 The subject I was told to talk about has been a real challenge for me. I'm an economist and so I started to look deeper into a country where as of now I have been living for almost 20 years and so to speak it was high time to try to get myself a clearer understanding and so at first I have tried to give a few let's say aphorisms yeah that I invented about Brazil to get closer to the country now Brazil as I see it and I would say definitely speaking from a European or more specific a German perspective Brazil is a country without history because its past is still present and so when we look let's say at on European countries we have close chapters yeah but in Brazil none of its history is so to speak a closed chapter the second idea everything is mestizo it's a Portuguese expression a mixture now mixed like the population now the economy is mixed very mixed the nature is mixed and so on and in this sense slavery is still as much present as the monarchy one has to imagine that for decades Brazil had a monarchy a European monarchy part of it Habsburg origin and this happened at the same time when there was no slavery now and there's also a big strain of of anarchism in Brazil in part from the natural environment there's an anarchist tendency the size of the country invites anarchist behavior where you can go out where you can go away from the state power and anarchism was also brought in by by Italian immigrants now together with some socialist ideas so in Brazil you find anything yeah and as you find anything you want to look for you you have it and you can pin any of these concepts on Brazil and they are true but only half true Brazil's economy society and the culture escapes definition because there are no clear contours now it also it already happens with a landscape with a society in the cities like say you you come to Paris or London in a few days you know your way around in a certain way because they are landmarks monument churches and so on and there's nothing like that in Brazil so you you don't have this kind of focus or points of orientation this also happens with the cities yeah I show a picture of the city where I live and when you take the picture of the skyline it can be any other city in Brazil it can put be some Paulo part of some Paulo for example although it's 2000 kilometers away and like the imagery of the early paintings of the tropical place or paradise Brazil is kaleidoscopic and something else that I think I discovered the same space the same locality close by each other is hell and paradise at the same same time finally the Brazilian cores of development the projectory the development as as one can say yes the Hegelian process or something like that or even even the the Martian process if you like these things is neither up nor down nor flat it is everything at the same time so Brazil is this peculiar place where you have progress constant progress and constant regress at the same time and this makes it hard to understand the country especially as a European so the first the first couple of years I made them it is joking in Brazil when when when students ask me why are you still here what are you doing here why do you say I can't go back to Europe I can't go back to Germany because when I go back to my colleagues asked me to explain explain this country to me tell me about the economy and I have to say I have no idea how it works yes and so there's the saying God is Brazilian now but I interpreted as the the hidden God now the God that is unknown to human understanding which is the deeper meaning of this biblical idea like God Brazil is fundamentally unknowable now with its essence forever hidden now so it is fairly easy to to get an idea idea about France what is France about what is Spain about yeah even even what is Portugal about now but you cannot you cannot say that about Brazil and as Hans has mentioned the the popular image of course he's a very kaleidoscopic image yeah with a race man race cars very modern very technological yes and then the idea of of the beaches and the palms and so on and the football of course and it's all a mixture that makes little sense that that does not fit together so to speak this is Brazil yeah exactly this way it's hidden no contours you have some idea where the path is going but it's hard to find a way no and on the other side there is this idyllic depiction now that has come over that was promoted under the monarchy now the peaceful the tropical country with nice people and here you have this beautiful Indians you have happy slaves now and so this on the right south side seem to be that conquist the daughters the the explorers daughters who are well dressed and very peaceful looking so this is of course a completely false picture of what has been going on in in Brazil and is still still going on Sao Paulo a desert of stone you don't know where you are a mega city economically extremely strong high income it could be the top countries per capita yeah but about 40% of the overall GDP come from the state of Sao Paulo no so this is a peculiar reality and on the other side where I live here in the in the northeast the old part of the country where the settlers and the conquist the daughters first came and where the slave trade took place but the city as you see looks just the same as Sao Paulo a mess of houses high rises about 2030 sizes and on the on the other side you have right beside you it takes half an hour to get out of the city and you will be in this tropical paradise now we're also there's infrastructure as you can see there boats they are you can have a meal and so on so this is also typical of of of Brazil as a European I'm always struck and never end being struck by the size of this country and of course I could give you the square miles or kilometers but if you see here just in this middle part you have Germany or in the size you have the united kingdom you have Spain France big European countries yes and so large part of the European continent would only occupy short a small part of Brazil no so there are continental dimensions and and and still a population of slightly over 200 million so this feeling for me at least that I had and still have