Going downtown: the old and the new

In my second day in Brazil, I went downtown (or to the city center, as we say in Portuguese) to renew my driver's license. Of course, there is a long list of documents and complicated procedures to get the license renewed. So, I walked out of the governmental building empty handed but with time to take some pictures of what we call "O Centro".

This is the Metropolitan Cathedral, located at the Sé Square (according to the Britannica Encyclopedia) or the Sé Cathedral (according to Wikipedia). It is a beautiful building where important masses are celebrated. If you are interested in its history, check out this wikipedia entry.



The Sé square is famous for pickpocketing, so I was lucky to take the picture and walk away with my camera... And my excitement allowed me to also take a picture of this, 200 meters away from the Cathedral:


I truly hope you can see how far this goes. It is an incredible amount of motorcycles. And what is more interesting: they are not here because people are cool and like bikes in São Paulo. Instead, they are used by courier services.There is this incredible amount of what we call "motoboys" available to deliver or pick documents anytime, anywhere. I found a 2001 estimate counting 150,000 motoboys in the city. More recent estimates indicate that there are now 500,000 of them.

The beggining of this video gives you a sense of how they drive: they skip slow moving trafic by driving between the cars. It is estimated that two motoboys die every day in São Paulo. I do not have estimates of how many get hurt in accidents. They are literally risking their lives to make a living. The video is an interview with the director of a documentary called Motoboys - Vida Louca. I watched the documentary a while ago, and I remember thinking it is quite a complex policy issue with very sad histories in the middle.

After being reminded of this sad reality, I walked more 200 meters and had a chance to visit my law school, which has an impressive building



But instead of boring you with details of my (first) alma mater (which can probably be easily found in the internet), let me tell you something more interesting. At the entrance of the school there is a sculpture called "The Eternal Kiss", which had a turbulent history. The sculpture was produced in 1920 and installed in two different neighborhoods just to be removed shortly thereafter under complaints of the local communities. Many thought the sculpture was immoral. It was then abandoned in a storage room until 1965, when the mayor's office decided to install it in another neighborhood. Same complaints. Yet another neighborhood. Again, same complaints. Then, the rebellious (or poetic, depending on your point of view) law students of USP asked the mayor to install it in front of the law school, where it remains until today.

This is the poem that inspired the sculpture:

Não me basta saber que sou amado,
Nem só desejo o teu amor: desejo
Ter nos braços teu corpo delicado,
Ter na boca a doçura de teu beijo”.

Olavo Bilac