Yesterday I heard people speaking about Brazil as a World power.
For us Brazilians, Brazil was always “o país do futuro”. The nation of the future.
Yesterday it was already future.
I am following Brazil growing up since 1992 (the first time I went back after running for my life from the hands of the dictatorship). At the start of the 90s Brazil was a country with people dying in the streets. Since then I have been working in Brazil from time to time and could feel the changes through the years. The same places people were dying from extreme poverty twenty years ago you can see people with happy faces and well dressed (not Christian Dior but well dressed).
When you come from outside you can feel the changes already in the airport but the Brazilians (at least most of my friends and my cousins) are always telling me how Brazil is not going well.
I did not hear from any of them some historical and general perspective. They always stick to some detail to explain to me why Lula is not doing sufficient or why Lula is doing too much.
I would like them to be with me yesterday at the Tel Aviv University. It was a business meeting about opportunities in Brazil. Not a big event sponsored by embassies and governmental agencies. On the contrary, it was a very down-to-earth event with lawyers explaining about taxes in Brazil, business talks and a lot of graphs.
http://video.tau.ac.il/Lectures/Management/MIT/2010/23_06/
It started with people talking about the possibilities of joint ventures, taxes, how to invest, taxes again, Mercosur, and bit by bit it went into a crescendo. The last speakers were people who told about their experience working with Brazilians – a guy that went through the whole process of the establishment of GVT till the selling of the company for 4.8 billion dollars, a small startup very successful in bringing some kind of communications to areas such as the state of Acre and the third one was a guy from Babylon.
They were Israelis speaking about Brazil with more emotion and empathy than the Brazilians themselves. They talk business but they showed a lot of admiration for the work of the regulator, the way of Brazilians doing business, that you can trust the Brazilian partner and Brazilians at large. They talked about crime in the streets. They all talked about the taxes but explained that in time it is possible to understand how to live with it (you just need excellent accountants). All of them assured the forum that he never was in a position that he needed to pay bribery.
The last one, the guy from Babylon at a certain point explained to all: It is not like Switzerland or France. It is not like England. It is like the United States and China. It is a WORLD POWER!
That’s it, Folks. Finally, the future has arrived. Brazil is the country of the present.
