became president.
Mr Temer is striving to project an air of normality. The disclosures, he says, are “staggering”, but “we have to move ahead”. He has said he will only dismiss cabinet ministers who are formally charged. Although the supreme court has given Mr Fachin extra manpower to deal with the massive caseload, that may take months. The compromised cabinet has some breathing room.
Congress, too, is trying to conduct politics as usual. Most members of Mr Temer’s centrist coalition, including his Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB), see economy-strengthening reforms as the only way to regain credibility with voters. The reforms themselves are not popular. Plans to liberalise labour laws, for example by deregulating working hours, are not a vote-winner. Still less is a proposal to fix the ruinously expensive pension system, Mr Temer’s most important policy. Trade unions linked to the PT, which is as mired in scandal as government parties, have called a general strike against pension reform on April 28th.
Nervous congressmen have forced Mr Temer to compromise. He has agreed to set a lower minimum pension age for women than he had planned (62, rather than 65) and to ease transition rules for men and women. This reduces the prospective savings from pension reform by 170bn reais over ten years. Even so, it should still save the government a substantial 630bn reais over that period. If it goes through, women will retire ten years later than they do now on average. That is probably enough to reassure the central bank, which has been cutting interest rates, mainly in response to lower inflation. Without the prospect of savings on pensions, the central bank might reduce rates more slowly, which would hurt the economy.
Mr Temer is fortunate that voters are feeling cynical rather than fired up. There are no plans to repeat the big anti-corruption protests that helped topple Ms Rousseff last year. Disclosure of Mr Fachin’s list has reassured Brazilians that the dragnet is going ahead without interference.
Any attempt by congress to change that would revive the outrage, warns João Castro Neves of Eurasia Group, a political consultancy. Earlier this year the legislature tried to give its members amnesty for taking undeclared campaign donations, but backed down in the face of popular opposition. The uneasy political calm could also end if congressmen start testifying against one another, or if investigations turn into indictments. Mr Temer has so far kept reforms moving forward and the scandal-plagued government afloat. His job is getting harder all the time.
ARGENTINA’S national colours are instantly recognisable. The flag’s sky-blue stripes and golden sun adorn everything from football shirts to fridge magnets. A huge monument in Rosario, a port city, marks the site where Manuel Belgrano, a founding father, raised the first flag in 1812. On the anniversary of his death, June 20th, schoolchildren pledge to honour the “white and sky-blue” colours.
But are they saluting the right shade of blue? A study published in a recent edition of Chemistry Select, a peer-reviewed journal, suggests not. Researchers at Argentina’s scientific research council (CONICET) and Brazil’s Federal University of Juiz de Fora examined silk threads from what is thought to be the oldest surviving flag, the enormous but faded San Francisco flag. The shocking discovery: its blue was ultramarine, a much darker pigment.
This is about more than just getting the tint right. Years of civil war followed Argentina’s independence from Spain in 1816. The Federalists, led by Juan Manuel de Rosas, a bloodstained autocrat, fought for decentralised government with strong provinces under dark-blue colours. The Unitarians, who wanted a strong central government in Buenos Aires, rallied to the lighter shade. The dark-hued Federalists ruled from 1831 to 1852 but were eventually defeated by the sky-blue Unitarians. The colour war has never really ended. “These two visions of the country still persist,” says Francisco Gregoric, a vexillologist.
After the Unitarians’ triumph, most Argentines assumed that Belgrano’s flag must have been light blue, despite his reluctance to back the faction. That belief was shaken when researchers took a close look at the San Francisco flag, which they say was made in Europe in 1814. Though it has been bleached by age and by dust stirred up by decades of sugar-cane harvests, scientists used chemical analysis, X-rays and spectroscopy to determine that the pigment in its blue stripes was made from lapis lazuli, which produces the darker shade.
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Carlos Della Védova, a researcher at CONICET, says the findings apply only to the San Francisco flag (which, unlike modern ones, does not bear the 32-pointed “sun of May”). Still, he thinks, Belgrano’s original was probably the same colour as that of the San Francisco flag. The newer flag was a gift to the Temple of San Francisco, a school in the northern province of Tucumán, from Bernabé Aráoz, a comrade-in-arms of Belgrano. Mr Della Védova doubts the two soldiers took different views of hue. “Aráoz was aware of Belgrano’s ideas about the flag,” he says.
Some historians detect in the colour shift a sneaky attempt to rehabilitate De Rosas’s reputation. Juan Pablo Bustos Thames, author of a book about the San Francisco flag and owner of a full-scale (sky-blue) replica, says the scientists ignored contemporary documents that attest to a lighter colour. Manuel Belgrano, a descendant of the independence hero, says it is unthinkable that his ancestor would have favoured ultramarine. “There’s no doubt about the colour”, he told Clarín, a newspaper.
