Diego in Brazil: Biking in Rio de Janeiro

September 3, 2013

I never expected biking to become my favorite activity in Rio de Janeiro. It wasn’t until I moved to Rio that I realized I hadn’t had the chance to live in a city where biking is encouraged and the right infrastructure exists. About two or three weeks ago my host-mother suggested that I could bike to and from PUC, my host university, every morning and afternoon. I thought it was a fantastic idea (from a social, environmental, and financial perspective, biking is the way to go!) but first I needed to make sure I had a bicycle, a safe path to take, and, of course, the time to do it.

I initially thought about buying a used bicycle. I had seen countless bike racks (bicycle stands) in Rio de Janeiro’s Zona Sul (where I am living,) so I thought buying a used bike was a reasonable plan. I told my host-mother about my plan but she quickly suggested it would be better to subscribe to BikeRio first. Needless to say, I had no idea what she was talking about, so I asked her to explain. BikeRio is a sustainability project led by the city’s Prefeitura (similar to a City Council,) the Itaú Bank, and the bicycle system SAMBA. The project relies on approximately 60 stations with twenty bikes each located throughout Rio’s Zona Sul and some other neighborhoods. BikoRio’s main objective is to provide a low-cost transportation alternative for people who move around these urban neighborhoods. “That’s exactly what I need,” I told my host-mother, and I had no idea that I was about to expand my image of Rio de Janeiro by simply joining a biking program.

Using BikeRio is incredibly simple. You pay a $4.00 monthly fee and gain the right to pick a bike from any station and use it for an hour. After you return to the bike to any station, you can wait fifteen minutes and pick another bike. The project also has an app for iPhone, iPad, etc., where you can check if the closest station to you has any available bikes. And in case you are wondering, every bicycle I have used so far has been in perfect condition.

“Great, I now have a bike,” I thought, but I also needed to find how to safely get to PUC and then home every day. The first days that I biked to my University I took the route that my bus usually takes. At that point, that route was the only one I knew and taking it was quite necessary to avoid getting lost. With time I have found countless ways to get to PUC in the mornings and come to my apartment in the afternoon. However, and I say this without a doubt, the safest and most enjoyable route to take is around the Lagoa (Rio’s lagoon.) The city’s Zona Sul now has several biking paths and lanes that can take you across this part of the city crossing only some major roads. This past Friday and today in the afternoon I went biking without a particular destination, and I reached some very interesting and new places in the neighborhoods surrounding the one where I live.

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Biking is becoming increasingly popular in Rio de Janeiro’s Zona Sul

So I have a bike (well, several) and a safe way to get to and from PUC every day, but do I really have the time? Going by bus to my University saves me a total of 40 minutes per day in comparison to taking a bike. Now, if I were to base my transportation choice purely on how much time it takes out of my day, I would have to go for the bus. However, the benefits I get from biking are definitely greater than what I could get out of those 40 “extra” minutes each day. Those benefits impact my health (both physical and mental, since I have found that biking can clear my mind for a while,) my perception of Rio de Janeiro (you certainly become part of the “biking community,”) my finances (I calculated that I save approximately $68 per month if I take a bike instead of the bus,) and many social and environmental aspects of the city. From a holistic point of view, and as I said in the beginning, biking is the way to go!

I am looking forward to biking beyond Rio de Janeiro’s Zona Sul. I recently met some Brazilian students at PUC who go biking for fun every weekend, so I am truly excited about joining them this coming week. Buying a used bike is still an attractive plan…

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Diego in Brazil: A new routine

August 26, 2013

Moving to a new place certainly has its advantages. Although feared by many (I suppose), one of my favorite aspects of settling in a new city/town is finding a new routine. Based on how everything developed this past week, I will dare to say that some sort of order is entering my life here in Rio de Janeiro. Don’t get me wrong, I pretty much depend on avoiding settling for a repetitive routine, knowing that I should not unpack my suitcase because in a matter of weeks I will be changing places, and even accepting that people I meet will stay around only for some time before I go back home or they continue their journeys. Yet these are precisely the thoughts and needs that make finding a routine so great sometimes.

From Monday to Thursday I spend about 8 hours each day at my host university, the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC). I have two or three two-hour classes each day, and I normally stay to have lunch and dinner at the University’s cafeteria. On Monday and Wednesday I start with States, Politics, and Development in Latin America, continue with “Poverty and Social Inequality, and end the day with Geography of the Contemporary World. In between my classes I manage to escape to the University’s gym for a one-hour yoga class. On Tuesday and Thursday I go to only two classes: Brazilian Foreign Policy and Portuguese.

