International
Black chefs carve out a place in Brazilian cuisine
| By AFP | Louis Genot |
From a tiny restaurant on a dead-end street come the enticing aromas of chicken, pork and shrimp as an award-winning chef slowly steams dim sum — the finger food typical of Cantonese cuisine.
This is not Hong Kong but rather Rio de Janeiro. And the cook is a black Brazilian.
“Many people ask me, ‘Where is the Chinese chef?’” Vladimir Reis, 38, says with a chuckle. He opened Dim Sum Rio almost two years ago in Laranjeiras, a wealthy neighborhood of the city.
“They ask me why I make Asian food and not African or Brazilian food,” said Reis. “But I am free to do what I like, without being restricted by what people think I should do because of the color of my skin or the country I come from.”
Things are going very well for this burly man with thin dreadlocks down to his shoulders. His dim sums are wildly popular and he has been named a winner in a new competition called the Black Gastronomy Prize.
This contest, whose first edition was held in November, honors the best black restaurant industry people in Rio in an array of categories such as waiter, sommelier, sous chef and pastry chef, all in a country where racism is deeply ingrained.
“There are many nice stories, and the time has come to acknowledge all of this talent,” said Breno Cruz, a university professor who created the prizes.
‘White universe’
Best restaurant honors went to Afro Gourmet, run by Dandara Batista, 37, who serves up African dishes in Grajau, a working-class neighborhood of Rio.
In the small kitchen of the eatery she opened in 2018, she fixes a dish called hauca rice — originally from Nigeria and featuring shrimp, dried meat and a golden sauce that is a blend of coconut milk and palm oil.
The menu also boasts a dish from Senegal called mafe and a South African one called chakalaka. Batista highlights where her creations come from by adorning them with little flags corresponding to the country.
Batista said she always felt a strong connection to the food of the northeastern city of Bahia, where her father’s family comes from.
“But when I did some research I realized there is a strong African influence on Brazilian cuisine in general,” said Batista, who wears her thick hair in braids.
Batista has been cooking since she was a girl but thought of it as a career option only after working for many years as a journalist.
“Gastronomy was always linked to a white universe, so I did not see myself there,” said Batista.
She switched jobs four years ago after taking a class in gastronomy.
She lamented the fact that there were no courses on African cuisine, so she learned how to make dishes from countries far from Brazil such as Angola, Cape Verde, and Sao Tome and Principe.
‘No reference point’
Like Batista, Reis’s life was also influenced by things not Brazilian, in his case a trip to Singapore. “When I saw dim sum the first time I thought it was marvelous, so delicate. Right away I said to myself, ‘we don’t have this in Rio.’”
Reis, born and raised in Rio, gives a personal touch to his dishes, using cassava and palm oil, which are basic ingredients in Brazilian and African cooking. At Dim Sum Rio, he decorates his dishes with edible flowers and green leaves of cabbage to cover them, like little roofs.
Reis had worked in several restaurants but never made it all the way to chef. Although he has a strong resume, he says that in job interviews white colleagues with less experience would always beat him out.
“They always wanted me to be a sous chef, or a basic cook,” said Reis, who grew up in a favela, or slum, in central Rio called Santa Teresa.
In Brazil black or mixed-race people account for 54 percent of the population but only 30 percent of leadership positions in companies.
Reis says he would have started his own business earlier if he had seen more black chefs in the news media.
“I only saw black chefs on reality shows from other countries. Here in Brazil I had no reference point. The job market has opened up in the last few years but racism is still very much a part of society.”
International
Israel says 136 food aid boxes airdropped into Gaza by six nations
The Israeli military announced on Sunday that 136 boxes of food aid were airdropped into Gaza by the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Germany, and Belgium.
“In recent hours, six countries conducted air drops of 136 aid packages containing food for residents in the southern and northern Gaza Strip,” read the statement, which added that the operation was coordinated by COGAT, the Israeli defense body overseeing civil affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Israeli military emphasized that they will “continue working to improve the humanitarian response alongside the international community” and reiterated their stance to “refute false allegations of deliberate famine in Gaza.”
The announcement comes as UN agencies warn Gaza faces an imminent risk of famine. More than one in three residents go days without eating, and other nutrition indicators have dropped to their worst levels since the conflict began.
The agencies also noted the difficulty of “collecting reliable data in current conditions, as Gaza’s health systems —already devastated by nearly three years of conflict— are collapsing.”
Meanwhile, Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry reported on Sunday that hospitals in the enclave recorded six deaths from hunger and malnutrition on Saturday, all of them adults.
International
Seven inmates dead, 11 injured after violent riot in Veracruz prison
Seven inmates were killed and eleven others injured in a violent riot and clash inside a penitentiary in the Mexican state of Veracruz, local authorities reported on Sunday.
The disturbance began on Saturday afternoon at the Social Reintegration Center in the port city of Tuxpan, in northern Veracruz, when inmates staged a protest over extortion and assaults allegedly carried out by members of the criminal group known as Grupo Sombra.
The protesting prisoners clashed with another group of inmates and set fires inside and outside the facility, seizing control of the prison for more than 12 hours.
During the takeover, the rioters released several videos, including one showing four prisoners —believed to be members of Grupo Sombra— accusing them of being behind the violence and extortion inside the prison.
It wasn’t until Sunday morning that elements of the Mexican Army, the National Guard, and local police forces managed to enter the prison and regain control. The state’s Public Security Secretariat confirmed that around 9:00 a.m. local time a coordinated operation restored full order and reestablished control of the facility.
Authorities also reported that the fires set by inmates were fully extinguished.
Official figures confirmed the “tragic” deaths of seven inmates and injuries to eleven people, who are now receiving medical treatment in various regional hospitals.
This is the second deadliest riot in Veracruz in the past eight years. In 2018, a violent uprising at the La Toma medium-security prison left seven people dead (six police officers and one unidentified man) and at least 22 injured (15 officers and seven inmates).
The riot follows the kidnapping and killing of retired teacher and taxi driver Irma Hernández, a case that shocked the entire country and was attributed to Grupo Sombra. Images of Hernández kneeling, surrounded by armed men in the municipality of Álamo, sparked nationwide outrage. She was murdered after refusing to pay extortion demands from the criminal organization.
Despite these incidents, Veracruz has not seen a spike in the daily homicide average. In fact, there has been a 1.6% decrease in homicides in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, according to the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System.
In 2023, the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) reported 3,094 incidents in Mexican prisons —an 18.5% increase from the previous year— resulting in 100 deaths and 892 injuries.
International
Study finds COVID-19 vaccines prevented 2.5 million deaths worldwide
COVID-19 vaccines prevented an estimated 2,533,000 deaths worldwide between 2020 and 2024, according to an international study led by Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Italy and Stanford University in the United States, published in the journal JAMA Health Forum. Researchers calculated that one death was prevented for every 5,400 doses administered.
The analysis also found that the vaccines saved 14.8 million years of life, equivalent to one year of life gained for every 900 doses given.
The study, coordinated by Professor Stefania Boccia, revealed that 82% of the lives saved were people vaccinated before becoming infected with the virus, and 57% of deaths avoided occurred during the Omicron wave. In addition, 90% of the beneficiaries were adults over 60 years old.
“This is the most comprehensive analysis to date, based on global data and fewer assumptions about the evolution of the pandemic,” explained Boccia and researcher Angelo Maria Pezzullo.
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