NO AUSTERITY IN BRAZIL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 524, 8 July 1949, Page 12

NO AUSTERITY IN BRAZIL

| Written for "The Listener" ]

| by DR.

G. E.

EICHBAUM

. all know that compared with Great Britain and other European countries New Zealand has not known what "austerity" really means, and we have been duly grateful for it However, if one is travelling abroad in a country like Brazil, which although it was at war with the Axis Powers was hardly touched by it, one becomes aware of our own scarcities. Only then does one realise how many things we have been going without in the last 10 years. Granted that these things I am talking about are not absolutely necessary for living, they help, all the same, in a subtle way to make existence more pleasant and carefree. Little amenities we have forgotten about long ago are taken for granted in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s second largest city. To begin with you have a practically unlimited choice of goods. Although Brazilians have import restrictions too, which, they assure you are "very tough," there is no evidence of them when you make your daily shopping round, a task which is not so much a drudgery as a pleasure. You go to town not because you have to, but because you want to. Apart from the fact that life in Sao

Paulo is more expensive than in Wellington or Auckland it is likely that you will spend much more money because there are so many things which are tempting and they are displayed in such a way that it is difficult to put up any kind of "sales-resistance." The shops in the Rua Barao de Itapetininga, one of the main thoroughfares, rival in elegance anything I have seen in Rio de Janeiro, in pre-war London, Paris, or Vienna. There are beautiful frocks and shoes on display, handbags with gloves to match, dainty lin‘gerie and a hundred and one articles both for men and women which give to their appearance and their homes a "cultured" look. Many of these goods we have too, of course, but in addition there are many things you can buy there which are difficult to obtain or not available at all in New Zealand-for example, pure silk (crepe de chine), any quantity of (cheap) nylon stockings. Silk ones are out of fashion and therefore one can buy them for the equiva-

lent of 3/6 or 4/-, while one has to pay at least 6/6 for nylons. Nothing is rationed. Butter, in quality inferior to ours and much more expensive, can be had in any quantity, as well as cream and eggs, and petrol for which one pays only about 2/- a gallon, If you have sufficient money you can buy an empty house any time you like. The Goods Are Delivered Insignificant purchases excepted, it is taken as 4 matter of course that they will be sent to you the same day, so that you need not carry them, This applies not only to frocks, shoes, books, etc., but also to small goods. The cake you erder for your afternoon tea-party will be promptly delivered at your home. You need not bother either if you have forgotten in the morning to buy your meat or groceries. True, the butchers close at 1.0 p.m., but they reopen at 7.0 p.m., so that the meat will be quite fresh even if one has no refrigerator at home. The grocer never closes before 8.0 p.m., and often later-even on Saturdays, when others finish work at 12.30 p.m. Many thrifty ‘housewives prefer to make their food purchases at one of the bi-weekly markets which are held in the ‘

open street. These markets (there are several of them in various quarters of the town and also a roofed-in central market hall) are fascinating places. Properly speaking they do not really belong to the modern city at all, but represent the old ways of trading. The vendors are peasants, but shrewd busi-ness-men, and the market is a meet-ing-place of all races-Negroes, Mulattoes, Japanese, Italians, Portuguese, and Brazilians compete with each other to sell their wares. These range from a profusion of fruit and vegetables, coffee, rice, pastry and pickles to straw-mats, cotton goods, household utensils, and what-have-you. . There~ are fortunetellers with their multi-coloured shrill parrots, hurdy-gurdy men with little monkeys on their shoulders, fish-ven-dors, flower-girls, market porters and a gesticulating, shouting, debating, haggling merry crowd which pushes its way around the flimsy stalls on which the goods are displayed. There you can buy Turkish delight or popcorn, peanutsand, of course, Brazil nuts-but also black and green olives, shrimps, cheese, sausages or whatever else you might fancy. P This co-existence of ultra-modern facilities cheek by jowl with very old ways of commerce is a striking feature of Sao Paulo. You can see, any day, modest tradesmen, tinkers, glaziers, umbrella-menders, wander up and down (continued on next page)

the streets of elegant suburbs ringing a little handbell and offering their services. Nearly all educated Brazilians of the younger generation understand and speak English, but the older generation is more conversant with French. The style of dress, both for men and women, although strongly influenced by the United States, still seems to have more a French than an American note, It may be that this seems only thus to us, because the Brazilians belong to the Latin race. They are dark-eyed and olive or dark-skinned. In their veins often runs Indian blood, of which they are very proud, or Negro blood, of which they are less proud, but not actually ashamed. Other races, too, have contributed to widespread miscegenation: Portuguese, Italians, Germans, Slavs, Syrians and Japanese, although the two last-mentioned, who are comparative newcomers, rather "keep themselves to themsélves" and do not inter-marry. Those who like the dark type of beauty will find Brazilian women pretty

and some of them beautiful. They dress well, though really elegant ladies are not very frequently seen in the streets: they drive past in their very smart cars with an immaculately dressed chauffeur at the wheel. The "new look" is no longer new and frocks have already be.come perceptibly shorter again, although they are not yet quite back to the "old look." Skirts (silk or wool) and blouses, worn with a leather or metal belt, are very fashionable. There, if a woman wants to look up-to-date she must paint her finger and toe nails a deep dark red. Pale finger nails look as incongruous as blue hair looks to us, but there you can see blue hair quite often. Old whitehaired ladies have their hair re-dyed not to its former shade, but in hues of violet and blue. Maybe they undergo this transformation in order to avoid the other "blues," the terror of realising that they have become old, for in this climate one ages quickly and youth is even more fleeting than elsewhere.