Brasyl (53 page)

The Iguapá nation had passed, the children's boats melted into
the mist. Caixa had rerurned the cross to its figurehead place in the
canoe; the paddlers pushed out. Waitacá gave a cry; an object
running the gut. For an instant Falcon thought it was a capsized
canoe, a great war boat. It cleared the run into slack water. The
paddlers hauled it in. An angel face, blank yet smiling, gazed up at
the fast-running gray mist. Its hands held a three-bladed sword; an
angel fallen from the pinnacles of Nossa Senhora da Varzea. Falcon
pushed it out into the stream, and the rippling water running fast
and chattering over the stones took it and carried it away.

Abia
: Uninitiated novice.

Agogo
: Twin-horned metal
percussion instrument used in candomble and capoeira.

Aîuri
: Tribal council.

Alabe
: First drummer and song
leader; male office in candomblé.

Aldeia
: Missionary Indian
village, usually Jesuit.

Alva
: Skin-color descriptor:
pure white, considered rare in Brazil.

Amaci
: Herbal infusion used for
purification.

Assentamento
: Assemblage of
objects, herbs, and water fed and venerated as the conjunction of a
person and orixá.

Axé
: Transformative
power: magic, the force that makes things happen.

Baiana
: From the state of
Bahia, latterly come to mean the quasi-traditional costume of women
from Salvador.

Baile
: "Dance," used
in Rio in the sense of an impromptu street sounddsystem party, giving
rise to the popular carioca genre of "baile-funk."
Constantly evolving.

Bairro
: Official city district.

Barracão
: Main
ceremonial room of the terreiro. Bateria: The percussion section of a
samba school

Bauru
: Paulistano hot
ham-and-cheese sandwich, often in sweet bread.

Berimbau
: Stringed instrument
of African origins, a bow attacked to a resonator gourd, used in
capoeira.

Bicha
: Literally "bitch,"
but used as "queen."

Bolar
: To "roll" in
the saint-a spontaneous possession trance and common precursor to
initiation as an iao.

Branca-melada
: Skin-color
subtype. Honey-colored.

Caboclo
: Mixed Indian/white,
very much an Amazonian underclass. The term is mildly derogatory in
contemporary Brazil. See also manzeluco.

Cafezinho
: "Small coffee,"
served strong, small, sweet, and on the go.

Caiçara
: Riverside slave
stockade.

Camarinha
: Inmost, holiest
chamber in a terreiro, reserved for the mae do santo and her consort.
Also, in colonial Brazil, a town council.

Candomblé
:
Afro-Brazilian religion based around the veneration of orixás.

Captaincy
: Division of Colonial
Brazil; a segment of land bordered by two lines that ran parallel to
the equator inland until they struck the Line ofTordesilhas, the
demarcation between Portuguese and Spanish terrritories. Ruled by a
donatory.

Catadores
: Informal garbage
collectors.

CBF
: The Brazilian Soccer
Confederation, the sport's governing body. Chopperia: Bar selling
draft beer.

Cidade Maravilhosa
: "Marvelous
City"; also, Rio's city "anthem."

Conselho Ultramarino
: The crown
council that ran colonial Brazil.

Corda vermelha
: "Red
cord"; the highest level of capoeira, analogous to a black belt
in other martial arts disciplines.

Cor-de-canela
:
Cinnamon-colored: one of 134 skin types recognized and delineated in
Brazil.

Crente
: "Believer"—member
of anyone of Brazil's many evangelical Chrisstian sects.

Dende
: Palm tree whose fruit
and oil are important in food offering to the orixás.

Descanso
: "Chilling"
on arrival at the terreiro—cooling the head.

Doces
: Cakes, sweets. Cake is
commonly served for breakfast in Brazil.

Donatory
: Quasi-feudal fief
holder of a colonial Brazilian captaincy.

Ebó
: Offering of
sacrifices to orixás.

Ebomi
: Terreiro elder,
initiated for more than seven years.

Egbé
: Community based in
a terreiro.

Ekedi
: A usually female
terreiro officer who does not trance but aids those ridden by the
orixás.