Exchange students at PUC have the option to choose certain courses that are taught in English. I originally considered taking some of these classes, but in the end decided to go for only courses in Portuguese. Being a native Spanish-speaker certainly gives me some advantage to learn Portuguese, but it is not by any means a guarantee that I will magically be able to communicate effectively. While I had never taken a Portuguese class before coming to PUC, I spent about a month and a half working in the northwestern region of Brazil this past summer. Sadly I did not find myself in the urgent need to speak Portuguese since many of those that I worked with spoke Spanish. However, my time in the Brazilian Amazon did help me to get used to Portuguese sounds, main endings, pronunciation, and so on. This, plus a lot of motivation and desire to learn Portuguese as soon as possible, pushed me to avoid English courses and go straight for those in Portuguese. I am afraid I will have to wait for my first tests to see how that turns out.

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PUC has a very warm atmosphere

It is an exciting time to be studying in Brazil. Next to Brazil’s socioeconomic changes in the last decade and the country’s growing economic and political influence around the world, social sciences at Brazilian universities have developed and expanded significantly. My impression so far is that my professors at PUC are much more concerned with theoretical and structural approaches to a social question than my professors at Richmond. I would say two different reasons explain what I have seen. On the one hand, the recent expansion of social studies in Brazil has led to very active debates on theories, appropriate methodologies, and other type of “larger” questions. On the other hand, Latin American social thinkers have traditionally chosen structural over particular explanations for social and political topics. To give you an example, while last semester at UR my international relations class started with readings on contemporary political structures, my Brazilian Foreign Policy course at PUC has been reading about Brazil’s foreign policy since the late 19th Century, several theoretical approaches to foreign policy, and discussions on how the study of foreign policy has developed in Brazil during the past twenty years.

Both inside and outside the classroom, the atmosphere at PUC is incredibly dynamic and welcoming for new students. As I walk towards the cafeteria, I come across hundreds of students eating, drinking coffee, and chatting in the University’s two main buildings. A friend at PUC recently invited me to a women’s rights group that meets every Tuesday to watch films, discuss, and organize for several events. Needless to say, I am incredibly excited to join them this coming Tuesday. While student-run groups may not be as common at PUC as in some US colleges, joining activities such as yoga has definitely given me a space to meet Brazilian students at PUC in a more relaxed environment.

Whenever possible I bike home at the end of each busy day. On Thursday I chose to bike around the Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas, a lagoon in Rio’s Southern Zone, and had the great pleasure to talk for some minutes with some local fishermen who have established a small community next to the Lagoa. Biking home from PUC around the Lagoa takes only about 25 minutes, and now that I met these local fishermen I will be definitely trying to avoid taking the bus more often.

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A fishermen community next to the Lagoa, a lagoon in Rio de Janeiro’s Southern Zone

As I said, there are some great things about finding a new routine!

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Diego in Brazil: Settling or Being a Tourist?

August 19, 2013

“Walking is a virtue, tourism is a deadly sin.” Bruce Chatwin

I wonder if it is possible to move to and establish in a new place without becoming a tourist the first few days or weeks. The countless “so how close to the beach do you live?!” questions that come through emails and phone calls from friends abroad make me think twice about how I should see Rio de Janeiro. I will get to that in a second, but first some words on this past week.

When I arrived to Rio’s international airport Galeão I realized how little time I had had to think about studying abroad. My summer internship in the Brazilian and Peruvian Amazon had ended just three days before and I still had (and have) many documents and reports to write. PUC-Rio’s (my host university) staff met exchange students at the airport the morning I arrived and in a matter of minutes we were on our way to our respective host family’s place. My host-mother came out of the apartment to receive me with a hug and a warm “Bem-vindo Diego!” She showed me my new room and before I even noticed we were in the kitchen telling each other stories about our lives with a cup of coffee. After living in Norway and the US for four years, I can’t describe how that first morning made me think of home in Guatemala. “All Brazilians are friendly” may be an exaggeration, but my experiences in Rio de Janeiro and the Brazilian Amazon so far have shown me the incredibly welcoming side of this culture.

Every morning at 8:30 a.m. I cross the street in front of my apartment to take a bus to PUC, usually with my German flat-mate who is also an exchange student at PUC. The twenty-five minute ride to PUC seems nothing compared to the hour and a half or even two hours some local students take to get from their homes to the university. Most exchange students at PUC live in Rio de Janeiro’s Zona Sul (“South Zone”) which includes the city’s richest neighborhoods and most famous beaches. I had some trouble deciding what I wanted to write in this entry about Rio de Janeiro. I could describe my neighborhood’s busy streets, Copacabana’s beaches or even the scenic path I take when I bike from the university back to my apartment in the afternoons, but I would certainly be describing just a small section of Rio de Janeiro’s reality.

