Non-Alignment Pact

Buried in the international section of the Inqy I saw a small story on Rwanda and their decision to stop teaching French in favor of English in the nation's schools (syndicated from the WaPo, of course, in this era of shrinking newsrooms). The article is mostly blase, operating on the assumption of French's diminishing role in the world. In particular, it prints a horrendous quote by Theoneste Mutsindashyaka, Rwanda's state minister for education: "When you look at the French-speaking countries - it's really just France, and a small part of Belgium and a small part of Switzerland."

Tell that to the Organisation internationale de la francophonie (Fr only, natch) and its claim of 200 million French speakers on five continents. I guess the minister never took a look at this map. Across the pond, The Guardian dug a little deeper, pulling a better quote from Vincent Karenga, the Trade and Industry Minister: "French is spoken only in France, some parts of west Africa, parts of Canada and Switzerland." Still off-base -- he didn't even mention Belgium, the very reason French is spoken in Rwanda -- but at least he got West Africa, a massive stronghold of French and the very reason French will remain a major language over the coming decades.

Of course, the article appropriately links the decision to lingering anger at the French for their role in the Rwandan genocide and a wider post-colonial push away from European powers, especially former colonizer francophone Belgium. But as an assiduous observer of French as a language of resistance in the Americas, from Louisiana to the Caribbean to Québec, I'm sorry to hear it couldn't occupy a more positive role in Rwanda. Its role in Africa is more as a common thread across countries filled with hundreds of local languages. That, in part, has rendered Dakar such a hub for African hip-hop -- a swirl of languages with French usually running through.

I wonder how politics will trickle down to affect culture vis-à-vis Rwandan hip-hop. The excellent Africanhiphop.com points to an excited local scene with the usual hybrid of languages (Swahili, the local Kinyarwanda, French, and English). Several profiles point to French-language schools that rappers attdended as children. But as that shifts in the coming generation, it's only logical that French will fall by the wayside, and by extension the tour dates to France and Canada will be replaced by the UK and the U.S.

Brasil: Um País de Todos?

This clever multiculturalist logo sneaks into the corner of just about every sign announcing federal support for a project. That the federal government would even need to make a public declaration of Brazil as a country for all is an indication of doubts that such a claim is really true. The longstanding belief that Brazil is a racial democracy has come under fire in recent years, as in the stratification of wealth that curiously corresponds to racial lines.

Still, I dropped by a few museums in São Paulo that, to their credit, were much more hospitable to the idea of a harmoniously multicultural Brazil.

First was the Museu da Lingua Portuguesa, a fairly new museum situated in the rafters of the belle époque Estação de Luz train station. Very high-tech and interactive, it purported to trace the history of the (Brazilian) Portuguese language while illustrating its various influences over the centuries. The time line history was particularly interesting, addressing developments in African language–especially Bantu–and American indigenous culture/language parallel with the development of Portuguese from Latin.

Thus, for example, such interesting cross-currents as Arabic affecting both Portuguese and African languages at the same time:


Or other tidbits, like cachaça, the national liquor, having Bantu origins:


Then, at 1500, they all converge:


The Portuguese meet the Tupi (Brazil's largest indigenous tribe and the one that left the largest mark on Brazilian cultural), African slaves are brought over, and the feijoada of languages stews for the next 500 years.


Unfortunately, little to no mention of what kind of linguistic repression occurred, what kind of penalty might be meted out for speaking your native language as a slave. There is a flash forward to a historically corrective present, though.


"In 1988, the Brazilian Constitution guaranteed to the Indians and the rural communities descended from slaves (remnants of quilombos [maroon communities of runaway slaves]) the right to the lands they have been occupying. It guaranteed as well legal protection to indigenous beliefs, languages, and
traditions.

The estimates of the time cited the existence of 220 indigenous tribes and around a thousand communities that were remnants of quilombos. The prolonged isolation of the majority of these peoples permitted the survival of more than 180 different indigenous languages and, in the black communities, the permanency of a Portuguese full of archaisms, in addition to African inheritances from the times of the senzalas [slave quarters on a plantaiton] and quilombos."

Language of African descent, or at least one word in particular, also caught the ear of Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, whose lyrics for tropicália classic "Batmacumba" (macumba = candomblé ritual offering) are designed as a recitation in poema concreta style:

Gilberto Gil & Caetano Veloso - Batmacumba
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Further on the east side of town, I also stopped by the Hospedaria de Imigrantes, or Immigrants' Hostel, which has been beautifully restored and turned into a museum & archive (for those looking for info about their family). It was more or less the Ellis Island of São Paulo. It's where hundreds of thousands of immigrants spent there first few weeks in Sampa before being assigned work on a coffee plantation somewhere in the interior.


Studying this period of Brazil's history was what first gave me the notion that Brazil and the U.S. have much more in common that either might originally think. Similar size, remarkable geographical diversity, history of plantation slavery. And neither is afraid of making really cheap ethnic stereotypes in a seemingly innocuous exhibit. I'm sure most Japanese women wore ceremonial kimono on their trip over to Brazil . . .