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 "I'm terrified. Besides fearing new attacks,
I feel that all immigrants now are going
to be discriminated against."
By Alessandra Dalevi
What about the American dream? For many Brazilians it was buried under the World Towers
rubble that fatal September 11. Some who were getting ready to leave for America have
given up the idea and others already living there decided to go back home. For the first
time, many Brazilians discovered—to their surprise—that the U.S. is not always a
happy ending Hollywood movie and is not necessarily the land where everything works and
everybody feels secure. One of the places worst hit by confusion and grief was the city of
Governador Valadares, in the state of Minas Gerais. Forty thousand Valadarenses have left
their town in recent years to start a new life in the U.S. with the majority going to the
American Northeast.
Rio's daily Jornal do Brasil told the story of Conceição Alves de Souza, 45,
who received an invitation to be a babysitter in New York and was preparing for her trip
in December. It was not an easy decision, but she seemed relieved to give up that
opportunity: "I will stay in my little land where nobody will want to throw a bomb on
our heads," she said.
Maria Lúcia Silva de Souza, from the state of Alagoas, was also getting ready to leave
for New York, following in the steps of her sister who emigrated 30 years ago. She had
already sold her bar and was getting more money for the trip. But the images of the planes
hitting New York's tallest towers made her change her life's plans: "For now, all I
want is to stay in my Alagoas."
SBT, Brazil's largest agency specializing in international student exchange, saw a fall
of 40 percent in the number of youngsters interested in going to the United States. Among
the comments from those who gave up the idea: "I'm terrified" and "I can't
even think about getting into a plane bound for the U.S."
Mostly Illegal
From more than 1 million Brazilians living in the U.S., 300,000 chose New York. The
numbers are imprecise since most of the immigrants—70 percent of them, according to
some experts—are undocumented and entered the country illegally. They come attracted
by wages they would never make back home. For Unicamp's (Universidade de Campinas)
sociologist Teresa Sales, an expert in Brazil-United States migration, Brazilians have
many unrealistic fantasies about life in the USA. "Brazilians use to overestimate the
qualities of the American way of life," she told reporters. "But now they are
having a chance to examine this golden fantasy."
Jornal do Brasil also told the story of Solange Gonçalves, 27, who was working
as a travel agent in Manhattan and making $2700 a month. She locked herself in her
apartment in a state of shock in the days following the terror attack. Solange is
seriously thinking about leaving the United States: "I read that Canada has an
excellent quality of life and I'm planning to move there."
Aparecida da Silva, 31, from Minas Gerais, works as a cleaning lady in a hospital in
Boston—it's believed that some 250,000 Brazilians live in the area. She had planned
to spend at least five years in Massachusetts in order to save enough to buy two
apartments in Brazil and move back there. The destruction of the World Trade Center,
however, has made her reconsider those plans and now she only wants to save enough to pay
her ticket back: "I'm terrified. Besides fearing new attacks, I feel that all
immigrants now are going to be discriminated against. That's why I will be happy if I'm
able to raise money for the ticket and to maintain myself for sometime in Brazil."
Edílson Paiva, from Governador Valadares, the publisher of Brazilian Times, a
Portuguese-language newspaper in the Boston area, says that several Brazilians are selling
their cars and furniture in preparation to go back to Brazil: "My paper is filled
with ads from Brazilians selling what they can. Besides fear, there is this sensation that
there will be a wave of xenophobia against immigrants. It is going to be very hard to get
a job from now on."
Back Home
Christian Rodrigues, 32, a pharmacist, kissed the tarmac of the Guarulhos airport when
she stepped out the plane from New York. She had plenty of motives for that, as she
explained: "The only reason I'm alive is because there is a God. I thought I'd never
leave New York again. At the time of the attack to the World Trade Center, I should have
been there having breakfast, but that meeting was cancelled."
Another Brazilian was next to the tragedy. Amadeu Salles, a worker at the World Trade
Center's branch of Union Bank of California, started running the 14 flights of stairs to
the street when the first of the twin towers was hit. He saw pieces of concrete falling
down: "I thought at first that it was a gas explosion. I went down running and
noticed that the tower was catching fire. I went to a nearby public phone to call home and
that's when I heard a second explosion and this time even bigger. I turned and saw a scene
I will never forget: the building where I worked was on fire." He was shocked by the
possibility of having lost several friends.
