www.brazzil.com Brazzil Immigration February 2003

Koreans and Chinese seem to be the only people interested in emigrating to Brazil nowadays, but they haven't yet won the affection of the local population. The Japanese, however, have adapted totally to Brazil and Brazilians one of these days might elect a Japanese president.

John Fitzpatrick

A reader contacted me recently about a piece I had written on the position of black people in Brazil. This reader said that, although he himself was a black African, originally from Uganda, he felt that the low social position of blacks in most countries was due to their easy-going nature. He pointed to the success which other immigrants, such as Germans and Japanese, had enjoyed in Brazil and compared them with the failure of blacks and mixed race people to make progress. He singled out the Japanese, claiming that their cultural inheritance had made them one of the most successful immigrant groups in Brazil.

It was obvious from the correspondence which ensued between us that the writer had never set foot in Brazil or he would not have jumped to such a clichéd conclusion. In fact, while the Japanese have done well, their record is nothing special and a Brazilian of Japanese descent is as likely to be a peasant farmer or hairdresser as a brain surgeon or bank president. Since many people do not even know that Brazil has one of the biggest Japanese communities in the world this could be a good opportunity to take a brief look at Brazil's main Asian communities.

If you visit São Paulo's main fruit and vegetable market, known locally as CEAGESP, some morning you will notice that many, if not most, of the names on the loading bays and stalls are Japanese. The same applies to the people working there. While some are of pure Japanese stock others show that the great mixing of races, which marks Brazil, has included the Japanese. Go to one of the city's outdoor street markets and you will almost certainly find Japanese bent over giant pans brimming with boiling oil frying pastéis, a kind of savoury pastry which is extremely popular here. I am not disparaging these trades but, perhaps, they would make our African correspondent rethink his views.

Liberdade Means Freedom

Visit the Liberdade district, only a five-minute stroll from the Pátio do Colégio where São Paulo was founded almost 450 years ago, and you will find yourself surrounded by Japanese shops, restaurants, travel agencies, martial arts schools, hotels and karaoke bars. The signs are in Japanese and Portuguese, the street lighting is in the form of magic lanterns and there is a Japanese garden, Buddhist temples and a museum on the immigrants who made Brazil their home.

However, Liberdade is not some kind of Japanese ghetto and, in fact, most of the Japanese you see are Brazilians of Japanese descent. There are many white, black and brown Brazilians among the people you see. A Japanese is as likely to have a wife or husband from another ethnic group as from the Japanese community.

I once saw a group of about 20 people having lunch. The mixture consisted of mixed white-Japanese couples and their children, and another family consisting of a white father, black mother and their daughter who, in turn, had a Japanese boyfriend. Generally speaking, the older people will speak Japanese as well as Portuguese but the younger generation will speak only Portuguese. Expatriate Japanese, working for multinationals are also found in Liberdade since if they are suffering from homesickness, they can find all they want there.

Liberdade is one of the few districts in São Paulo which is worth a visit. It is compact, reasonably clean and safe and refreshingly human in scale without the monstrous skyscrapers found in so many other areas. At the weekend, there is a pleasant little market selling all kinds of handicrafts. Just outside the metro station, a religious group usually holds meetings in Japanese and Portuguese.

Recently I was taken aback to hear them singing the traditional Scottish hymn "Amazing Grace" in Japanese. In a scene which was reminiscent of James Clavell's novel Shogun I saw a couple of blind masseurs treating patients outdoors. However, instead of being Samurai veterans blinded in combat, these masseurs were young.

Foodstalls sell all kinds of Japanese foods and snacks, which most Paulistanos generally like, regardless of their own ethnic background. Every year a Japanese version of the carnival is held complete with a parade and samba school.

A Royal Visit

In 1996 I was present during a visit to Liberdade by Princess Sayako to celebrate the centenary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Japan and Brazil. The streets were bedecked by Japanese and Brazilian flags and I am sure she was amazed to find herself amongst this multitude, at once so familiar yet also so strange. There were lots of elderly people there who were born in Japan before the Second World War when the Emperor was still regarded as a god-like figure. One can only wonder what they thought.

The Japanese are also found in the countryside, which is where the bulk of them went when the first group of 165 families (totaling 781 people) arrived in Santos on the ship Kasato Maru, on June 18, 1908. They were mainly poor peasants and most began working on the coffee plantations in São Paulo state.

