terça-feira, outubro 21, 2003

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Cuba Policy Report - October 17, 2003

President Bush Courts Old Miami

The Cuba policy remarks President Bush delivered last Friday were more notable for their embrace of Miami’s most hard-line, first-generation segment of the Cuban exile community than for their relatively modest substance.

First-generation exiles, grouped today in organizations such as the Cuban Liberty Council (CLC), are the most vociferous proponents of tough economic sanctions against Cuba. Most oppose any dialogue with the Cuban government. Seeking “change not transition,” they disdain the Varela Project, a petition drive conceived by Christian Liberation Movement leader Oswaldo Paya, because it uses the Cuban constitution’s citizen initiative provisions to press for a political and economic opening and new elections under a new electoral law.

Many Cuban Americans of the first generation oppose links with Cuba, even at the family level; the CLC opposes all travel to Cuba and calls for a ban on financial support from Cubans abroad to their families in Cuba today. Some Miami commentators refer to those Cuban Americans who visit their families on the island as a “parallel” exile community.

And they oppose the migration accords that President Clinton negotiated with Cuba and that President Bush decided to uphold. They strongly criticized the Bush Administration’s decision to repatriate Cuban migrants who commandeered a Cuban research vessel in July in an attempt to reach the United States. Because they are reliable single-issue voters, their anger caused a political problem for the Bush White House as it looks ahead to next year’s re-election campaign.

The President repeated two actions that he took when he faced similar discontent in 2001. Then, he announced a “policy review” that eventually produced only modest initiatives. Last week, he named a commission composed of government officials, led by the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, that will plan for a Cuban transition and seek ways to make it arrive sooner, and will produce recommendations in six months.

As he did in July 2001 and May 2002, the President announced last week that he would strengthen embargo enforcement. He said federal agents would be “strengthening re-enforcement” of travel restrictions, and the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would inspect “all” travelers to Cuba as they depart and as they return – a signal that Cuban Americans, who have faced no penalties to date for violations of regulations governing travel and delivery of family remittances, may now be scrutinized like other travelers.

One purpose of the inspections will be to ensure that travelers do not carry excessive amounts of cash to Cuba. It is not clear how stepped-up inspections of travelers will enforce these limits, especially because the Administration relaxed them last March. Travelers are free to carry up to $3,000 per person for delivery to Cuban households in the form of remittances, and to spend unlimited amounts for expenses related to the delivery of those remittances.

Additionally, the Department of Homeland Security, the new super-agency designed to bolster defenses against terrorism, will dedicate “intelligence and investigative resources” to nab Americans who travel to Cuba through third countries.

The President also restated a commitment to delivering information to Cuba, through the Miami-based Radio and TV Marti and other means.

Notably, the President did not take steps long urged by the CLC and Cuban-American members of Congress such as Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen: imposing new sanctions against foreign nationals under the Helms-Burton law, abrogating the U.S.-Cuba migration accords, or ending all family remittances and travel to Cuba.

To compensate, he announced that the United States would “increase the number of new Cuban immigrants we welcome every year,” presumably beyond the 20,000 immigrant visas provided in the migration accords. This initiative plays well in Miami, but it works against the goal of promoting political change in Cuba because it focuses the minds of discontented Cubans on the goal of leaving their country rather than changing it.

Pointedly, the President made no mention of the Varela Project. He praised three “brave dissidents” in Cuba, two of whom oppose the Varela project. He did not praise Oswaldo Paya, who one week earlier took the dramatic step of delivering 14,000 new signatures to Cuba’s National Assembly.

President Bush also engaged in some hyperbole that appeals to the hard-line constituency. He implied that Americans travel illegally to Cuba to vacation at beach resorts; this surely occurs in some cases, but it’s just as surely the case that most Americans who travel to Cuba do so for reasons other than to seek a typical Caribbean beach vacation. They explore Cuban cities, colonial architecture, and nature areas, and have extensive interaction with Cuban people.

The President said that “our country must understand” that hotel bills, paid in dollars, result in wages paid in “worthless pesos” to hotel workers. In fact, while Cuba’s peso is not a convertible currency, Cubans use pesos every day to buy food, pay utility bills, and obtain services from government entities and private entrepreneurs.

The dollar-to-peso swap that the President cites is a standard critique of the worker compensation system in joint ventures between foreign investors and Cuban entities. It is of limited relevance in the hotel industry, where only one in eight hotel rooms is part of a joint venture.

