HAVANA TIMES – My relationship with Brazilian culture was always more or less the same as most Cubans have. It was influenced by what I saw in the soap operas that have been airing on national television every other day for the past 40 years.
These shows present a Rio-centric vision of Brazilian culture. The beach, carnival, Sugarloaf Mountain, coconut water, and samba.
A slice of reality where places like São Paulo and Curitiba are shown only as complementary alternatives, and the northeastern region of the country is just a blurry hell from which some characters manage to escape.
The rest is a void.
I don’t want to, nor do I have the right to, question the outward projection of Brazilian culture. I haven’t even spent two years in this country, and I’m far from knowing how its ministries work, or who pulls the s
