'Buscando America' highlights culture

By Grace Meiners

Published May 2, 2008

Columbia resident Carlos Silva said one of the national sayings of his native Brazil is, “If you don’t know how to Samba, you are not Brazilian.”

By that definition, Silva would fit the requirements. He demonstrated his knowledge and talent of the Samba with members of the Luso-Brazilian Student Association as a part of “Buscando America” Tuesday.

MU AIESEC, along with the Latin Dance Club and LUBRASA, presented information about Colombia and Brazil.

AIESEC Events Coordinator Jessica Bukaty said organizers decided to focus on these countries because of the traineeships available to students through AIESEC.

AIESEC President Erik Elfrink said the students who go on the South American traineeships, which are called “Buscando America,” can study and work in fields such as management or technical trades.

The event featured booths for Brazil and Colombia complete with information about the politics, culture and common food and drink from each country.

At the Colombia booth, volunteers served chicken and salsa on top of a fried plantain. The Brazilian booth featured a snack called “Romeo and Juliet” which is guava paste and provolone cheese between two saltine crackers.

LUBRASA member Eliana Jeanetta spoke about Brazil’s culture, politics and accomplishments.

Jeanetta said Brazil holds its sports in high regard.

“Soccer is a passion,” she said. “When the national soccer team plays, it is a national holiday.”

Because of Brazil’s temperate climate, Jeanetta said that Brazil does not participate in the Winter Olympics and focuses on outdoor sports like soccer and volleyball.

Jeanetta said Brazilians created a sport called footvolley in the 1960s, a combination of soccer and volleyball because of the sports’ individual popularities.

Carolina Escalera, National Association of Hispanic Journalists President, told about her time in a favela, or slum, in northeastern Brazil teaching journalism to students aged 10 to 20.

The favela, in the outskirts of Recife, Brazil, did not have amenities like running water or a sewage system, Escalera said. She said the students faced many challenges in their daily life.

“These are marginalized youth,” she said. “I wanted them to explain to me how they have to go through life in a favela.”

Escalera said that with her help the students produced an eight-page newspaper focusing on topics they felt were important to them in their community.

Some of the topics the students addressed included violence, pollution and drug trafficking. A few interviewed drug dealers and users for their articles, she said.

Escalera said the students were interested in sending the newspaper to those in power to highlight the environmental problems their favela faced.

After Escalera spoke, junior Diana Veloza spoke about her native country of Colombia and said she wanted to show Colombia is not full of drugs, violence and kidnappings.

Veloza showed a video highlighting the attributes of her country including the many festivals, urban life and the natural scenery.

After the presentations, the Latin Dance Club offered salsa lessons to participants.