There are many things of interest in downtown Rio, but of them all perhaps the Avenida Rio Branco is the most enticing. Stroll where one will on either side of it, to the Arsenal, the Ministries, the palace where the last emperor of the western hemisphere had his official residence up to little more than thirty years ago, to the heavy and not particularly striking cathedral, one is sure to drift unconsciously back and take again to wandering aimlessly along in the human stream that surges as incessantly through the Avenida as if the populace were still enjoying the novelty of moving freely where their ancestors could not pass. The only other street in old Rio that has anything like the same fascination is the narrow Rua Ouvidor, as it is still known in popular speech, though the city fathers long since decreed that it shall be called the Rua Moreira Cesar. This is to Rio what the Calle Florida is to Buenos Aires, not merely a populous street but a popular institution. Along it are the most brilliant shops, in it may be seen the most exclusive residents of Rio greeting one another with the elaborate and leisurely formality of their class. Level paved from wall to wall, it is in reality a broad sidewalk, for here wheeled vehicles may not enter at any hour whatever. Yet even the enticing windows and the now and then attractive shoppers of the Rua Ouvidor do not often keep the stroller long from wandering once more out into the Avenida.
For all its width it is not easy to walk along the Avenida. What might be called “sidewalk manners” are atrocious throughout South America; in Rio they are at their worst. This is not because the Fluminenses—for these, too, call themselves “rivereens,” though they are far from any real river—are especially inconsiderate, but because they are tropical idlers with no fixed habit of mind, and instead of picking a straightforward course down the broad avenue they wander back and forth across one’s path in all sorts of erratic diagonals. The pace of life slows down noticeably in twelve degrees of latitude, and street crowds are not only slower but much more stagnant in Rio than in Buenos Aires. In time the direct and hurrying northerner comes to realize that the Avenida is not designed to be merely a passageway from somewhere to somewhere else. It is somewhere itself, a lounging-place, a locality in which to show off at one’s best, a splendid site for café chairs and tables. By late afternoon it is often so blocked that passage along it is a constant struggle; in the evening clumps of seated coffee sippers and groups of gossiping men fill the broad sidewalks almost to impassability.
An employee of the “Snake Farm” of São Paulo
Residents of Rio’s hilltop slums, in a chosen pose
The heart of Rio, with its Municipal Theater, the National Library, the old Portuguese aqueduct, and, on the left, a shack-built hilltop
These sidewalks of the Avenida were evidently laid with the connivance of shoemakers. Most of them are mosaics of black and white broken stone in striking designs and fantastic patterns, here geometrical, there in the form of flowers, with horsey figures before the Jockey Club, nautical things before the Naval Club, all of striking effect when seen, for instance, from the upper windows of the Jornal do Commercio building, but particularly deadly on shoe leather. An architect might have much to say of the score of splendid structures that flank the avenue. Some are merely business houses; farther seaward, beyond two great hotels, are clustered the sumptuous Municipal Theater, the School of Fine Arts, and the National Library; set a little back from the street are the Supreme Tribunal and the Municipal Council until the Avenida breaks out at length into the Beira Mar beside the Palacio Monröe in its little park. This last marble and granite edifice was carried back from our St. Louis Exposition and set up chiefly as a show-place and an ultra-formal gathering-hall, but the Chamber of Deputies has been meeting there since their old firetrap on the Praça da República took to falling about their ears. Beyond it lie the blue waters of the oval bay, across which, always in full view from anywhere on the avenue, stands the Pão d’Assucar, like a rearing monolith, the thread-like cable that now and then carries a car to or from its summit plainly visible in the clear tropical sunshine.
However, it is not these more formal things but rather the continual interweaving of curious and motley types, the air of unworried tropical indolence that pervades the throng, the brilliance of the night lights that draw the idler again and again to the chief artery of downtown Rio. Particularly after the hour of siesta does the capital exchange the extreme négligée of the household for its most resplendent garb and sally forth to stroll the Avenida, the women with curiously expressionless faces, as if they would prove themselves deaf to the audibly flattering male groups that grow larger and larger until by sunset the sidewalks become a great salon rather than places of locomotion. Foreigners and those who have lost the spirit of Rio and must hurry may take a taxi. These pour so continually past, day and night, that to cross the Avenida is a perilous undertaking at any hour, for the personal politeness of the Fluminense does not extend to his automobiles, and the chances of being run down, particularly by empty machines cruising for fares, are excellent. Nor is it worth while for the lone pedestrian to protest, for the odds are against him. Both private automobiles and those for hire carry two chauffeurs, usually in white uniforms, less often unquestionably of that complexion, their faces studies in haughtiness as they gaze down upon the plebeian foot-going multitude. The extra man is known colloquially as the “secretary,” and the custom is said to have arisen from the fact that before the law required meters taxis charged all the traffic would bear and it often took two men to collect from recalcitrant customers. But its persistence suggests that there are other reasons, among them the Brazilian love of sinecures, the terror which solitary labor causes to the tropical temperament, the pleasure of having a congenial friend always hanging about, the excess of population over jobs, the real chauffeur’s need of someone to crank his car, light his cigarette, and keep an eye on the police, most of all, perhaps, the Brazilian love of fazendo fita. Literally fazendo fita means “making a film,” but by extension it has come to signify posing for the moving-picture camera, hence, in the slang of Rio, “showing off.” It is a rare Brazilian who is not given to acting for the movies in this sense. Watch a traffic policeman, in his resplendent uniform and white gloves, and you will find that he is much more seriously bent on displaying his manly form and graceful deportment to a supposedly admiring audience than on keeping his street corner clear. Go up to any man with a gold cable swung across his chest and ask gently, “O s’nhor tem a hora?” and he is almost as apt as not to reply with a mumbled, “Ah-er-I cannot tell you the time,” meanwhile grasping first one end of the chain, then the other, as if he were striving to convince even himself that he has a watch somewhere attached to it.