Robin Sparks

Buying Real Estate In Brazil-Part 3

By Robin Sparks 

Law Enforcement and Personal Safety

Americans inured to our Police State will be amazed at the personal liberty accorded the Brazilian. You can drive from Boa Vista on the Venezuelan border to Bagé in the South without ever having to deal with a damned drug-sniffing cop. You will, however, have crossed 663,846 speed bumps and will be on a second set of springs and fourth set of shocks! Don't even think about making the trip in a Kombi made of "maconha!" 

In the eight times I've traveled (mostly by bus, backpacking, camping by Kombi and Amazon river-boating) through Brazil, I have been robbed at gunpoint once, burgled about three times, had large rocks thrown at me once, been run into by a bicyclist, infected with skin bacteria, Hepatitis A, bichos de pé and intestinal parasites. To me, this seems about par for the course. And I've recovered from everything except the exhilaration. Brazilians generally worry more about personal safety than I do, and the need to deal with security and keys is the curse of Brazil. Tall walls, gates and window grates obstruct access and views, and ferocious dogs are everywhere behind the walls and fences. My property, for example, came with 17 different keys to gates and outside doors alone, which served to drive me insane, In Teré, at least, it is impossible to buy two padlocks keyed alike, and there is no such thing as a combination padlock, let alone a set of four with like combinations. The new Wal-Mart in São Paulo is rumored to have them, though. I am considering importing garage door openers with remote controls and keyless locks, electric strikes and combination locks to use throughout Santa Edwiges.

This past year, there were lots of murders, kidnappings and carjacking in Rio, far more than were registered in Chicago, the Americans' most dangerous big city. 120,000 Cariocas fell ill with dengue fever, spread by mosquitoes that bite in daylight hours, and dozens have died after contracting its hemorrhagic form that kills much as Ebola does. Rio had the hottest summer recorded, with daily temperatures like those of August in Austin, Taxes. (Except that in Rio you can walk to Ipanema and Copacabana beaches, stopping for beer or caipirinha all along the way, while, in Austin, you will die of thirst walking to Barton Springs, where it's illegal anymore to have any real fun once you get there.)

 Language

Brazil's economy is steadily improving, mostly because of privatization, trade liberalization and dollarization of the currency, but it still suffers frequent ups and downs at the hands of its government, George W. Bush, the World Bank and the IMF. Privatization has given Brazilians telephones, ubiquitous cell phones and cheap plane fares for the first time. Trade liberalization has given them computers about as cheap as in the USSA, if not quite the latest models. And dollarization has given them a currency that takes inflation hit of only 2% per month instead of 30%.

Now that Argentina is on the ropes, the tourism industry in Brazil has fallen off a lot. Fake free-marketeer George W. Bush has just imposed punitive tariffs on imports of Brazilian steel. I read in O Globo, the Rio newspaper, that 1% of Brazilian families earn above R$2,193 per month, while only 10% earn above R$570 per month. The minimum wage is R$200 per month, and lots of people find themselves unemployed at that wage. Unfortunately, the prospects of laborite presidential candidate Lula are improving, threatening to make things far worse (more on this later).

Language

Brazilians speak Portuguese with various accents, all-differing from that of Portugal. Their language, much like American English, gladly accepts neologisms, celebrates the native tongue in clever and varied world-class music, cultivates slang, freely imports foreign words and respects and dominates the dialect of the old moribund colonial master. If you nowadays buy a book written in or translated into Portuguese, it will probably be one published in Rio or São Paulo.

I have to say: the importance of learning some Portuguese can never be over-emphasized, but I do have some language-challenged monolingual friends, male and female, who have never let a false-friend or malapropism stand in the way of getting STDs in Brazil. Good language skills are necessary when dealing with government bureaucracies, but you can hire a translator or a bi-lingual lawyer or real-estate agent if you do not speak Portuguese and have no bilingual friends to help you.

