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| Tambaba lowers the flag |
Exactly two years ago, Brazilian Naturism received the INF/FNI World Congress at Tambaba Beach in the northeastern town of Conde, Paraíba. Two days ago, the Naturist Society of Tambaba - Sonata announced it would not honor INF Passports, and that it was leaving the FBrN, and consequently cutting its affiliation with the INF/FNI.
With the 2010 INF/FNI Congress taking place, the secession from world naturism of the host of the 2008 Congress is an opportunity to remind foreigners why they should not put their faith in Brazilian naturism - and, especially, why they should not put their money in Brazilian naturist undertakings.
The 2008 INF Congress was clouded before it opened. The President of the FBrN, Dr. André Herdy, who had planned the Congress, had been arrested with three other naturists nearly a year earlier, in December of 2007, on false charges brought by members (including management) of the Colina do Sol naturist community in Taquara, Brazil. The Congress had been announced in the Brazilian press as an event that would bring over four thousand naturists from around the world to Tambaba. Without the talents of Dr. Herdy, the beach never had more than 400 people during the Congress. All the announced musical shows were canceled, as were the various balls.
If Brazilians are peddling "investment opportunities" at the 2010 Congress, I strongly urge reading our warning from May about "Colina dos Ventos". Let me add to that a warning to avoid anything related to "Colina do Sol" as well. I have here with me two maps used by Colina, one to show what they had to sell to incautious investors, the other showing what Colina had purchased, owned, and could offer. The second covers a good deal less land than the first.
Sonata's decision to leave the FBrN rests on three issues: the INF/FNI passport, the admission of single men to naturist areas, and press censorship.
The INF Passport
The INF passport has been under attack in Brazil. The issuance of the passport by a naturist association supposedly certifies that the bearer is a genuine naturist and a member in good standing, and should be treated as such elsewhere in the world. However, the Internet portal "Brasil Naturista", had been devaluing the INF credential by issuing it to anyone at all who purchased a subscription, apparently including call boys ("member in good standing" may still be an apt description of them, of course).
Brasil Naturista and its editor/publisher are answering several civil suits for using photos of naked children without parental permission.
The passport is under further pressure from the FBrN itself, which recently voted to require member clubs to submit the names of those to whom passports are issued, for inclusion in a computerized database. Many people are reluctant to be identified as naturists, and if having an INF passport means being included in a database, they may opt to not obtain or to not renew a passport.
Single Men
A peculiarity of the Brazilian branch of naturism - which may be one reason it has lagged behind world growth - is an obsession with prohibiting the entrance of single men to naturist areas. Brazil's most urban naturist beach, Abrico in Rio de Janeiro operates quite well without that odd rule, and such discrimination on public beaches is prohibited by the Brazilian Constitution. Indeed, organized naturism was swept from the major state of Bahia for many years when a gay organization took the Massandupió beach to court because of the rule, and won not only a damage award so large it broke the naturist association, but the right to collect the award from any successor naturist organization in the state.
Foreign investors, Celso Rossi, and the Hotel Ocara
Mr. Rossi in 2001 sold 20% of his Hotel Ocara in Colina do Sol to American Dana Wayne Harbour for R$250,000. The total investment for which Mr. Rossi and his family retained 80% of the hotel was the land on which it sat, which had been purchased for less than two percent of what the American paid. Even so, while claiming to sign over to the corporation the land where the hotel was being erected, they instead turned over a neighboring lot, worth even less.
Wayne Harbour eventually realized he had been defrauded, and accumulated boxes of proof, which he planned to turn over to the police. However, just two weeks before the engineered arrest of Dr. André Herdy, Wayne "died accidentally" during a "robbery" of his home in Colina do Sol. The boxes of evidence disappeared the next day, and Celso Rossi is now living in the hotel - though a bank has a lien on it.
French and Spanish investors also lost money in the Hotel Ocara.
The rule can be traced back to Celso Rossi, the "founder of the FBrN" (though not, by many decades, of organized Brazilian Naturism), whose sinister presence was another shadow on the 2008 INF Congress.
For years, Brazilian naturism was closely intertwined with Celso Rossi, who controlled the FBrN; edited the only Brazilian naturist publication, the magazine Naturis; and the most prominent naturist development, Colina do Sol in Taquara in the south of Brazil. The magazine and the FBrN served to bring attention and lend credibility to Mr. Rossi's business undertakings. It is difficult, looking at old records, to see when Rossi is speaking as editor, a FBrN President, as real-estate entrepreneur, and when as himself. This lack of differentiation extends to finances, to put it delicately.
Mr. Rossi doesn't like single men on beaches, and consequently the FBrN did not like single men on beaches, and still does not. I've managed to wade through only a little of Rossi's turgid prose, in which he is always the central character and always the hero, but at his very first INF Congress, nearly 20 years ago, something else that offended his delicate sensibilities was the sight of the elderly (both men and women) in romantic relationships with younger adults. I am confident that his views on this will reform, though, since he's now over 50, and this aspect of love will now look less ill when viewed (as he always views the world) through Rossi-tinted glasses.
The ban on single men seems to be a fig leaf for banning homosexuals, another group against which Mr. Rossi has some sort of dislike. And his ability to mistake his dislikes for ethical principles has a grandeur about it that is nearly solipsistic in its depth and breadth. I didn't find roots of this in his writings, but it does long predate his wife leaving him, reportedly for another woman, so that's not the cause.
Censorship
The Colina dos Ventos affair
Earlier this year, Jornal Olho Nu, the leading Brazilian naturist site and virtual newspaper, published a letter from a naturist critical of the Colina dos Ventos naturist inn in the Brazilian Northeast. His room had been robbed, and when he wanted to go to the police station to register the robbery, he found the inn's gate had been locked with him and other naturists inside, with the management nowhere to be found. While many had purchased a Christmas/New Year's package, only he lasted out the entire period. The original letter can be found in Portuguese, here.
The FBrN asked with astonishing speed that the letter be removed, I assume that someone's financial interest was being endangered by the truth, probably Celso Rossi's, if only because the truth is always a danger to his financial schemes.
The Sonata memo was sent along with a cover letter, which I haven't translated as it refers heavily to local politics with which I'm not familiar. Apparently an ex-president of Sonata, José Wagner, whose ever-present Indian headdress may be remembered by those who were at Tambaba in 2008, spoke out in favor of the FBrN passport, and against the prohibition on single men.
Sonata had asked the FBrN to do something about this. The FBrN has strong powers to expel and discipline naturists, another Rossi legacy, and perhaps Sonata was hoping to gag Wagner, as it gagged Jornal Olho Nu in the Colina dos Ventos affair.
Another part of the FBrN's Rossi-era world view is that "endangering the reputation of naturism" is an ethical violation, and that it is not doing something reprehensible that endangers the reputation of naturism, but rather telling people about it that consummates the injury.
That is an important definition to have, if you are using naturism to hide business practices that don't bear close examination.
The FBrN apparently merely asked Wagner to communicate with it and with Sonata before talking to the press in the future. Most people and most organizations would consider that a gross violation of freedom of the speech and of the press, but in the world of Brazilian naturism, where the rules were written to enforce silence and obedience, Sonata found it innocuous.
And said, essentially, that if the FBrN wouldn't play by Sonata's rules, it was going to take its beach ball and go home.
Dispatch nº. 002/2010
To The Honorable Sr.
JOSÉ ANTÔNIO TANNUS
Hon. President of the Brazilian Federation of Naturism - FBrN
Goiânia– Goias - Brazil
Mr. President,
Postagens
