Brazilian judges are reputed not often to be open to actual bribery, but to be overrun with sentimentalism, nepotism, that do-anything-for-a-friend or for a friend’s friend, that lack of moral courage necessary to act with full justice when a personal element is involved, which is a crying weakness in all Latin-American countries. Striking evidences of this were frequently coming to the attention, more often in the interior than in Rio itself. A politician in a city farther north, for instance, killed a man of little standing, and went at once to report the matter to his bosom friend, the circuit judge. “All right,” the judge was reported to have replied. “Your sentence is one day’s imprisonment—in my house,” and when a warrant for the assassin’s arrest finally reached him, the judge marked it “Judgment given and sentence served,” and sent it to be filed in the archives. Aside from this weakness, the courts of Brazil seem to be fair; if anything they are too lenient. Not a few Brazilians contend that the jury system is not suited to the temperament of the nation, because it requires a sterner attitude toward human frailty than they can attain. In fact, the extreme leniency of juries is but another manifestation of the liberty-license point of view of Brazil, the same weakness that spares the rod and spoils the child. There were almost daily examples of this attitude of irresponsibility, emotionalism, undue compassion, as if the jurors considered a thief or an assassin at worst a poor unfortunate and were thinking that the day may quite likely come when they will find themselves in the same boat. A baker of a certain large city asked a member of the Chamber of Deputies, to whom he had been supplying bread for months without any suggestion of payment, to settle his bill. Being of foreign birth, the baker may not have known that openly to dun a Brazilian is so great an insult as to be dangerous. The deputy shot him through the heart, and the jury found it “justifiable homicide.” A Carioca boy of fifteen, who had been in jail for a year charged with murder, was tried during my stay in the capital. The whole trial took place between one and twelve P. M., and the accused was found guilty of “imprudence” and sentenced to fifteen days in prison. A well-known citizen of Rio was assassinated on January 5 under revolting circumstances. The case finally came to trial on the afternoon of December 29; the court took a recess from seven to eight for dinner; at 11:20 the jury retired, and at 12:20 there was brought in a verdict sentencing the accused to ten years’ imprisonment. Innumerable examples might be cited, all showing extraordinary sloth in bringing criminals to trial, lightning speed in dealing with them when at last they are arraigned, and a mistaken soft-heartedness in punishing them. On the other hand, the state may, and sometimes does, appeal a case and convict a man acquitted by an earlier verdict.

CHAPTER X
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE CARIOCAS

The mixture of races gives Rio a society very different from that of Buenos Aires; its elements are more distinct, more complex, more primitive, much less European. Probably it is the African blood in his veins even more than his Latin ancestry which gives the Carioca the emotionalism and the unexpected violences that often carry the individual or the population to excesses. The Brazilian character may be said to consist of Latin sensibility tinged with the African traits of superstition, fatalism, slovenliness, indiscipline, a certain happy-go-lucky cheerfulness, and an almost total lack of initiative; and to these the country owes most of its social and economic afflictions. It would be unreasonable to expect high things of it. The Portuguese were the cheapest race in western Europe, who won their place in history simply because they happen to live on the sea, and in the New World they mixed indiscriminately and in a purely animal way with the lowest form of humanity. The negro gave the Portuguese more imagination and a better adaptability to the tropics, perhaps an increase of cheerfulness; but with these came other qualities that do not make for improvement. Though he is often quick of intelligence, the Brazileiro seldom shows continuity of effort or any other sturdiness of character; he is exceedingly susceptible to flattery and highly incensed at any mention of the faults which he himself sometimes recognizes. Weather appears to make a difference in man’s disposition, and the climate of Rio does not seem to breed what we call “crankiness.” Outwardly the Carioca is usually good-humored and obliging, with less gruffness than the Porteño. Yet it is evidently not best for a man to be too greatly favored by nature; not only does it make him more indolent, but he seems on the whole to be less happy than in countries where the struggle for livelihood demands continuous and gruelling labor. Though individually and superficially they may be cheerful, the general air of a group of Brazilians is melancholy; as a character in a native novel of standing puts it, “they always seem to be discussing a funeral”—“or pornographic secrets,” adds another. There are more suicides per capita in Rio than in almost any other city in the world, and the finer the weather the more there seem to be reported each morning.

