Walter Stokes Colton
I was born in Morganton, North Carolina (NC) USA and grew up in Asheville, NC where my family hosted a foreign exchange student (Eduardo Setti) from Brasilia, Brazil my senior year in high school. Having Eduardo as a brother led me to study Portuguese at the University of North Carolina and at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Subsequently, I chose to take a freighter to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil when I was 20 instead of going to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles or San Francisco as is the norm for many small town Americans. Thus, I imprinted on Rio and later Sao Paulo, Brazil as my “big city” experiences when I worked/lived there as a journalist 1973-79.
When I returned to the USA, I did not feel comfortable continuing in journalism for a career so I shifted to import/export projects involving international food shipments to/from Chile, Brazil, the USA and other countries. In 2015 I was fortunate to return to live in Brazil — this time to the federal capital Brasilia where I now reside and work on translations, teach English, do film and theater work and manage international trade consulting projects. For many years I wanted to develop a Blog to enable Brazilians and non-Brazilians to post impressions about a variety of subjects relative to their experiences with Brazil. Today I am happy to inaugurate this blog.
I am a “Brazilianist without a portfolio” who grew up as a North Carolina child loving his state (but struggling with mixed feelings about slavery, segregation and mistreatment of African Americans). I spent many years as an adult working in Wilmington, North Carolina and traveling back and forth to Latin America. My former wife Mary Updike Colton and I raised our sons Henry and Stokes in Wilmington (they now live in California). However, I kept being attracted to Brazil and Latin America and wanted to live again in Brazil. Since 2015, I have had the pleasure to get to know the garden city Brasilia.
Unfortunately, this is a scary time in world history. Both Brazil and the USA have terrible Presidents, Bolsonaro and Trump. Sadly, these two New World “continental nations” are increasingly dominated by self-serving interests of large corporations, landowners and billionaires. Mexico is not much different except that its new President Andrés Manuel López Obrador supports better treatment for less fortunate people. The only Western Hemisphere country that treats its citizens somewhat equitably is Canada since it at least has national health insurance (also maybe Uruguay and a couple of other countries are “decent”).
I have no defined “agenda” or “portfolio”. I am a friend of Brazil who loves the musicality of the Portuguese language and the JEITO of the Brazilian society. Both Brazil and the USA have terrible scars from abusing slaves brought by force from Africa and indigenous peoples who were here before the Europeans arrived. My view is that each one of us should attempt to help improve conditions for the less fortunate in Brazil, the USA and other countries, however possible. Also we need to work to protect the environment.