Nonetheless, it tells only part of the story of compensation in the joint ventures themselves. Through interviews with workers, Lexington has documented that in mining, hotel, manufacturing, telecommunications, and other joint ventures, Cuban workers are paid dollar bonuses tied to productivity. A central fact of Cuba’s labor market is that Cuban workers covet jobs in joint ventures because of these bonuses, and they want to work in the tourism industry because of the dollar income they earn from tips.

The President also claimed, without elaboration, that “most goods and services produced in Cuba are still reserved for the political elites.”

Reaction to the President’s speech was varied.

In Cuba, a leading dissident, Vladimiro Roca, took exception to the notion that a U.S. commission might plan Cuba’s transition. “We Cubans are the ones to decide about the transition,” he said. “We are the ones to decide how we are going to do it.”

The President’s speech did not seek to build broad support for his Cuba policy. It ignored many opposition figures in Cuba who oppose U.S. sanctions, large parts of the Cuban American community who favor engagement, and a growing element of the Republican party, which either wants to reduce sanctions such as the travel ban, or to debate the wisdom of the overall policy. For example, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar this month called for a broad debate on Cuba policy and for ending the travel ban, “at the appropriate time,” in order to “let more ideas flow into the country.”

It remains to be seen how well the speech will work with its target constituency. Hard-line Cuban Americans applauded the speech and the Cabinet-level attention to the Cuba issue; but some expressed concern that there could be a gap between rhetoric and policy. The new commission buys the Administration time, and initiatives that fill in the blanks of the President’s speech can earn new political credit.

But pressures on the Administration are likely to continue because Miami’s discontent owes less to the ins and outs of the policy debate than to the fact that Fidel Castro has remained in power for so many years. For the President’s target audience, as long as that situation continues, no policy is tough enough.

by Philip Peters

(C) Lexington Institute

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Bolivia's ex-president blames conspiracy

The former Bolivian president, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, has accused drug traffickers and trade unionists in his country of having forced him from office. Mr Sanchez de Lozada, who left Bolivia shortly after he resigned on Friday, was speaking to the BBC from Washington.

Here are extracts from the interview:


Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada: My departure was the product of a conspiracy, of sedition by armed groups, 'narco-syndicalist' groups, terrorist groups and cartels who created a confrontational situation, leaving me no way out but to resign.
But we haven't lost the thread. My successor is the vice-president, so the constitutional succession has been maintained. I hope he will be there to promote aid.

BBC: The new President Carlos Mesa and the indigenous leader Felipe Quispe seem to be on very amicable terms. Do you think there is some kind of complicity between them and how would you view it if they came together in the same government?

Obviously they are looking for the right environment. Hopefully it won't be just a honeymoon. Hopefully they will be reasonable and he can have a dialogue with them. They didn't want to have a dialogue with me. He (Quispe) was part of the conspiracy to get me out. Now the tiger has been tamed.

Do you think your government would have been saved if Washington had acted promptly?

Well, I wouldn't say that. Governments fall from within, they don't fall because of external factors. I don't want to say that. I think there were many mistakes made by me and my allies, and I think there was also disloyal behaviour. But the important thing is to look to the future, to help Bolivia receive assistance and aid and get the benefit of the efforts that Mesa is making, and God willing, he will be successful. I have my doubts, but I don't want to be pessimistic at the moment.

You have suggested that the indigenous people's movement received aid from foreign governments. Could you be more specific?

Well, it's very difficult to be specific, because, you know, these things only come to light through other countries' intelligence reports. Bolivia doesn't have channels of this kind. But it's interesting to note that Evo Morales received a peace prize in Libya awarded by (Colonel) Gaddafi.

Finally, what happens now, what about Bolivia's future?

Well, I view it with great concern. I read the other day, I think, that these anti-establishment, anti-globalisation elements are causing the country to disintegrate. I'll carry on doing what I've done for the past 25 years, fighting to help Bolivia in whatever way I can.

Published: 2003/10/21 12:38:43 GMT

© BBC MMIII

domingo, outubro 19, 2003

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A ver, a ponerse triste todo el mundo, porque Pepe Carvalho quedo huerfano. El tipo decidio morirse en Bankok - se imaginan un mejor lugar donde hacerlo? - y ahora El Pais ha sacado esta nota que nos pone a todos a llorar. R.



DESAPARECE EL ICONO INTELECTUAL DE LA ESPAÑA DEMOCRÁTICA

Se rompe el corazón de Vázquez Montalbán

Un infarto masivo acaba en Tailandia a los 64 años con la apasionada vida del escritor

ROSA MORA - Madrid

EL PAIS - 19-10-2003

Manuel Vázquez Montalbán murió en el aeropuerto de Bangkok a las doce de la noche del viernes (media tarde, hora española). Acababa de llegar de Sydney después de una gira de conferencias por Nueva Zelanda y Australia, y estaba a la espera de tomar un vuelo para Madrid. "No sabemos exactamente si estaba ya en la cola para pasar el equipaje de mano por el arco voltaico o se dirigía a ella", explicó ayer el embajador de España en Tailandia, José Eugenio Saladich.

