Booming Brazil – a well-kept secret
I’ve been in Brazil for three days now, but only just woken up to the reality that the humungous city of Sao Paolo is only the beginning of it.
This morning I broke out, and we drove more than 400 kilometres west – a distance, well, heading from London to well past Newcastle.
Let me tell you, when you look at a map of Brazil we had hardly moved a centimetre.
We came out here to look at the miracle of sugar cane, an organism which is capable of being spun into plastic, distilled into alcohol fuel for cars, and the waste used for cattle feed and for fuelling power stations.
But more of that on Channel 4 News next week. What struck me once we escaped the dense urban sprawl into the Brazilian countryside was the high quality highway (private toll road), the apple-pie clean verges, and the verdant green.
And everywhere abundant farmland – of course, also in private ownership. No squatters here.
This is where you begin to see Brazil as the bread basket of the Americas, if not the world.
Brazil is the best-kept secret, and though aficionados brag about the samba, this is also an economy on the boom. And we haven’t even set foot in Rio yet.
Tomorrow to the Amazon! All this ahead of Channel 4 News, beamed live from Brazil all next week.
Related posts:
- Brazil: a country at an environmental pivot
- Boos from Brazil: Sao Paulo by night
- The Tory conference – full of known unknowns
- In the midst of a tectonic shift in the new world order
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SHow Jon snow in his loose undershorts ont he live broadcast; Hoping hes not jetlagged
Brazil, like all latin countries, has corruption rooted in its DNA. Is the Catholic Church linked in any way? The Vatican is a State, smaller than the London borough of Camden. Yet this tiny, past and present World Super Power, hides so much evil that not even the much practiced theory of Hell, could contain. The love of Christ, has been the
“peaceful” weapon they have used for the past 2000 years. The Vatican happens to sit very comfortably, inside the “Eternal City” and guess what? Italy is a latin country.
adzmundo CND
Big Booms in Brazil
Bust Looms Large in Basil (don)
UK Tax the taxpayers who
Support the benefit culture ,
who have more children
who claim more benefit
who then study ‘benefit culture’ in education
that elects a Government that supports failure and attracts the disposessed.
Governmental meltdown
There are a serious number of UK taxpayers that have exclusively paid tax, tax, corporation, inheritance, VAT, airporte tax, green tax..for what..
To be told in the last 24 hours that the Bank of England passed more money to the failing banks……. secretly ..yes…. under the radar … yes..who pays.?? yes you, me BUT not those that claim benefit and cannot be bothered to upskill or learn to speak English..
Pass me the Brazilian dream !
Cheap fuel, Toyota 4 X 4 , weapons of violence obviously and all the other benefits, land freedom and no taxes.
What a regressive country we have become.. a real life Disney World’ visited by money spending people from the rest of the world, that visit and depart and say how cute..
Cute taxes.. no stupid government stupid.
Warning – I’ve just been flashed a warning .too many characters…in a ??!!
Thanks Jon Snow
I’m very happy , because the world starts to see my country with good eyes and they are discovering the real Brazil . Brazil doesn’t have just bad news as we see in the newspapers and TV.We don’t have just poverty , violence and slum to become notice. We have wonderful things to show and I am grateful to see my country in evidence.
Ely dos Santos- well said. The British media are obsessed with the violence, slums and favelas unfortunately. It’s to make English people feel good. My Brazilian wife from Rio has been saying this for years!
Thanks. Obrigado.
John. Liverpool. England.
Hope your travel vaccinations and antimalarial treatment is up to date.
When you say it is a well kept secret, whch aspect of Brazil do you mean the fact that it is cram packed with industry and still developing quickly ,or the fact they seem to get it on the use of ethenol or then again that the potential for being a Country in the centre of the world is apparent ?
For Centuries the culture mix has been there . Europeans,Africans and Asians settled many having arrived in small boats, the root diversity would lend itself to extending its branches world wide and if that was clean air, well one could regard it as the axil tree.
“And everywhere abundant farmland – of course, also in private ownership. No squatters here”
Aye, there’s the rub! Let’s not get carried away and blind to the extreme poverty/neglect in evidence away from those scenic routes you are taking, Jon!
That is land everywhere though. The feudal system inwhatever shape or form it morphs into rules. Landownership , taxes and poverty.
[...] the mod cons we in the North take for granted yet when people emerge from the side alleys onto the built up streets of Sao Paulo, they are meticulously dressed in beautifully laundered skirts, blouses, jeans and [...]
Brazil is a country of contradictions & extremes ! Corruption is rampnat! thank the colonialists! Great wealth is hidden whether within grand homes in Sao paulo and the interior ! All Brassilia should be sacked and new , non contamintaed political activists introduced ! as for faveela and novels – all a convenient smokescreen to corrupt the minds !
For me, the oil was the best kept secret or did everyone know already?
i have just come back from the International Conference on Corporate Social Responsiblity and Industrial Disasters held at the National Law Institute University in Bhopal last weekend. Is anyone interested in hearing about this event?