At first, most immigrants aimed to spend only a few years in Brazil and then return home, but they found life in Brazil tough and few enjoyed that option. However, as the years passed they became more entrenched and founded business and cultural organizations. They bought pieces of land and proved to be good farmers. At one time, 94 percent of all Japanese were engaged in farming and even today 40 percent of Japanese still work in farming.

The second and third generations became Brazilian and some young men even ended up in the Brazilian army, which fought in Italy after Brazil declared war against Japan and Germany in the Second World War. During the war all Japanese, German and Italian schools in Brazil were forced to abandon classes in their national languages and teach only in Portuguese. Some Japanese were imprisoned, as were Germans and Italians, but overall the war left little bitterness.

There were four waves of mass immigration, which ended in 1960, and there are now around 1.3 million people of Japanese descent in Brazil (around 0.7 percent of the total population). They are concentrated mainly in São Paulo and Paraná and have a high profile in these areas.

A Japanese President?

They are prominent in medicine, finance and politics e.g. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's communications minister, Luiz Gushiken, is the son of a Japanese immigrant. Maybe one day Brazil will follow Peru's example and elect a Japanese president.

One can safely say that the Japanese have adapted totally to Brazil and my reader's idea that they are the kinds of "ants", to use an unforgettable if undiplomatic comment by the former French Prime Minister, Edith Cresson, is completely wrong. In fact the difference between Brazilian Japanese and the real Japanese culture is seen everyday in Japan itself where there are an estimated quarter of a million Brazilian immigrant workers and their families.

Nearly all of them are of Japanese descent since, unlike Brazil or the US, Japan does not welcome non-Japanese and its strict immigration laws favour those of Japanese ancestry. The Brazilians tend to do the manual jobs the locals do not want and are often found in car plants and factories. About 30 percent of these dekasegis (someone who earns money abroad) are graduates. Often they complain that the work they do is kitanai (dirty), kitsui (hard) and kiken (dangerous).

Although they can make good money, incidentally helping Brazil's balance of payments account, most return to Brazil. Some claim they are looked down on by the Japanese while others are frustrated by what they see as the lack of individualism in a group-oriented society. Japan may be the land of their ancestors but Brazil is their homeland. They have set up Brazilian clubs and restaurants.

Most top Brazilian singers have visited Japan where they are assured a warm welcome by the nisseis, as Brazilians of Japanese descent are called. When Brazil won the World Cup final in Japan last year most of those cheering Japanese bedecked in green and yellow were not locals who had adopted Brazil but expatriates who were as Brazilian as Ronaldo and Roberto Carlos.

This integration which the Japanese have accomplished has not yet been achieved to the same extent by the two other large Asian groups—the Chinese and the Koreans—but this is probably a matter of time. Both these groups have been in Brazil en masse for a far shorter time and ongoing immigration means they still have strong roots in their home countries.

Brazil's Newest Immigrants

In fact, Koreans and Chinese seem to be the only people interested in emigrating to Brazil nowadays. They have not yet won the affection of the local population since they are still apart in terms of language and attitude. Having said that, many Koreans have intermarried. The first Koreans arrived in the early 60s and there are an estimated 50,000 in São Paulo. They have cornered a large part of the textile trade in São Paulo, which has led to some ill will from those who lost out.

The Koreans have been accused of using sweatshop labour, relying on illegal immigrants from Bolivia. There is also concern about the activities of the Unification Church founded by the controversial religious leader Sun Myung Moon, which owns large tracts of land in the Brazilian Midwest. It is worth recalling that last year a newspaper called the Washington Times, which is owned by Moon's group, published a preposterous article claiming that the then presidential candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was a communist who was planning to form a terrorist axis involving Brazil, Venezuela and Cuba.

The Worst Chinese Food

There are an estimated 120,000 Chinese in São Paulo. Although there have been Chinese in Brazil for about a century, the first main wave of immigration came in the years after the Communist take over of China. Many arrived here via Taiwan. They have set ups scores of restaurants, which incidentally are generally lousy. São Paulo is the greatest place in the world for eating out, but my advice, based on experience, is to avoid its Chinese restaurants. The Chinese also run little shops selling cheap trinkets and gifts. They are scattered throughout the city although many live in Liberdade.