Se sintió repentinamente mal y pidió ayuda al personal de la aerolínea tailandesa Thai Airways, pero no hubo nada que hacer. Murió de forma fulminante. La autopsia se realizó ayer y, aunque el embajador no tenía aún el resultado, todo hace presumir que "falleció a consecuencia de un infarto masivo", según afirmó Saladich. Se prevé que la repatriación del cadáver se realizará mañana.

Anna Sallés, su esposa, y su hijo Daniel se enteraron de la noticia hacia las cinco de la madrugada. La familia está destrozada.

¿Hubiera imaginado alguna vez Manolo que moriría en el exótico Bangkok, adonde envió un día a su Teresa de Los pájaros de Bangkok? Probablemente, no, pero no le hubiera molestado demasiado. Vivió con tanta intensidad su 64 años que seguro que los multiplicó.

Tímido y serio en aparencia, Manolo podía ser muy divertido, era muy divertido. Era el hombre más cumplidor del mundo, nunca se negó a escribir un artículo ni a presentar un libro. Agudo, certero, inteligente, acuñó sentencias que dieron la vuelta a España, como cuando dijo que "contra Franco vivíamos mejor".

Cuando nació, el 27 de julio de 1939, en el barrio chino de Barcelona, su padre estaba en el exilio. Regresó para conocerle y le metieron en la cárcel. Le conoció en la cárcel cuando tenía tres años. También Manolo estuvo en la cárcel. En 1962 le condenaron en consejo de guerra a tres años. Cumplió uno y medio. Su padre era rojo y él también. Vinculado al PSUC, luego a Iniciativa-Verds, jamás abdicó de sus ideas.

Estudió Filosofía y Letras, pero le tentó el periodismo. Cuando salió de la cárcel, sus primeros trabajos fueron colaboraciones casi anónimas para enciclopedias, aunque enseguida empezó a publicar.

Su primer libro, Informe sobre la información, apareció en 1963 y marcó ya lo que iba a ser el escritor. Crónica sentimental de España, en 1971, convenció. Pero la popularidad le llegó con Carvalho, su detective, el mejor cronista de Barcelona. Se cree a menudo que el primero fue Tatuaje, pero el detective gastrónomo nació en Yo maté a Kennedy (1972), una novela que él mismo calificó de experimental. Carvalho es como un alter ego de Vázquez Montalbán. Abominó de la Barcelona Olímpica, quizá porque la Torre Foster interfería en el teléfono o en la televisión de su casa de Vallvidrera, y lo reflejó en dos carvalhos salvajes: El laberinto griego y Sabotaje. Tan enfadado estaba Manolo, que Carvalho incluso se fue de Barcelona (El premio y Quinteto de Buenos Aires). Y con Carvalho se reconcilió con la Barcelona posolímpica: el detective se iba a bañar en la Barceloneta en El hombre de mi vida.

Se solía bromear con la factoría Manolo. Era fácil imaginarlo encerrado en un estudio con seis ordenadores y escribiendo en cada uno de ellos un libro diferente. "Pero si éste es mi trabajo, no hago más que escribir", replicaba. De esa factoría salieron títulos como El pianista, Los alegres muchachos de Atzavara, Galíndez, Autobiografía del general Franco y tantos otros. El ensayo, la poesía, la narrativa, la gastronomía, el periodismo -fue columnista de EL PAÍS desde 1980-... ¿Había algo que no interesara a Manolo?

A finales de agosto de 1994 estuvo a punto de rompérsele el corazón. El 7 de septiembre le hicieron cuatro by-pass. Aflojó un poco el ritmo, pero no demasiado. Ese mismo año se publicó una de sus mejores novelas, El estrangulador.

Deja el escritor dos inéditos con fecha de publicación: en noviembre aparecerá La aznaridad. Por el imperio hacia Dios o por Dios hacia el imperio (Mondadori), que se prevé una crónica vitriólica del reinado de Aznar. Y la esperada Milenio, de Carvalho, una novela de 1.000 páginas que publicará Planeta en dos volúmenes: el primero aparecerá en enero de 2004 y el segundo, en marzo. Además, aparece estos días Geometrías de la memoria. Conversaciones con Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (Zoela), de Georges Tyras.

