Brazil Think Tanks and University Programs

 Think Tanks and Universities:

• Wilson Center "Brazil Builds"
• https://www.wilsoncenter.org/meet-brazil-institute-team 
• Atlantic Council Brazil Articles
• GWU: The Institute of Brazilian Issues (IBI)
• Kings College London Brazil Institute
• Brookings: Autonomy or alignment? The US-Brazil relationship in a changing world order
• Economist Intelligence Brazil Analysis

Related Brazil Posts:

• Brazil Podcasts
• Brazil Youtube Channels
• Brazil Starter Pack
• Brazil Articles and Resources
• Brazil Movies, Doc and TV Shows

Brazil Articles (Resources)

1. The Association of Diplomatic Studies and Training website is the #1 resource I recommend most often to new Foreign Area Officers and one which I highlight in my article: So You've Got Orders, Now Read This Poem hosted at the excellent Africa OSC page.  Most notable are the country readers they have which consist of a chronological series of interviews with various embassy personnel from ambassadors to attaches to public affairs officers to management officers to GSOs.  These are an amazing supplement to studies of a country history as it offers a glimpse into our foreign policy/diplomatic posture at various points in time.   https://adst.org/Readers/Brazil.pdf  

The website also features podcasts and other articles such as the ones highlighted below. 

• Four Days in September — The Kidnapping of the U.S. Ambassador to Brazil
• The “Leaky Bucket”—Brazil and the Cuban Missile Crisis
• Brazil’s Long Detour on the Road to Democracy
• CSI: Sao Paulo — The Search for the Angel of Death

2. University of Chicago Revista Vaeranda Program

Academic department with a collection of public essays and experiences that capture a broad span of society, arts and government--such as this short essay: Revolution, not Transition: The Collapse of the Brazilian Military Regime

3. Brasilian Whatsapp Slang (my list)

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/brasilialifeafterdesign/282996878?autoplay=1 

4. In-Betweens of the Forest

Environmental activist, journalist, and National Book Award finalist Eliane Brum considers how governments and corporations destroy the Amazon and disrupt the under-recognized populations who live there, in this excerpt from Banzeiro Òkòtó.

5. https://countrystudies.us/brazil/

Related Brazil Posts:

• Brazil Podcasts
• Brazil Youtube Channels
• Brazil Starter Pack
• Brazil Articles and Resources
• Brazil Think Tanks and University Programs
  
• Brazil Movies, Doc and TV Shows

The Brazil Starter Pack (Book Recs)

If you are going to read only one book on Brazil read this one: Brazil: A Biography.  It's the one that's been most recommended to me.  Yes, it's massive--the audible version is nearly 29 hours long--but the native Brazilian author team offer a comprehensive and clearly written account that spans from "first contact" between the European invaders ("discoverers") up to the transition from military dictatorship in the 80s.  One of the authors, Lilia Schwarcz was inducted into the Academia Brasileira de Letras earlier in 2024, becoming only the 11th woman to join the esteemed literary institution since it was founded in 1897.

The Collector of Leftover Souls: Field Notes on Brazil's Everyday Insurrections.  This book is a collection of essays by reporter Eliane Brum.  In it she sheds light on different facets of Brasilian society normally buried in darkness: Os povos indígenas, minorias sociais, os povos que vivem à margem da sociedade, longe dos núcleos de poder.  Essential Brasil read.

Brazillionaires (Audible).  Incredible Michael Lewis-style tale of the rise of the 21st century rise (and fall for some) of a billionaire class in Brazil told against the backdrop of corruption, favelas, soccer stadiums, kidnappings and Miami real estate.  Essential Brasil read.

