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Black chefs carve out a place in Brazilian cuisine

Photo: MAURO PIMENTEL / AFP

| 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.

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“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.

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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.

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“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.

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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.”

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International

Bolsonaro is transferred to São Paulo to continue the treatment for an erysypela

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The lawyer of the leader of the far right, Fabio Wajngarten, said on his social networks that Bolsonaro will also be examined for a possible intestinal obstruction, although he did not give more details on the matter.

Bolsonaro, 69, arrived last Friday in Manaus for some political commitments and on Saturday he was hospitalized once it was found that he suffered from erysipelas, a bacterial infection that affects the skin and subcutaneous tissue.

The Santa Julia hospital, where he was treated, reported that the former president, from 2019 to 2022, had a “table of dehydration and infectious skin process.”

The doctors did not mention the possible intestinal obstruction cited by Wajngarten, but it is a problem that Bolsonaro suffers repeatedly since, in the campaign for the 2018 elections, he was stabbed in the abdomen in the middle of a rally.

Since then, they underwent four surgeries to correct stomach problems resulting from that attack.

The former president faces serious difficulties in Justice, which investigates him in various cases, one of them linked to alleged plans to prevent the inauguration of the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated him in the 2022 elections.

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International

The number of deaths in a passenger bus accident in southern Peru rises to eleven

The number of deaths in Peru when a passenger bus crashed from the southern department of Puno to Cuzco, when it was traveling through the province of Melgar, rose to 11, official sources reported on Monday.

The head of the road police of the Puno department, David Sota Paredes, told the RPP station that the number of deaths from the accident increased to eleven, including a five-month-old baby, who have already been identified, and that in addition, 11 other injured people were transferred to the Ayaviri hospital.

The Universal company bus overturned at kilometer 1,170 of the Longitudinal road, in the district of Santa Rosa, in the province of Melgar in Puneña, in the early hours of Monday morning, confirmed the Superintent of Land Transport of People, Cargo and Goods (Sutran).

This official entity reported that it activated all its immediate attention protocols and initiated coordination with its inspectors in the region, the National Police of Peru (PNP) and the Health Emergency Operations Center of Puno to “help with the investigations that allow the causes of the accident to be determined.”

Likewise, Sutran indicated that the vehicle, with B2R959 plate, had authorization from the General Directorate of Transport Authorizations of the Ministry of Transport and Communications for the regular passenger transport service, with accident insurance and technical review in force.

“The Sutran expresses its condolences to the relatives and relatives of the victims of the unfortunate accident and vows for the speedy recovery of the injured,” he said in a statement shared on his social networks.

Last week, the roads in northern Peru recorded another accident of a passenger bus that left 27 people dead from the fall of the vehicle into a chasm in the department of Cajamarca, while another public transport unit rushed into a river, in the jungle of Amazonas, and caused the death of a policeman and 10 people injured.

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Israel says it will continue to negotiate a ceasefire while bombing the east of Rafah

The Israeli War Cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, agreed on Monday to continue “the operation” in Rafah, south of Gaza, but agreed to send a delegation to Cairo to continue negotiating a possible ceasefire.

“Despite the fact that Hamas’ proposal is far from meeting Israel’s fundamental demands, Israel will send a high-ranking delegation to Egypt in an effort to exhaust the possibility of reaching an agreement on acceptable terms,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement.

Benny Gantz, also a member of the War Cabinet, agreed with Netanyahu. “The military operation in Rafah is an inseparable part of our continuous efforts and our commitment to return our kidnapped,” he said tonight in a statement quoted by Israeli media.

Gantz confirmed that Israel will send a delegation to Cairo although, he said, the proposal agreed by Hamas “does not correspond to the dialogue that has taken place so far with the mediators and contains important gaps.”

Both messages come after the announcement of Ismail Haniyeh, head of the political bureau in Hamas, that the Islamist group accepted a proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza, a few hours after the Israeli Army issued an “immediate” evacuation order from the east of Rafah.

In a final statement released tonight, Hamas confirmed that both Haniyeh and the secretary general of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Ziad al Nakhala – a faction also present in the Gaza Strip – discussed on Monday whether or not to approve a ceasefire, and said that the decision was made as a result of “the evolution of the current situation” in Gaza.

“It was also emphasized that the resistance factions will not back down on their demands included in the proposal they agreed, in particular a (comprehensive) ceasefire, an integral withdrawal (from Israeli troops), an honorable exchange (of hostages for prisoners), reconstruction and the end of the (Israeli) siege,” Hamas recalled.

The Israeli Army confirmed that it is currently bombing the southern city of Rafah, where more than one million Gazans take refuge after the start of the ground offensive on October 27, which forced the northern population to leave their homes, many of which are now destroyed.

Despite the heavy bombings and firing of flares, according to EFE on the ground, Israeli troops and tanks have not crossed the fence that separates Israel from southern Gaza.

The Army “is currently carrying out targeted attacks against Hamas terrorist targets in the east of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip,” a military statement confirmed tonight, announcing that there would be more details shortly.

For its part, the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, confirmed Israeli attacks in the city of Rafah against “roads, agricultural land, residential houses and farms” in the eastern neighborhoods of Al Salam and Al Jinaina, among others, which coincide with some of the places included this morning in the evacuation letter.

In a press conference in Hebrew tonight, the Army spokesman, Daniel Hagari, recalled that the troops are prepared for a land incursion into Rafah after this morning’s evacuation order, which only affects about 100,000 Gazans among more than a million people who are overcrowded in Rafah.

Hamas warned Israel on Monday that any military takeover of Rafah will not be something simple and that his armed wing, the Qasam Brigades, are ready to defend his people.

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