Manolo siempre dejó en la ambigüedad si Milenio, novela en la que el detective y Biscuter dan la vuelta al mundo, iba a ser o no la última de la serie. Ahora ya sabemos que definitivamente es la última.

(C) El PAIS 2003

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Esto es el ejemplo de lo que yo les he dicho... a leer la TIME se ha dicho para que ven la ridiculez del escandalo que he encontrado en mi paicito...

Es mas. Todo el mundo, en particular el gobierno se han escandalizado con esto, mientras loas demas nos hemos reido de todo. Ustedes lo deciden. Please.

TIME October 13, 2003

WHEN THE MENINAS CAME TO TOWN

Bragança was just an ancient, remote Portuguese outpost. Then the Brazilian prostitutes moved in — and the wives started fighting back

BY AMANDA RIPLEY

Once a month, Paula goes out into the night to find her husband, to show him that she knows he is not just playing cards as he claims. Since she does not have a car, she gathers her baby daughter in her arms and carries her through the streets of Bragança, a remote mountain town in northeast Portugal, stopping at one brothel and strip club after another, sometimes until dawn. Paula marches under the high stone walls of Bragança's medieval castle and along winding roads into the hills to reach the clubs, where neon signs cast a pink glow on the cars belonging to the men of Bragança. "Some of the places I have walked, if you knew, you would say I am crazy," says Paula, who spoke on the condition that her real name not be used. Once she spots her husband's car, she waits. She glares at the brothel door, daring him to come out, imagining him inside with what she calls the "bitches and whores" — some of the 300 or so Brazilian prostitutes who have moved into Bragança in the past few years. But when he finally stumbles out the door, all she can do is stare at him. She cannot find the words. He looks back, and then he gets into his car and leaves.

Bragança's meninas brasileiras, or Brazilian girls, are part of the estimated $50 billion global sex trade that profits from the hundreds of thousands of women transported across national borders by human traffickers — often through coercion, sometimes willingly — to be sold or rented on the other side. A tiny fraction have found their way to Bragança, a town of 27,600 tucked into the corner of Portugal's isolated Trás-os-Montes (beyond the mountains) region. But there's nothing small or insignificant about the effect the meninas have had on the town, which for 800 years was known mostly for its storybook castle, complete with a "Princess Tower" where at least one heartbroken maiden is said to have jumped to her death. As Paula and an activist band of other wives see it, the meninas have invaded and degraded their town. To explain the hold these Brazilian women have over their husbands, the wives tell themselves stories, accusing the prostitutes of using drugs and even witchcraft to seduce the men. "The men are the most guilty, but the meninas are the most dirty," says Paula. And earlier this year, as seven strip clubs and countless private brothels opened in Bragança, the wives decided to fight back. In May, they drew up a manifesto and brought their grievances to the mayor and the police chief, calling for a "war on prostitution." Over the summer, there was a flurry of action — official statements, police raids, camera crews. The spotlight on Bragança widened to include neighboring villages, where locals suddenly felt emboldened to complain that their children couldn't sleep at night because of the noise in the street, and violence has been on the rise — including a case in which a jealous wife is said to have beaten up a prostitute.

Now it's becoming clear that the Brazilian women are not leaving Bragança. Like cities and towns all over Europe, Bragança has been snapped into place like a Lego town, becoming one stop along the endless networks of migrant prostitutes and the men who move them. The only difference is that in Bragança, which could not be reached by major highway until the 1990s, the recent appearance of hundreds of young, dark, tightly dressed and extremely available meninas was harder to ignore. People would have tried to look the other way, but Paula and her small crew of wives dragged the mess out into the town square. And so everyone was forced to talk about what happened here — about the dozens of unexpected ways that Bragança has been altered by its own small piece of the global trade in human beings.

On a warm September night at the top model disco, Bragança's teachers, construction workers and students sit on stools and couches and drink. They are watching eight pretty young Brazilian women take turns dancing with a pole on a makeshift stage, twirling and arching under the low colored lights. In between dances, the women talk to them; they tell jokes and giggle and don't mind if the men touch their hair. "We come to see friends, to drink and to watch the girls," says Georges, who, like his father, is a regular. And 90% of the younger men also come to choose a woman to have sex with after they leave, Georges says. "It is discreet, anonymous. It is one night."