Dancing with the Devil in the City of God: Rio de Janeiro and the Olympic Dream (Brazil book).  Prodigal daughter/Journalist Julianna Barbassa returns to her home city after a childhood spent largely abroad.  Part memoir, part expose, part investigative journalism that covers the national and city politician's ill considered efforts to prepare the city and populace to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. Her thorough reporting brings the reader behind the fabric of Brazilian government and societal machinations, triumphs, and dysfunction. 

xvi-xvii:    The Lula story: rise from poverty in the Nordeste, shining shoes as a child, selling peanuts in the street, then a steelworker and union leader.  A rise above previously entrenched societal hierarchies--founded the Workers' Party.  Ran for President three times and lost prior to 2002.  But then with a reformed and more business friendly he image he won twice. He played the pivotal role in winning the 2016 Olympic bid for Brazil. 

xviii:         Rio as the cidade maravilhosa, the heart of Brazil
xxii:         "God is Brazilian" is a common refrain for Brasileiros to describe good fortune in their country
xxii:        para Ingles ver is an Brazilian expression to describe a facade meant to pull the wool over western eyes.  First used when they signed a international treaty to abolish slavery but kept doing it anyways.  
9:            Escape by helicopter of  Jose Carlos dos Reis Encina aka Escadihna aka Little Ladder, the founder of Commando Vermelho
13:            UPPS (Unidades da Policia Pacificadora) Permanent police bases inside the favelas
15-20:      The history of the Vermelho Commando  
21:            Rio as the cidade partida divided between the morro and the asfalta

Essential Brasil read.

The Invisibles (Brazil book).  Came across this book on a colleague's bookshelf and he kindly let me borrow it.  I liked it so much that I ordered a copy of my own!  A British woman and a Brazilian man fall in love in the 70's and have a child.  Unfortunately, he falls on hard times and ends up jailed under the military dictatorship.  His wife and child flee to England and never return believing him dead...until some 30 years later when a news clip give his son hope his father might still be alive in Rio.  Thus begins a journey for one man's father but also his long lost country--all against the backdrop of a class/tranche of society that often feels invisible--hence the name.   Brasil read.

Related Brazil Posts:

• Brazil Podcasts
• Brazil Youtube Channels
• Brazil Starter Pack
• Brazil Articles and Resources
• Brazil Think Tanks and University Programs
• Brazil Movies, Docs, and TV shows

Brazil YouTube Channels

Youtube Channels

 Speaking Brasilian Language School with Virginia

 

Brasilian Maithe

SpencerSabe

Mundo Sem Fim (Brazil Playlist)

Chris Gringo

Porta Dos Fundos

(this Office style show has some entertaining clips like the one below--also check out the "Brasileiro Tourista" clip)

Paul Cabannes

French stand up comedian that lives and does standup in Portguese--some hilarious bits.

Related Brazil Posts:

• Brazil Podcasts
• Brazil Youtube Channels
• Brazil Starter Pack
• Brazil Articles and Resources
• Brazil Think Tanks and University Programs
• Brazil Movies, Docs, and TV shows

Brazil Podcasts

This blog has long been a repository for sharing information on working as a foreign area officer in embassies and particularly, in Africa.  With my next assignment to Brazil, I've pivoted to focus on that country and am using these posts to organize my research as I prepare myself.  My hope is that this will help others who come behind me.

Here's a link to my post on Brazilian Portuguese youtoube channels: Brazilian Portuguese YouTube Channels

Recommended Podcasts: 

In English:

Explaining Brasil is a phenomenal podcast to hear from native academic experts on current and historical events in Brazil.  It's fun by The Brazilian Report which is an independent media company that publishes journalism in English by Brasilians.

Brazil Unfiltered is hosted by James N. Green, Professor of Brazilian History and Culture at Brown University and the National Co-Coordinator of the U.S. Network for Democracy in Brazil. It's part of the Democracy Observatory, supported by the Washington Brazil Office. While the name WBO sounds like its something funded by the US Government, this is actually a independent think tank-type organization.  The podcast itself is edited and produced by Camilo Rocha in São Paulo.

