Cultural Arrogance
Re Jack Mathews’ Nov. 18 cover story, “Into the Rain Forest”: The article reveals little about Brazil and only alludes to the great social and environmental issues that have plagued Amazonian development.
Mathews does touch on two significant issues of cultural arrogance. The first is that of the zealous missionary impressing his vision of good on the Indian. The second is that of the more modern but equally zealous ecological do-gooder who would save the Amazon from the evil or neglectful Brazilians.
The article itself reflects a measure of cultural arrogance on the part of The Times--grammatical arrogance. Clearly, Portuguese is a little-known language in this country, but it behooves those who publish proper names in that language to spell them correctly. In the article, Mae de Deus becomes “Mae de Dios” and Sao Paulo “Sao Paolo” (of course, it is Paolo in Italian ). Also, The Times doesn’t seem to believe in the value of diacritical marks. Thus Mae and Sao appear as Mae and Sao.
To say that diacritics are unimportant is to deny the validity of part of another language. To say that we shall accept or reject whatever aspects of a language we please is arrogant in the extreme.
LUDWIG LAUERHASS
Chair, UCLA Program on Brazil
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