We are currently seeing a new wave of arrivals from mainland China. Many speak no Portuguese and are illegal immigrants, usually entering through Paraguay. They tend to stick to their own community although it is becoming increasingly common to see young men and women hawking sports shoes in the streets. Unfortunately, there is a criminal element which feeds on the community and forces shopkeepers and restaurant owners to pay protection money. Those who refuse to pay are attacked or even killed. There is also a small Indonesian community which is generally of Chinese descent. These Indonesians came here after the anti-Chinese riots in Indonesia in the mid-60s when thousands of ethnic Chinese were massacred following an alleged Communist coup attempt.

No British Raj in Brazil

One final point. It is interesting to note the lack of an Indian population in Brazil. There are only about 300 Indians in São Paulo. There are a couple of restaurants which are overrated and overpriced. The shortage of Indians is probably related to the fact that Brazil was not a British colony. The British shipped hundreds of thousands of Indians off to places like South Africa, Kenya, Malaya, the Caribbean, Guyana etc to work as labourers. Their descendants have often thrived, particularly in Africa. My African correspondent who is familiar with the Indians who ran the economy in Uganda said that if a group of Indians were to establish themselves in the Northeast of Brazil, within 10 years they would have developed it. I certainly could not accept that. All these Indians would do, I said, would be what they have done in Africa. They would open a little shop where they would sit on their bundas all day long selling basic goods or lending money to the locals. They would enrich themselves but not the local economy.

John Fitzpatrick is a Scottish journalist who first visited Brazil in 1987 and has lived in São Paulo since 1995. He writes on politics and finance and runs his own company, Celtic Comunicações— www.celt.com.br , which specializes in editorial and translation services for Brazilian and foreign clients. You can reach him at jf@celt.com.br 

© John Fitzpatrick 2003

You can also read John Fitzpatrick's articles in Infobrazil, at www.infobrazil.com

www.upi.com By Carmen Gentile UPI Latin America Correspondent From the International Desk Published 2/4/2003 5:28 PM

SAO PAULO, Brazil, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- Brazil's Landless Workers Movement, armed with scythes and sticks, blocked a major highway Tuesday in the country's northeast and is holding a state secretary of agriculture hostage.

Known locally as the MST, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, an estimated 500 protesters calling for widespread agrarian reform in the state of Alagoas, have been refusing to let traffic pass since Monday.

Specifically, officials in the MST -- the world's largest land reform group -- are calling on representatives of the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform, or INCRA, to make available land for distribution among its ranks and are asking for guarantees regarding access to water and electricity.

The economic divide between the South American nation's wealthy and poor is one of the greatest in the world, particularly in the impoverished northeast, where a great portion of private lands are held by a relative few.

The MST often organizes and carries out seizures of private land to draw attention to their cause and have asked the Brazilian government to introduce wide-scale agrarian reform.

"We want a solution for this calamitous state," said local MST leader Jose Marcone Alves, adding that the protest was an effort to bring national attention to the slow pace of negotiations with INCRA.

The movement calls for a restructuring of Brazilian land ownership in a country where the MST claims 60 percent of Brazil's farmland remains unused, while 25 million peasants toil as landless laborers.

The previous Brazilian government claimed that during its eight-year tenure -- the time of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's administration -- it had allocated some 20 million hectares to landless workers.

The MST widely disputes that figure.

Meanwhile, State Secretary of Agriculture Reinaldo Falcao -- along with five other state officials -- are being held by the MST blocking the Alagoas highway, although they are reportedly in no danger and are working toward ending the siege.

"We came to intervene in negotiations between the MST and INCRA, but we are impeded from leaving," Falcao said Tuesday in a phone interview with Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper.

The highway siege is the first large-scale action by the MST since the Jan. 1 inauguration of Brazil's new, leftist leader, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The MST had stated publicly up until Monday that they would maintain an informal truce with the Brazil government in an effort to allow Lula an opportunity to show that he is committed to agrarian reform.

The former union leader and labor-rights activist campaigned on a platform to work toward allocating under-utilized land to those Brazilians seeking to establish their own farms.

During his visits to the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Lula took the opportunity to stress the need for agrarian reform in Brazil.

"We now have an administration with the political will to resolve social problems," national MST leader Joao Stedile said last month in Porto Alegre, expressing optimism about the prospects for reform during Lula's tenure in office.