Americas 360 is produced by the Woodrow Wilson Center and while it's not focused exclusively on Brazil it's a good resource for policy oriented discussions on the western hemisphere.  It has put out about 52 episodes to date (about one every month).  The Wilson Center also has a "Brazil Institute" 

The Wilson Center's 'Brazil Institute' podcast stated in 2020 and has released about a dozen episodes over the last few years.  

The Brazilian Hour is a podcast run out of the Cultural Affairs team at the Brazilian consulate in L.A. It's sponsored by the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs ("Itamaraty") and focuses on conversations with different Brasilian musicians.  

Brazuca Sounds is a superb podcast for music lovers--it's about "Brazilian music of all styles, decades, and genres hosted by Leandro Vignoli."

Em Portuguese:

Carioca Connection features conversations  between a native speaker from Rio (hence the podcast name) and an American learning Portuguese.    

Fala Gringo is a show in easy Brazilian Portuguese to intermediate learners.  Spotify has a beta setting that will scroll closed captions while you listen which is super helpful for those studying Portuguese com mim!
    

Cafe de Manha

Coffee Break Portuguese is a basic one but a great thing to listen to in the car with your crianças  while you are waiting to move to/travel to Brazil!

 

 Resumao Diario is a news cast for daily news.  

Boletim Folha is a news podcast for daily news 

Related Brazil Posts:

• Brazil Podcasts
• Brazil Youtube Channels
• Brazil Starter Pack
• Brazil Articles and Resources
• Brazil Think Tanks and University Programs
• Brazil Movies, Docs, and TV shows

Read "The Fortune Men" to Lives as a Somali in 1950s England (Somalia)

Key Quotes:

Naf yahay orod oo, arligi qabo oo, halkii aad ku ogeyd, ka soo eeg. Oh soul, go run to your homeland and look for it where you knew it. —Ahmed Ismail Hussein, “Hudeidi,” written in detention in French Somaliland,

Remember the green glow of phosphorous, on a bow waved warm tropic night, the wonderful wild roaring forties, when you fought the storm at its height. The scent of the spices off Java, a frigate birds cry to the moon, the sound of the anchor chain surging, when we stayed in that crystal lagoon. No requiem plays at your passing, no friend there to bid you goodbye, who knows that the sea birds are grieving, and perhaps a fool such as I.

Harry “Shipmate” Cooke, excerpt from “The Last Tramp Steamer”

the centre of both of their worlds—four feet five of undiluted hope and promise.

Berlin has low expectations and a worldly acceptance of even the greatest tragedies.

“She uses words like arrows.” “Poetry is war, what else you expect?”

The story she knows well enough from the Torah: sacrifice of a child as small and innocent as them. Isaac’s throat reddened by the blade but miraculously not cut; his silence in Abraham’s arms as, weeping but steadfast, the prophet obeyed God’s command; the ram then sent down at the last moment to replace Isaac and deliver God’s mercy. Both the trial and deliverance celebrated. Diana knows the Muslims tell it a little differently.

“You are the best thing God ever gave me, you and these three boys. I would steal the stars out of the sky for you.”

Mahmood hadn’t really sent any money to Haji Ali, but he had intended to, still intended to, and liked the idea of being the kind of man who did things like that. A just outlaw.

There Will Always Be A Tiger Bay. “Bloody right there will,” she thought. In London, the past year, she had seen There Will Always Be An England scrawled everywhere: on the ruins of bombed-out homes in Victoria, on the plinth of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, on the grey stones of Waterloo Bridge. It was a kind of talisman, a prayer, and it worked, she never entertained the notion that they might lose the war.

The macalim taught Mahmood that becoming a man was like turning wood into charcoal: a process of destruction until something pure and fiercely incandescent emerged. Tears softened the soul while pain toughened it.

the unmistakable war poetry of the Dervish.

Wasn’t it against the very spirit of Islam to cold-bloodedly kill a man when there was still some chance of peace and restitution?