That the Brazilian is superficially courteous and in his way kindly there is no doubt; yet few traces of these qualities are to be found far beneath the surface. Even if he protests, he does so in soft language; palavras grossieras under any provocation are considered exceedingly bad form in any but the lowest classes. Yet there is a distinct suggestion of decadence in this very softness of speech, and one comes to long occasionally for the vigor and manliness of the doubled fist. As fathers the Brazilians have few equals, in all truth, for almost no other race on earth shows more indiscriminate diligence in peopling it. But it is an excellency of quantity rather than of quality. They are good husbands in the Brazilian sense, so long as the woman is content to remain at home and raise children while her lord and master is cultivating similar gardens elsewhere. Divorces are practically unknown because the general sentiment of the country is still Catholic, for all the prevalence of other theologies and philosophies, because the Brazilians have something of the French point of view that the family is primarily a business partnership not to be broken up for such light reasons as lack of love or illicit intercourse, and because the country has no divorce law. Married sons often live with their parents because they are too proud or too lazy to go out and work—though there is a strong family affection among all Latin-Americans, in the long run the principal result of this particular custom is bad for the race. That the rod is spared, often to the detriment of the child, especially of the boys, there is no doubt; one finds proofs of it every hour of the day in Brazil. The average Brazilian is an excellent illustration of the fact that mankind must be disciplined, that even children cannot always be ruled by love any more than they can be fed only on sweets, and the sparing of the rod has had a very large and by no means always beneficial effect on the male adults.

Indeed, there is far too much liberty, too much laissez faire—or deixa fazer, to use the native tongue—in Brazil, as in Spanish and Portuguese life everywhere. No one in the country seems to recognize that liberty may easily slop over into license, that the liberty of one may go so far as to interfere with and even wholly annul that of many others. No doubt democratic liberty should allow street-hawkers to howl the night as well as the day hideous, or let a merry soul pound a tuneless piano until three in the morning. To the newly republicanized Brazilians a law forbidding the interspersing of brothels through every residential district would no doubt be “a despotic interference with our sacred constitutional rights as citizens and equals,” as it would be to compel the hundreds of boys selling newspapers in the streets of Rio to learn some trade or calling, that later they may find some better way to earn a living than by hawking or thieving. But it is the Brazilian, as it is generally the South American, way never to correct anyone or anything unless it is absolutely unavoidable, until a confirmed democrat comes to wonder whether the human race must always have kings or dictators to rule over it rather than ever learning to rule itself. Then one recalls that Brazil has been a democracy, even nominally, only since 1889, and it is not so strange that she has not yet come to see that there may be a seamy side even to liberty.

Though they are constantly asking for credit abroad, either collectively or as individuals, Brazilians trust one another even more rarely than do the average of Latin-Americans. Everywhere are little hints of lack of confidence. The cash system is widely prevalent, which does not merely mean paying the moment the work is done, but often before it will be undertaken, lest the client change his mind or prove insolvent. Thus one pays a dentist before he fills a tooth, the doctor before he will remove an appendix, and a photographer before he will undertake to print one’s films. The mail boxes of Rio are automatic, for instance; the mailman must shove a locked bag under them before they will disgorge their contents, and both box and bag lock themselves as he pulls the latter out again, so that he never sees a letter, much less gets his sticky fingers on it. A judge of Rio stated publicly, when a jury let off a palpable offender, that ninety-five per cent. of the fires in Brazil were set by the owners or their hired agents in order to get the insurance, but that “there are so many artists at this crime who exercise their profession with such admirable perfection that few are ever convicted, however convinced the judge and the public may be of their guilt.” His Honor was, of course, incensed at a specific failure to convict, and perhaps exaggerated somewhat, but there are evidences that he had not greatly overstepped the truth.