is okay you go you can go on yeah the population can grow yeah they can grow for decades and decades and and and and more and the land waits for you no that's a feeling one probably had in the united states but in the meanwhile it's no longer this case as it is in in in Brazil so the funny thing is and and I show a graph about that later on that there is no immigration no immigration no nobody seems to come like to come to Brazil yeah not even from the surrounding countries yeah and there's actually some kind of immigration going on the hot places for the Brazilians are of course having a relative a grandfather who had a citizenship of Italy or Germany and so on and or Spain and get a passport a European passport that's one of the ambitions of the young and if it does not work the other group likes to go dreams about going to the united states no there is no much energy okay let's stay here let's do something let's let's let's make Brazil great in this thing in the sense maybe things will change now yeah come to that later about the new government so to give a structure of of the country you have you have this gigantic amazon if you look at it you can you can take five big european countries and put it there yeah you can put germany france spain and still places left and because down there from the lots of grass and forests there is marshland some jungle and the cattle farms and the movement for what is here called deforestation is only a small part so the recent news about fires in the amazon i mean already the idea that a jungle rain rain jungle could burn is is a little bit strange and so further down you have the area where they have a milk cattle milk production it's called the land of the cheese and further down you have sa paulo yeah you see the gdp yeah gross dramatic that's the place where where work is going on yeah it's it's hard to understand that in this gdp here and pollution 40 of the overall gross domestic product is is being made now it's the heartland the the economic pause of the country now and then you have further south the countries of the european non-portuguese immigrants it's called here brazilian russia these are there are a lot of its paranoia there are a lot of immigrants from the ukraine from poland along with germans yes at this part and then where it's called nazis and beaches the beautiful beaches in santa carderina it's a state that is almost yeah completely german of origin yeah and further down is Rio Grande dos Sula gigantic country itself i took a bus ride i had a the commission at the at the uruguayan border and i took a bus from south uh from about alegre to the south and i slept for hours i woke up still there still riding on still all flat now then i slept again and it seemed it didn't even end so so so so long so far and so wide and of course a lot of cattle breeding going on and this is settled also mainly by germans but it has a very leftist tradition and a very uh yeah what's called here uh lgdb lgbt a very progressive attitude these are the progressives progressives down there and it's also the country the state of of she sell bündchen yeah something positive this is the contradiction that i feel again and again yeah our winter time is in december our summer time high summer is in in in december and this is also the time when you see the center clause walking around in the european style well protected against cold and snow and uh those gives you a kind of absurd feeling and paradoxical way uh and and the the center clause is very popular all over in the shopping centers and so on children can go there and he's very very very old in the traditional style and now already the malls are full that they start already now preparing for christmas which is a big big thing in brazil so you have uh let's say a european tradition uh christianity you have christmas and so on you feel almost in this sense at home yeah and at the same time the climate is is is the opposite which makes a lot of confusion yeah i i still have to concentrate uh when i write down uh uh date uh which month with which month am i in i always have to think yeah in europe you just knew it you looked outside and you knew which month it is just from the climate from the temperature you knew it was winter or summer or august august looked different than than september but i i always have no idea are we really september so these are the strange things that happen to a gringo a gringo in brazil a friend of mine has just published his book yeah and it's called gringo and he uh has uh he has written a novel uh where he talks about uh similar experiences no everybody is gringo in brazil who's not a brazilian so a person from latin america barack why is also a gringo no they are the the strangest no and uh an a thesis i i have is the following almost all ethnic groups overall in brazil are a minority no let's say italian ancestry german ancestry uh blacks and so on indians in overall they are all a minority but what counts for the daily life is uh how is your situation in a concrete way and so we can have a look at at this map which shows the simple fact that for example most germans live in the south and they are not a minority there they're actually a majority yes uh most uh ukrainian poles and so on are in in parana they don't feel as a minority Most black people live in Bahia, this is about 20% white, 80% colored, which means the black persons there cannot have the feeling of being a minority, because in their state they are a majority, like the whites in the south 80%, and up to Sao Paulo and so on, 60% in Paraná, 70%, 80% in Paraná, 70% in Sao Paulo, 60%. So there is not really this point of being a minority, to have the feeling of minority, overall you are, but where you live and where you existences, where you go after your daily life, most people live there where they are in a certain way a majority. The rate of the white people, as they call it here, is now about 43%, but it was much higher in the 60s, was over 60, and there were even expectations by anthropologists and so on, and demographers who projected that the white population would reach 80%, but the opposite happened. In part, the opposite happened