Ivaporunduva
June 19-22 was a holiday weekend. On Thursday the 19th, Laurel, Raul, and I, along with Raul’s friends Tatiana and Pablo, loaded up his jeep and headed for the interior of Sao Paulo state. I was excited — it was my first journey of any significant distance away from the coast and the major cities.
It was a beautiful drive, as we headed into mountains covered by mata atlantica (Atlantic rainforest). We spent most of the day at Ivaporunduva, a Quilombo (”key-loam-bo”) community. The Quilombos are the descendants of escaped and freed slaves who founded their communities centuries ago. Here’s a shot of Ivaporunduva. The church in the photo is 250 years old:
“Quilombo_Village”
We rode in a small motor boat across the river. A group of a dozen or so Quilombos were hanging out and talking about the previous night’s futebol (soccer) match. They were happy to see Raul and chatted with him for a while. A lot of my preconceptions about the Quilombos were immediately shattered. They dress and look like millions of other Afro-Brazilians. Their village has electricity, and I even saw several satellite dishes (note: these are all over Brazil in rural areas). In short, nothing overly exotic.
Raul’s a lawyer for Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), an NGO that addresses social and environmental issues jointly, viewing them as being inextricably linked. ISA is working on a project with the Quilombos to grow and sell organic bananas. The methods used help preserve mata atlantica. Organic bananas command a higher price than conventional bananas, and the Quilombos save money on pesticides (which one villager told me cost $20/liter). As I understand it, agriculture is one of the few activities the Quilombos in that region can perform due to environmental restrictions. Raul gave a class to representatives of various Quilombo communities about the types of legal association in Brazil (associations, foundations, cooperatives, corporations), describing which ones would be good for the Quilombos’ political activities and which for their economic activities.
The Quilombos I met were deeply savvy. We had a beer with a leader of the movement (aaargh! I’ve forgotten his name) opposing the building of a dam that could flood their valley. He’s been all over Brazil and abroad in pursuit of the cause. I hope he succeeds.
The big question I had was why so many people I’ve met in Brazil – people I deeply respect – express such admiration and support for the Quilombos. My best answer is community. Almost all of the people I spoke to in the village spoke of rising or falling together. I asked one guy, really smart, a little younger than me, why he stayed rather than head for the city. He replied that he knew there was no chance of making a lot of money in the village. But heading for a favela was like a lottery: a few people got jobs and did well, while the rest lived in squalor. He’d rather live with the community, grow with them, make his living with them. It was uncannily like Duncan Kennedy’s description in Law & Development of why urban slums exploded in developing countries: a 1 in 100 chance of making 1000 times the income made it a rational choice for many villagers to leave for industrializing cities. But looking around the village and comparing it to favelas I’ve seen, I think the Quilombos made the right choice.
I don’t want to over-romanticize their way of life. They are materially poor. There were buildings in the village made of bamboo and dried earth (though most were made of brick or cement blocks). The church had no pews, only loose desks and chairs. The school was literally one room. But their communities represent a centuries-old, self-sufficient alternative to the way most of Brazil’s poor live. A better alternative, in my view.
I’ll admit I’m biased. Ivaporunduva is the only place I’ve been where people actally like lawyers. I said “Oi” (hi) to a toddler, and her mother said, “Diga oi ao advogado” (say hi to the lawyer). Mostly due to the efforts of folks like Raul (whose class was excellent, btw).
Addendum (July 19, 2003): Ivaporunduva is more prosperous than Quilombo communities in less fertile parts of Brazil, where the villagers often don
Buzios
Rose, a friend from law school who’s working in Brasilia this summer, came to visit in Rio. She, Laurel, and I went to the beach resort of Buzios for a couple of days. Buzios is sort of a combination of Cape Cod (a small peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic, the getaway for many folks in Rio) and South Beach (lots of expensive, posh boutiques and restaurants in downtown which only open at night). On Saturday, we walked to Praia Tartaruga (”Turtle Beach”), which Lonely Planet described as “quiet and pretty.” Oops:
“Praia_Tartaruga”
At high tide, the beach chairs were sitting in six inches of water.