There is no more futile occupation on earth than trying to save money in Rio de Janeiro. It melts away like ice under an equatorial sun; in fact, money is of such slight value in Brazil that it seems foolish to try to keep it. Do so and you are more likely than not to find that it has grown even more worthless next morning in exchange for those things of real value which man needs; that you have saved the cash only to lose the credit. Prices were decidedly higher in Rio than in Buenos Aires, or even in Montevideo. A small glass of not very good beer cost 800 reis; a green cocoanut, that finest of tropical thirst-quenchers, growing in superabundance along all the 5000-mile coast-line of Brazil, was considered a bargain at the equivalent of a quarter—and a tip to the man who opened it. The smallest bottle of native mineral water of unquestionable antecedents cost at least a milreis, and thirst lurks on every corner in sun-blazing Rio. Ordinary water? Certainly; if one cares to flirt with the undertaker. Everything else was in proportion to this most necessary source of expense. In the Seccos e Molhados, “Drys and Wets,” as Brazil calls her grocery or provision shops, potatoes sold at six hundred and more reis a kilogram; butter imported from Denmark into this enormous country of splendid grazing lands was a luxury far beyond the reach of any but the affluent. With the smallest coin in circulation worth more than three cents, it was not to be expected that prices would be cut fine. Moreover, there is the tendency of fazendo fita. A Brazilian is ashamed to admit that his money is limited. He has the reputation, and prides himself on it, of being a “good spender,” but this is not so much due to his scorn for money as compared with the better things that money will buy as it is to the fear of being thought less well-off than his fellows. Commerce is largely carried on in public, and the purchaser is thereby forced to pay more for dread of being seen making a fuss. He is afraid to ask the price of a thing before buying, or to protest against exorbitance, lest the by-standers think money matters to him—the ally of the tip-seeker the world over. À la carte restaurants in Rio almost invariably leave the price-space on their menus blank and bring a check bearing only the sum total, knowing that the average client will not have the hardihood to ask for a bill of particulars. Even a Brazilian workman never protests against commercial exploitation, never refuses to take a thing after he has asked for it, but pays whatever is demanded as if it were a pleasure to do so.

Even in the matter of prices a community gets about what it demands, and this national lack of protest has lifted the cost of living in Brazilian cities into the realm of the absurd. Prices of almost anything are out of all reason; the people seem to have formed the habit of paying high to cover the heavy import and other duties and the grafting of their officials, and to expect everything to be marked up in the same proportion. It seems to be more or less a matter of pride with them that they pay more than other people. Third-class fare from Portugal to Rio was 55$000; the return trip on the same ships cost 105$000. The attitude of the entire population seems to be graft and let graft pay through the nose because you can make someone else do likewise. The average Brazilian does not look as hard at a 32-cent milreis as most Americans do at a dime, or Europeans at a copper. Rio is one place where Americans can realize how the European, earning his money with more difficulty than we do, feels when he first comes into contact with our prices.

Numerous proofs may be found that the Brazilian is rather an imitator than an initiator. He seldom has a worthwhile idea of his own, but he is supernaturally quick to grasp those of anyone else. A year or more before my arrival a Portuguese opened a caldo de canna shop in aristocratic Rua Ouvidor. He set up a small cane-press, stood a bundle of choice sugarcanes at the door, laid in a supply of ice, and waited for customers. They soon came, for nowhere does a novelty take more quickly than in Rio. Picking out their own cane as they entered, the clients caused it to be run through the press, the juice straining down through chopped ice, with the result that for a tostão they had a pleasant and refreshing drink. Within a fortnight of the establishment of this entirely new industry fifteen other persons, all Brazilians, had opened caldo de canna shops in the three short blocks of that narrow, vehicle-less shopping street, buying out the former occupants at any price—with the inevitable result that within a month the entire clan, including the originator, were bankrupt. To-day, when the stroller is thirsty yet has no desire to consume alcohol, he can get a glass of iced cane-juice only in a few shops which make this a side-line of their regular business. This is one of hundreds of similar incidents in the commercial life of Rio, and suggestive in general of Brazilian business ethics.

A Brazilian proverb has it that “A cauda do demonio e de rendas” (the devil’s tail is made of lace). Whatever the scientific exactness of that assertion, there is no doubt that the Brazileiro is early, often, and usually successfully tempted by what are sometimes vulgarly called “skirts.” The same may be said of all Latin-America, but in Brazil the undisguised prevalence of irregular polygamy probably reaches its zenith. Rigid, yet provocative, seclusion of the women, thanks to Moorish influence, the former teaching of the Jesuits, to the instinct for self-preservation of the women themselves, is perhaps as much the cause of this condition as the natural polygamous tendency of the males. Being an accepted convention of society that freedom of social intercourse between men and women is certain to lead to more intimate relations at the first opportunity, the women of the better class are inclosed within an impregnable wall of Oriental seclusion, and their contact with men is almost wholly confined to those of their own family circle. Even the French find Brazilian family life unreasonably circumspect. Under such conditions there can, of course, be little social or intellectual activity, little real human intercourse, and it is not surprising that the eager and romantic young men who find it impossible to meet girls of their own class without a cynical chaperon hanging constantly at their heels should fall easy prey to the darker skinned and more accessible members of the sex, or to the imported demimondaines who flourish in all the larger cities.