Cover by Richard Kern
 BLOODY MEMORIES
Storied Artifacts from the Carandiru Prison Massacre
Throughout the 90s, São Paulo’s House of Detention contained approximately 8,000 of Latin America’s most violent criminals. Better known as Carandiru, it was once the largest prison on the continent. On October 2, 1992, a massive fight broke o...READ MORE |
  VICE MAIL
Letters - The Brazilian Issue
Gonad Gauntlet, Slacks Flack, The Best Little Girl In The World...READ MORE |
 THESE ASSHOLES WON'T SHUT UP
Twenty-Four Hours of Legislative Assembly Television
In February 2008, Senator Mário Couto of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party came down from the podium and threw himself toward his rival, Gilvam Borges of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party. Borges retaliated by pushing him. Before being separated...READ MORE |
 SUGARCOATED SERVITUDE
The Casualties of Brazil’s Biofuel Revolution
Brazil and the US are the world’s largest producers of biofuel, cranking out 72 percent of the global ethanol supply every year. In 2007, both countries committed to a pact that’s supposed to help wean the world off the oil industry’s massive...READ MORE |
 TORSOS OF THE AMAZON
Hey, guess what? Not all Brazilian women are supermodels with perfectly taut bubble asses from which you can bounce a quarter two feet into the air! I know, right? Shocking.
As it turns out, the Brazilian megababe constitutes only 2.764 percent of the Bra...READ MORE |
 HOUSEHOLD HIGHS
Brazil’s DIY Drug Concoctions
Ever wondered how a Brazilian without a source of disposable income or a reliable drug connection gets high? Us too. So we asked some buddies of ours down there to sate our curiosity. They gave us three simple recipes for frying up neurons...READ MORE |
 BIBLE BABIES
Inside the Weird World of Brazil’s Child Preachers
Managed by their parents, on tour 365 days a year, and charging $900 for a two-hour sermon, child preachers are big business in Brazil. Each event is a finely tuned marketing maneuver promoted with posters, magazine coverage, and radio ads. If you want one of ...READ MORE |
 HAND JOBS
The Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Art of Manual Brazilian Communication
Recently, Brazil was heralded by the internet as having the world’s most enviable form of codified body-language-speak. We wanted in on the secret, so we called our pal Mariana in São Paulo and had her round up a bunch of her cute friends to pantomi...READ MORE |
 WELCOME TO BRAZIL
Rio Took a Shit on Me
After a week on assignment at Vice’s spanking new São Paulo office, I headed to Rio de Janeiro with the VBS crew for a day with Brazil’s most famous ass, Watermelon Woman (see page 48 for that story). Pleased with how things had gone th...READ MORE |
 OSCAR NIEMEYER
The 101-Year-Old Man Who Invented Brazil’s Capital
Oscar Niemeyer is on the infinitesimally short list of people who have designed and built an entire city. A world capital. Sure, Haussmann made Paris into the postcard background it is today and Wren rebuilt London after the Great Fire (by not building everyth...READ MORE |
 COSPLAYICALIA
São Paulo’s Costumed Nerds
In Brazil, the birth of cosplay occurred at an anime convention in São Paulo in 1996. Since then, the act of wearing of elaborate costumes and then going to a big room to compete and hang out with other people wearing elaborate costumes has exploded. Braz...READ MORE |
 SKINEMA
By Chris Nieratko
IT’S SUNNY IN BRAZIL
A bunch of my friends are pro skaters from Brazil and they’re always telling me the craziest stories from their childhoods of murder, drug mules, and prostitution...READ MORE |
 THE GLAMOROUS LIFE
Hot New Summer Looks from the Amazon Jungle
These photos were taken during our frog-hunting adventure in the Amazon jungle. In order to find said frog and subsequently get high on its venom, we had to travel for three days on a boat through the rain forest. We were leaving from a town on the ass end of ...READ MORE |
 A BRAZILIAN IN... MEXICO CITY & VIENNA
Amanda Rosa
Vice: Where are you from?
Amanda: I’m from a very small town called Gravataí. It’s near Porto Alegre, which is a very beautiful place near the border of Uruguay and Argentina. It has the most trees...READ MORE |
 THE HORNY HUMANITARIAN
Brazil’s Political Pornographer Is Loved by (Almost) Everyone
Oscar Maroni is, fairly or not, often thought of as the Larry Flynt of Brazil. While it’s true that Maroni publishes the Brazilian editions of Hustler and Penthouse, he also owns cattle ranches, a mixed-martial-arts fighting league, hotels,...READ MORE |
 A BRAZILIAN IN... TOKYO & NEW YORK
Manuela Hiromi Kondo
Vice: Which part of Brazil are you from?