Politics

The politics of Brazil is Soccer. Brazilians hate to debate and are congenital pacifists. They did (belatedly) enter WWII against the Axis, but only to gain license to persecute their German citizens and expropriate their wealth, in much the same way we Americans treated our Japanese citizens -- history both disgraceful and true. But nowadays Brazil -- like the USSA -- is a nation of immigrants that is likewise learning to esteem the treasure represented by past and present immigrants. One distinction is that we Anglos killed off almost all our natural treasure with smallpox blankets and buffalocide, while the Portuguese miscegenated (and maintained legions of slaves until the 1880's) instead, resulting in the spectrum of races that is sure to surprise my fellow Americans on their first visit to Brazil. I enjoy discussing politics with my mostly socialist/laborite Brazilian friends. They remind me of the Soviets we all knew and loved: perpetually denigrating American materialism and cultural hegemony while racing off to Kentucky Fried Chicken and Wal-Mart (and, like the Soviets, Brazil has faster women, harder liquor, older music, less money.) The more hi-tech, multi-lingual and well traveled a Brazilian is, the more capitalist. They also remind me of the Italians I got to know in Italy: whether fascist, capitalist, socialist or commie, we always agreed:

1. All governments are mostly illegitimate and corrupt.
2. The less you cooperate with government the better.
3. Only pay those taxes you can't avoid paying.
4. Seek pleasure and avoid pain or work.
5. Never fight fellow humans in a government war.
6. Don't bother to vote unless you have to (in Brazil, you have to).
7. True politics is local, and neighborhood, friends and family count for everything.

Racism

Brazilians refer to all foreigners as "gringos." I still remember the very black Colombian teenager I met on an Amazon riverboat trip who couldn't get used to being called "gringo" by the Brazilians. He knew what "gringo" meant in Colombia, and the term there was never meant to include black Latinos!

Brazilians are racists like the rest of us, of course, the chief difference being that folks of various colors freely mix on the street and often intermarry in Brazil. We Americans are familiar with the common rules: people of color are basically not allowed in high political office, corporate leadership, film-making, haute couture or cuisine, universities, science, engineering or math. In compensation, they are allowed to dominate in sports, prison populations and early obituaries (and, uniquely in America, state-sanctioned homicide). And, of course, they are treated equally when it comes to being taxed to support the grand public universities and national parks they will never visit. Both nations see to it that the average man of color works hard all his life, only to die just before qualifying for social security benefits, which then go to numerous white widows who live to 87 and who haven't earned a paycheck in all their pampered lives. 

In both our nations, public universities are wide open only to white boys and girls, but paid for equally by persons of color. Brazil, thank Darwin, is frantically privatizing and, if it continues, may someday get to the point where white folks will at least pay extra for the privileges that are denied their compatriots of color. 

Where Brazil has privatized (as in the USSA), in telecommunications, computers and other consumer goods, folks of color do not subsidize the white folks, as they still do in higher education, health care, national parks and retirement. Count on government, everywhere and always, to arbitrarily choose the winners and losers in life.

NEWS FLASH: Brazil just this year instituted "affirmative-action" in public university admissions, a policy we Americans have already suffered through and lately rejected, but only after having dumbed-down a couple generations of our kids.

Religion

The national religion of Brazil is Samba. Brazil -- "under populated" with only 170 million people -- is the largest "Roman Catholic" country in the world. If the Pope's Catholic, however, they sure as hell aren't! In 15 years of getting to know Brazil, I have never seen a Brazilian friend or acquaintance of mine attend a church service! (Maybe because I tend to meet Brazilians in bars and on nudist beaches?)

While many, mostly in the Northeast, practice Candomble (kin to Cuba's Santería) or mix it with the moribund Romanism that was forced upon them, the fastest growing religions are those of the Holy Rollers, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists and Mormons (same as in the USSA) -- I hope this represents nothing more than a necessary false step on the road from Roman Enslavement to Scientific Enlightenment!

