Brazil has been called for a long time the “land of the future”. This is from the title of a book by Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, who fled to Brazil during the WWII. Some people also say Brazil is a “giant asleep”. But that future never comes… Until then Brazilians keep saying themselves that “um dia esse país ainda vai dar certo”, (something as “some day this country will work out successfully”), or asking themselves whether this is possible at all, and what could be it that holds us back from finally taking-off as the aircrafts of Santos Dumont. What is wrong with us afterall?...

There are many theories for the lack of success felt by Brazilians. Some say there are cultural characteristics that are shared by all Brazilians and doom them, like the ‘Gérson’s Law’ that some nave people like to say is something widely accepted and practised by Brazilians. There is also the theory of the “colonised mind” that would make Brazilians incapable of doing things in “the first-world way”. Some also blame the weather, implying in some form of environmental determinism.

It is true at least that our geography has strong influence in our economy. Something that Brazil always did great was exporting primary goods as wood (I mean the legal production), iron, meat, soy and coffee. Coffee is a great deal for Brazil. Coffee and tobacco have been present in our Coat of Arms ever since the independence. Coffee, this plant so tightly binded to the intellectual activity… Next largest producers of coffee are our Nobel-less companions Indonesia and Vietnam. Ethiopia is also a big and traditional coffee producer. Other than selling coffee and cigarettes to North-American and European intellectuals, Brazil did succeed in a few noted human activities. Main one is probably soccer.

Although Brazil is recognised today as a power in the sport, the laurels did not come until the 1958 and 1962 world cups. Brazil did not start to “dar certo” (work out) in soccer before a very painful defeat at home in 1950, losing the title to the already champion Uruguay.

This defeat is the epitome of something writer Nlson Rodrigues named “síndrome de vira-lata” (mutt syndrome), still a very popular concept evocated when talking about Brazilians… “Mutt” is not a perfect translation to “vira-lata”, a dog without an owner that lives in the streets and eat garbage, tumbling trashcans (the name comes from this). Vira-latas can be purebred dogs who ran away from home, and mutts can be adopted. I believe the existence of numerous vira-latas in Brazil, and of a term that describe them so specifically, seems to tell us something about the syndrome itself. It’s the Sapir-Whorf thing.

Brazilians also shine today in other sports as volleyball, tennis and car racing, and this list is growing fast recently without big terrible traumas as the 1950 world cup. The Brazilian dog is eating less trash and looking for a home. We’ve been doing well in business too, although exporting primary goods is still important for Brazilian economy.

But we are still lacking a scientific Jules Rimet cup. Carlos Chagas and Cesar Lattes were probably the closest Brazil ever came to winning Nobel prizes (the more technical ones at least). It is said Brazilian envious nemeses sabotaged the evaluation of Chagas, and that Lattes was a victim of a policy of the Nobel committee that changed in 1960, tough I don’t know cases of other famous scientists that would have been victims of the same policy. Perhaps Morley in 1907?... I would be glad to read a comparison of the work by Lattes, Occhialini and Powell, and those of the Nobels from 1903, 1915, 1951, 1952 and all those from 1956 to 1959.

The idea that Brazilian people often discredit their successful brothers, as would have happened with Chagas, is something frequently pointed out as one of the reasons Brazil doesn’t work out. Part of the syndrome. Something we also often say is that Brazilians only “do certo” (work out) outside Brazil, like Santos-Dumont and perhaps Nicolelis, or when foreing people lead Brazilians… Countering these claims is a daily activity for some.