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other
work by Carmen Michael...
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It
was Rio’s worst heatwave in fifty years and a violent drug
war raged in the surrounding slums, but nothing could dampen the
enthusiasm of Império Serrano samba school on this Saturday
night in February. With just one week to go until the eagerly
awaited Carnaval Parade – thousands of deliriously excited
locals descended on the school’s quadrangle to watch the
final rehearsal of their statuesque samba queen, Quitéria
Chagas. read
more (as published July 2010 Marie Claire
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When
the popular host of a local Amazonian TV crime show Wallace Souza
made his name exposing murders in the capital city’s violent
east zone, police were puzzled as to how he always arrived on
the scene of the crime first. A surprise confession by one of
his henchmen revealed the grisly source of his competitive advantage:
Manaus’ most popular TV host was murdering people to increase
ratings and build his political career. Over the next year investigators
pieced together an ugly case of drug trafficking, corruption and
murder which would reach into the highest echelons of Amazonian
politics. read
more (as published Jan 2010 Marie Claire.
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At
La Catedral in Buenos Aires on Tuesday nights, young Argentine
people climb in through a shop window to make their way upstairs
to a tango. But there are no fishnet stockings or slanted hats
in this hall. The crowd wears Converse sneakers and ripped T-shirts,
and they’re dancing the traditionally repressed tango with
abandon. To the east, in Rio de Janeiro, dirty, pretty, rich things
grind their hips to a fierce samba-funk fusion in the streets
of the filthy red light district of Lapa. Their parents may be
ensconced in their fortified country clubs in Rio’s wealthy
South Zone. But that’s them. And this is now..... read
more (as published in Australian Financial Review)
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El
Cigarro is a hawker that works the sand between Rio de Janeiro's
Ipanema and Copacabana beaches. He has a snowy white beard and
sells cigarettes with the cry of 'Oh Oh Oh El Cigarro', but it
is not for cigarettes that he is known. He uses the sale of tobacco
to set up meetings between prospective daters for the mere price
of five Reals. “What kind of man are you interested in?”
he quizzes a forty-something woman in expensive European sunglasses,
gesturing to the bodies on the beach behind him like a sale rack.
“For fun? Or something for the mind?” he asks with
a tap of his temple...read
more (as published in the Sydney Morning Herald)
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Rio
de Janeiro is a city of paradox. Stunning beaches are overlooked
by favelas, glories of modernist architecture line up beside development
disasters, devout hedonists join in on passing religious processions
and in spite of their diverse roots and extraordinary tolerance
of individuality, there is little multiculturalism...... read
more (as published in Qantas Magazine)
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A
little Sartre with your soufflé? The panelled wood interior
is not unlike Cafe Flore in Paris, where Sartre used to down his
daily bottle of Bordeaux. Elegant French couples twirl Kir Royales
over plates of saucisson at the front while behind the red velvet
drapes at the rear an impassioned philosophical debate is unfolding.
read
more about Sydney's cafe philosophy scene (as published in the
Good Living June 09)
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There
are three reasons why people go to Tasmania. To marry a Tasmanian,
eat cheese or go walking. Ironic perhaps, considering past Tasmanian
residents, such as the convict Alexander Pearce who ate all five
of his companions on a walk to escape the island, but trekking
is now one of the prime tourist attractions of Van Diemen’s
land. .. read
more (as published in the Toronto Star..)
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There
is something immediately authentic about the antique market on
Rua do Lavradio.This is old Rio. A barrio far from the madding
crowds of Copacabana, where baroque edifices crumble into cobbled
streets, entire banana trees sprout from friezes and the band
plays a lazy samba for the afternoon beer drinkers. read
more (as published in Qantas mag Oct 09)
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A
group of elderly astronomers are standing silently on the range
around Wilpena Pound. Some are hunched over walking canes, but
their eyes are looking upwards to the yawning night sky. They
are searching for the Jewel Box Constellation and the Silver Coin
Galaxy, but I can only make out the Southern Cross. (as published
in the Sun-Herald) read
more about Wilpena Pound (as published in the Sunherald May 09)
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Student
backpackers have long recognised Eduardo Galeano as a Latin Chomsky,
but it was not until Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez presented
his book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage
of a Continent to President Obama, that it hit no.2 on Amazon.
The comments pages jammed. Detractors raged that the Uruguayan
writer and journalist Galeano was no more than a Castro flunky
who blamed every leaf that shook in Latin America on the hand
of El Yanqui, while supporters rallied around CIA conspiracy theories.
read
more (as published in Spectrum 4th July 2009)
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In
the suffocating heat of a Rio de Janeiro afternoon sometime in the
1930´s, Joao Francisco dos Santos walked into the shabby corrupt
Lapa police station with a depthless rage against a discriminatory
society and retribution on his mind. With a silk shirt stretched
across his taut Negro frame and a gold ring engraved with St George
on his long nailed hands, it is said that he single-handed assaulted
five policemen who had previously assaulted his transvestite friends.
Well that’s the story they tell in the more notorious drinking
dens of Lapa anyway.
Read more (as published in Lonely Planet).. |
other
work by author Carmen Michael...
A
corridor of peach blossoms greets the traveller outside Araluen. Old miner's
cottages are tucked under the escarpments of the Great Dividing Range,
cut off from the world by winding dirt roads and mountain tracks..
read
more (as published in the Sun-herald August 09)
People
describe Australia as the red country, but it is mostly brown and grey.
It’s the smoky husk of a boab tree, the glint of a silver gum or
a tangle of roadside scrub. And sometimes it is nothing. The earth simply
rolls right up into the sky. read
more (as published on SBS online)
WITH
a view over spectacular Ipanema Beach and designs bearing the stamp of
Philippe Starck, the Fasano Hotel is lining up to become a new Rio de
Janeiro attraction.read
more (as published in The Australian)
More
frequently associated with tango, Evita and ridiculously good-looking
polo players, the literary attractions of Buenos Aires are rarely the
subject of travellers’ commentary. However, any conversation with
an Argentine intellectual will reveal that the intriguing Jorge Luis Borges.....
read
more (as published in Qantas magazine)
Claudio
Camunguelo was late...It was Sao Jorge’s (Saint George’s)
day and he went to the church. It was admittedly after the first night
of their annual party, where the fifty eight year old flautist and occasional
dockworker would host Rio’s finest bohemian musicians on the dirt
street.... read
more.
“I
don’t dance. I ride bulls,” he replied taking a swig of cachaça
and stamping out his rolled cigarette with the heel of a steel capped
cowboy boot," Tales of Barretos Rodeo Brazil by Carmen Michael
Read more...
  
All
words copyright© Carmen Michael
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