Tag: Brazil

Stories

King of Coxinha: The Underbelly of an Artisanal Brazilian Snack

A documentary film explores the hard work of making a hand-crafted specialty food.

U.S.-Brazil Custody Case Reaches Highest Levels of Obama Administration

By Eduardo A. de Oliveira, EthnicNEWz.org and Feet In 2 Worlds contributor

Goldman and his son, Sean.

Goldman and his son, Sean. (Photo: BringSeanHome.org)

The ingredients were typical of a soap opera: a handsome American male model falls for a Brazilian fashion student. The couple met in Milan, Italy. From the love of David Goldman and Bruna Ribeiro resulted a happy wedding, a peaceful marriage, and life in New Jersey with their baby boy, Sean.

But the dream of a beautiful family went awry, resulting in an international custody battle that has strained ties between two friendly nations — even prompting an intervention by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In 2004, Ribeiro brought 4-year-old Sean to spend 15 days in Rio de Janeiro. Goldman would join them a few days later. But as soon as she landed in the “Marvelous City,” the mother called David and said she was not returning to the United States. Goldman’s nightmare started when his wife told him that if he ever wanted to see Sean again, he would have to assign sole custody of the boy to her.

Since that phone call, Goldman has fought to have the right to visit his son in Brazil. Meanwhile, Ribeiro married an influential and politically well-connected lawyer, João Paulo Lins e Silva — although in the U.S. her marriage to Goldman was still valid.

In August 2008, the couple’s story took a dramatic turn. After giving birth to a baby girl, Bruna Ribeiro Lins e Silva died of complications from the birth. Although tragic, the events gave Goldman renewed hope that, as the only blood-relative to Sean, he would finally be reunited with him.

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Latin America to U.S.: Tsk-Tsk

Brazilian President Lula da Silva at the U.N. Tuesday.

Brazilian President Lula da Silva at the U.N. Tuesday.

Miami is sometimes half-jokingly called “the capital of Latin America,” for its concentration of Latin American expats, Latin American corporation headquarters and even vacation homes for the region’s richest. No wonder then that both Senators John McCain and Barack Obama opted to outline their potential foreign policy towards the region while campaigning in Florida last week. Both candidates gave interviews to Radio Caracol that made headlines, each in its own way.

The highlight of McCain’s appearance was his apparent confusion as to Spain’s location and who its prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is [you can listen to it here.] A story on the incident in The Sydney Morning Herald was headlined “The brain in McCain under strain about Spain.” However, a campaign advisor denied there was any confusion, which can only hurt Spanish pride.

In respect to Latin America, McCain expressed coldness for the more anti-American leftist leaders in the region and support for Mexico’s Felipe Calderón in his war against drug cartels.

Obama, in turn, projected a more empathetic stance towards the region, admitting that the U.S. “has been so obsessed with Iraq that we haven’t spent time focused on the situation in Latin America.” He also seemed to defend his position on a potential meeting with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who the McCain camp featured in an attack ad on Spanish-language TV this week:

I think it’s important for us to not overreact to Chavez. I think what we have to do is just let Chavez know that we don’t want him exporting anti-American sentiment and causing trouble in the region, but that we are interested in having a respectful dialogue with everybody in Latin America in terms of figuring out how we can improve the day to day lives of people.

Most people in Latin America would agree that the U.S. has not paid attention to the region so far this century. A lot of them, however, would probably view that as a good thing. Most Latin Americans consider the much-disliked free-market economic policies of the ’90s known as the Washington Consensus to have been forced on the region by the U.S. and the multilateral organizations on which it generally exerts commanding control, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. (more…)