Engenho
: A sugar mill,
including the land, buildings, slaves, and animals that worked it.

Entrada
: Slave-taking
expedition.

Enxofrada
: Skin-color subtype
of pallid yellow, jaundiced.

Escaupil
: Kapok-padded leather
or cloth armor worn by bandeirantes, considered impervious to shot.

Exu
: Lord of the crossroads and
entrances, messenger between gods and humans, dynamic principle.
Often found at the entrance to the terreiro, and characterized as a
typical Rio malandro.

Farofa
: Manioc flour, often
fried in butter for a nurty flavor.

Favela
: Unofficial Brazilian
shantytown.

Fazenda
: Country estate for
coffee or sugar, or a cattle ranch.

Feijoada
: Great dish of Rio, a
long-simmered cassoulet of pork bits with Brazilian sausage and other
thrifty cuts. In Rio, always made with feijaos (black beans), though
pinto beans are commonly used in the rest of Brazil.

Feitor
: Trader or small
industry owner; "factor."

Fidalgo
: Portuguese knightly
class.

Furaçao
: Hurricane.

Furo
: A cross-channel between
two main river channels.

Futebol
: the beautiful game,
real
football. Known in United States as soccer.

Futsal
: Five-a-side soccer
played in a walled arena with a smaller, heavier, ground-hugging
ball. Very fast, very popular, very good.

Gafieira
: Dance hall/public
dance. Paulistano equivalent of a carioca baile.

Gatinha
: Young vivacious woman.

Gelosias
: Wooden shutters on
the upper windows of colonial houses.

Guarana
: Native Brazilian berry
with high levels of caffeine, made into a series of stimulant
products, including very popular, very sweet soft drinks.

Ianques
: Literal
transliteration of "Yankees."

Iâo
: Initiate of a
typical syncretist Afro-Brazilian religion.

Igapó
: Terrain
occasionally flooded by a river.

Jacaré
: The cayman.

Jogo
: "Game" or match
of capoeira. Unlike other martial arts, one "plays"
capoeira, emphasizing its street-smart, malandro aesthetic.

Kibe
: Delicious deep-fried
meatballs of Lebanese extraction, often found at breakfast.

Ladeira
: Steep "ladder"
like alley in a favela. Usually traversable only on foot or by
moto-taxi.

Lanchonete
: Lunch-stand/small
cafe.

Lavrador de cana
: Small-scale
colonial cane-grower, owning at the most half a dozen slaves.

Lingua geral
: "General
language"; a simplified version of the languages of the Tupi
peoples used as a universal tongue. In eighteenth-century Brazil it
was more widely spoken than Portuguese.

Loira
: White with blond hair.

Maconha
: Marijuana.

Mae do santo
: Candomble
priestess.

Malandragem
: The entire
capoeira philosophy of malicia and jeito (qv) as a theory of life.

Malicia
: Capoeira term meaning
"street cunning/warrior smarts"—the abillity to see
and rake an unfair advantage if one is presented.

Maloca
: Multigeneration Indian
house.

Mameluco
: Alternative
expression for caboclo, usually in military service.

Moqueça
: Bahian (usually
seafood) dish based around coconut milk and dende.

Morbicha
: Headman of a village.

Morena-fechada
: Very dark,
almost mulatta.

Morro
: Steep hill
characteristic of Rio.

Mulatinho
: Lighter-skinned
white-negro.

Orixá
: A god, force of
nature, divine ancestor, archetype—all of these and subtly much
more; the expression of the divine in Bahian candomble.

Pae do santo
: Candomble priest.

Pão de queijo
:
Cheese-bread. A Brazilian obsession.

Paulista
: Inhabitant of São
Paulo (state).

Paulistano/a
: Inhabitant of São
Paulo (city).

Patúa
: Amulet worn to
ward against evil spirits in capoeira.

PCC
: Main Paulistano criminal
gang. In Rio the favelas are divided between the ADA (Amigos dos
Amigos) and the CV-Commando Verrmelho, or Red Command.

Peças
: Literally
"pieces"; old colonial term for slaves.

Pelourinho
: Slave whipping
post, also that area of Salvador in which it was set up.

