David in Brazil

I am reading – very slowly – a history of Brazil. A few interesting facts about Brazilian history (the interesting facts stop at 1810, because that’s as far as I’ve got):

• Jesuits ran all the schools in Brazil from the 15th to the mid 18th century, at which point they were kicked out by the Portuguese colonial government who thought the priests were getting too powerful. Jesuit education was carried out in the Lingua Geral (general language) – a standardised form of the American Indian Tupi language which was also therefore the day-to-day language of most people in the country. It’s weird to think that if the Jesuits and the Portuguese government hadn’t fallen out, Braziians would be speaking Tupi today instead of Portuguese.
• Diamonds were discovered in 1726 in the middle of the state of Minas Gerais (where I am) in the town of Tijuca. It was more a question of realising than discovering though: long before 1726 Tijuca residents were finding shiny see-through stones in the street, and principally using them to keep score in card games. This may be an insight into the Brazilian psyche.
• In 1808 Napoleon invaded Portugal and the British helped the Portuguese court to escape to Brazil, where the King and Queen set up home to wait out the problems in Europe. I’d known about this for ages, buts what I’ve just found out in my new history book is the sheer scale of the operation: the British evacaution took 15,000 royals and major and minor nobles to Brazil. They took half the money in circulation in Portugal with them.

Juscelino Kubitschek was the man who as president of Brazil built Brasilia in the 1960s – I´m sure you all remember that the Brazilians carved a new capital out of concrete in the jungle. Oscar Niemeyer, who´s still alive aged 101, was its main architect.

Before becoming president Juscelino Kubitschek (who as far as I can tell was one of Brazilian politics´ few undisputed good guys) was mayor of Belo Horizonte and was already working with Niemeyer. Beo Horizonte therefore has the largest collection of Niemeyer´s buildings from the 1940s and 1950s.

The most famous of these is the Church of St Francis (above right), a collaboration with with Brazils most famous artist – Portinari, who did the (traditional blue portuguese) tiles. The building was finished in 1943 but unfortunately the Catholic Church didn’t like the fact that Portinari had portrayed sinners sinning in his tiles and they didn’t agree to consecrate it until the late 50s.

The residential building just called ´Edificio Niemeyer´ is not so important, but its nice to look at, and is one of the main symbols of Belo Horizonte. I took the pictures above yesterday, while wandering up and down before my first Portuguese lesson (which I missed, having got a bit mixed up with the 24hour clock and the difference between 16 and 17 in Portuguese).

Unfortunately Danilo (who is the type of flashy queen who would contemplateplate moving to a modernist masterpeice in the centre of the city) tells me that the Edifico Niemeyer is quite tricky to live in as the rooms aren´t that big and all the walls are curved.

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Use the + and – buttons to zoom in and out, and switch to sattelite view to see the overhead view…

(top Left) This is the astonishingly steep road leading up to the apartment block. Belo Horizonte is very hilly.

(top Right) Danilo is quite tidy.