Another Brazilian, Raul Paulo Costa, 33, had an even closer brush with death. He was on
the 25th floor of the first tower to be hit. Costa was also able to leave the
building running down the stairway. Costa is the vice-president of exchange for Garban
Intercapital. "When the building started to be cleared we already knew it was a
terrorist attack. There was generalized panic. I ran to a stairway that was not open and
the floor was already filled with water and smoke. I was able to find the correct stairway
and went down as a crazy man. The building was shaking a lot and everybody was screaming
that it was going to collapse."
Looking from Afar
As expected, the terrorist attacks in the U.S. dominated the news in Brazil. Folha
de São Paulo, the daily with the largest circulation in the country, wrote in an
editorial: "In a world dominated by one pole of economic and military power,
dissatisfaction fermented by misery, exclusion and religious fanaticism, tends to fragment
into warring factions of politically irresponsible groups who are not committed to
anything except bringing about their own apocalypse….
"The political behavior of the United States is not very sensitive to the
international inequalities aggravated by the free market. Nor is it sensitive to the
complaints of the poorest countries.... It is obvious that the attack puts its authors
outside the orbit of all civilized behavior and that they should pay for the carnage that
their actions produced. But one cannot ignore that the United States has not contributed
to the reduction of the level of world tension."
Writing in the same Folha, columnist Clovis Rossi commented: "From a
strategic point of view, the drama only increases when one thinks of the virtual
uselessness of the North American arsenal, even as it is increasing its defense with the
so-called "Star Wars" missiles…. In the new war, only a handful of people
ready to kill and die at the same time are enough to cause more damage than the Red Army
ever could."
As a somber reminder that intolerance is always peeking through the promises of freedom
and democracy, a group of 15 white and black American youngsters in Bridgeport,
Connecticut, insulted and spanked Brazilian student Hermes Barbosa de Lima, 23, known as
Netinho, just because he looked like an Arab. They broke his nose and fractured his arm in
two places.
It was around 8:30 PM, the night after the attack, and Lima was going to a nearby
public phone in one of many attempts to call his mother in Espírito Santo to tell her
that everything was OK, when he was attacked. "Arab, son of a bitch," he heard
before being thrown on the floor by a fist blow, according to his own account. It didn't
help when he started screaming: "I'm not Arab, I'm Brazilian. I came from Brazil.
Please stop." The attack went on for around five minutes until Netinho fell down and
seemed unconscious.
Despite his fear, Netinho decided to call the police, which according to him had to be
called twice and only appeared 20 minutes later. The officers took notes, but didn't seem
impressed and after a 15 minute sweep of the neighborhood came back to announce that no
suspects had been found. Possible witnesses from a delicatessen and a gas station close to
where the attack occurred refused to get involved.
"I'm desperate," he said later. "I feel like I'm nobody, as if people
had no consideration for human life." Only on Friday, two days after being attacked
and after going to the Brazilian consulate in New York, did he go to a hospital. The
doctor who saw him said that his arm would need special treatment and that she could not
put his nose in place because his face was too swollen.
Netinho is back in Brazil now. "It's the end of a dream," he confided.
"I had plans to stay four years in the US to study and save enough money to help my
mother. All I want now is to be home. I need to be close to people who really love me. I
have no money, but I don't feel defeated but for the violence from which I was a
victim."
A survey by Datafolha throughout the country, one week after the attack against the
World Trade Center, showed that 79 percent of Brazilians are against an American military
retaliation against the country or countries where the terrorists live, although 74
percent of the population agrees that the terrorists should be detained and brought to
justice. That opinion institute heard 2830 Brazilians.
The survey also found that 78 percent are against a Brazilian military participation in
any conflict while 17 percent were in favor of sending Brazilian troops to war. The
majority of Brazilians (51 percent) believe that the attacks will negatively affect
Brazil's economy and another 29 percent think there will be minor fallout from the
terrorist act.
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Amadeu Salles,
NY