The Lost Generation

A friend passed along this fun parody of the Gangnam Style video.  Thought I’d share it.  For those that don’t read Portuguese, here’s my attempt at the lyrics:

See? Very fun. For me, behind all the silliness is a raw fact: this happened A LOT. In some ways it is the story of Brazil’s interior.

We lament here amongst our friends here that there’s no place to go in the evenings. There used to be–bars, restaurants, even a disco in this small town, a movie theater in the next town over. They all closed. Why? A large part of it is because a decade ago an entire generation left. My husband and his peers all left in their early 20’s for the big cities: São Paolo, Belo Horizonte, Rio, and for the exterior: the United States, Spain, Italy. What was left was a gutted city. With no young customers to fuel the commerce the center of town withered, and it’s still trying to bounce back. What’s the nickname for the nearby town of Governor Valadares? Vala-dolares (translation: its’ worth in dollars), just because so many youth were overseas and sending dollars back home.

The holiday traffic between our region and São Paolo is amazing. The road that we travel from our farm into town usually has light traffic–some trucks, a few cars. Two days before Christmas I sat and waited for a line of thirty-eight cars–thirty-eight, not even counting the trucks–filed by before I got an opening to pull out of our driveway into transit. All of them had out-of-state plates.

We see it in the markets too. During the holidays prices on locally-made comfort foods–requeijão, pão de quijo, bisquoitos, doce de leite, etc.–skyrocket around the holidays because all the Paulistas stockpile presents to bring back to the city. Four of my bottles of jabuticaba liquor have already been packed into tourists’ luggage and are making their grand debut in the Big City.

This lost generation is returning as Brazil’s economy betters. They’re trickling back in ones and twos. But some found lives elsewhere in the intervening decade, started families, found good jobs and urban lifestyles they can’t or don’t want to leave. Those like us who have returned are now in a different place. Now in our mid-to-late 30’s, we’re not going to be the ones to stay out all night at the clubs (although maybe we’ll be the generation to re-invest and re-open them). The job of creating the new energy for the city falls to our nieces and nephews. I watch them giggle about going out to meet friends for ice-cream and daydream about what this town might look like in another ten years.