The most famous Brazilian in Central Asia was a slave

Uzbekistan, from all places, seems to be the destination of choice of retiring Brazilian soccer stars. World champion Rivaldo plays in Buniadkor, the team from Tashkent. Zico trained the team at some point.

But even more than Ronaldo and Ronaldinho and whatever "Rs" Uzbeks can come up with, it’s the Brazilian soap opera that really connects Brazil to Central Asia. There is a facination for us, exotic Brazilians.

When I was in India a few years ago, a Tajik classmate told me she loved Brazilian films. How the hell the Brazilian cinema reach Tajikistan, I wondered. Then she said she really enjoyed Isaura. She was referring to Escrava ("Slave") Isaura, a soap opera from the seventies that for some reason was a phenomenon in the communist world. Its main actress, Lucélia Santos, who played the white slave of the title, was (and still is) greeted as a star in all the former Soviet Republics, as well as in China and Cuba. Just two weeks before my arrival in Kazakhstan, there she was as the guest of honor of the Brazilian Film Festival in Astana. In Kyrgyzstan, a tour guide told me that the time in the evening when our soap operas played was the one favored by thieves, that would enter the houses and steal their bounty while the family kept their eyes glued to the screen.

The capitals of Central Asia (and of "Planalto Central")

Almaty, Bishkek, Tashkent, Brasília. Sister cities. Low, long buildings; solid, geometric structures; long, wide avenues; parks and trees galore; far from the sea. You’ve seen one: you’ve seen all. Well, not quite so. There are always surprises.

The luxuriously designed lounges in Almaty (design furniture, international cuisine, vodka, live singers, beauties dancing on the counter). Almaty, the "garden of apples", is the former capital.

The intimate scale of the greenest of them all, Bishkek, old Frunze, that manages to keep a human feeling to what would otherwise be a typically cold and gray Soviet capital.

An austere and earnest production of Gisele (or any other ballet or opera) at the Opera Theater in Tashkent, where old and young, rich and poor, virtually anyone can buy a ticket and be surrounded by the simple and sincere beauty of the spectacle and the building.

Brasília, where, well, you will find a lot of Brazilians.


Astana and Ashgabat are rather cousins of Brasília - not sisters, with their brand new (sometimes kitch) architecture.

Astana, the capital that is farthest from the Ocean, the second coldest capital in the world, the Dubai of the steppes. Astana, the city of gleaming skyscrapers, with barely a soul on the streets. Astana, the the capital built in an effort to occupy the Far North of Kazakhstan (a region closer to Russia). Economic crisis = unfinished megadevelopments, half-built concrete mammoths. But Astana is there to stay, to be loved or hated, to be envied or despised. And to become the future home to a few Brazilian diplomats (those particularly critical of Brasília might become more appreciative of it after being "really" far from the sea and out in the cold).

Ashgabat is the odd kid on the block, much like Turkmenistan, which doesn’t quite fit in the lot of Stans of Central Asia. What to make of it? An hybrid of Singapore and Dubai, the immaculately clean city is out of tune with the much poorer rest of the country. It lives in its own dimension, and proudly so. It’s the fruit of the design of Saparmurat Niyazov, or Turkmenbashi (“father of the Turkmen”), the first president of the country, who spared no effort to build a gleaming city that was devastated by an earthquake in 1948, leaving Nyazov’s mother and two siblings dead, along with other 150.000 people. It’s the white city, where all public and main buildings are covered by white marble. One would suspect Turkmenistan might have helped keeping the Italian and the Spanish trade deficits not too out of control simply by buying all that stone. Besides the white buildings, the monuments and statues stand out. And in this domain Turkmenbashi, the president that could be king, reigns absolutely. Though dead since 2006, he lives and shines in the many golden statues in Ashgabat and elsewhere in the country, together with the statues of his mother, father and infant brothers. The main statue, atop the Arc of Neutrality, sits on a mechanism that rotates it in a way that leaves Turkmenbashi always facing the sun. Other unusual sites in Ashgabat are the “walks of health”. When Turkmenbashi decided to stop smoking, he forbade smoking on the streets and built two long paths, one with 8 km and the other with 24 km. Going up the hills, with thousands of steps, they are illuminated and can be seen from different points of the city. Although one’s health might improve after completing the shortest path a few times a year, the effects of completing the longest one are yet unknown.

The current president seems to be slowly undoing some of the more controversial policies of Turkmenbashi. He allowed the use of internet; replaced the old currency (the old bills, no matter their denomination, carried the face of the first president); and restored the old names of the months of the year, which had been renamed by Turkmenbashi with the names of his parents and relatives. Still all public buildings, universities, aeroports carry the name of the first president.

Turkmenistan was my first experience of a country that still has very visible marks of a cult of personality. It's pure travel bliss, like being transported to another time or dimension.

Central Asia's pot - and a lesson on stereotypes

One of the best aspects of traveling abroad is the possibility of overcoming prejudices and stereotypes through a first hand contact with the places and people along the way; of being surprised by how the world is richer and more complex than previously expected. I was surprised, for instance, to know that the cap on the head of my driver-cum-guide-cum-travel companion in Kyrgyzstan wasn’t a kippah, but a taqiyah. I guess I was not expecting a blond, blue-eyed, Russian-named guy in Kyrgyzstan to be a Muslim, just because I’d never seen one before. It shows not only my ignorance but also the melting pot that is Central Asia.

Well, not exactly a melting pot, but a pot where many races live more or less side by side within the same borders, and not always in great harmony. Ethnic Kazakhs make up only half of the population of Kazakhstan, as do ethnic Kyrgyz in Kyrgyzstan. Although ethnic Tajiks are registed as Uzbeks in Uzbekistan, some claim that the first outnumber the latter in the country. Ethnic Russians can be found in all countries, especially in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Tajiks living outside Tajikistan outnumber those living in the country. In Uzbekistan, Turkmen, German, Ukrainian, Korean, Tatar, Uighur add to the mix. It’s a festival of faces and features that rival the different landscapes found in the region.