When a couple of people found out he was going to spend a week in Brazil, his first reaction was: wow, the beach! Go samba dance! Have lots of caipirinhas!
A week later, I didn't do anything about it...well, the caipirinhas thing was impossible, but the rest of the list was impossible, because not all of Brazil is how it is painted and I was in Brasilia, that city that, given its status as capital, seems to have the responsibility of keeping its composure.
Brasilia is like a beautiful, demure, quiet young woman who would never vent her problems or transgressive thoughts in public. As I walked along the Plaza de los Tres Poderes, an area of nearly five kilometers, flanked by the dozens of buildings of the different ministries of the state - all in beige and perfectly balanced buildings, I could not help but think that behind such an apparent calm there was a nation that was currently in turmoil.
At the head of the square, in front of the imposing Senate building, a small postcard on a pole seemed to shout at the concrete fortress with its white letters:"Fora Temer". Here, however, dirty laundry is washed away at home and the isolation of the language helps nosy tourists not to understand the popular discontents.
People walk calmly around the artificial ponds, between the Library and the National Museum as if in a bossa nova rhythm, contained, in a Tuesday at noon.
No doubt Niemeyer's architecture and order can be admired, as well as his permanently reddish sky. Without a doubt, there is a rhythm when entering its super-blocks - as they call the shopping malls assigned to each neighborhood, for every four residential blocks there is a super-block - but you have to walk with tact and patience to find that cadence that is not shown at first, because the good things are reserved only for those who ask enough questions.
Maybe there is no samba here, but it is not necessary, its cadence is enough to be at peace with oneself.
