Two weeks is not enough time to understand Brazil. It's a country of more than 210 million people and almost the size of China or the United States. Moreover, we spent the bulk of our working time in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro–the two biggest cities and centers of finance, commerce, culture, and education not just for Brazil but all of Latin America. To say I completely understand Brazilian business, economics, or even culture from this trip alone would be akin to spending a week in New York City and another in Los Angeles and then saying I've figured out America.
However, two weeks is enough time to begin to see what makes Brazil a country like ones I've seen before, as well as what sets it apart. When traveling abroad, the differences are always what are most immediately apparent to us. But by paying attention to the similarities, we can see that where we are going is ultimately informed by where we came from. And as an economics student, this has illuminated for me what makes Brazil um país do futuro–a country of the future.
I chose to go to Brazil because it's a foreign country that somehow feels familiar to me. My parents are from the Philippines, and I have traveled back there to work, volunteer, and stay with family many times. My prior, academic understanding of Brazil was that despite its wealth and growth, they still struggle with poverty, inequalities, and corruption–much like I have seen that the Philippines still does.
Coming to Brazil reminds me that such issues do not look unique to any one country.
In my eyes, Brazil is a country much like the Philippines. Our problems as well as potentials are born from very similar places. A pressing point today is how well (or not-so-well) we have transitioned from being ruled to ruling ourselves, and how well we have coped with the inevitable aftereffects in postcolonial life. And these effects are far-reaching and ever-present, whether they be the massive imbalances in land value and ownership traced back to the haciendas in the Philippines, or the persistent concentration of political power in São Paulo and Minas Gerais going back to the times of the coronéis.
Despite decades of nominal independence, we still live with these lingering legacies that complicate day-to-day politics, business, and society. But at what point do we no longer blame these complications on systems and institutions left behind by the Spanish, Americans, or Portuguese? We have had decades to shape our own growth under our own leadership. But in Brazil as in the Philippines, our leadership has failed us more than once. The upcoming October general election may be one of, if not the most significant in Brazilian history given the four-year ongoing Lava Jato investigation into electoral money laundering and government corruption. Now more than ever are our futures in our own hands.
Brazil is grouped together with Russia, India, and China as the BRIC countries, or four major emerging economics at similar levels of development; and the Philippines is among the Next Eleven countries that Goldman Sachs identifies as having the potential to bloom into world economic leaders in the 21st century. GDP growth rates and rising incomes leave us all with reason to be this optimistic, but actually traveling to these countries may show us what statistics cannot: That this economic miracle has not yet graced everyone, and that if we are not careful, our policies and attitudes could exacerbate the gaps and inequalities that very much still define where we are.
But we've come this far in the lifetime of my own parents who saw nothing like this in their childhoods, or even in the lifetimes of Brazilians who have left Brazil within the past twenty years.
If overcoming colonization and foreign dependency to grow into the presumptive countries of the future was the story of the 20th century, then ensuring no Filipino nor Brazilian be left behind by this growth will be the story of the 21st.
That is a massive challenge, but one worth undertaking.
What does a Brazilian look like? Our stereotyping minds might conjure up someone playing soccer on a beach, but beyond that, mine draws a blank when it comes to skin color, hair, or any other physical feature tenuously tied to national groups. This is much like trying to answer what an American looks like. The common, causal factor is immigration.
Brazil has taken in immigrants by the millions in waves comparable to what we have experienced in the United States. This has shaped a society where a Brazilian's nationality and ethnicity are not necessarily synonymous. One can live in Brazil with many of the nuances of their ancestral culture while simultaneously being Brazilian, and their cultural self-identification is not restricted to one or the other. On this trip, I saw this nowhere more obvious than with the food and with Japanese Brazilians.
Brazil is home to the largest number of Japanese people outside Japan, and the Liberdade district of São Paulo alone is home to a bigger Japanese community than any outside Japan: Bigger than Los Angeles, San Francisco, Hawaii, or anywhere else in America that we would reflexively associate with the Japanese American diaspora.
Japanese sushi, temaki, and ramen restaurants are ubiquitous throughout Brazil, from bustling street markets in Rio de Janeiro to roadside stops in Amazonas.
Fittingly, food is the best metaphor for the continuous referendum on national identity that immigration creates.
If America is a stew simmering in a melting pot, then Brazil likewise is feijoada. A dish of ultimately foreign extraction but now defined by locally grown ingredients, with complex origins in its country's protracted history with colonization and slavery. A dish common to people of all classes and colors, that comes in so many flavors and varieties that no one group, no matter their contribution to it–Portuguese, African, etc.–can claim singular ownership of it. Feijoada is Brazilian above all else. It's a delicious reflection of the best aspects of Brazil's history with immigration.
This history of mixing and matching is, by my estimation, what makes Brazil such a mutually attractive destination for foreign investors and entrepreneurs. A common thread in the companies that we visited, specifically those in financial technology, was their international backgrounds. Their founders, executive officers, and teams had extensive experience in New York City, London, and financial markets all over the world. We were told multiple times that certain concepts or services seen in the United States or Europe were the inspiration or impetus for their Brazilian innovation. Why not bring internationally proven solutions to Brazil?
Though as we've seen with immigration, just as one cannot transplant a foreign culture with no adaptation to local customs and expect frictionless assimilation, one cannot lift a business idea from San Francisco into São Paulo and expect the same results. It must adapted to a Brazilian context. I believe that Brazil's history with immigration can actually facilitate such a global exchange of ideas.
What did Brazil look like to me? It looked like a country firmly in both the developed and developing worlds. I cannot compare how far it has come from one to the other like I can with the Philippines, since this was my first time to Brazil and Latin America. But based on the sentiments I could glean from talking to Brazilian students and entrepreneurs–another metric that doesn't show up in regression models or balance sheets–there is still reason to be optimistic despite the ongoing political and economic crises.
There is a critical awareness of what is working and what is not, and we see that in the startups we visited. They bring internationally informed solutions and adapt them to a Brazilian context. Some, like Nubank, have had such disruptive success that competing institutions are really beginning to sweat. The limiting factor for their success, as seemingly always, will be to what extent government prohibits or promotes their work.
Two weeks was enough to begin seeing this, but not enough to fully explore the implications of what we've seen. There are entire classes at Illinois about the Latin American and Brazilian economies, but even after taking them, I don't think I'd able to say I can completely grasp the economic intricacies of this country or region. It requires a thorough understanding of history, culture, and psychology that cannot be fully gained within the classroom.
How else can we achieve such an understanding? My simplest solution: Go back!