Sex & Nudity

SDR&R are alive and well in Brazil, thank Darwin again. The Brazilian rules for sex seem strange to a gringo, and I really don't profess any special qualification to comment on the topic. I observe that Brazilian men do seem to celebrate machismo, though not as much as their Spanish-heritage neighbors. Brazilians are slimmer than Americans, by choice and necessity, and they place more value on a nicely turned ass (on the male or female) than on big knockers. A Brazilian woman, quite the expert in the old game, will humor and pretend to exalt the male. And all the kids seem to flirt, starting at the age of 6 or 7. In Brazil, as in America, you can walk up to any woman on the street and ask her almost any crazy question, and she'll answer! (In Buenos Aires, in contrast, you will have to marry a woman just to learn her name. A single man could seldom feel more at home than with a stranger in Brazil; he could never feel more lonely than on a crowded public street in central Buenos Aires, a city of 12m real strangers.)

Brazilian machismo apparently affects male behavior at the nudist beach, of which there are several in Brazil, from Tambaba in Paraíba to Praia do Pinho in Santa Catarina. Although Brazilian beaches must be open to all by federal fiat, these Atlantic beach resorts uniformly segregate the single Brazilian male from single women and mixed couples, with the justification that the Brazilian men usually just show up to stand around and stare. Having enjoyed all the Brazilian nudist beaches as well as some in Austin, Taxes, Côte d'Azur and Munich, Germany, I say, "So what?" 

Brazilians have a different theory of sex, however, not having had to put up with the Victorians, Puritans and Fundamentalists we've all known and learned to hate. During Carnaval, they gladly suffer bare boobs, transvestites, temporary homosexuality and car-hood fornication. In America, you can only begin to come close to this public sex fun during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and then only if you're into beads.

Smoking & Pets

Brazil is, unfortunately, one of those countries where you can still inflict your cigarette smoke on the public most anywhere you please, though not legally on buses, trains, planes or in theaters. But, unlike Ireland, where smoking ruins the essential pub experience, in Brazil the weather is so dependably good that you can almost always sit outside at a pub or restaurant to avoid the smoke! Except in the three southern states in Winter, where it snows in June, July and August.

There are lots of neighborhood dogs, fenced-in and feral, but almost no cats. At least Brazilian dogs have figured out that they are not allowed into the house.

Cultural Differences

Brazil is a civilized country, where you can sell, buy and consume booze anywhere, 24/7. In Austin, Taxes, the cultural center of the USSA, we can generally consume alcohol anywhere in public. But Austin has only two movie theaters where you can eat pizza and drink beer while watching the Ten Commandments or the Taxes Chainsaw Massacre. In Brazil, you can watch the same movies (though uncut, in English with subtitles) and buy beer and popcorn in the theater lobby at -- get this! -- regular street prices. Brazilians buy fresh food daily at the market on their way home from work, much as we Americans used to do in Chicago of the 50s and in Germany of the 70s. Oooh, the fresh baguettes, cheese, tomatoes and bananas! I think that most Americans have never tasted a tomato or a banana. Gardeners will know what I mean.

In Brazil, you greet and say farewells with lots of hugging and kissing. "Make yourself at home" ("fica a vontade") is the rule of hospitality. Men's sex organs are not mutilated at birth there, as they routinely are in the USSA, and breast-feeding often continues into a baby's fourth year. Brazilians are slender, owing to their great diet of black beans and rice and their penchant (and need) for walking miles every day, and they don't much appreciate the fat American body. Yet, Brazil is the cosmetic surgery and liposuction capital of the world and the rate of caesarian births approaches 85% -- reportedly the highest in the world -- in cities with nice golf courses.

Still, whenever I have to return to America, I imagine myself as Woody Allen in The Sleeper remarking, "Now, why am I returning to a country whose only cultural amenity is you can toss your used toilet paper right in the bowl?"

