Benjamim Moser: Why I love Brazil

Everywhere I went, I found everything I expected to find. There was no lack of golden beaches, colonial charm, scary rain forests, soccer players, tropical rhythms and chatty hookers. I drank cachaça-based cocktails; I got a tan. 

All of those things I more or less expected. I didn't expect to find a gigantic factory in Recife that its owner, the sculptor Francisco Brennand, had spent half a century transforming into a total work of art full of abstract ceramic genitalia. I didn't expect anything like "The Passion According to G.H.," a novel written by a part-time Rio beauty columnist named Clarice Lispector, about a well-to-do lady who, at the height of a mystic crisis, eats a roach.

 That was how it went all over the country. Every time I thought I had seen something, another door would open and make me realize everything I had missed.

It's not that the country doesn't still have its problems. It's because if Brazil, with all its enormous challenges, can come this far this fast, there's hope for the rest of us too. 

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