What is depressing about “Opinion” to North Americans in the audience is not its vague “message” (considered daringly left in Rio) or its amateurishness (that is rather endearing). It is the sudden, sad, uncanny feeling of déjà vu: it is all so reminiscent of college plays in the early thirties with Kentucky miners, clenched fists and awkward stances.
Other plays go on as usual. Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” is one, and “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” has been running a long time. There is Goldoni’s “Mirandolina,” and, more typically, plays like “The Moral of Adultery,” “Let’s Fall in Love in Cabo Frio” and “The Nuder the Better.” In general, the theater in Rio is far behind the other arts, and acting is in a sort of historical “pocket,” miraculously preserved from about 1910.
The question always in the air is: When are elections to be held? At first they were to be this year; now they have been postponed until 1966, and no one knows the date, or year, for sure. Carlos Lacerda is the only Presidential candidate so far. Ex-President Kubitschek is in self-imposed exile — mostly in Paris — with his political rights taken away for 10 years.
If his followers could find a way of getting around that, he would probably be only too glad to run again. Although his enemies blame the worst of the inflation on Kubitschek’s industrial-progress-at-any-cost policy, and his building of Brasília, and believe his Government to have been hopelessly graft ridden, nevertheless they agree he did get things done. And his many partisans, particularly those who grew rich during his term, are eager to get him back.
Pro-Kubitschek propaganda has reached a height of absurdity. Poor, poor Kubitschek, it goes, he lives in a small apartment in Paris, he drives his own car, and — worst deprivation of all to the family-minded Brazilians — he hasn’t seen his latest grandchild yet. His enemies have given this movement the very Cariocan name of “Operation Coitadinho,” a splendid example of the diminutive of coitado, “poor little one,” one of the most frequent exclamations on the lips of the soft-hearted, but ironical, Brazilians.
Many people were disappointed when President Castelo Branco announced that he would not run for a full term. They had hoped he would, or at least felt it was too early for him to make such a decision. He has almost no demagogic appeal for the masses, and he has not attempted to cultivate it. He is a sad man, still mourning his wife, who died the year before he became President, and he works hard at the almost impossible job he was reluctant to accept.
He has always been respected; now there seems to be a growing admiration and fondness for him. His unfailing dignity, refusal to play politics or make promises and fine speeches, his preference for appealing to law in emergencies, rather than to emotions — all are something new in Brazil, and a welcome relief after the hysterical atmosphere of the past few years.
The press is free, if wildly inaccurate and frequently libelous, and political arrests, which flourished after last spring’s coup, have almost ceased. Talk about police and army brutality and torture has died down, and one can only hope that what Brazilians felt was a national disgrace has been really cracked down on, hard, at last.
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Inflation produces an atmosphere unlike any other. It is felt even in the way money is handled: tired old bills wadded into big balls. Bus conductors neither give nor expect exact change any more; there is no change. Shopkeepers give the customer’s child a piece of candy, instead. Taxi fares have gone up so many times that the meters are several adjustments behind. At the moment, the fare is twice what the meter says, in the day-time. After dark, it is more or less what the driver says.
In Rio, the inflation has almost lost its power to shock; at least, people no longer talk about it constantly the way they did a year or so ago. The minimum wage has gone up and up, but never quite enough. The poor take the inflation more stoically than any other class, since they have never had any savings to lose, anyway. Some of the rich are undoubtedly getting richer. It is the very small middle class that feels the pinch the most. All eyes are fixed on the movements of the dollar, as on a sort of North Star, and the mood might be described as numb, but slightly more hopeful than it was.
For the first time, the Brazilian Government is adhering to a scheme of economic planning; there has been a renewed flow of foreign capital and the pace of inflation has certainly slowed. The prices of gasoline and bread are way up, because the Government has taken away their former impossibly high subsidies. Fighting inflation has to be done slowly and cautiously in Brazil. Because of the ignorance and the high illiteracy rate — and the longstanding skepticism as well — no strong measure against inflation can be explained to the people. The Government does not dare stop public-works projects, even though they are draining the Treasury; that would be considered too “hard.” Wages and prices will go on rising yet a while, although they are supposed to level off this year.
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But in spite of the shabbiness, the shortages, the sudden disconcerting changes for the worse in standard products and the inflation, life in Rio has compensations. Carnival is gone, but next will come St. John’s Day, the second-best holiday of the year; then St. Peter’s Day. For highbrows, a large exhibition of contemporary French painting will arrive in July, in honor of the quatercentenary, and later Spain is sending a ballet and an opera by de Falla. There is also to be a series of concerts of the compositions of Father José Mauricio, the 18th-century Rio de Janeiran priest-composer.
Far more enduring and important than these small treats, in what is now essentially a provincial city, is another compensation for those who have to put up with the difficulties of life in Rio. One example will make it plain. Recently a large advertisement showed a young Negro cook, overcome by her pleasure in having a new gas stove, leaning across it toward her white mistress, who leaned over from her side of the stove as they kissed each other on the cheek.
Granted that the situation is not utopian, socially speaking, and that the advertisement is silly — but could it have appeared on billboards, or in the newspapers, in Atlanta, Ga., or even in New York? In Rio, it went absolutely unremarked on, one way or the other.
1965
Gallery Note for Wesley Wehr
I have seen Mr. Wehr open his battered brief-case (with the broken zipper) at a table in a crowded, steamy coffee-shop, and deal out his latest paintings, carefully encased in plastic until they are framed, like a set of magic playing cards. The people at his table would fall silent and stare at these small, beautiful pictures, far off into space and coolness: the coldness of the Pacific Northwest coast in the winter, its different coldness in the summer. So much space, so much air, such distances and loneliness, on those flat little cards. One could almost make out the moon behind the clouds, but not quite; the snow had worn off the low hills almost showing last year’s withered grasses; the white line of surf was visible but quiet, almost a mile away. Then Mr. Wehr would whisk all that space, silence, peace, and privacy back into his brief-case again. He once remarked that he would like to be able to carry a whole exhibition in his pockets.