But there were some big rocks on the far side, and when I climbed them, I came across a hidden strip of pink sand beach. Really beautiful. I also saw this:
“Tartaruga_Red_Stuff”
I initally assumed the red stuff was blood or some kind of dye. But it wasn’t. Waves didn’t wash it away. When I tried to grasp it, it tore with some resistance, almost like a membrane. If anyone has any idea what this could be, please comment below.
We found a cooler beach, Praia Brava, the next day. Great waves; there were a lot of kids with surfboards there. I also had an enormous lunch of fish, rice, beans, salad, and french fries. In Brazil, always ask whether the meal is for one or two.
Random observation: one-hour photo places in Brazil advertise “revela
Ubatuba
A couple of weekends ago, Laurel, her brother Asa, and I went to Ubatuba, a beach resort a few hours from Sao Paulo. Ubatuba is surrounded by dozens of beaches; we stayed at one called Fortaleza. We hiked for half an hour through forest to another beach which could only be reached by foot or by boat. Here’s a shot taken from the trail:
“Ubatuba”
Asa wanted to go to Fortaleza to boulder. Here he is:
“Asa_Bouldering”
Reclaiming the Public Domain: a Beginning
You may have heard of the Supreme Court’s awful decision last January in Eldred v Ashcroft, upholding the consitutionality of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA). CTEA extended the length of copyright terms by twenty years. My friend Marvin Ammori has written an excellent analysis of Eldred issues. Economics-minded folks should make sure to check out the amicus brief by Milton Friedman, Kenneth Arrow, Ronald Coase, et al. opposing the CTEA.
There are innumerable reasons to support a reduction in the length of copyright terms. You can find a good summary at eldred.cc.
Larry Lessing and other have proposed an innovative measure for returning works to the public domain. If you support it, please take a minute to sign this petition.
Kaldor-Hicks Efficiency
If you go to law school today, you’ll rarely hear the words “justice,” “morality,” or “fairness.” No, the word used most often to assess the legal order is “efficiency.” From the ever-forthcoming William Allen & Reinier Kraakman, Introduction to the Law of Enterprise Organizations:
Pareto reasoned that a given distribution of resources is efficient when and only when resources are distributed in such a way (within a different group or territory) that no reallocation can make at least one person better off, while leaving no person worse off. Economists refer to this hypothetical state as Pareto Efficient or a Pareto Optimal state…
[This is] a difficult definition to use in non-theoretical settings. Another definition of efficiency loosens the constraint of this condition. Two English economists, Nicholas Kaldor and John R. Hicks, each addressed the problem of externalities in their conception of efficiency. Under their definition, an act (or a rule) would be said to be efficient if the transaction produced total gains to those who consented to it that are sufficient to permit the payment of compensation all of those who suffered any losses as a result of the transaction. Note that it is not stipulated that any compensation actually be paid. Kaldor-Hicks is simply attempting to identify transactions that are efficient, not to establish a principle of justice. The idea here is that we live in a world of imperfect and costly information. Third parties who incur losses of some sort as a result of the transaction may not know of their losses. Or if they know of them, the law may give them no recourse for damages, or such recourse as the law provides may be too expensive in light of the size of their loss. In all events, there will be uncompensated losses from certain transactions. These are in principle and in fact made worse off by the trade. Under Kaldor-Hicks’ conception, however, so long as the transactions gains are great enough to compensate them in principle, the transaction would be regarded as efficient: as moving closer to an optimal distribution. In other words, Professors Kaldor and Hicks posited that total (net) wealth creation is the sign of an efficient transaction…
[Kaldor-Hicks efficiency] is the standard definition employed when law and economics scholars criticize corporate law doctrine or practice.
