Last week, all the newspapers and the overall press in Brazil gave wide release to the Brazilian alpinista (mountain climber) who died attempting to climb the Aconcagua. Well, the Aconcagua is located in the Andes.

The word alpinista refers to climbers of the Alps. In Latin America we have for a long time now used the word andinista for those who climb the Andes. Pay Google a visit.

The word andinismo registers, today, 36,800 occurrences. Andinism associations proliferate throughout the whole continent. Can’t find the word in Portuguese dictionaries?

Blame the authors who insist on keeping their eyes turned to Europe. It does exist, but our brave journalists insist on ignoring it.

If at least our Brazilian guy had started in the Alps… But that was not the case. According to the newspapers, his first decisive bet was the Andes. Therefore, andinista.

Meanwhile, no journalist would ever embarrass himself enough to use a solecism such as descatracalização, a neologism based on charges appearing in the daily Folha de S. Paulo and imposed as an essay topic to the vestibulandos (candidates for college-entrance examination) of a university in search of media attention.

The recourse had a good effect and the university in question was able to create a controversy. According to the organizers of the vestibular (exam), the idea was to make the candidates discuss the descatacralização of life, and society, imposing catracas (ratches) on everyone.

They forgot to suggest the possibility of descatacralizing the universities themselves to begin with, for imposing the vestibular—a major catraca—to whoever wishes to attend college.

With universities duly descatacralized¸ we would see the end of all these ridiculous discussions about quotas, good only for producing racism, utter bliss for the nostalgics of the now defunct era of class struggle.

In some newspaper I read that the Spanish police has detained in the city of Sabadell, in Cataluna, seven fake curandeiros and psychics who came from Brazil. Wait, now—so there is such a thing as a genuine curandeiro (healer) or psychic?

Considering that the profession remains absent from any law, curandeiros or psychics are people who decide to call themselves so. They are, therefore, as fake as they are genuine. Same thing with psychoanalysts.

Psychoanalysis is not a profession recognized by any law, therefore anyone—even I or you, the reader—is absolutely free to hang a psychoanalyst plaque at the door and start treating those naïve souls who still believe that psychoanalysis is a science.

I must mention that everywhere I look I see people practicing medicine illegally, from witches to pajés and even quiromantes and spiritual surgeons. In Porto Alegre, folks unemployed and just out of Philosophy degrees have set up a more sophisticated hoax—clinical philosophy.

Do you have an existential problem or a problem of a psychic nature? Visit a philosopher. In exchange for a reasonable payment, the new soul specialist will relieve you from your ills.

A friend tells me that at Campeche Beach, in Santa Catarina, there is even a hospital for spiritual surgery. Since I don’t see any manifestation from the Medicine Board, I suppose that good medicine has surrendered to the advance of these gigolos of human anguish.

The Brazilians jailed in Spain—so the story tells us—had inserted advertisements in newspapers all over that country, offering their services as curandeiros able to solve all sorts of sentimental and personal problems, as well as to cure physical illnesses, depression and serious health problems, in exchange for high amounts of money.

Imagine if this catches on in Brazil. Even our large newspapers would see a downfall in their classifieds’ revenues. Not to mention the horoscopists. Newspaper owners know that horoscope is superstition, but they also know that horoscopes sell newspapers.

If anyone still believes that our press is serious, just read your horoscope and you will have a hint of what editors think about the intelligence of their readers.

The supposed charlatans, according to the press, abused people in desperate situations who responded to their ads and threatened them, saying that tragedies would happen to them if they didn’t deliver different amounts of money, depending on their financial status.

The Spanish police are now dealing with expelling them from their country. It must be an effort to avoid competition with local charlatans, because there is no shortage of curandeiros and psychics in Spain.

As if it were not enough for newspapers to call andinistas alpinistas and to create the exotic concept of a fake curandeiro, we just had the President use his inherent folkloric authority to confer the title of intellectual to Brazilian rap and rock virtuosos.

According to the Supreme Ignoramus in the Nation, during the times when people with graduate degrees led the country, “you would hardly see an official act and you would not honor here, for example, the Titãs and Mano Brown. They would have mentioned other personalities of the intellectual world, but never two intellectuals so close to the Brazilian periferia (poor suburbs)”.

Given this promotion, vestibulandos can now prepare to deal, in their literature exams, with quotations from masterpieces written by these two new intellectuals. It should not surprise anyone.

If Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, according to the organizers of the vestibulares¸ are already part of Brazilian literature, why not go some steps further down the ladder?  

The Supreme Ignorant was even bolder. He saw himself in the mirror, thought he looked beautiful and recommended his image to the nation, stating that education and specialization are potential hindrances for the good performance of public officials.

Which is very coherent with the recent decision by the Rio Branco Institute, the school that trains candidates for Itamaraty (Brazilian Foreign Service), of demoting English to the status of non-eliminatory subject in its exams.

Only in the administration of an atrocious monoglot can anyone conceive that a school for diplomats would dispense its students from speaking the only lingua franca that we have today.

The level of universities, deplorable already, has lowered even further with the institution of quotas. Today, depending on the color of his skin, even an illiterate Brazilian can go to college.

In the vestibular exams, English is mandatory. In diplomatic school, where English is a basic working tool, it is now waived. If universities already reserve quotas for black people, Itamaraty has introduced a novelty by reserving quotas for monoglots.

If the President doesn’t speak English, why should his representatives do it? Let’s equalize everything down at the lowest level and institute an examination for interpreters.

Given Itamaraty’s vocation for thirdworldliness, it will not be a surprise to see Suahili or Wolof become mandatory languages in the exam.

As far as their relations with the First World are concerned, diplomats can very well follow the simplicity of the President, taking interpreters on their shoulders when they travel abroad.

Janer Cristaldo—he holds a PhD from University of Paris, Sorbonne—is an author, translator, lawyer, philosopher and journalist and lives in São Paulo. His e-mail address is janercr@terra.com.br.

Translated by Tereza Braga. Braga is a freelance Portuguese translator and interpreter based in Dallas. She is an accredited member of the American Translators Association. Contact: terezab@sbcglobal.net.

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