Clube Rincão, in the interior of São Paulo, has given a new
impetus to the nudist cause. The naturist resort has recently been promoted in the
mainstream press. It presents itself as a respectful and wholesome club only taking
couples and families as members.
By Émerson Luís
Despite its reputation as a place where anything goes sexually, Brazil sometimes can be
as prudish and hypocritical as mainstream America. Case in point _ until ten years ago
Brazil’s 165 million people had but one place for those in the mood to bare it all in
public: the Praia do Pinho, a beach on the littoral of Santa Catarina, a state in the
south of Brazil.
The options for going disrobed have increased in the past few years to a couple dozen
places, but they are still concentrated in the south where German and Italian colonization
has created a more tolerant and European culture. Most of the these places are sea beaches
(there are seven official nudist beaches) and some have already built a reputation for
themselves including Tambaba, in the northern state of Paraíba and Pinho in the southern
state of Santa Catarina. Created in 1988, the Pinho nudist beach was the first one of its
kind in the country. In the Northeast, the most famous naturist site is Tambaba, a
secluded beach in Conde, a little town in the state of Paraíba.
Tambaba is always full, with up to 1000 naked people on weekends. These sites were
enriched more recently with inland nudist colonies in Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and the
Amazon. It is estimated that 60,000 Brazilians have embraced the no-clothes-is-our-clothes
way of life. Compare this to 16 million nudists in Germany, for example. The growth has
been by leaps and bounds recently. According to the Federação Brasileira de Naturismo
(Brazilian Naturism Federation) the number of nudists has increased by 25% in the country
last year.
Celso Rossi, director of the naturism magazine Naturis and co-owner of Colina do
Sola naturist resort in the state of Rio Grande do Sulcommented about these
changes in an interview with weekly newsmagazine Isto É: "This reflects a
change that happened in the decade when naturists stopped being seen as an indecent
assault and had their activity regulated."
A five-year-old nudist place, the Clube Rincão in Guaratinguetá in the interior of
São Paulo, which uses what used to be a cattle ranch, has given a new impetus to the
nudist cause. The naturist resort, with 100 families as members, has recently been
promoted in the mainstream press. It presents itself as respectful and wholesome only
taking couples and families as members.
The Rincão nudist club is the brainchild of Alexandre Tsanaclis, 50, a physician who
has been a nudist since his late twenties. He is also the president of the
three-thousand-member Federação Brasileira de Naturismo and explains the purpose of his
club: "Here we have a space for those who are bothered by the compulsive use of
clothes, by this hypocrisy of wearing a bikini, a skimpy swim suit."
In the state of Goiás, the Goiasnat, the state’s only nudist club conceived two years
ago in Bela Vista, is thriving. With 112 members the Goiasnat was created by Jodenon
Borges de Sousa on his own farm. Sousa, who raises his small children in the club, doesn’t
forget all the opposition from his own friends and family when he started the club. The
mother argued that this practice wasn’t something approved by God. His answer: "If
God wanted otherwise, everybody would be born dressed."
The couple Marcos Juliano de Oliveira Pinto and Sheyla Gonçalves Pinto also bring
their three children to the Goiasnat. They have two boys who are 5 and 7 years old and a
girl who is 4. "They love the place," Sheyla said in an interview with Goiás
daily Diário da Manhã. "When we say we are going to the club they take their
clothes off in the car."
There are several sites dedicated to Brazilian naturism on the Internet. One of the
more complete, with links to several other sites, is the NaturisNet ( http://www.naturis.com.br/ ), which publishes the
magazine Naturis and houses the homepage for the FBN (Federação Brasileira de
Naturismo). http://www.naturis.com.br/fbnet/fbn01.htm
. Created in January of 1988, the FBN is responsible for coordinating the naturism
movement in Brazil.
More links to several naturist sites in Brazil can be found at http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Workshop/6690/naturisites.htm
, http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/1328/natbm.htm
and http://www.naturis.com.br/fbnet/fbnasscl.htm
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