Author: Thomas Harvell-DeGolier

Rio de Janeiro has been an amazing experience overall. From visiting Cristo Redentor to seeing the cultural patrimony and how it is supported by the Brazilian government, to just meeting incredible kind and open people. It has been a memorable and interesting experience where I have learned how U.S. cultural and Brazilian customs intersect and differ. In doing so I have grown to appreciate where I have grown as a person and as a world citizen and where I still need to continue to grow.

Seeing how much U.S. cultural productions are the rage in Brazil has been interesting. For example, while I still need to see Barbie, there were Barbie-themed foods, pizzas, cookies, and more. Barbie was, for lack of a better word, fetch, in Brazil. People were going to the movie wearing pink, getting their nails done specially for the film. It was in many ways, a mirror to the experience people had with the movie in the United States. Much like the United States this, of course, meant that Oppenheimer received the second billing among fans.

Brazil and the United States share a long history of partnerships and cultural interchange, primarily with the United States cultural products entering Brazil and it is fascinating to watch that in practice.

From U.S. Music to seeing U.S. sports on television, to noticing the presence of Lakers jerseys and NBA fans in Brazil, it is fascinating to think about the links between Brazil and the United States and in many ways the one-sidedness of U.S. cultural presence n Brazil, while Brazil lacks such a cultural presence in the United States

I recently visited O Museu Historico Nacional, which is in Rio De Janeiro because for those who do not know Rio was the capital before Brasilia. As such many of Brazil’s national institutions and its historical patrimony are located not in Brasilia but in Rio de Janeiro.

The museum itself is working to untangle the complicated colonial legacies of Brazil’s past and while it is balancing these imperatives with the normal goal of such museums to present a more whitewashed view of the national past it is making an earnest effort to confront the legacies of anti-indigenous and anti-Black violence in Brazil. The museum is grappling—at least in part with the legacies of many of Brazil’s national 19th-century historic figures being slave owners such as the Duke of Caxias while putting in the work to uplift and uphold Afro-Brazilian voices both from the past and the present.

But what truly struck me was the beginning of the long-term exhibits in the museum. Rather than starting out with the myth of the European discovery and valorizing the arrival of the Portuguese in Brazil, it extolled Brazil’s indigenous past and more importantly, Brazil’s indigenous present. It did this by commencing with an exhibit titled Îandé: estavamos aqui, estamos aqui (or US: we were here, we are here) the museum strongly too ka stands in support of indigenous Brazilians. Such a forthright position that not only acknowledged state violence against indigenous people but also an indigenous present brought me to tears and made me think of how the past and present are presented can reflect the needs of the present and of underserved peoples.

 In this vein the work of Brazilian museums and the ministry of Culture to support these efforts are incredible. Even private institutions such as the Bank of Brazil’s cultural center, extolling the importance of black artists in the construction of Brazilian cultural symbols such as art and samba. The forthright centering of Black and indigenous existence and influence in Brazil in many of the state’s national museums, as well as private institutions, brought to mind the importance of working on representing under-listened-to voices in the construction of national narratives.

Again, a bit late, but I have to say that I keep falling in love with this city and its people while it seems to dislike me. I have been—it can be said lightly ‘com pé frio—or unluck during my time in Brazil. From being sick when I arrived. To have my phone stolen out of my hand. And twisting my ankle, not once, but twice, I have had quite the experience in the Marvelous city of Rio de Janeiro. Despite this, I keep loving this city. Whether it is going to the tourist police and explaining my situation or going to medical clinics and talking through my issue in Portuguese, I am certainly having a  form of immersion and learning more about the inequalities of Rio de Janeiro, and the access to healthcare. While living in a foreign country is new to me—as would be expected—it is also new to be living in a big city. Drug stores on every corner, access to clinics within walking distance, and the knowledge that Brazil has one of the most impressive healthcare systems in the world.

It has also been a lesson that my language skills, while far from perfect, are good enough that I do not need to go to clinics specifically for foreigners and can converse with Brazilian doctors adequately in Portuguese. While it has not been a huge shock intellectually, it has also been instructive in that my base complaint about the narrowed blinkers of historians of U.S. history—namely that they think they can get by with only English language skills or principally by working in English—are not only shown their intellectual arrogance by their fellow historians in other fields and the global south who have to work in multiple languages to engage with the basic foundations of their field of study, but also by the traditional and professional doctoral degrees of medicine, who themselves need to at least understand English, if not understand it. The world does not work solely in English, and to work in a monolingual fashion allows baked-in assumptions of how the world works to remain unchallenged.