Here is video, audio and transcriptionHere is the summary of the episode:
It wasn’t just the churrasco that made him fall in love with Brazil. Brian Winter has been studying and writing about Latin America for more than 20 years, tracking the region’s struggles and triumphs as it confronts decades of coups, violence, and economic change. His work offers a nuanced perspective on Latin America’s enduring challenges and remarkable resilience.
Brian and Tyler discuss the politics and economics of nearly every country from the equator to the border. They cover the future of migration in Brazil, what it does well in agriculture, the cultural shift in racial politics, crime in Rio and São Paulo, the effectiveness and future consequences of Bukele’s police state in El Salvador, Colombia’s economic growth despite ongoing violence, the prevalence of startups and psychoanalysis in Argentina, the reduction of poverty in Uruguay, the beautiful ugliness of São Paulo, which Brian will explore next, and much more.
And here is an excerpt;
COW : What will Brazil’s economic geography look like? All the riches nearby Mato Grosso and the north is just very, very poor? Or the north is emptying? How is this going to work? There used to be a few modest degree of balance.
WINTER: That’s right. Most of Brazil’s population and economic center was in the southeast. That actually means the state of São Paulo, which accounts for about a quarter of Brazil’s population, but about a third of its GDP. Rio, too, and the state of Minas Geraiswhose name tells its story. In Portuguese, it means “general mines”. This is the area where much of the gold came from in the 18th and 19th centuries. It has disappeared today, and therefore no longer has as much economic appeal.
You’re right, Tyler, but the real boom right now, the action, is in places like Mato Grosso, which is in the central-west region of Brazil. It’s soybean country. I’m from Texas, and Mato Grosso is pretty much inseparable from Texas these days. It’s hot. The land is flat. Like I said, the crop is soybeans. They also raise cattle.
Even music – Brazil, as others have noted, has gone from being the land of bossa nova and samba in the 1970s to the land of Sertanejo Today. Sertanejo is a Brazilian cousin of accordion-driven country music, but it’s sung by people—mostly men—in jeans, big belt buckles, and cowboy hats. They import that—not just that business model, but that lifestyle.
COW : What is the great Brazilian music of today? DPP is dead, isn’t it? So what should we listen to?
Recommended, interesting overall.