At this early hour, just before midnight, the women could be mistaken for college girls — tight black clothing, skirts hiked up, eyes bright. Later they will take their clothes off for money and leave with men for more money. But now, they are singing along to Brazilian pop under red lights, and they are laughing and seem happy. Anita, 25, is one of the veterans; she arrived a whole two months ago. In July, she tells me, she kissed her crying mother goodbye and boarded a plane out of Brazil to Paris (where there is said to be less scrutiny of Brazilian "tourists"). She knew full well she would be working as a prostitute. In Paris, she was met by her new boss, Top Model owner Manuel Podence, who had paid for her flight and would drive her to Bragança to work at his club. And to her great relief, she says, he was very kind. (Other Top Model employees agree.) That first night, Podence showed her and a few other new arrivals the shining monuments of Paris, lit up as in the movies. "It was splendid," she says now, sitting on a sofa at Top Model, Jennifer Lopez's Jenny From the Block blaring in the background.

Anita has a sweet smile and brown doe eyes underlined with pencil. She is wearing a blue miniskirt and beige sandals with straps that crisscross up to her knees. Like many of the other Top Model girls, she is not glamorous, but she is pretty and approachable. Her long brown hair has been carefully highlighted and brushed. She is warm and affectionate, touching your hand to make a point, eager to please. All the qualities of a successful prostitute.

After the Eiffel Tower, Anita drove with Podence to Bragança. "I thought it looked so big," she says now, smiling at her own naiveté. To the rest of Portugal, Bragança has always been known as a little backward. The town's importance peaked in the 15th century, when it was a fiefdom of the powerful dukes of Bragança, who left the place but went on to rule Portugal from 1640 to 1910. Through it all, the fortress and surrounding mountains protected Bragança from invaders, preserving its traditions and separateness. Today, there is no industry to speak of, the primary occupation is farming, and the invaders work in the town's booming "nightlife" industry.

Anita heard about Podence and the Top Model club through a friend of hers who had already left Brazil for Bragança. Anita decided to follow her "because of poverty," she says. Back home in Rio de Janiero, she worked at a shopping mall and took classes in "tourism." She earned €100 a month. Now she earns that in a slow night. When Anita arrived, she owed Podence €2,700 for her airfare, Paris hotel and transportation to Portugal (she says the airfare itself cost €800). For many immigrant prostitutes, this debt is a yoke that binds for years. But Anita says she paid it off in 20 days. At Top Model, men pay j30 to have a drink with her, €20 of which she gets to keep. For €70, she will perform a table dance. After her shift ends at 5 a.m., she leaves with anyone willing to pay a minimum of €250 to spend what's left of the night with her in a hotel.

Not all women who come from Brazil are so willing or well-informed, of course. "A lot of girls were not told they would be prostitutes when they agreed to come," says Silvia Costa, a doctor at the local medical center, which regularly treats prostitutes. It is an old trick. Lorena Ramos came 10 years ago, well before the boom. She had answered a newspaper ad to be a waitress, she says. Her new boss picked her up from the airport and took her back to an apartment divided up by mattresses. Ramos eventually ran away and turned the man in to the authorities. She now works in a veterinarian's office in Bragança and reads tarot cards for people in her free time. The surge of Brazilian women on the streets "makes me very sad," she says. "They go around in big groups. There are a lot of complaints from society ladies. They feel uncomfortable."

The U.N. describes trafficking as recruiting or transferring human beings into exploitative situations through force or other forms of coercion or deception — or through "the abuse of a position of vulnerability." Anita doesn't consider herself exploited. Some advocates would argue, however, that her economic desperation, her lack of options, made the job offer inherently coercive. Many other cases occupy an even grayer zone. Like Anita, Vanilsa Aparecida Santana da Silva came to Portugal "for a better life," knowing she would be a prostitute. Seven months ago, when da Silva arrived in Moimenta da Beira, a town 170 km southwest of Bragança, her brothel owner took her passport and return ticket. And half an hour after her arrival, her first client was waiting for her — the father of the brothel's owner, a house tradition for new prostitutes. Da Silva was told she could not spend more than 20 minutes with each client, or risk losing her share of the money. Before she came, the owner had promised da Silva that if she gave him the names and numbers of five friends back in Brazil, he would lower her €3,000 debt by €1,000. He reneged on his side of the deal after she gave the names, she claims.

"I'm not against prostitution. I am against being lied to," da Silva says. After one week, da Silva, who used to lead a union for rodeo riders back in Brazil, launched a sit-in. For three days, she refused to leave her room and loudly demanded her passport. Finally, the owner threw her into the street — and her passport, too. She is now living in Chaves, 60 km west of Bragança, trying to find a way to bring her two children over from Brazil and become legal. "The girls who become prostitutes do it because they have their necks in a noose," she says. "If the owners of factories and businesses would pay for our way here, we would do other jobs."

