Reviewed 15/11/2009
This is in English, but was written by a victim in the city of São Paulo. Simply put, me.
"Where were you at 22:13 on 10/11?"
This is the most talked-about issue everywhere... else. Not here in Brazil. We are too much used to all sorts of disasters. What's the point anyway?
Well, I see there is something out there, worth commenting.
First, Dilma - whom president Lula wants as his successor - is a former minister of Energy. She was tactifully put out of the scenes, canceled all her appointments. She vanished!
Second, we can find out a lot more about the two main newspapers in São Paulo by comparing the content of their reports on the incredible blackout - blecaute in Portuguese form. As you should know, such newspapers are Folha de S.Paulo (referred to as Folha) and O Estado de S.Paulo. The former stays more in evidence, and bends to a The-Sun style, though keeping up the appearances of a serious media. The other, known as "Estadão", is actually the serious stuff, as far as we can take 'serious' seriously in this country.
Let us check the differences, considering the edition of those papers on the day-after (11/11):
1) Folha counts 9 states affected, plus the DF (the capital). Estadão counts 12 states (and also de DF). On the 12/11, Folha makes a really big fuss on announcing the correct figure is 18 states.
2) Estadão gives due space to the reporting of traffic accidents and violence, including an arrastão in Avenida Paulista (the heart of the city). Arrastão is when several people are attacked in sequence, usually by the same gangsters. What about Folha? This paper says the police were only called by people who were scared. Not a single word about violence.
3) Estadão reminds us that the blackout of 2004 was attributed to hackers. Folha shows a long historical column listing what would have been ten or so blackouts along the past decades - but the blackout of 2004 precisely was not on the list.
4) In line with what I said regarding a The-Sun style, Folha shouts, "Brazil in the dark" (Brasil no escuro), showing an image - city spot - that takes almost the entire front page of the "Cotidiano"(daily matters) brochure of the paper (and the same fuss is also on the main cover of the paper). The equivalent of "Cotidiano", in Estadão, is called "Metrópole" (metropolis) and shows an about 1/4-of-the-page picture with people stranded in the subway.
5) Folha fills pages with boring quotes from citizens, such as the one of the lady that fainted in the elevator, ' I thought I was going to die'. As I already said, no violence is reported. Estadão focus on violence and the possible causes of the blackout, strongly suggesting the action of hackers.
6) Folha mentions that 14,000 MWatts of energy from Itaipu (power plant) were cutoff, not mentioning that means the whole capacity of Itaipu. Estadão clearly states Itaipu came to a complete stop.
As expected, the official version blames the weather, curiously in the region of São Paulo countryside (Itaberá) where there was no blackout...
INPE - acronym for National Institute for Spatial Research (www.inpe.br) - denies the official version.
[We apologize for the mistake in the first version, where we mistook INPE for Ipen.]
Now the problem is the shortage of water, since supply was also affected by the blackout.
Ok... I will satisfy your curiosity. At that time I was at USP, and had just commanded "shut down" in the computer! Yeah, was funny. Stroke "enter" and the lights started to flash, ooooh filled the room. 'Fellows', somebody soon warns, 'it is all dark outside!' Then took a bus; and, just as a girl begged the driver, 'Drive wisely', he went on as recklessly as he possibly could. Out-of-my-way drivers were all around, even though all traffic lights were off. Can you see yourself in the picture?
Not a big deal for most of us. Really.
