Independence Week

Conversation IV

Brazil’s Creative Way to Break the Law and Feel Virtuous About It
Excerpt from the text written by Augusto Zimmermann

American historian Robert M. Levine, director of Latin American Studies at the University of Miami, has once commented
that Brazilians are a kind of people who “pride themselves on being especially creative in their array and variety of gambit
suitable for bending rules.” Actually, they pride it so much that they have even elevated the bending of legal norms to a
highly prized institution: the jeito or jeitinho.
A term that can be roughly translated as a “knack” or a “clever dodge”, jeito, explains the historian Joseph A. Page, “is a rapid,
improvised, creative response, law, rule, or custom that on its face prevent
someone from doing something.” As such, however, it always involves a conscious act of breaking formal rules so as to
“personalise a situation ostensibly governed by an impersonal norm”.

According to Fernanda Duarte, jeito “is inherently personalistic. It requires a certain type of ‘technique’ involving the conscious
use of culturally valued personal attributes (eg: a smile, a gentle, pleading tone of voice); it seeks short-term benefits; it is
explicitly acknowledge and described by Brazilians as part of their cultural identity... So deeply entrenched is this practice in
Brazil that it has become intertwined with constructions of Brazilianess”.

One must become aware of the reality of jeito in order to properly understand the Brazilian legal system. Whereas the
bending of legal norms to expediency occurs to a certain degree in any country of the world, Brazil has the quite curious
peculiarity of having actually institutionalised it. The institution of jeito is therefore the uniquely Brazilian way of achieving a
desired result amid the adversities of the formal legal system.

The social mechanism known as jeito can be adopted in many legal and non-legal situations. A jeito can be asked, for
instance, when the queue in a bank is too long and a person argues that he cannot wait for his turn. Lawyers can also apply
it in the form of a ‘favour’ (legal or illegal) requested to court employees. Finally, it can also be granted by a public inspector
who condones the failure of a company to comply with a statutory provision for considering it somehow uneconomic, unjust
or unrealistic.
Because of the many instances in which jeito can be applied, the bypassing of legal norms has become more the rule rather
than the exception in Brazil. In fact, the bending of laws bears no stigma in the country if it acts as a solution to unfair laws
or absurdities of bureaucracy.

Jeito means in this situation figuring out a fair solution over such inconveniences, acting as a tool by which people can avoid
the many obstructions and barriers the convoluted legal system places in their path. It is therefore seen by this society as a
‘fair’ solution in the face of the unreasonable barriers created by a highly complex and convoluted legal system.
Although jeito has such understandable justifications, it nevertheless produces very undesirable consequences. There is no
doubt that a system that features such an endemic and astonishing level of informality is obviously inimical to the generation
of the rule of law.

*Augusto Zimmermann is a Brazilian Law Professor and the author of the well-known books Teoria Geral do Federalismo
Democrático (General Theory of Democratic Federalism - Second Edition, 2005) and Curso de Direito Constitucional (Course on
Constitutional Law, Fourth Edition – 2005).

Suggested questions:
- What do you think about “The Brazilian Jeitinho”? In your opinion, is it true?
- Have you ever used the “jeitinho” to solve any problem? If yes, tell us how you did this.
- How do you deal with people that try to use the “jeitinho” to get some advantage?
- What’s the image that you think foreign people have about Brazilian people?
- How could we change this image?

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 Independence Week
Fun Class

SERGIO MENDES

Sérgio Santos Mendes was born in February 11, 1941, in Niterói, Brazil. He is a Brazilian musician. He has released over 35
albums, and plays bossa nova heavily crossed with jazz and funk. The child of a physician in Niterói, Brazil, Mendes attended
the local conservatory with hopes of becoming a classical pianist. As his interest in jazz grew, he started playing in nightclubs
in the late 1950s just as bossa nova, a jazz-inflected derivative of samba, was emerging. Mendes played with Antonio Carlos
Jobim (regarded as a mentor) and many U.S. jazz musicians who toured Brazil.The following songs are his interpretations of
Tom Jobimm’s classics:

