I’ve come to accept that I’m from a distant land. It’s interesting to know that many people are unaware of Brazil, not only internally but mainly outside.

You can even find travel guides to Brazil at the supermarket, but the trip is already another story. It’s intriguing because we manage to hide a country with nearly 200 million inhabitants, the fifth largest in the world.

I always observe where things I buy come from here. You can now buy lime from Brazil and seedless grapes, produced in Bahia.

Ah, there’s always shrimp at Carrefour coming from Brazil, of course. In fact, shrimp is cheaper here than in the jungle. I don’t understand logistics, but Manaus has always been expensive because it’s far from everything. Now, how do they manage to send shrimp to Belgium, paying who knows what taxes and freight? It can’t be easy, even converting to Reais, it’s cheaper here: I buy it by the kilo for €6.00. And it’s not small shrimp, but medium-sized ones. Mystery :-)

But if you leave Brazil it’s complicated, coming back is even harder. Flights only go through Paris, London, Lisbon or Frankfurt. Tourist package difficult to find. I can spend a week in luxury hotels in the Dominican Republic, but cheap to go to São Paulo and sleep at the airport… The Brazil product is very poorly sold. Unavailable, expensive, or dangerous. I’ll ignore sex tourism.

In addition to the scarce tourist packages, our products are not well identified. I bet a large part of the coffee here comes from Brazil, but in those cases the packaging only identifies the brand. When the coffee is from Colombia or Ecuador things change.

I increasingly accept that I came from a really distant place :-) My Portuguese language is my revenge for not speaking French correctly yet. As many are not used to hearing and since the Brazilian accent sounds smooth to them, it seems like a dialect of some nearby language. They try to understand, but take time to realize it’s another language.

Few people have an idea of our culture. I thought this only happened in the US. For an American, everything is Latin America, so they must speak Spanish and that’s it. But in Europe you have the same kind of problem. I’ve traveled for work here and saw that things don’t change much.

I believe the answer to this is Brazil’s real size. Our country is big, but doesn’t consume proportionally and we’re still crawling in terms of world trade. Of course, foolish foreigners who ignore Brazil for investments will certainly find it a treasure trove yet. But this “ignorance” of the general population is because we failed to sell our culture.

Typical examples of documentaries about Brazil:

a) Samba and Bossa nova: usually old or focusing on the little girls’ clothes in Samba. b) Urban and rural poverty: all types. I was reading some pages from an English journalist. He traveled to Manaus and, of course, identified the “filé” of the city. c) Destruction of the Amazon. At this time of ecological revival, this becomes increasingly present. We are the destroyers of the largest remaining forest in the world, because others have already destroyed theirs… and we’re last, but that’s a reason for pride.

Nothing against showing our reality, but it’s made up of poor people and other people. There is industrial Brazil, technological Brazil, etc. I’m probably exaggerating, after all, nobody is obliged to understand geography and especially the country of others.

My wish is that Brazil started selling more abroad and that wealth was better distributed. More business, greater interest in knowing Brazil. But for this to happen, we would have to take 100 million Brazilians off the poverty line. We consume little because many people are poor. The market is big in numbers, but modest in purchasing power. Many people still work to try to eat, when they work.

In fact, it’s us Brazilians who don’t see our own country. We accept absolute poverty around us and often ignore it. I remember a favela behind the Studio 5. Rich kids eating popcorn at Cinemark and across the street: poor children looking. Violence only increases, especially in cruelty. What did we do wrong?

The problem is serious. A proof of this is to get the website of a large American company. Let’s say Best Buy. Search for Best Buy stores within 50 km. Probably several stores will appear. Do the same with other large stores in Brazil. Exclude Rio and São Paulo and see how distribution is different. Empty consumption.

We always improve, that’s true. But why Mexico and other countries in Latin America are improving faster?