He maintained, however, that the MST would continue to pressure the Brazilian government to resolve the agrarian issue and "organize the workers, the poor, and the people to fight for their rights."

www.upi.com By Carmen Gentile UPI Latin America Correspondent From the International Desk Published 2/5/2003 4:58 PM

SAO PAULO, Brazil, Feb. 5 (UPI) -- The leader of Brazil's ruling party is considering a public smear campaign as punishment for the senator that did not back the Workers' Party choice for Senate leader, touching off a feud among its ranks, Brazilian newspapers reported Wednesday.

Jose Genoino, president of the Workers' Party, or PT, said he might use an unspecified public warning condemning Sen. Heloisa Helena for not attending Saturday's session in which the Senate elected former Brazilian president, now senator, Jose Sarney as the upper house leader.

"Senator Heloisa Helena is irritating the PT by constantly criticizing the party's decisions," said Genoino, who didn't specify exactly how he would further criticize the senator.

The vote was part of a pre-arranged agreement between the PT leadership and Sarney's Democratic Movement Party, or PMDB, whereby the PT would throw its support behind Sarney in exchange for PMDB votes in lower house presidential elections.

True to their word, the PMDB backed the pre-ordained PT choice for lower house president, Rep. Joao Paulo Cunha.

According to Genoino, the Helena's decision to not vote for Sarney went beyond defiance by a member of the PT's "radical faction," which has questioned some of the political maneuvers made by its leadership since President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva assumed office on Jan. 1.

Mostly, the radicals have been critical of Lula's economic team, which has won the kudos of both local and foreign investors for not deviating from the free market policies implemented by former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

They insist that Minster of Finance Antonio Palocci and Central Bank President Henrique Meirelles have been far too conservative for the leftist PT.

The public condemnation of Helena is part of a strategy by the Lula administration to isolate the radicals and prompt them to toe the party line as it attempts to push its agenda of social reforms in Congress and pull Brazil out of its current economic slump.

The PT needs the support of the highly influential PMDB if it hopes to achieve any of its professed goals in the next four years. A further splintering of the PT would surely jeopardize Lula's agenda and undermine efforts at economic recovery.

Helena, however, defended her absence in Saturday's vote saying she has notified party leaders she would not attend the session and that her decision was a just one, as she could not support a "representative of the oligarchy," referring to Sarney.

"Every day I know that am not alone (in my decisions)," said Helena referring to her fellow PT radicals. "I have the conviction to help better this wonderful country."

www.rabble.ca by Judy Rebick February 3, 2003

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way,” Indian writer Arundhati Roy told a massive crowd of 30,000 at the concluding event of the World Social Forum last week in Porto Alegre, Brazil. “On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

I, too, heard her breathing this week, not in quiet, but in the boisterous noise of 100,000 activists talking, chanting, clapping, dancing, discussing and listening to each other’s stories.

At this year’s World Social Forum (WSF), it became clear to me that the Forum is really a process more than a product. The WSF has given us a new way of talking to each other, a new way of sharing our experiences and the impact is extraordinary. On so many levels, the space and the spirit of the WSF has created multiple dialogues that may very well promote transformation. The WSF is realizing a century old dream of an “International,” a gathering of the workers of the world that Karl Marx and Frederick Engels called for in the Communist Manifesto. But instead of the Euro-centric elites of the previous Internationals, the World Social Forum is a meeting of peoples of the world, inclusive, non-sectarian and open.

An organizer of the Asian Social Forum whom I met on my first night in Porto Alegre told me how magical that meeting of 20,000 activists was, “The Indian left is really very sour and negative,” he said, “but here we had fun over those few days as well as engaging in serious political discussions. People thought it was wonderful.” It was the same word I heard from many participants in the first event of the Toronto Social Forum, “wonderful.” Here are some dialogues that the WSF has facilitated:

Israel and Palestine

As Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon consolidated his greatest electoral victory yet, Israelis and Palestinian peace activists met in Porto Alegre to develop a joint declaration for peace. It was read in English by both a Palestinian Member of Parliament and a Jewish doctor to the same throng addressed later by Roy and Noam Chomsky. It read in part, “We Israeli and Palestinian peace activists are determined to pursue peace…an end to the Occupation, the establishment of a Palestinian state, Jerusalem as an open city and a just and fair solution of the Palestinian refugee problem.”