The Law of the Land

Brazil does have its share of funny laws, recognizable to other Latins. You can be sued for "moral insult" if you refer to some broad, especially some poor soul's wife, as the "bitch" that she is. And common-law marriage is alive and well, so we men still have to watch out, like we did in pre-1980 Taxes. Indeed, it would be common for a Brazilian man to cohabit with his lover, the mother of his second kid, while he supports his legal wife and his first kid who both live in the house of his mother nearby. (It costs little to marry but a lot to divorce.) The schmuck will have to support all his kids financially until they finish their university education, with some compensation in that the bloodsucker probably won't run off to California to keep him from visiting the kids. However, if a guy catches his wife in bed with her lover, he can shoot them both dead with few consequences. Fair enough.

Brazilian workers are afflicted by the dual plagues of compulsory social security and compulsory health insurance. (As is true of the Canadians and Germans as well, no Brazilian software engineer or physician ever wins an Olympic medal, because any who can run, jump or swim are living and working in the USSA.)

As a foreign resident, you will fortunately not have to participate much in their socialist system. If you buy a car, however, you will have to carry liability insurance, but the minimum coverage, thank Darwin, costs very little -- though still an infinite multiple of the $0 annual premium I would be required to pay as a resident of New Hampshire, Wisconsin or Tennessee!

Instead of having to run off to some Notary Public every time you need to sign a will, sell real estate, or grant someone power of attorney, Brazil provides for signature verification. You just work up some cool and irreproducible signature and pay a couple of bucks to have it recorded at a private agency downtown. After that, just sign away. Cool.

Right up there with religion, marriage and circumcision, insurance has to be one of the worst afflictions a person can suffer, and Brazilians, like 60% of our Hispanic drivers in El Paso, seem to get the idea. While wary of petty crime, kidnapping and car jacking, Brazilians do not go out of their way to avoid reasonable risk. For my house in Teresópolis, I need no homeowners' insurance, since are no ambulance chasers or courts that will force me to fence in my swimming pool or turn away all the neighborhood kids who want to swim or play soccer unattended. Brazilian kids are free to view T&A, flirt away, drink a guaraná with adults in any bar, and walk on high

decks without railings, climb trees, play on teeter-totters and diving boards, and cruise around downtown unattended. In Brazil, an adult can buy a child-seat for a car or cheap ladder not labeled for idiots, or a cheap lawnmower with no dead-man's throttle. Ward Cleaver and I fully understand. Other Americans have long since forgotten.

Brazil today is simply the same kid heaven I knew growing up on Chicago's South Side. Parents, relatives, neighbors and strangers include all kids in all activities and they cooperate to discipline them and tend to their welfare. A modern American kid, in contrast, is isolated, protected, coddled, never spanked, driven to school and soccer practice, and protected from SDR&R, publicly nursing mothers, internet porn, and failure to graduate with the rest of the class. Of course he is prohibited from even thinking about ever talking to a stranger.

It can be said that a child growing up here in America faces so few risks that rearing a kid here is a form of child abuse

Doing Laundry

Life in Brazil means friendship and partying and is generally a hell of a lot more fun, not to mention torment-, traffic-, and hassle-free, than life in the USSA. The gringo tourist encounters two major hurdles, not appreciated by the typical Brazilian: laundering clothes and changing dollars, as already mentioned.

In Brazil, there is no such thing as our standard public Laundromat, where you walk in, choose a washer, stuff in quarters, go for a brew or fall in love, and leave with clean, dry clothes for around $4. Some big Brazilian cities come real close; there you can find a Laundromat (like Lav-e-lev) where you will pay about R$8 to wash about 5 kilos. If you want the attendant to transfer your clothes from the washer to the dryer, you will pay an extra R$4. Most of the time in Brazil you are faced with this: you pay, per piece, at a rate that depends on whether the item falls under the category of sheets, towels, slacks, shirts, panties or socks. The attendant first dumps your dirty linens out on the counter, and then sorts through them, panty-by-panty, sock-by-sock. A gringo might find this practice barbaric, and OSHA would never approve. Definitely worse than bikini waxing with duct tape.

