First-time visitors to Rio de Janeiro inevitably follow a similar routine: taking a stroll on Copacabana, and climbing Corcovado to take a picture with the famous Christ the Redeemer statue — usually with their arms wide open — trying to avoid the massive crowd around them.

But few, if any, know anything about Little Africa — a region in the heart of the city that represents black heritage.

The name Little Africa, Pequena África in Portuguese, has been featured in books, songs, and lyrics of famous samba schools. But it remains unknown to most people — Brazilians included.

That’s not…

A dirt road, surrounded by crops, under an unforgiving sun. A hot and heavy wind, carrying dust, indicates that the day will be scorching. This setting would be at home in a Wild West movie, but this is no tale of sheriffs and outlaws. This is about long journeys, connections and, above all, narratives, and their endless versions.

At the end of the dusty road, in the town of Santa Bárbara d’Oeste in the São Paulo countryside, there is a place filled with history itself. The Cemitério do Campo — or “American Cemetery” as it is known to the local…

A stroll around the irregular cobbled streets of the historical center of Paraty, the small coastal town 248 kilometers from Rio de Janeiro, gives the sensation of peering into Brazil’s colonial past. With no cars allowed, tourists are left to wander freely around the quaint stores and restaurants set up inside baroque 18th-century houses, while listening to the birdsong and the clip-clopping of the working horses pulling carts around town.

From the sea, the white buildings adorned with colorful doors and windows are just a tiny reminder of human life, alongside the boats coming and going from the busy marina…

Nowadays played in films, bars, and elevators around the world, bossa nova (literally “new trend”) came as a wave of modernity in the 1950s and 1960s, an innovative style that took over the Southeast of Brazil.

And it all started with João Gilberto, then a young guitarist from the poor countryside town of Juazeiro in Bahia. Gilberto, who passed away on Saturday, July 6, at the age of 88, was a visionary guitarist and songwriter. He is often credited as the “father of bossa nova,” one of Brazil’s most distinct musical styles.

The birth of a new beat

Poet Vinicius de Moraes and composer Antônio Carlos…

Only July 1, the Brazilian Army caused outrage when it paid tribute to Eduard Ernst Thilo Otto Maximilian von Westernhagen, a German Army major who fought for the Nazi forces in World War II and was assassinated in Rio de Janeiro, in 1968.

The salute seemed stranger than fiction. It is not a good look for an army which led a brutal dictatorship in Brazil between 1964 and 1985 — but has since stressed its commitment to democracy — to then publicly honor a Nazi. But there are doubts over whether this was actually the case.

Major Eduard Ernst Thilo…