At Bragança's health clinic, the prostitutes do not come in with stereotypical concerns — fears of aids, for example. Most of the women insist their customers use condoms, says Costa. But, she says, they complain of other, chronic kinds of pain. "They have psychological problems, especially anxiety. They worry they won't be able to become mothers one day because of diseases," she says. They talk of headaches, insomnia and "imaginary" maladies. "They aren't at peace with themselves," she says. The prostitutes are always in motion. They float from one disco to another. They leave Portugal when their three-month "tourist" stay is up, then re-enter later from Spain. It is a nomadic life, punctuated by violence, police interrogations and, sometimes, deportation orders. But while it lasts, many of the women are able to send fistfuls of cash to their children and parents in Brazil. As da Silva says, "Prostitution is not easy money. It is fast money."

But Anita, for one, says she has found what she came for. She sends money home to her mother, who she says knows her daughter is an artista da noite, as the Brazilians say. Recently, she was able to move out of the apartment Podence keeps for his new dancers and into her own place. "I have my tax number, my bank account. I am normal." Anita has only one month left as a "tourist" in Portugal. But she says she does not know if she wants to go back to Brazil. She has friends here now. "I came here of my own free will," she says. In the background, one of her fellow dancers is wrapped around the pole, completely nude save for a white bridal veil.

Three years ago, this club was a casa fado — a house of Portugal's traditional, mournful fado music, a sort of blues-opera hybrid that weaves together vocals and string instruments. Then, about two years ago, the meninas brasileiras began to arrive in droves, lured by the common language and Bragança's proximity to the Spanish border. Soon Top Model and six other clubs opened up, becoming the town's most profitable enterprises.

One of them, a strip club called Montelomeu, opened up last year on the edge of the town's nature sanctuary, its red neon sign lighting the hillside like a carnival. Montelomeu, "M.L." for short, had an unusual feature: three dozen bedrooms ringing the dance floor. Soon it was pulling in hundreds of local men every night. A half an hour in a bedroom costs €30, according to Portuguese media accounts. At the peak of the fever, M.L. even sponsored the local football club. "Nobody could imagine that this could happen here," says Bragança's mayor, Jorge Nunes, sitting in his office beneath an oil painting of the castle. "But there are lots of activities that people just learn to live with."

The meninas made themselves more noticeable in Bragança by sticking together. They bought their groceries and got their hair done together, always together, often gripping mobile phones and giggling like schoolgirls. Some were overweight, but the majority looked young and healthy and wore slightly sexier clothing than the traditional Portuguese women. "It caused people to talk," remembers Helena Fidalgo, a local reporter for LUSA, Portugal's national news agency. "I would go into a shop and the shopkeeper would look out the window and say, 'Oh, here come the girls.'" Shortly afterward, Fidalgo noticed a neighbor's wife move out and, the next day, a young menina move in. She asked the police chief if any of this was illegal. But he just laughed, she says. "I had nothing to write about."

In some ways, the meninas were a boon to Bragança, as one service sector fueled others — from beauty salons to taxicabs to Chinese restaurants. "In the times of vacas gordas [fat cows, or during the heyday], they used to come 17 and 18 a day, and sometimes they had to stand in line," says Ana, a hairdresser in Bragança. Which is not to say everyone welcomes the meninas, especially the ones who are black. "I'm not racist," Ana says. "But there are many hairdressers who are. They refuse to receive them in their shops."

Iwould not trade my hometown for anything in the world," says Podence, owner of Top Model — and perhaps Bragança's biggest booster after the mayor. Podence, 37, wears red Puma sneakers, jeans and a gold cross. He slouches across town smoking Marlboros, shaking hands with police officers and kissing meninas on the cheek. He is the quintessential southern European businessman — making the work look incidental, never rushing a drink. But Podence is at Top Model seven nights a week until 5 a.m., chatting with the clients, cueing the pole dances, watching everything.

Over a dinner of wild boar and pig's ears, Podence makes no apologies for what he does. As he sees it, he runs a nightclub where people have a good time. "After work, the women can go wherever they want. But I know they're not going for free," he says smiling. Podence helps arrange hotel reservations for clients. And he loans the women money to get from Brazil to Bragança. But it is the market that drives the trade, he says without sentiment: "It is like an anthill — one woman comes here and everyone follows."

As for the men who spend money they don't have on these women, and the families that suffer because of that, Podence is a realist. "There are hundreds of marriages that break up, and it's not just because of Brazilian women," he says. Married men buy sex because there is something missing at home, he says, and not just in the bedroom — a theory echoed by many of the prostitutes. Recently, a man paid j150 for three bottles of champagne and a long talk with Anita. "And he didn't even touch me!" she says. Another man called her repeatedly from his business trip in Germany, relaying stories from his day. "I said, 'Why don't you call your wife?' He said, 'Well, she doesn't listen to me.'" The meninas, says Podence, "are like psychologists. They listen to these guys. And these guys tell them things they don't even tell their lawyers."

