A6 Meeting: Public Presentation

Border Comparisons

Here are aerials of different dry-land border cities . The first three are cities along the Brazil-Uruguay border. All these cities have grown around the border, just as many cities grow along a main axis. I have arranged them from most to least "border-developed".

Rivera is the best known free trade zone in the Gaucho border. Its main source of income has been the tax-free shopping, so much so that after going into a Uruguayan cafe for a soda, the owner said, "Gracias, buenas compras!"












Xuí is the southernmost city in Brazil. It is the final stop before Uruguay for those traveling along the Atlantic coast of Brazil. Much like Rivera, it has developed along its major commercial avenue that sits on the Brazil-Uruguay border. The Avenue is the center of their own free trade zone.











Aceguá is also on the border between Brazil and Uruguay, about sixty kilometers south of Bagé. It did not have a free trade zone and has been very underdeveloped in its urban quarters. Its most successful developments are actually many miles outside the urban zone in the form of co-ops and horse farms. In 2007 the free trade zone was announced in the city and there is speculation that the city will turn into another shopping area for Brazilian Gauchos. So far, it is a distribution point for smuggled produce into Uruguay.











Just for the sake of comparison, here is Tijuana. The severe cut between the US and Mexico is such a stark contrast with the seamless border between Brazil and Uruguay that one must wonder how this "fronteira" has not been exploited more thoroughly yet.

Interview at CEASA

An interview with Amurim, a "carregador ambulante" or freelance carrier. He transports goods from trucks or loading docks to the market building and from the market building to the buyer's truck. I caught him at the end of the work day and he gave me his thoughts on how to improve the CEASA.


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How I put myself in danger and didn't even know

In Google-ing for Aceguá, I found a news article - perhaps the only news ever coming from Aceguá- that happened on the same day that I was there taking pictures and video and being interrogated by the look-outs. Turns out the same contraband group that I caught on camera was caught some miles down the highway with over five tons of contraband Brazilian fruits and vegetables. It looks like I should stay away from Aceguá for a little while, or at least go in a different car, so that they don't blame me for their capture...

Here is the original news feed:

Uruguai apreende contrabando brasileiro de frutas e verduras

2008/12/26

MONTEVIDÉU (AFP) — Funcionários da Alfândega uruguaia apreenderam nesta sexta-feira mais de cinco toneladas de frutas e verduras produzidas no Brasil e que entraram ilegalmente no Uruguai, informaram autoridades.

A apreensão ocorreu na região da fronteira com o Brasil, entre as cidades de Melo e Aceguá, a cerca de 400 km de Montevidéu.

No total, foram apreendidos 5.400 quilos de batatas, cenouras, mangas, mamões e bananas, acondicionados em caixas sem identificação do produtor ou importador, como determina a legislação uruguaia.

Segundo a Alfândega, o contrabando entrava no Uruguai transportado por motos, do território brasileiro, e era distribuído entre diversos varejistas.

and translated:

Uruguay captures contraband of Brazilian fruits and vegetables

2008/12/26

MONTEVIDEO (AFP) — Uruguayan customs workers apprehended this Friday more than five tons of fruits and vegetables produced in Brazil and illegally entered into Uruguay, inform authorities.

The apprehension occurred in the frontier region with Brazil, between the cities of Melo and Aceguá, about 400 km from Montevideo.

In total, there were 5,400 kg of potatoes, carrots, mangoes, melons, and bananas in boxes with no identity of producer or importer, as is required by Uruguayan legislature.

According to customs, the contraband entered Uruguay by motorcycles, from the Brazilian territory, and were distributed to diverse vendors.

Images of IAPI and Vila dos Comerciarios

The Instituto de Aposentadorias e Pensões dos Industriários (IAPI) was built in 1936 during the "Estado Novo", headed by Getulio Vargas with similar ideals as the "New Deal". There are IAPI's in several Brazilian cities, all built as "cidades jardins", much like garden cities in the United States such as Greenbelt, MD. The IAPI is now a neighborhood in Porto Alegre since it has been surrounded by development.

The most striking difference between IAPI and Greenbelt is the preservation of the place. Architects in Brazil are constantly enfuriated by the "discharacterization" of planned towns, they complain about the modifications to the buildings, the landscapes, and the building uses. On the other hand, the inhabiting of these places and gradual modifications and marks left by its residents adds an incredible amount of character and physical layers of history. My impression of IAPI is that even an iron-fist home-owner's association could not have prevented the incremental changes of the neighborhood.