They consider Somalis wild because every man is his own master, but they forget we have one powerful master, Al-Rab, Al-Raheem. We need only our land, Allah will be our sustenance for everything else. If, as it seemed, it was true that the British hated their lives in Somaliland, it would go some way in explaining just how quickly they abandoned the protectorate in ’41, when the Italians invaded from their colony in the south

That’s how they met and how Mahmood fell in love with Berlin. A love platonic and pure, for sure, but weighted by the close scrutiny the boy put the man under. His bearing, his ideas, his silences, his insults, his desires, his hates, Mahmood would have scribbled them all down if he could write, but instead he memorized them and brought them home like birds caught in his snare.

Dualleh the Communist is in London, meeting with his comrade Sylvia Pankhurst. She’s been invited by Haile Selassie to live in Addis Ababa.”

They grew up in a world where the truth was something you needed shielding from.

this steel whale crashing through the waves, had electricity, telephones, lifts, smokeless cookers, flushing toilets, and levers and dials everywhere that did mysterious things. White man magic. It was as if Europeans had remade the world, and they only had to stretch out their hands to bring before them all the wonders of the world.

No way to put out the fire but to burn it!” Those were words to live by.

In Hargeisa, where sunset meant genuine darkness, you could track the slow movement of stars and planets, glittering and pulling you up into a depthless, shifting sea with its coastline of purple, indigo and black stretches. God reminds you through those night skies of how small and insignificant you are, and he speaks to you clearly, his anger and solace tangible in the rain he sends or withholds, the births or deaths he orders, the long, waxy grass he gives or dead, broken earth he carves. The miasma above the prison, above Cardiff, suffocated Mahmood’s faith and separated him from God.

It’s not that Mahmood believes himself important, the past few months have torn away that illusion, but he is extraordinary, his life has been extraordinary. The things he has got away with, the things he has been punished for, the things he has seen, the way that it had once seemed possible for him to bend, with great force, everything to his will. His life was, is, one long film with mobsof extras and exotic, expensive sets. Long reams of film and miles of dialogue extending back as he struts from one scene to another. He can imagine how his movie looks even now: the camera zooming in from above on to the cobblestone prison yard and then merging into a close-up of his thoughtful, upturned face, smoke billowing out from the corner of his dark lips. A colour film, it must be that. It has everything: comedy, music, dance, travel, murder, the wrong man caught, a crooked trial, a race against time and then the happy ending, the wife swept up in the hero’s arms as he walks out, one sun-filled day, to freedom. The image stretches Mahmood’s mouth into a smile.

They will hear that he was a nomad, a chancer, a fighter, a rebel, but not from him, and therefore they will know the price of being all that, the potion and the poison taken together.

“Is it quick?” Mahmood is back in bed, facing the brick wall, taken over by a bone-deep tiredness. “What’s that?” Perkins replies, cracking his stiff spine. “The hanging.” Silence. “Yes,” Wilkinson says finally. “How long it take to die?” “You are out immediately.” “You sure?” “Absolutely.” “Good,” Mahmood says, closing his eyes.

“They want to…to hang me…on my eldest boy’s birthday.”

“And what does a martyr receive?” Mahmood asks, playing teacher. “Jannat ul-Firdaws.” “Yes. The highest paradise.

I have learnt how small and fragile this life is, and how everything in this world, this duniya, is a mirage that evaporates before the eyes. I have tasted the bitterness of injustice. Have you, Sheikh?” Al-Hakimi shakes his head, his pale brown eyes fixed on Mahmood’s mouth. “It’s like swallowing poison.”

He sits in the small bath—his body white apart from some flashes of his real skin—and asks himself what life would have been like if he had been born with skin this white.

Somalis have got the right idea, you wrong someone and you’re forced to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life unless you make amends. You deal with each other face to face. Only cowards live by prisons and cold hangings.”

The wrongful conviction and execution of Mahmood Mattan became the first miscarriage of justice ever rectified by a British court, but the harm it had caused to his family could never be undone.