Pernambucano
: From the state of
Pernambuco in northeastern Brazil.

Pichação
: Tag
graffiti; in Brazil usually done with a paint roller.

Pistoleiro
: Hired gunman.

Preto
: Black-as in color or
person. Racial terms are used more freely and with less political
freight in Brazil than in the north.

Puta
: Whore, most commonly used
in the popular sense of "bitch."

Reconçavo
: The
early-settled area around the Bahia de Todos os Santos, the heart of
colonial Brazil.

Reducione/reduction
: A group of
native villages or aldeias grouped imo a working collective under
Jesuit authority.

Reveillon
: Mass beach ceremony
in Rio at New Year when flowers are offered to Yemanja. Possibly even
more popular than carnaval, certanly less commercialized.

Roda
: The circle within which
capoeira takes place.

Rodovia
: Expressway.

Rodoviaria
: Bus station.

Sampa
: Paulistano name for
their city.

Seleção
: The
Brazil international soccer team.

Serrao
: The semiarid region in
northeastern Brazil.

Soldado
: Soldier—in the
gangster sense.

Taipa
: Brazilian mud adobe.

Tanga
: Originally a triangle of
fabric to cover the genitals of either sex, now a bikini style.

Telenovela
: Insanely poplar,
insanely badly made, and insanely trashy übersoap; the mainstay
of Brazilian television.

Terra firme
: High forest almost
never flooded.

Terreiro
: "Church" or
temple of candomble and urn banda-usually a converted urban or
suburban house within a sacred enclosure.

Travesti
: Transvestite.

Uakti
: Legendary Amazonian
forest monster.

Umbanda
: Rio/São Paulo
remix of Bahian candomble, usually practiced by whites.

Vaqueiro
: Cattle rancher.

Varzea
: Flood-plain zone of a
river, regularly flooded.

Yemanja
: Yoruban deity; "Mother
whose children are like fishes," absorbed into candomble as a
sea-goddess, who is venerated in a (recent) Mass celebration on the
beaches of Rio at New Year.

Daniela Prodohl, Paulo Prodohl, and Cleusa Nascimento for help with
the Portuguese and rowdy arguments over doces on fine points of
idiom. Any egregious errors are entirely my own.

Zack Appleton for assistance with biofuels.

Heidi Hopeametsa and Syksy Rasanen for lunch, capoeira, and physics.

SELECTED READING

The intellectual godfather of this book is David Deursch's
The
Fabric of Reality
. A few years old, but one of the most
intellectually thrilling books I have read.

Books in English about Brazil are surprisingly hard to find: there
are ten times as many about Cuba, a country you could lose in the
Itaipu Dam, as there are abour Brazil. Nevertheless, here are a few
volumes I found special.

John Hemming:
Red Gold
. Peerless, beautiful, and grim, this
is the definitive history of the Brazilian Indians.

David G. Campbell:
A Land of Ghosts
. A beautifully written,
humane account of the ecology and peoples of western Amazonia.

Robert M. Levine and John J. Crocitti:
The Brazil Reader
.
Invaluable for the 134 types of skin color alone.

Euclides da Cunha:
Rebellion in the Backlands (Os Sertões)
. Classic, stunning story of the nineteenth-century Canudos uprising
and its brutal suppression.

Alex Bellos:
Futebol
. The
Guardian
's Brazil
correspondent has produced the best book about the beautiful game in
Brazil and the essential guide about how to be Brazilian. I freely
admit sampling his definitive account of the Fateful Final. Not a
dull page in it.

Peter Robb:
A Death in Brazil
. Fascinating journalistic study
of political corruption in the northeast, but also a history, a
travel book, and a cookbook as well.

Siri: "No Tranco"

Suba: "Tantos Desejos" (Nicola Come remix)

Samba de Coco Raizes de Arcoverde: "Gode Pavao"

Acid X: "Uma Geral"

Bebel Gilberto: "Tanto Tempo"

Suba: "Na Neblina"

Fala: "Propozuda R'n'Roll"

Salome de Bahia: "Taj Mahal" (Club Mix)

Céu (feat. Pyroman): "Malemôlencia"