As the Mayor of Porto Alegre read the statement in Portuguese, John Lennon’s song “Imagine” was heard first softly and then at full volume over the giant stadium’s loud speakers. Spontaneously 20,000 people stood, held hands high and swayed and sang along. On the stage, the Israelis and Palestinians too held hands and then hugged and kissed each other. “You may say that I’m a dreamer,” says the song, “but I’m not the only one.”

Political Parties and Social Movements

The day before, José Genoino, president of the Workers’ Party (PT) of Brazil and Willy Madisha, president of COSATU (the union federation in South Africa) explained two sides of taking state power in an extraordinary dialogue on political parties and social movements. Genoino told the crowd, “The challenge of the left is to be an affirmative alternative to authoritarian exclusion, commodification of life and objectification of people.” He continued that the priorities of the PT were democracy as a fundamental value and the struggle for rights. “We walk on two feet, “ he explained. “One foot is the democratization of the state and the other the building of strong autonomous social movements.”

Madisha drew the lessons of the quick and heartbreaking slide to the right of the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa. “When the ANC was elected, we thought the road ahead would be easy.” The ANC went from being a liberation movement to a traditional party that is only interested in winning elections in such a short time. “It is simplistic to blame the ANC leaders since a similar fate has met almost every left-wing government that has won power.” Here are the lessons he drew:

• All of our militants went into government because we believed that we could make all the changes we needed through the state. We dealt a mortal blow to our social movements and this has had grave consequences.
• South Africa is second only to Brazil in the gap between rich and poor. The ANC thought they could use the state to redistribute wealth, but they quickly succumbed to the pressures of capital. The first step of any left-wing government must be to restructure the state to include participation of ordinary people at all levels of government.
• We in COSATU relied on our informal relations with our comrades in the ANC. We should have structured a formal relationship of accountability.

He warned the PT that the real fight begins once the new government takes over. I was struck by how closely these lessons resembled those many of us drew from the Bob Rae/NDP government experience in Ontario.

Trade Unions and Social Movements

One of the more amazing personal experiences I had was to facilitate two discussions among the world’s trade union activists and leaders. Last year, some women unionists from Canada were disappointed that male leaders making long speeches denouncing neo-liberalism dominated the union sessions. So they joined with the Brazilian, Argentinian and Italian labour federations to organize two round tables with me as moderator keeping every one to no more than three minutes each.

There were amazing stories like the one from Jonathan Neal from Globalize Resistance in England. Globalize Resistance invited the two top left-wing journalists in Britain as speakers, and then leafleted the newspapers and the TV stations for a meeting. Seventy journalists showed up and were challenged to take the fight against the war into their newsrooms and into their editorial boards. One result was that the Daily Mirror, a tabloid, has taken an anti-war stance and will publish a five-page supplement for the massive anti-war marches planned throughout Europe on February 15 including maps on how to get to the march. On a recent cover, the paper cleverly highlighted the connection between war and oil.

But most important was the sophistication of the discussion based not on bombastic interventions or debating resolutions but rather on sharing experiences and discussing strategies. Everyone loved it and wanted to find ways to continue the dialogue.

Canada and Quebec

The spirit of the WSF even touched one of our most difficult questions, the relationship between the left in Canada and in Quebec. We held two meetings to discuss launching a Canada/Quebec Social Forum. As someone who has worked on building these links for more than twenty years, I can say that these were the meetings with the least tensions across our divide that I have ever seen. There was a consensus to move forward on a Quebec-Canada and, hopefully, First Nations Social Forum with a start-up committee being formed to issue an appeal to the groups who were not at the WSF.

Activists from Quebec, Canada, the United States and Mexico also persuaded the Vancouver group that has been pushing for a North American Social Forum in August of 2003 that it was not realistic in the short time frame they had planned.

Lula and the PT

At the centre of the magic was the new world that Lula and the PT are trying to build in Brazil. We saw more than a glimpse of it. On the last day, in the giant stadium, a man freaked out and started smashing sound equipment. The big security guards, instead of subduing him with violence, comforted him. They held him and patted his head and his back, speaking kindly to him. They physically stopped his destruction but with kindness instead of violence. He began to cry and left voluntarily with them.