Read Lion Mountain to See Worlds Collide (Tunisia)

       Lion Mountain is a                                                                                                                novel of collisions  

                                     physical and spiritual,                                      

emotional and political 

urban and rural

French and Tunisian

dictators and villagers

mother and son

Ancient dirt and modernity

Religion and government

Bullets and flesh

Land and soul.

In the story, famed Tunisian author Mustapha Tlili paints a secluded village modeled on Feriana, the home of his youth. It’s an ancient place lost amidst the desert steppes but which has persisted through the centuries--sheltered always under the shoulder of Lion Mountain. He describes “a geography more than physical or human: sacred...In this mystical topography, landmarks determining the rights of each and every individual were perfectly clear.” The diviner of this sacred geography is the equally ancient Horia, a widow, a mother of two sons, a fierce defender who bears all of life’s adversity with a stoicism that is seemingly unbreakable. A woman who daily sees “the horizon of Lion Mountain...and what she admires is undoubtedly pride itself, eternity, even though in Horia’s heart and mind, there is but one name for eternity: God.”


Practically, the story takes the reader from the battlefields of World War II, to continued French rule, to Tunisia’s eventual freedom. It’s noteworthy, though, that for the villagers, freedom means little. If anything, the arrival of political freedom comes as an invasion of their own personal freedom as the villagers are pressured to pledge allegiance to “the party.” The arrival of the outside world sets the novel on a tragic arc as the forces of modernity smother the spiritual life from Horia and her household.
In Lion Mountain, Tlili has penned a tragic requiem for a world that is outwardly modernizing but inwardly decaying, casting out its true believers. As Horia laments in a letter to her son: “You set out in search of wisdom and knowledge; out of sacred duty you have become an exile. Are we not all exiles upon this earth?” This is the question that reflects the author’s own unrooted life as a Tunisan exile of sorts, a French writer, and a career UN bureaucrat who worked in New York City. In Horia’s case, as she refuses to let her sacred geography be ripped apart, we see echoes of the defiance that will become Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution decades later.

*This is of my Reading Around the Continent books--the full list is here.
**See our 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.

Key Quotes:

9 A geography more than physical or human: sacred...In this mystical topography, landmarks determining the rights of each and every individual were perfectly clear.

13 The horizon of Lion Mountain...and what she admires is undoubtedly pride itself, eternity, even though in Horia’s heart and mind, there is but one name for eternity: God.

18 “like the weight of centuries” describing both Horia but also her house. e

80 “Time passes, pain is forgotten, horror is forgotten. Only by remaining silent in the face of horror may we escape it.” This is Horia’s outlook her whole life. This is the opposite of what most society believes about confronting horrors and injustice in life.

134 “All because of that extraordinary ability with which the Lord has endowed him: the ability to forget. To forget. To forgive.” This is Horia’s logic on the only way a human being can enjoy happiness and wisdom.

140 “You set out in search of wisdom and knowledge; out of sacred duty you have become an exile. Are we not all exiles upon this earth? Is not dust our natural abode?” Horia in a letter to her oldest son.

141 “Believe me, nothing brings us distinction in this life, be it here at home or abroad, except our humanity.” Horia to her son as she explains all that matters is how one treats, particularly the weaker ones

Key Notes and Takeaways:

32 Saad’s bravery became legendary when he fought for France but it also became his greatest weakness.

75-6 The key to survival in the village by Lion Mountain has always been an ability to endure hardship, to calibrate their limits. Struggle is just a given fact that exists as central to every villager’s life...all in the shelter of Lion Mountain.

-The Twin Towers were the author’s Lion Mountain as he discusses in an essay

Key References:
https://ips-dc.org/fiction_blossoms_into_tunisias_jasmine_revolution/

https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/Tlili_Mustapha_city.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/16/books/books-of-the-times-a-time-of-the-tyrants-in-a-north-african-village.html

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254965464_Un_apres-midi_dans_le_desert_An_Afternoon_in_the_Desert_review