Finally, dear readers, I'm updating the blog! So hello from the Marvelous City, Rio de Janeiro! I've been here for about a week and a half, much of which was filled with attending panels at the Latin American Studies Conference that was held over the weekend. I've had a whirlwind week getting in the site before Jenn and my other friends in town for the conference headed back to the States. But it's been lots of fun. Rio is this incredible mix of urban neighborhoods and forested hills, some of which are home to favelas and others that are protected forests. The photo on the left I took from Corcovado hill, where the famous Christ the Redeemer statue overlooks the city. You can see Sugarloaf mountain in the distance, the tall hill in the upper left of the photo (it's hard to say if these are hills or mountains...the portuguese word is morro, pronounced moho, which means hill, but they are much more than hills as you can see). In addition to being one of the nicest places in the city to watch the sunset, Sugarloaf (Pão de azúcar in portuguese) is geographically fascinating. It actually has more in common with the geology of Africa that it does with the neighboring hill, called Urca. The hill is a key piece of evidence for the theory that Africa, South America, Australia, and Antarctica were all once part of one big continent back at the dawn of time.
I'm not really going to go in chronological order with my adventures here so far. My brain is too full...yeah, that's my excuse. Yesterday I wandered around the city center with a friend of my sister's she met when she studied Portuguese here two years ago. He gave me a fantastic tour of that part of the city. I probably should have read a bit more of Brazilian history before coming here, but I really had no idea about the depth of history here in Rio...pretty soon the city will be 500 years old. It was founded by Portuguese but the French also tried to get a foothold early on but were driven off. During the Napoleonic wars in Europe, the Portuguese monarchy moved their entire empire to Brazil and finally ended up settling down in Rio, making the city the imperial capital of the Portuguese Empire for about 40 years. Much of the historic buildings in the city center and other towns nearby, such as Petropolis (a town up in the mountains where the imperial family spent the summers instead of baking on the coast), are full of imperial Portuguese architecture. Think baroque, rococo, early 19th century Europe. I'll check some of my facts online, but I'm pretty sure I remember from our walk around the city that after the war with Paraguay, called the War of the Triple Alliance by most historians, slavery was abolished in the Brazilian territories and soon after that the Republicans (no, not those Republicans) kicked the monarchy out of Brazil. Also, interestingly enough, when Brazil moved the country's capital from Rio to Brasilia, the city of Rio became it's own state, Guanabara State, for a few years until the military dictatorship moved the capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro from Niteroi, the city across the bay from Rio, to Rio and abolished the state of Guanabara.
Ok, so that's the extent of your history lesson for today. I'm getting distracted, so I'll write more later. Until then, then.....
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