One day last spring, the wife of one of Podence's customers showed up at his club and demanded to know which woman her husband was seeing. "'What does she do that I don't?'" Podence says she wanted to know. "I felt I had to be very blunt," he says. "First of all, you weigh 15 kilos more than she does. Second of all, these women will do anything for money." He blames the "conservative Portuguese" wives for forcing the husbands to go elsewhere — and a surprising number of his countrymen seem to agree with him. "In marriage, women see themselves almost exclusively as mothers rather than wives," says Marília Neres, spokeswoman for the Portuguese Department for Foreign Immigration and Frontiers. "The women forget that they should also be good wives and companions."

Even Ramos, who says she was tricked into becoming a prostitute 10 years ago, is reluctant to condemn the johns for creating demand. Sitting at a café on a sunny afternoon, Ramos talks about prostitution less as an industry and more as a natural phenomenon. "Before marrying, women make themselves attractive to men. Then they let themselves go. Time is scarce; people worry about finances; kids arrive," she explains in the patient voice one might use to relay a recipe for soup. "The men have a macho, Latin mentality. They have to feel they can conquer other women. And Brazilians — it's true — are very exotic, very sensual. It's no one's fault," she says, just the logical result of a modern Latin culture bumping up against a traditional, European one, the old colony coming home.

The wives, then, do not even enjoy the thin righteousness of victimhood. No one is very interested in how their husbands "let themselves go" after marriage, or whether the wives are sexually and emotionally satisfied. So rage is layered upon jealousy, which is layered upon sadness. And that is not a sustainable combination, as a student of male-female relationships like Podence should have known. "Of all the places I have been, Bragança is the only paradise," he says, sipping his port, "except for four old hags who are going to ruin that for me."

Paula is a large woman with a wide smile and fierce eyes. She is not the type to be shamed into silence. One day last year, she ran into Maria, another Bragança wife, on the street. (Both women have requested their real names be withheld.) They started talking, and Paula asked her, ever so delicately: "Does your husband run around with those bitches?" Maria said yes, and they agreed to meet at a café later. They shared parallel stories — of husbands who came home later and later with increasingly dubious excuses, of money that leaked away inexplicably, of women's names programmed into their spouses' cell phones. "I used to always have to tell my husband to change his shirt, that it was dirty," says Maria, an attractive, petite woman with dark, deep-set eyes and a soft voice. "And he'd say, 'Oh, I'm fine like this.' Now, he changes his shirt all the time."

For a long time, says Paula, "I was stupid. My eyes were closed." Now that her eyes are open, there is precious little that Paula does not see. "I know where these whores live. I can take you there at 9:30 at night and four of them will come out and taxicabs will take them to M.L.," she says. What she does not see, she hears about. "Even if I don't know the secrets of my husband, people come and tell me," she says. "What he did to me in my life, I could kill him."

"I think they give the men drugs," Paula continues. "He used to work day and night. Sometimes we had arguments, but then it passed." If not drugs, then maybe witchcraft; some Brazilian immigrants are known to practice magic. They put flowers at crossroads to win men's hearts and the names of their enemies on the soles of their shoes. So some Portuguese wives have tried counterspells, going to witch doctors to have their husbands cleansed.

Men around here have been using prostitutes forever, though they used to travel farther to find them. What's changed — in addition to the meninas' arrival — is the attitude of the wives. "It has always been considered correct to have an arranjo [kept woman]," says José Lopes, a psychology professor at the University of Trás-os-Montes. "In the mountains, the [wives] still walk behind the men, burdened down with loads on their heads." The wives tolerated the cheating because they had no choice. But thanks to television and better job opportunities for women, this is changing, he says. "Women have got more autonomy."

Eventually, Paula, Maria and two other Bragança wives decided to go above their husbands' heads. "Our lives are already buggered. These women must not bugger anyone else's lives," Paula says. They produced a manifesto: "It is not a time for indifference and adjustment, but rather a time to fight, fight for a town with more dignity where it is possible to breathe in peace," they wrote. And then, ominously: "We wish to avoid taking justice into our hands, but if we are obliged to, we won't turn aside." They signed it "the Maes [mothers] of Bragança."

Last May, they took the manifesto, along with several hundred signatures, marched to the Bragança police station and demanded to see the chief. "They just arrived and said their husbands are spending all the money with the Brazilians," remembers the chief, António Magalhaes de Oliveira. "I told them I would look into it."