because after the 60s, immigration from Europe basically stopped, and not just from Europe, but from all over the world. Also there was a strong, strong immigration in the beginning of the 20th century of Japanese, in Sao Paulo there is a strong Japanese community, which now has several million, and so this of course stopped, has been going on some immigration from Portugal, but even from the neighboring countries, Paraguay, Argentina and so on, there has been no immigration. This is the ethnic distribution, where one has to take into account that this center-barred, the huge center-barred is not very populated, it's largely empty. So what counts is the southern part in population, the coastal part and the western frontier, which is the new wild west of Brazil, where the entrepreneurs are going and primarily work in the agricultural sector and area. And you see, for example, in the area where Sao Paulo, north of the German flag, where this is German dominance, you have the strong Italian dominance. So one can say, who industrialized Brazil? And the other is the Italians, together with the Japanese and the help of the Germans. That is the history of Brazilian industrialization. The north is underdeveloped, the northeast is underdeveloped and poor, so I live in the poor part, and the west, this western part is strongly on the rise, accelerated by the immense production and productivity of the agricultural sector, with gigantic exports going to China and the Middle East. Now these are the big, big, big markets nowadays. Now here, as I said, the immigration, it had a peak at the turn of the century, and till the 60s, it's practically non-existence. Hardly anybody moves into Brazil. It's not attractive for the new global type, that has emerged. And there is no chance for the poor people and lowly qualified people to come, because the country has enough itself. That's a simple reason that it's unattractive. Yes, so when you're highly educated, let's say Paraguayan or Argentinian, you would try to go to Europe or to the US, but never think about going to Brazil, and if you have only chance to work in a factory or as a maid, you also won't go to Brazil because there's a lot of competition there. This is interesting statistics, I find, to know what happened with the Brazilian takeoff, who were the accelerating ethnicities, and that's the business owners of industry in the 60s, and you have this high dominance of the Italians and the old Brazilian group and the Portuguese and the Germans and the Syrian Lebanese. That was also a strong group of immigrants that came. The Japanese that came moved out into the countryside of Sao Paulo, where they set up small farms. They grow vegetable and all this stuff, and they were not so dominant in the industry. And you see also the income distribution, and you see the richer part and the poorer part, and it correlates very well what Cristiano showed this morning about the voting behavior. So the richer people voted for Bolsonaro and the poorer people for the Labor Party, and especially my state is a stronghold of the PT and of the leftist in Mississippi here, and of course you have this whole region, light blue, which is poorer and the leftist part. A few words to the origin, and Brazil was given to the Portuguese, it was not conquered, it was not discovered in the traditional sense, but there's a treaty of Tardisilias, where the Pope decided before Brazil was known of its existence, that was in 15, that the eastern part of the new territories would belong to Brazil, and the Meridian would divide these two spheres of influence, and Portugal set up this state-controlled kind of organization, as you can see it looks very artificial, so they divided in strips their part, and gave the individual part to private citizens with the direction developed there, that's your part. So already from here you have the origin of the confusion in Brazil between what is private, what is public, you were given public terrain by the king, and to develop in other words to exploit it as you wish, and this is the origin of the Brazilian states that would come later. Just a few words about slavery, and as you can see from these flows, and compared to the United States, Brazil has been the major importer of slaves throughout the centuries. It's a number with a rest, in the United States it's relatively few, and here we talk about close to five million, which also means that taking the current population that black people in the U.S. could reproduce, could grow, could multiply, while the poor black population in Brazil is still so to speak a minority, that means a lot of these slaves died at the workplace through to exhaustion and brutal treatment. Nowadays this idea of race and racism is getting imported from the United States, so there's a new identity movement which is ridiculous, because as I said the pure black are very rare, most are mixed with all shades of gray, all shades of colors, and in the same family you have one person who is darker, one who is brighter and so on, and so ridiculous things show up. I've seen this note various times, it says every one minute 83 young blacks get killed in Brazil as a result of your racism, and now I made a short calculation and noted that Brazil is extinct in the meanwhile, including the whites. So you see a lot of exaggeration about racism, often made up, poorly made up, there are strict laws nowadays, you have to be very careful what you say, and there's also a quota system which was implanted by the federal government that places at the university are reserved for so-called blacks, but it's hard to prove it, so sometimes from the same parents, one gets the quota and the other does not get it, and the commission says, well he looks like a negro, and the other doesn't, so the other one doesn't get it, it's absolutely ridiculous and absurd and highly risky because they get a negative badge. Brazil, a country for everyone, that's the official propaganda, but as one can see it is not a nation in any sense, even when there are these events like football and so on, you can see there is, within the country, there are in fact many Brazilians, many Brazilians, thank you very much.