As the Forum wrapped up, we were all seized with how much there is to do to “Confront the Empire,” as the final event put it. Promoting the process, ideas and practices of the World Social Forum and the New Brazil is central on the agenda. Canadians discussed the idea of building meetings with leaders of the PT government to spread their ideas and practices to a broader audience. There was a lot of focus on organizing against the FTAA and the war on Iraq, which were certainly the two most prominent issues. Supporting the efforts of activists in India to organize the next World Social Forum, in addition to spreading the forum throughout Canada and Quebec, were other priorities.

Laying Seige to the Empire

I end as I began with the words of Arundathi Roy. After outlining a series of victories, including of course Lula’s election, she said:

“…We may not have stopped it (Empire) in its tracks, but we have stripped it down. We have made it drop its mask. We have forced it into the open. It now stands before us on the world’s stage in all its brutish, iniquitous nakedness. Empire may well go to war, but it’s out in the open now — too ugly to behold its own reflection. To ugly even to rally its own people.

“We can turn the war on Iraq into a fishbowl of the U.S. government’s excesses. We can expose George Bush and Tony Blair and their allies for the cowardly baby killers, water poisoners and pusillanimous, long-distance bombers that they are.

“We can re-invent civil disobedience in a million different ways…becoming a collective pain in the ass.

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness…The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling — their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons and their notion of inevitability.”

“Remember this. We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.”

www.forbes.com Reuters, 02.03.03, 9:58 AM ET By Todd Benson

SAO PAULO, Brazil, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Brazil's financial markets edged higher early on Monday after President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva gained support over the weekend for his reform agenda in Congress. The country's currency, the real , strengthened 0.6 percent to 3.5 per dollar, gaining ground against the greenback for the fourth straight session. Stocks rose in tandem with the currency, lifting the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange's benchmark Bovespa <.BVSP> index 0.64 percent to 11,010.9 points in modest trade. Though fears of U.S.-led war against Iraq continued to weigh on sentiment, markets headed higher after the Lula government managed to rally additional congressional support for its ambitious economic reform agenda, topped by plans to overhaul Brazil's cumbersome pension and tax regimes. Over the weekend, legislators elected two key Lula allies to lead the Senate and the lower house, both of whom pledged to aggressively push the president's agenda in Congress. Lula was also the beneficiary of some last-minute party defections, seeing his support base in the house swell by 11 percent to 254 seats. While that leaves the government three seats short of a simple majority, at least a third of the opposition is willing to support Lula, giving him more than the 308 votes necessary for constitutional reform. Moreover, further defections in favor of the government are expected before Congress resumes work on Feb. 17. "Things are shaping up well for the government in Congress, and that bodes well for the reform agenda," said Pedro Thomazoni, treasury director at Lloyds TSB in Sao Paulo. Another factor underpinning the market were expectations that the government will raise its primary budget surplus later this week in a move that could make it easier for the country to service its $250 billion public debt. Last week, Brazil posted a record primary surplus for 2002 equivalent to 4.06 percent of gross domestic product, stirring hopes in the market that the government will hike this year's target to at least 4.3 percent of GDP, well above the current goal of 3.75 percent. "My feeling is that the market still hasn't fully priced in an increase in the surplus target, so that could be a nice surprise for the market this week," said Eduardo Duarte, head of the currency desk at Banco Prosper in Rio de Janeiro. In the stock market, Brazil's No.1 private bank, Banco Bradesco SA <BBDC4.SA> (nyse: BBD - news - people), was among the early leaders. Bradesco shares climbed 1.62 percent to 10.05 reais after the bank posted a better-than-expected fourth quarter profit of 698 million reais. In the beverage sector, stock in beer giant Companhia de Bebidas das Americas, or AmBev <AMBV4.SA> (nyse: ABV - news - people), edged up 0.2 percent to 506 reais after it said it had wrapped up a $600 million deal to buy a 36 percent stake in Argentine brewer Quilmes Industrial (Quinsa) <QUIN.LU>. Among energy companies, shares in Sao Paulo-based electricity provider Eletropaulo SA <ELPL4.SA> rose 1.65 percent to 28.97 reais amid heavy speculation the firm could be brought back under government control. On Friday, Eletropaulo's parent company, U.S. energy giant AES Corp. (nyse: AES - news - people), failed to make an $85 million debt payment, putting the group in material default with Brazil's National Development Bank, the BNDES.