Prostitution used to be legal in Portugal. Between the 1940s and 1970s, especially under the suffocating dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar, brothels were permitted. But the women were under constant police surveillance and their bosses kept 90% of their earnings, according to VISAO magazine, the Portuguese weekly. Today, prostitution dwells in a messy netherworld. "It's not permitted but it's not prohibited," says Ana Maria Rodrigues, Bragança's deputy police chief. Forcing or tricking women into prostitution is illegal, as is "pimping," or facilitating prostitution. But these are hard crimes to prove. Any arrests that do get made usually stem from the women's immigration violations.

In other words, "In Portugal, there is no such thing as prostitution," says chief Oliviera in his office in September. The meninas do not sound like a priority. "It's the wives' problems to solve with their husbands, not the problem of police," he says. "It's an emotional problem, not a social problem." The wives, he says laughing, "better start making themselves more interesting to their husbands!"

After getting no satisfaction from the police department, Paula and the others went down the street to the mayor's office. "I told them that family differences can happen for a multitude of reasons," remembers Nunes, a very calm man. This is a parable about globalization, he says, about the increasingly seamless exploitation of desperate people. But it is at the same time "an ancient situation," he says, "about relations between men and women."

Had the women stopped there, that would have been the end of it: a couple of startled officials and a nice walk. But then the maes went to the media. Fidalgo, the news agency reporter, wrote the first story on April 30. And suddenly everyone wanted to hear from the maes. THE MEN OF BRAGANCA HAVE LOST THEIR HEADS, announced Jornal de Notícias, a Lisbon daily. But most of the coverage ridiculed the maes. The weekly Expresso quoted one disco owner summing up a common theory: "The husbands arrive home and find their wives smelling of [cooking] fat, full of problems and in a bad humor, but the Brazilians are clean, smell nice and are sweet and affectionate." This outrages the maes, of course, but they sound too weary to care much anymore. "I have always treated my husband very well. We lived together for 12 years," Maria says quietly. "I was always his friend. I was absolutely destroyed."

Maria and Paula say they have no regrets. At least they forced people to stop acting as if everything was normal. After the media blitz, Mayor Nunes called for the legalization of prostitution. The Bishop of Bragança, D. António Montes Moreira, tried to use the ordeal as a teaching moment. "Recent events in our city form a basis for an appeal to all of our Christian community," he said. "We must all make a redoubled effort to bring dignity and sanctity to Christian marriage." The police have conducted more raids, and five discos have recently closed, but the sex industry adapts quickly. A large number of apartments sprinkled throughout Bragança are used as "private" brothels. And the slumping economy may have had more to do with the disco closings than the police. "There could be five or six more opening tomorrow," says Rodrigues.

New clubs filled with dancing meninas and lonely men are opening in nearby towns. In Chaves, a man named Carlos, his wife of 13 years and his Brazilian mistress spoke to a reporter from tvi, a national TV station. Then his mistress returned to Brazil, and Carlos returned to his wife. He seriously considered following the mistress to Brazil, he told Time, but decided to stay for the sake of his baby daughter. He doesn't see anything special about Brazilian women. "Portuguese women are very pretty. I fell in love with the Brazilian girl because I liked her. It was one of those things," he says. "I am sorry but not repentant."

Maria's divorce has been finalized. Her son is seeing a psychologist, and she is on antidepressants, having lost 14 kilos. She has taken an hiv test, which was negative. Paula is in court, pursuing her own divorce. Her small daughter remains visibly terrified of male strangers. Paula says she would like to leave, start a new life somewhere she does not have to see her husband or his mistress while on her way to the grocery store. But she has a life here — and an obsession — and cannot easily imagine a way out. There is one thing the women say they know for sure. They know that if they need to circulate another petition in Bragança, the people who laughed at them will not laugh anymore. Now they will sign.

Outside the strip club called M.L., which is guarded by dogs and large bald men, Pedro, the manager (who requested that his last name be withheld), complains of police attention. As he talks, early on a Wednesday night, a steady stream of men walk past him and into the club. But Pedro insists business is down. "Every two days the police are here. They ruin the ambience." Worse than that, Pedro says, he senses a permanent change in tone in Bragança. "This has been talked about too much to be forgotten."

— With reporting by Martha de la Cal/Bragança

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Hello... todo el mundo...

He estado de vacaciones en Lisboa y por eso no he podido actualizar el blog. Pero en los proximos dias estoy de vuelta a Miami y ya veran lo que hay que contarles.

Los escandalos en Lisboa estan al orden del dia y ya veremos un buen ejemplo de ello.

Rui