Greetings from Brazil!

BRASILIA, Brazil--Brazilians always seem to roll their eyes whenever I tell them that I'm going to Brasilia to visit my parents. Mention Rio de Janeiro or even Sao Paulo, and their eyes light up with excitement. "Give my regards to Sao Paulo!" said the Brazilian Air France check-in man at Heathrow Airport in London when I was checking in for my more than 11-hour flight to Sao Paulo via Paris.

Ever since Brasilia was built on the flat plains of the Planalto Central and inaugurated in 1960, in a brave vision of the future of President Juscelino Kubitscheck and designers Oscar Niemayer and Lucio Costa, it has been the butt of jokes on how it is the most boring place in Brazil. Just the other night while watching a TV soap opera at night I heard one character quip that he had turned down a job working with a politician in Brasilia because it meant he would have to spend two days a week in the capital, and how that would be "too boring."

Well, I'll take boring over the violence of Rio or the pollution of Sao Paulo any day. On the day I arrived in Brazil, cable TV news announced that 14 schools were closed for the day in Rio because of drug gang violence spilling over from slums.

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THIS is my first visit back here since 1996. Not much has changed except for the fact that the airport has a new runway, which means more planes seem to fly over our house in the Park Way neighborhood. That, plus all of the radar traps and cameras that click photos of speeding cars. Huge signs announce "Fiscalização Electronica," which means the speed limit is being enforced electronically. If you don't pay attention, you'll get a photo in the mail announcing you were over the speed limit and you'll have to pay a fine and have points taken off your driver's license. Lose too many points and you could find yourself without a license for six months.

My mother says that they have to announce the presence of electronic radars and cameras, or else any fines are illegal. Thus everyone just slows down for the speed traps and accelerates as soon as they are out of the zone being monitored.

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BRASILIA hasn't been immune to the growing crime rate in the country. It is the richest city in the country in terms of per capita income, even richer than the megalopolis of Sao Paulo, and thus is a magnet for poor people from all over the country.

Slums have sprung up all around the city, with many of their inhabitants becoming criminals who break and enter people's homes to rob them. Many of the houses in the exclusive Lago Sul district now have live electric wires running the lengths of their outer walls to keep intruders out. Whole subsections of the Lago Sul have cordoned themselves off into mini gated communities, with security guards at the entrances to keep out unwanted visitors.

The latest crime technique here is what are called "lightning" kidnappings. A person is accosted by armed men who demand that they be taken to an ATM machine. Once there the victim is forced to withdraw all of their money in their account and hand it over to the criminals, who run off with their booty.

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THE LATEST news in Brazil is that the great-grandchild of the French sculptor Paul Landowski, who sculpted the huge Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio, wants to receive royalties from the 600,000 visitors who pay to visit the statue that looms over Guanabara Bay and which has become a worldwide known symbol of Brazil.

The Correio Braziliense, our local newspaper, reports from Paris that the great-grandson in question, Frederic Jerome Landowski, does not want a war with the city of Rio or even less to reclaim the statue, but wants a cut of the income that Rio gets every year from tourists who visit the 30-meter statue that sits on the Corcovado hill. He is thinking of launching legal action against the city of Rio, citing the fact that under a new Brazilian copyright law passed in 1998, he has a right to a cut in the income generated by the statue. Rio Mayor Cesar Maia called the demand "ridiculous," and it is doubtful that Frederic Landowski's case would get very far in a Brazilian court.

Carved in stone, it took Paul Landowski from 1926 to 1931 to complete the statue. Shipped over from France in 50 pieces on boats, the first part of the statue to be erected was interestingly enough the head of Christ. The whole statue is 30 meters high, and is placed on a pedestal measuring 8 meters in height. The head by itself is 3.75 meters high, and each outstretched arm of Christ weighs 57 tons, or approximately the weight of eight elephants.

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"FEAR ON THE ROADS," screams the headline in the Correio about how buses plying the Brasilia to Rio and Sao Paulo routes are routinely being held up and robbed.

A photo accompanying the article shows Sabrina, a 17-year-old student, who was recently robbed along with other friends when they were traveling to a "manga" comic book convention in Sao Paulo. She said the masked robbers were all polite and didn't behave badly. They took all of the passengers' cash, cell phones and cameras. According to the federal highway police, armed attacks on buses have risen 66 percent in the first six months of this year, compared with the same period last year.

Although Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva claims to have generated 800,000 new jobs in the past year, unemployment is high and the minimum salary is only around 86 dollars a month.

I remember taking the overnight bus from Brasilia to Sao Paulo. The journey used to take around 17 hours, or 24 hours if you wanted to go to Rio. Now with the highway robbers striking on a regular basis, I think flying would be the safer, if more expensive, option.

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NEWS about the kidnapping of Filipino truck driver Angelo de la Cruz in Iraq, seems distant here. Being six hours behind the Middle East, and 11 hours behind the Philippines, and with no access to CNN or ABS-CBN Broadcasting, most of my news comes via the Internet.

Although I supported the presence of Philippine troops in Iraq, Arroyo is doing the right thing in pulling out some of the 51 Filipinos in Iraq ahead of their scheduled departure on Aug. 20. Of course, the US and Australia are screaming their heads off at the move, claiming that it will only embolden the terrorists further. That remains to be seen, and I don't think any country can be second-guessed when it comes to defending its national interests and welfare of its citizens.

The administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is also doing the right thing in keeping a news blackout on De la Cruz's whereabouts, especially after last weekend's fiasco where his release was prematurely announced by Labor Secretary Patricia Santo Tomas. Nothing should be said until he is safe and soundly at home in the arms of his loved ones in Pampanga province.

Comments or questions? E-mail the author at manilamoods@hotmail.com.

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