In case you’re not moving to Brazil and have only a casual interest in the country and its people, I’ve selected some highlights from Rohter’s book:

One of the basic organizing features of daily life [in Brazil] is the jeito…[which means] the skill required to maneuver around the laws or social conventions that prevent you from achieving an objective.

Rohter notes that Brazilians typically employ the jeito (or jeitinho) charmingly and with a smile. Rohter interviewed a seasoned US trade representative who said Brazilian diplomats outshine all others:

[They are] polished, urbane, warm, sophisticated and skillful. No matter what the degree of disagreement over an issue, differences were always expressed in a charming way…and there was always a desire to find a solution, a compromise acceptable to both sides.

Regarding the tendency of public figures and politicians to experience spectacularly disgraceful and humiliating falls, and then emerge years later to win elections, Rohter quotes writer Ivan Lessa:

Every 15 years Brazilians forget everything that happened the past 15 years.

About Oscar Neimeyer’s love of curves:

Those forced to live or work in Neimeyer’s buildings often complain that the rooms in his concrete structures are hot and annoyingly prone to echoes. Form, in other words, has prevailed over function.

Rohter’s guide boat’s engine broke during a trip through the Amazon rain forest, a happy accident that allowed him to experience its true splendor:

We paddled amid an almost sepulchral silence, the stillness broken only by the occasional caw of a multicolored toucan, the screech of a monkey, or the rustling of some unknown creature in the bush. All around us, trees, some as tall as two hundred feet and dotted with insect hives and bird nests, stretched to the cloudless blue sky.  No longer scared away by the noise of our motor, anteaters and buck-toothed capybaras…emerged from the jungle to peer at us. Swarms of butterflies in brilliant pastel hues fluttered along the riverbank, feeding on the salt in the soil. In the river, curious dolphins and otters splashed around us, and fish leaped from the water and pirouetted in the air, their scales glistening in the sunlight.

Regarding the challenge of balancing preservation of the Amazon with development:

The government itself, confronted with budgetary constraints common in a developing country, does not have the capacity to do everyting that needs to be done to protect the Amazon and the people who live there. But because of Brazil’s fears of seeing its sovereignty in the region weakened even further, it is unwilling to let outsiders play an active role or even to accept their financial assistance. This in turn strengthens the hand of the powerful domestic economic interests that control the Amazon.

The “powerful domestic economic interests,” of course, favor clear-cutting for farming, ranching, and resource extraction.

These words, written by Rohter around 2010, read like a cruel joke in 2019:

There is always the danger, of course, that a new president with populist leanings could attempt to alter the course the country has been on for the past 16 years.

Interracial marriage has been more prevalent in Brazil over the past 400 years than in the United States, but Rohter’s chapter “The Myth of a Racial Paradise,” dispels the notion that mixed marriage has been a silver bullet for combatting prejudice and racial tensions. Nevertheless, the form, impact, and manifestations of prejudice and racism are different than in the US. Brazilian novelist Jorge Amado told Rohter:

The United States has millions of people who are not racists, but it is a racist country…Brazil has millions of people who are racists, but it is not a racist country.

Rohter disagrees with this clever aphorism and deftly explains the nuances of race and racism in his book, which I’m unable to summarize with just a quotation or two. But here’s one that provides some insight in the variance in cultural norms:

In place of the simple black and white classification that has historically prevailed in the United States, Brazil has dozens of gradations [of color]. I once tried to do a tally and came up with a list of more than sixty different terms to designate shades of skin color, from preto for someone with African features and very dark skin to brancarão for a person with very light café au lait skin. But Brazilian friends who are sociologists or anthropologists have told me that a complete index would have to include at least three hundred terms.

There’s a taste of the book which, in the event of further interest, is an enjoyable and easy read. Four more things:

• Rohter provides a survey of Brazilian visual art, literature, and music, from the last of which I created this Spotify playlist, uncreatively titled “Brazil”.
• Boy and the World‘s a stunning, award-winning Brazilian film that depicts the wonders of childhood and the discontent of industrial development, about both of which Brazil and Brazilians seem to be experts.
• I’m currently reading from The Collected Stories of Machado de Assis, which are masterful. More on him/them in a week or two.
• My photo at the top of this post depicts quintessential Brazilian juxtaposition. Taken near Morumbi in Sao Paulo, a close look reveals the homes of the wealthy, the ad hoc shacks of a favela, and a soccer field.