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My neighborhood in Zona Sul at night

I continue to wonder – is it possible to move to and establish in a new place without becoming a tourist the first few days or weeks? Tourism continues to exploit the same discourses that built Brazil’s image abroad as an exotic, happy, and social destination. In addition, a tour around the city’s favelas (typically described as low-income shanty towns) is now part of some tourists’ plans for their visit to Rio de Janeiro. These two contrasting touristic destinations (Copacabana’s famous beaches vs. some of Rio’s poorest areas) seem to dominate the tourism-related advertising I have seen around the city and online. And the conversations I have had with foreign and local students at PUC make me think such discourse is not strictly limited to tourism, but goes as far as influencing how Rio’s residents present their city to others.

Is it possible then to “experience” Rio de Janeiro under a different scheme? I have my doubts. Getting to “know” a new place is, of course, a subjective experience, yet I truly hope I find a way to step back from the common descriptions of Rio de Janeiro and settle as a student as soon as possible. My first “solution” was to read Brazilian literature with stories that take place in this city. I recently finished reading “Quando ia me esquecendo de você” [“When I almost Forgot About You”] by Maria Silvia Camargo, and as I thought about this entry I struggled to avoid presenting you with a typical “Zona Sul” description of Rio de Janeiro, an exotic presentation of the city’s high levels of socioeconomic inequality, or Camargo’s romantic view of Rio’s atmosphere. How we position ourselves within and in relation to a new space will certainly determine our views and experiences regarding such place. I just hope that in the next couple of weeks I find a position that allows me to take a step away from becoming yet another tourist in Rio de Janeiro.

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Diego in Brazil: Moving to Rio de Janeiro

August 19, 2013

Hi all! My name is Diego and I am a third-year student from Guatemala at the University of Richmond (UR). I am in Lima, Peru, where I have been working for the past few weeks, and now I am on my way to the airport to take a flight to Rio de Janeiro for my semester abroad.  I wanted to introduce myself before going into a busy introduction week at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio).  At UR, I am an Interdisciplinary major (Latin American Politics and Social Justice) and, potentially, a Geography minor. I will be studying at PUC-Rio this fall (but don’t be surprised if I try to stay there for the entire year!).

Rio de Janeiro is located in the south-eastern region of Brazil. Once the capital city of Brazil, Rio is currently the second largest city in the country and one of Brazil’s main cultural and economic centers. Throughout the semester, I will make sure to update you with more and more information about Rio and the city’s relationship with the rest of Brazil.

Explaining the two reasons that led me to study in Brazil requires a bit of information on what I do at UR and outside. My main academic interest is to understand and explore how marginalized groups in Latin America do politics, both inside and outside governmental structures. Outside my regular classes, I have worked for a year now on issues related to indigenous peoples and their territories in the Brazilian-Peruvian Amazonian borderlands. As you may imagine, political and economic centers in both Brazil and Peru have strongly influenced the history of this remote region. Getting to know these powerful hubs, such as Lima, Brasilia, and Rio de Janeiro, is key to understanding indigenous peoples’ struggles in the Amazon.

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Here I am this past summer working with the Comissão Pró-Índio do Acre in the Brazilian Amazon.

As such, my first motivation to study at PUC-Rio is to begin to understand Brazil’s relationship with its Amazonian territory to further my academic and non-academic work in the region. My second reason to study at PUC-Rio has to do with my background as a Guatemalan student and my desire to work in Latin America. From the Hispanic immigrant population in the US to the Tierra del Fuego archipelago at the southern tip of South America, notions of what Latin America is and perceptions of a Latin American culture vary drastically. My experience tells me that people both inside and outside Brazil will think differently when asked whether Brazil is part of Latin America or shares a Latin American culture. Yet Brazil’s recent economic and political growth has made the country an attractive ally for the region. How do Brazilians think of Latin America, and to which degree do they identify with the region? Do such perceptions and identification vary across different regions of Brazil? Hopefully by the end of this semester I will be able to have some initial answers for those questions!

I am almost at the Lima airport now. It is always tough to leave Peru (an incredibly interesting country) but I am truly looking forward to settling in Rio and sharing some of my experiences with you! Studying at PUC-Rio will be a great opportunity to learn more about other Brazilian regions.

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