It was somewhere in the Amazon that we paid the most to get our laundry cleaned; there the attendant sewed a tiny tag on every sock and panty, so as to identify them when thrown in together with the clothes of others, we imagined. My sister still laughs when she encounters her old socks with their tiny tags. Brazilians wash everything -- hands, dishes, and clothes -- in cold water. Get used to it. If you want hot water, order tea or coffee, or take a shower.

Opening a Bank Account

The first verse I recognize from the old German tune: you can't get a job without a work permit, and you can't get a work permit without a residence permit. OK, so what do I need for a residence permit? A job, and after you find one, come back any day between 11:59 am and noon to apply for your residence permit.

The second verse is: you can't buy property in Brazil or open a bank account without a CPF (tax number). So how do I get a CPF? Just show residency, evidenced by property ownership, bank accounts, etc. A puzzle wrapped in an enigma -- and I had to get that CPF before that dog got my cash.

My good buddy and new neighbor, Hermann, helped me through all this. He's an old hand at buying, selling and renting out real estate and had maintained a retail shop in Teré for years. So we went downtown, where everything is as it should be and indeed was in the USSA of the 1950s: banks, bakeries, pharmacies, hardware stores, newspaper stands, bars, restaurants and government offices -- all within a block or two of each other! Embarking on a soon-to-become-familiar routine, we bought a newspaper, drank beer and caipirinhas, and planned our day. First we went to the Federal Tax Bureau to secure my CPF, so I could open a bank account and buy the property. They said I had to go to a bank, fill out the application form, pay the small fee and return with the receipt. Sounds real simple, so we sat down to another beer and caipirinhas. Then we're off to the stately Bank of Brazil, where, first day, we wait a half hour to find out their computers are down, so, what else? -- we just sat down and had beer and caipirinhas. Second day, we again wait a half hour to find out their computers were still down, so .... Third day, the computers work and they check out the rules to find out that one of the prerequisites for a CPF is having a clean voter's card. This is important in Brazil, because the law says you have to vote, or you will be fined and barred from certain activities, like attending parades and checking out library books. Of course, the Bank of Brazil bureaucrat concludes that since it's not possible for a foreigner to vote, he can't get a CPF! So we gave up for that day and just sat down ....

Just a typical minor setback in Brazil. Next day, after newspaper, beer and caipirinhas, we returned to the Federal Tax Bureau, where a nice chap informed us that, just the night before, a gringo had got his application by going to the Banco Económico -- no problem, man. So, after beer and caipirinhas, we head off to that bank, where we are immediately directed to the busy manager, who not only gives us the form, but fills it all out except for my signature and puts us first in line at the window to pay the fee! $2 fee paid, we return the half block to the Federal Tax Bureau, hand in the application, and I get a provisional CPF, valid for marrying, buying property and getting those library books. So we really celebrate&..

CIVIL RIGHTS DIRECTIVE: If you kill a USSA bureaucrat, especially if not justified, you will get the death penalty, after first being quarantined and tortured in Guantánamo. But if you first flee to Brazil and manage to produce a child there (or already have one there, or claim to), you will not be extradited to stand trial in the USSA! First, because Brazil will not cooperate with American government killers to extradite anyone facing the death penalty (nor will any enlightened country!) and, secondly, having a Brazilian kid protects you from extradition even in the case of a lesser offense. And, not being a Brazilian, you won't even have to vote! (The Great Train Robber knew and appreciated this fact for many years before he lost his mind and voluntarily returned from Rio to England. They say he'd missed tossing his toilet paper in the bowl.) American bureaucrat decimation is one sure way, which neither Cicero nor I will recommend, to gain Brazilian residency without having to endure all the red tape.