An aerial photo of the IAPI

Mercado Publico in Porto Alegre

The Mercado Publico in Porto Alegre is one of the best known in Brazil, particularly for its revitalization in the 1980s. It is still considered the best place to purchase fish in the country and is the anchor to one of the busiest public squares in the city. Around it, overflow produce sellers have set up shop near the bus stops and paved plazas. The market is my favorite place in Porto Alegre, reminiscent of the city's origins as a port and trade post while incorporating the gaucho lifestyle and modern downtown atmosphere. It is colorful, alive, and infinitely rich in photographic potential.



A block from the market is a building that has been abandoned since it was under construction. It is over 15 stories tall and in the heart of downtown but was never completed so it has been taken over by squatters. They have installed windows, power, television antennas, clotheslines, stores, and all the spontaneous parts of most favelas inside the building's skeleton. Here are a few pictures:

Images of Rio Grande

The city of Rio Grande is in the souteast tip of the state of Rio Grande do Sul. It is home to the second largest port in Brazil, behind Santos. It has just been given an enormous investment by the government to expand the superport. With the speculated tripling of the port, the housing market in the city has boomed, although in the very lowest class of dwellings. The city contrasts a rich tradition of colonial and eclectic Portuguese architecture with the gritty industrialized superport development. Here are images from the downtown area, the housing projects in the outskirts, and the summer beach town next door.

Images of Aceguá

Aceguá is the city I intend on using as my project site. It has lived off its position on the Brazilian-Uruguay border and has recently been granted a free trade zone. I was surprised to find that the city had not changed much since the first time I passed through three years ago. I was also surprised to find an elaborate, albeit meager, contraband operation dealing Brazilian produce into Uruguay. My cameras called attention to the popcorn vendor, who happened to be a look-out, and he eventually interrogated me about my presence there. I played the dumb tourist, but still left rather fast with all my incriminating photage.

On the way back to Bagé, we passed through a German colony between the two cities called Colonia Nova. It was established as a cooperative in the 1950s by German immigrants producing dairy goods. I will post more information on the co-op later.

Images of Santana do Livramento and Rivera

Pictures from the border city of Santana do Livramento, Brazil, and Rivera, Uruguay. Essentially the city has developed along its border driven by a free trade zone. The dividing avenue is a site for informal shops and a variety of goods, generally aimed at the lower class. The streets off that avenue house several duty free shops aimed at the middle and upper classes.

Images of Bagé

A slideshow of my explorations in Bagé on Christmas day. It is the city in the Pampas that I am most familiar with and a short(ish) distance from the border sites I am researching.

Procession of Goods

In searching for a program, I have observed a gap in the ideal distribution and urbanization of a region. Despite plentiful land in most regions of Brazil and Latin America, the regional distribution infrastructure is overly dependent on truck traffic, due to a lack of railroads or alternative methods, and far too independent from the small population centers since they are destinations for goods and consumption instead of production centers supplying larger urban centers with goods. There should not be a radial procession of goods, but rather a gradient one.

Present Regional Distribution of Goods in Brazil

Proposed Distribution of Goods through Development of Rural Nuclei

Gente Humilde

A song by Chico Buarque and Vinicius de Moraes of the humble people of Brazil

Tem certos dias
Em que eu penso em minha gente
E sinto assim
Todo o meu peito se apertar
Porque parece
Que acontece de repente
Feito um desejo de eu viver
Sem me notar
Igual a como
Quando eu passo no subúrbio
Eu muito bem
Vindo de trem de algum lugar
E aí me dá
Como uma inveja dessa gente
Que vai em frente
Sem nem ter com quem contar

São casas simples
Com cadeiras na calçada
E na fachada
Escrito em cima que é um lar
Pela varanda
Flores tristes e baldias
Como a alegria
Que não tem onde encostar
E aí me dá uma tristeza
No meu peito
Feito um despeito
De eu não ter como lutar
E eu que não creio
Peço a Deus por minha gente
É gente humilde
Que vontade de chorar

There are certain days
When I think of my people
And I feel like
All of my chest tightens
Because it seems
That it happens suddenly
Like a desire to live
Without being noticed
Just like
When I pass by the subburb
Myself very well
Coming by train from somewhere
And then I get
Like an envy of these people
Who go along
With no one to hold on to

They’re simple houses
With chairs on the sidewalk
And on the façade
Written above that it’s a home
On the veranda
Sad flowers and pots
Like a happiness
That has no place to lean
And then I get a sadness
In my chest
Like a disappointment
That I have no way to fight
And I that don’t believe
Ask to God for my people
They’re humble people
What a longing to cry

"Gente Humilde" by Chico Buarque and Vinicius de Moraes

1969 © by Cara Nova Editora Musical Ltda. Av. Rebouças, 1700

Disney's Pampas

In the 1940s, Walt Disney released several short films and cartoons of travels through South America packaged as Saludos Amigos (1942) and The Three Caballeros (1944). Through the two movies, Disney portrayed pieces of the pampas and life in the Platine regions of South America. Here are some clips from those movies. Please email me if the clips are taken off the server.

