Porto Seguro

Starting a week ago, I contracted the flu and was horribly sick. Friday, I planned to stay
in and get better, but mid afternoon, I got a call from Kyle's family and was invited to Porto Seguro for the weekend.
That's the thing about being on exchange, you can't just plan to do nothing. It doesn't work like that. There's always something going on, whether you like it or not.
The other thing about being on exchange is that you can never say "no". If someone invites you somewhere, you say YES. "Yes, I would love to go to a vacation resort with you for the weekend", or "Yes, I will gladly stand in line at the bank with you". There's no difference. If you say no, you'll never get the chance to say yes again. Take that to heart, future exchange students!
I climbed into the back of the truck, 4 people to three seats, and we drove three hours to Porto Seguro, the oldest city in Brazil.
Porto Seguro is the site where Portuguese Pedro Alvares Cabral "discovered" Latin America while making his way to the East Indies on April 22, 1500. Here they built the first church in Brazil, which still stands open to the public.
The first night, we walked around downtown looking at all the touristy stores. Porto Seguro is a major tourist destination, so there were a lot of foreigners. It's also a great beach town where Southern Brazilians come up to party and such.

The Porto Seguro Library

Brazilian flowers outside of our hotel

Kyle's host parents took us to a lot of really touristy points. The first one we stopped at, I was speechless for a few minutes. Really, I had never seen anything like it. Giant statues of naked Indians opposite giant statues of Portuguese colonists planting a cross. The Indians looked primitive and helpless, while the Portugese looked like you would expect- white colonists coming in and making things their own in the name of God.


I was shocked. I always knew that in the US, at least, people had thought this way about Native Americans for as long as America has been around. And these statues, although I doubt they were there for this purpose, looked to me as if they were mocking the Indian people of Brazil. But the Indians that we saw (Porto Seguro is where most of the Bahia Indians live) were participating in this industry as much as the other Brazilians were. Kids were walking around in traditional costume selling jewelery, women were standing in booths ready to pose for pictures.
The US has treated its Native Americans no better. But they've always kind of dealt with it in the shadows, denying what they really did. While our textbooks sort of explain what happened to the Indians that met Columbus and his men, they stop there. There isn't a huge tourist industry revolving around the few Indians left. And in Brazil (I have no idea how Brazilian textbooks explain the colonization of Latin America by the Portuguese), it felt to me like they were exploiting Indian culture.
I'm not judging Brazil, everyone knows that I have great respect for this country. But visiting these tourist traps, I felt guilty. I've always felt guilty about the US' Native American history, but this pretty much summed it up for me. If the Portuguese hadn't colonized the way they did, there might still be 4 million Indians left in Brazil, instead of just 300,000.
Every story I hear or read comes from a non-Indian Brazilian (biased or not), which makes me wonder what the Brazilian Indians have to say about it, are they at all resentful towards Brazil, as many Native Americans are towards the USA.
But I think there's a point where you just have to recognize that Colonization was (is) a horrible thing, and that in this case, all you should really do is be sensitive about it and prevent it from happening again.

me and a real Indian!

Later we went to the beach and saw the point where the Portuguese landed, marked by a big cross.
We have some great photos of this memorial, but they're all on Kyle's camera.. I'll get them for you later, don't worry.

Big Brazilian Cross

Then we went to the oldest church in Brazil. Catholic.
Like the English colonists of North America, the Portuguese converted many Brazilian Indians to Catholicism, and here were more Indians selling things, posing for pictures, ect.

pretty brazilian coast!!

a dream catcher

Brazilian Indians
The taller little girl was looking at my hair, I think. I smiled at her and she grinned and didn't stop smiling until we left. cute.

And the entire weekend, I was in awe of this family's generosity! I'm not even their exchange student yet, and they've taken me with them on two trips already. They're so nice and friendly, it's beyond me how one family can be so generous. :)
So if you're reading this, OBRIGADA!!

.. and yes, I do have photos of me in Indian wear, but no, they are not going on the internet.
.. ever.