Manuela: I was born to an Italian-Brazilian-Portuguese mother and a Japanese father in Piracicaba, a small city in the southeast countryside of Brazil...READ MORE |
 PILLS FROM BRAZIL
Pharma-Tourism Is a Real Trip, Man
If a Brazilian person ever hands you some pills, don’t ask any questions. Just swallow them on the spot. I assure you that they are far superior to their American counterparts. And full disclosure here, I am not one of those pill voyagers. I am more of a...READ MORE |
 RECORDS
Music Reviews - The Brazilian Issue
Music Reviews by Guest Brazilian Person Luiza Sá of CSS
JIM JONES
Pray IV Reign
This has a lot of “featuring.” Who’s Starr? Is that Gangstarr?...READ MORE |
 FAMOUS FOR HAVING AN ASS
Watermelon Woman Is Brazil’s National Fruit
The only person who loves Andressa Soares’s butt more than Brazil’s sun-soaked masses and us is Andressa Soares. She’s really into it. And for good reason: Her ass has catapulted the charming Rio-born girl from bit parts in music videos into ...READ MORE |
 PLOWBOYS AND INDIANS
Brazilian Farmers Are Slaughtering Native Tribes for Land
Rita, an indigenous Piripkura Indian, speaks only rudimentary Portuguese, and I can’t understand her native language, Tupi-kawahib, any better than I can pronounce its name. But over the course of our first hour together, we pieced together the story of ...READ MORE |
 COFFIN JOE’S SUBTERRANEAN SECRETS
Legendary Director José Mojica Marins Won’t Really Kill You
José Mojica Marins began making movies at the age of ten and he hasn’t let up for 70 years. Though he’s responsible for gems like 24 Hours of Explicit Sex and its sequel, 48 Hours of Hallucinatory Sex, the true lunacy started wit...READ MORE |
 A BRAZILIAN IN... PARIS & MELBOURNE
Philip Griffiths
Vice: Where were you born?
Philip: In São Paulo in 1978. My dad, who’s a British native, used to work in a slaughterhouse. He’s part of the dynasty that imported zebus into Brazil. My parents spent...READ MORE |
 A PIT STOP ON THE COCAINE CORRIDOR
Militias and Drug Gangs Go to War for Rio
In 1982, Rio de Janeiro had a lower crime rate than New York City. This was also the year that the Calabrian Mafia began using a South American smuggling route affectionately known as the Cocaine Corridor. Throughout the next decade, much of the powder going u...READ MORE |
 RECORDS
Music Reviews - The Brazilian Issue
BOSS IN DRAMA
Your Favorite EP
Don’t know how to write at all, but since you guys asked me nicely, I’m going to talk about Boss in Drama, one of my closest friends here in Brazil. He’s 22, white, super-skinny...READ MORE |
 THE SAPO DIARIES
In the Amazon rain forest, there lives a very special frog called the Phyllomedusa bicolor, otherwise known as the Sapo. Traditionally, the Mayoruna tribe uses this frog’s gooey secretions to gain superpowers that transform them into killer hunting machi...READ MORE |
 A CHAT WITH FERNANDO GABEIRA
Brazil’s Preeminent Erstwhile Guerrilla and Green Party Totem
Fernando Gabeira is one of Brazil’s best-known politicians, an author, and an activist revered as a former member of the far-left urban guerrilla group Movimento Revolucionário 8 de Outubro—aka the MR-8. In the mid-1960s, the MR-8 took an arme...READ MORE |
 A BRAZILIAN IN... BERLIN & COPENHAGEN
Mayra Magalhaes
Vice: Hey, girl from Brazil, how long have you been in Berlin?
Mayra: Around three and a half years now, but it took a while to get here. In high school I had a French boyfriend, and after graduation I went to live with him in ...READ MORE |
 A BRAZILIAN IN... MILAN & NEW ZEALAND
Caroline Miwa Nemoto
Vice: Why Italy, Brazilian lady?
Caroline: I came to study fashion design. In São Paulo I took a course in styling while I worked on a social project at the university. After a while I’d had enough and decided t...READ MORE |
 SQUAT THRUSTS
The Fight to Occupy São Paulo’s Abandoned Skyscrapers
The Prestes Maia building was once home to the largest concentration of squatters in Latin America. Condemned and abandoned for 12 years, the once-glorious skyscraper had become a shithole infested with roaches, rats, and criminal activity among the widespread...READ MORE |
 SLUM LORD
How an English Gentleman Reclaimed a Favela From the Police and Thieves
Thirty years ago, an English film producer called Bob Nadkarni decided he’d had enough of London so he packed his suitcases and headed to South America. Eventually, he settled in Tavares Bastos, one of Rio de Janeiro’s drug-lorded favelas. Not only...READ MORE |
 A BRAZILIAN IN... BARCELONA & LONDON
Luam Banzai
Vice: What are you doing in Barcelona?
Luam: I’ve been here for nine months. I could’ve had a Spanish baby by now! My intention was to begin cinema studies and also work in video production or graphic design...READ MORE |
 A BRAZILIAN IN... AMSTERDAM & ANTWERP
Anderson Henrique Tenorio Vila Nova
Vice: Tell us something about the place where you grew up.
Anderson: I’m from Recife in the northeast of Brazil. I was living there with my parents until I was 25. It’s kind of a big city, with...READ MORE |
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