The Argentine Pampas


Goofy the Gaucho


Stereotypical Rio

The Pentagon's New Map

In my search for world maps and the global situation of development, I came about Thomas P.M. Barnett's The Pentagon's New Map. In his web site http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/, he talks about the risks of Brazil and Argentina:

3) BRAZIL AND ARGENTINA Both on the bubble between the Gap and the Functioning Core. Both played the globalization game to hilt in nineties and both feel abused now. The danger of falling off the wagon and going self-destructively leftist or rightist is very real. • No military threats to speak of, except against their own democracies (the return of the generals). • South American alliance MERCOSUR tries to carve out its own reality while Washington pushes Free Trade of Americas, but we may have to settle for agreements with Chile or for pulling only Chile into bigger NAFTA. Will Brazil and Argentina force themselves to be left out and then resent it? • Amazon a large ungovernable area for Brazil, plus all that environmental damage continues to pile up. Will the world eventually care enough to step in?

Here is his map (by William McNulty), that delineates the "functioning core" and "non-integrated gap" zones of the world.



In reference to the Amazon, he fact that a country cannot manage its own territory is insulting, regardless of the fact that the administration of the Amazon really is out of control. The way he presents it is reminiscent of the fiasco from about seven years ago when a textbook mapped the Amazon as an international zone. Help is of course welcome, but in non military or territorial means.

The first question referring to the Mercosul, FTA, and NAFTA is valid. South America is divided into two drifting pieces, the leftist underdeveloped northwest and the more developed south. Columbia is an exception in the northwest, so much so that it has negociated with NAFTA more than any other country in South America. Peru is perhaps the country I've seen the most micro-investment headway.

Taking the "non-intergrated gap" map from Barnett's book and coupling it with general regions of high productivity in the continent, the Pampas is evidently the shaft of land that seems to be linking the two "functioning cores" of South America. Considering the richness of the location of the Fronteira (Brazil-Uruguay border region), it is impossible to assume that no development will occur in this region, and it is obviously lacking proper administration since it is sitting between the richest zones of the continent.

Patterns of the Pampas

In looking through aerials of the Pampas and examining how the cities meet the landscape meet agriculture, I began to find some mesmerizing patterns of land use. Here are a few frames at the same scales:



And here is a frame of the area that I am interest in working in. The land is far less touched, but also far less dynamic.



Here are four different situations, at equal scales, of the city edge meeting the rural landscape

Get to Know a State

The diagram below generally maps out the land uses and reasons for being of the different regions of the southern half of the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The dark black border is the boundary between Uruguay and Brazil.




Below is a scale comparison of the state of Rio Grande do Sul overlaid on the Bos-Wash megalopolis. The state is large enough to capture Richmond to New York City to Pittsburg to Buffalo and everything in between.




Here is another scale comparison encompassing most of the major Italian cities.

World Bank Projects to Look At

At the suggestion of KDP from our initial meetings, I looked at World Bank and IMF programs in the areas of Brazil that I might be interested in pursuing research to see if there is any overlap. Here are some links that I found so far.

Bage - RS Integrated Municipal Development Program
http://web.worldbank.org/external/projects/main?pagePK=64283627&piPK=73230&theSitePK=40941&menuPK=228424&Projectid=P111511

Uruguaiana - RS Integrated Municipal Development Program
http://web.worldbank.org/external/projects/main?pagePK=64283627&piPK=73230&theSitePK=40941&menuPK=228424&Projectid=P111514

Pelotas - RS Integrated Municipal Development Program
http://web.worldbank.org/external/projects/main?pagePK=64283627&piPK=73230&theSitePK=40941&menuPK=228424&Projectid=P094199

Rio Grande do Sul Fiscal Sustainability
http://web.worldbank.org/external/projects/main?pagePK=64283627&piPK=73230&theSitePK=40941&menuPK=228424&Projectid=P106767

Brazil: First Programmatic Loan for Sustainable and Equitable Growth
http://web.worldbank.org/external/projects/main?pagePK=64283627&piPK=73230&theSitePK=40941&menuPK=228424&Projectid=P080827

Instituto Nacional de Colonizacao e Reforma Agraria
http://www.incra.gov.br/