Whatever the truth, Argentines will not soon wave ultramarine flags. In 2002 IRAM, the national standard-setting agency, confirmed the lighter colour by specifying its co-ordinates in the Lab colour system. It also set out how thick the stripes should be and how the sun should look. A decree in 2010 by the then-president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, enshrined those standards in law. Argentines are not about to change their stripes, whatever the chemists say.
Mauricio Macri’s reforms provide the best hope for Argentina
The economics are working but the politics is the weakest point
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YESTERDAY
Put it down to personal experience. South America, unlike the US or Europe, seems to have rejected populism. Argentina was the first to do so, in late 2015, when Mauricio Macri unexpectedly won the presidency.
Politically centrist, economically liberal and socially conscious, the former businessman is emblematic of a new pragmatism in the region. This has been a refreshing change from the ideology, corruption and mismanagement that characterised many of the “pink tide” populists who came before.
Lately, though, Argentina has hit a bumpy patch, suffering protests and strikes. How Mr Macri now manages the turbulence is important for Argentina, a G20 member; more crucially is that his policies and actions may represent a blueprint that could be adapted by reformers elsewhere.
In many ways, it is remarkable how popular Mr Macri remains. He inherited an economy riddled with wasteful subsidies, cut off from international credit, bereft of investment, and suffering from currency controls and dwindling reserves. His economic team moved swiftly: it settled with foreign bondholders to restore access to global credit; dismantled currency controls; and jacked up interest rates to tackle an increase in inflation. Despite a recession, his government’s popularity rating remains around 50 per cent.
That is quite a feat for a country one year into an adjustment programme. It is all the more remarkable given a series of political gaffes by Mr Macri, such as the unnecessary cancellation of a public holiday. Indeed, his relatively high ratings are at least partly due to the unpopularity of his predecessor, Cristina Fernández. She remains the most visible leader of the opposition Peronists, despite multiple corruption investigations into her affairs and her former ministers.
These scandals have profited Mr Macri politically. They have enabled him to cast Argentina’s future as a binary choice: a return to the past with the Peronists, or a new future with his party Cambiemos (Let’s change). Most Argentines seem to prefer Mr Macri’s vision. On April 1, tens of thousands took to the streets, chanting: “We don’t want to go back.” By contrast, a Peronist-inspired general strike the following week had little support. Crucial midterm elections in October will provide a more decisive referendum.
Before then, Mr Macri needs a rise in Argentina’s economic feelgood factor. Although the recession has ended, most are yet to feel any benefit. High but falling inflation has cut into real wages, and the popular mood is tetchy. To soothe tempers, Mr Macri has lately slowed cuts in social spending and delayed the end of domestic subsidies. This buys him support but at a cost. The fiscal deficit, at 7 per cent of economic output, is untamed and debt levels are rising. Both have undone too many reform programmes in the past.
Every 12 years or so, Argentina, a land of perpetually thwarted promise, receives a second chance; Mr Macri is the latest. His government is the country’s best hope in a generation. Despite some failings, its achievements have been considerable. Its reform programme deserves international support and investment. That includes from the US and from Donald Trump.
Still, when Mr Macri visits President Trump in Washington on Thursday, both leaders need to avoid any echo of the conflict of interest scandal that erupted in November when then president-elect Trump reportedly asked Mr Macri, a former business associate, to approve construction of a $100m tower in Buenos Aires. At home, as in Washington, Mr Macri must tread a delicate political path.
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Neil Sedaka once sang a song "The Hungry Years." He missed that simpler time when he was poor and didn't have all of the complications in life that comes when you have success.
Back in 1983 I was dead broke and living in the charming small town of 15,000 people, Albany, West Australia. It sits right on the Indian Ocean. It had once been a whaling village. My wife Maria had left me for good and gone back to San Francisco. I had a legal complication. I was not allowed to leave the state of West Australia. I lived in a rented room. I had a humble portable black and white television and an audio cassette music player. I had no car or bike. I was able to eat and barely support myself by working at a very humble job in a restaurant. The food was good. My boss was, believe it or not, a Mr.Smith and a nice man.
I would think back to my happy times in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. I would long to be back there.While I lived in Perth, I discovered an obscure shop that sold Brasilian music. I had a small collection of audio cassettes from the shop. My favorite Brasilian artist was an obscure singer named Maria Creuza. Every evening I would listen to her beautiful voice and have the happiest thoughts of Brasil.
This music collection got lost by a moving company in South Africa in 1995. I thought that part of my life was gone forever.
In my recent Brasil trip, I was able to find some vinyl records of Maria Creuza thanks to Anna Chagas and Bossa Nove Music Shop in Rio de Janeiro.
Yesterday afternoon was sunny and cool in Pacifica. I started to play the vinyl records of Maria Creuza. Her beautiful songs touched my heart just as they had 34 years ago. I thought back to those hungry years.
It's so nice when you get a part of your life back that seemed to be lost forever.