Waters Of March - Sérgio Mendes One Note Samba - Sérgio Mendes

A stick, a __________, it’s the end of the __________ This is just a little __________,
It’s the rest of a stump, it’s a _________ __________ Built upon a single note
It’s a sliver of glass, it is life, it’s the sun Other notes are bound to _______,
It is __________, it is death, it’s a trap, it’s a _______ But the root is still that note
The oak when it blooms, a fox in the brush Now this new one is the _____________,
A knot in the _________, the ______ of a thrush Of the one we’ve just been through
The wood of the wind, a cliff, a fall As I’m bound to be the unavoidable ______________ of you
A scratch, a lump, it is nothing at all There’s so many people who can talk
It’s the _________ blowing free, it’s the end of the slope And ________ and talk and just say _________,
It’s a beam it’s a void, it’s a hunch, it’s a __________ Or nearly nothing
And the river bank talks of the ________ ____ _______ I have used up all the scale I know, and at the
It’s the end of the strain end I’ve come to nothing,
The joy in _______ __________ Or nearly _________
The foot, the ground, the flesh and the bone So I come back to my first note,
The beat of the ________, a slingshot’s stone As I must come back to you
A fish, a flash, a silvery glow I will pour into that one note,
A __________, a bet the fange of a bow ______ _______ ______ I feel for you
The bed of the well, the end of the line Anyone who wants the _________ _______,
The dismay in the face, it’s a loss, it’s a find Re mi fa sol la si do
A spear, a spike, a point, a ____________ He will find himself with no show,
A drip, a drop, the __________ of the tale _______ ________ the note you know
A truckload of bricks in the ________ ___________ light
The sound of a shot in the dead of the night
A mile, a _________, a thrust, a bump,
It’s a _______, it’s a rhyme, it’s a cold, it’s the mumps
The plan of the ________, the ________ ____ _____
And the _______ that got stuck, it’s the mud, it’s the mud
A float, a drift, a flight, a __________
A hawk, a quail, the __________ of ________
And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It’s the ________ of _________, it’s the joy in your heart
A __________, a stick, it is John, it is Joe
It’s a thorn in your hand and a cut in your ________
A point, a grain, a bee, a bite
A blink, a buzzard, a sudden stroke of ________
A pass in the _________, a horse and a mule
In the _________ the shelves rode three shadows of blue
And the river talks of the waters of March
It’s the ___________ of life in your _________
A stick, a stone, the end of the ______
The rest of a stump, a lonesome road
A sliver of glass, a life, the sun
A ________, a death, the end of the run
And the _______ ________ talks of the waters of March
It’s the end of all strain, it’s the joy in your heart

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 Independence Week
Listening

BRAZILIAN FOOD FOR FOREINGNERS

Before you listen:

- Discuss with a partner, and list as many typical Brazilian foods as you can rememeber:

-What is your favorite one?

Match the words in the left to their definition on the right:

1- gourmet ( ) If food is appetising, it smells or looks really good and makes you want to eat it.
2- staple food ( ) pudding, sweet or fruit eaten at the end of a meal
3- stew ( ) food ordinary people eat regularly
4- side dish ( ) someone who likes high-quality food
5- dessert ( ) dish with a small portion that accompanies the main dish
6- appetising ( ) strong alcoholic drink (for example, whisky, gin, vodka)
7- pounding ( ) to drink liquids with the food to help swallow
8- spirit ( ) beating hard
9- to wash down ( ) a kind of food in which meat or fish and vegetables are cooked slowly with a little liquid

Listening task 1:
Which country is the biggest coffee producer in the world?
Which of these countries do you think is in second place for coffee production?
a. Colombia
b- Indonesia
c- Vietnam

Listening task 2:
Listen and read along, trying to identify the missing words.

Grace: Now let’s talk about food.

Rob: Good, yes. I’d like to know: if I go to a Brazilian ______________, what will I eat? What’s the staple food of Brazil?
Grace: The basic food in Brazil – the staple food – is _______________________. You can have it with fried eggs, a steak
or some salad. But there’s a ______________ called ‘feijoada’. Thomas Pappon, a Brazilian who ___________ about food,
explains what it is. And then, tell me: what kind of dish is this?
Thomas Pappon, Brazilian food blogger: There’s a _____________________ version of rice and beans which is served
________________________ and in every restaurant on Saturdays. It’s called ‘feijoada’. It’s a stew made of black beans and
with pieces of pork. The main dish is served with side dishes such as fried greens and toasted manioc flour. There’s no room
left for dessert after this!
Rob: It’s a stew! I like a good stew – a kind of food in which meat or fish or __________________ are cooked slowly
with just a little bit of liquid. But no dessert?! I need my dessert, Grace!
Grace: The main dish is quite filling, Rob. You won’t need a pudding, sweet or fruit afterwards.
And there are lots of side dishes with it.
Rob: These are small dishes which ____________________ the main one – and they sound
very__________________ too.
Grace: They sound appetising; in other words, it makes you really want to eat them. And at the
end of the_______________you wash these dishes down with a ‘caipirinha’.

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