When outsiders think of Brazil, we usually think of the Amazon rainforest or Rio de Janeiro, Carnival, and soccer.

There's another Brazil where we find cactus, cowboys, fishermen and soccer.

It's Brazil's north east, especially the state of Ceará.

Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Agnese Haury.

The north east can be so dry as to be semi-desert.

It's called the Sertão.

Ceará is one of Brazil's smaller states.

Its capital is Fortaleza, a city of a couple of million people.

It isn't obviously different, just a big city with plenty of sunshine.

At night, thousands of the city dwellers come out.

In Fortaleza, as in most coastal cities in Brazil, the most popular place is the Beir Amar, the ocean walk where people can come, stroll for a few kilometers right at the ocean side.

In Fortaleza, it's especially nice because the temperature never changes.

It's generally in the low 80's in the evenings and the mid 70's in the mornings.

Families and individuals with all sorts of activities come here to spend a very pleasant time.

The Beir Amar in Fortaleza.

The Beir Amar is fine, but I want to see the rural northeast, the Sertão.

I'm itching to get on the road and maybe to pick up some stuff along the way.

Along the highways in northeastern Brazil, you'll find every once in a while fruit stands like this.

There's a lot of competition among the fruit vendors so they take great pride in arranging all the fruits, so the passerbys will have to stop.

We all know the mangos, but what few of us know, what I didn't know, is the pitomba, if you bite off the outside it has a sort of slimy, but sort of sweet interior.

It puckers your mouth, but it makes you want more.

Another more or less local fruit, that is completely unknown in North America is the sapoti, it tastes something like sweet potato, only better.

You suck out the white pulp, it tastes citrusy, but has a very nice flavor.

A couple of more strangers here, one they call caja.

This is used mostly for making fruit juices.

These are just a small sampling of the fruits that are found in the north east of Brazil.

Just because Ceará has a semi arid climate, doesn't mean it never rains, but it's dry enough to support forests of cactus.

Brazilians live in a land that seems to have an endless supply of tropical fruits, papayas, mangos, passion fruits, guavas.

They seem to overlook the fact that native particularly in the northeast is cactus fruit.

It's a gorgeous color and it really tastes very good.

Nice and sweet and the seeds of cactus fruit are very nutritious so in addition to the fruit that benefit that you get, you get a little protein and oil from the seeds.

Ceará has hundreds of miles of beaches and fishermen were working here long before beach front resorts appeared.

When Europeans arrived on the coast of northeastern Brazil in the early 1500's, they found fishermen using the same kind of boats that they are using today.

They are called jangada.

(Portuguese) The first Brazilian jangada you could say was the ?

?

jangada.

I even fished from one of those old ones.

It was a very sacrificial experience.

We took everything in the face, hard rains, strong winds, all the nasty natural elements.

Today we have modern jangadas, where we have a place to tuck away and hide from the stormy conditions.

This boat is more modern materials, but it's actually a Pre-Colombian design.

This is their stove and for wood they used coconut husks.

There's a small pot they will put inside there.

They make the fire there.

They have to take everything with them and there they cook.

They heat the water to boil it and they add to it the mixture of flour and fish and that will be their sustenance for four or five days of fishing.

(Portuguese) Right here we lift up the lid.

3 or 4 men can sleep inside here.

And so we find out what it's like to spend the night in a jangada.

I haven't done this, if you have long knobby knees it makes it harder too.

I think the comforts of home have vast advantages to this but what the heck.

Now three men sleep in here at the same time, so one gets over on the side.

They have to close it to keep the ocean out and this is really just about as fun as I've ever had in my life.

As they're leaving they throw water up onto the sail.

It's a fairly porous cloth and the water closes the pores and because we have a land breeze, it gives them an extra amount of force.

It's difficult getting these things launched, so that little help makes it easier for them to get the boats going out to sea then they have to fight the waves as well.

When they fish, they use only a line and a hook.

There are no poles involved.

They know how to hook the fish.

They know by the feel of the fish what kind it is and they're going after a very special one on this particular trip.

(Portuguese) When we get back from a fishing trip, everybody thinks we're bringing in a huge haul.

A big box like this one will hold 150-200 kilos of fish.

When we can't go out to sea, we hang around the boats, chatting with our friends, waiting for an opportunity to go back out.

Oh, this is the anchor.

This here is another kind of anchor.

We use it in a drag mode while fishing.

This other one here keeps us fixed in one spot.

It's got to weigh a couple hundred pounds.

So that the anchor certainly could not have changed in centuries, it's wood and stone.

It's at least a 500 year tradition and probably goes way back many hundred of years before the arrival of Europeans.

Away from the coast, the real Sertão begins.

It's cattle and cowboy country.

The cowboys or the wranglers involved in the vaquejada practice on a almost a daily basis.

It's a big time sport and they have to be experts.

And it would...

I could understand it if I weren't surrounded by both sides of papaya trees and mango trees, banana trees, sugar cane fields, coconut trees, cashew trees.

It sort of doesn't connect with my experience of the whole cowboy culture, but this is the northeast of Brazil.

So here we go into the training facility.

I'm going to go in first.

I do not know what I am getting into but I'll find out.

This has become a big time sport and wealthy ranchers who want to massage their egos will bring their most skilled cowboy out to participate.

(Portuguese) The prizes are great.

Cars, motorcycles, even cash money.

Ever since I was a little boy, I lived and breathed horses.

I have won a few prizes over the years.

The vaquejada originated in the open range.

Nowadays we compete in an arena like strip or pista.

The rules were very different back then.

The first to grab the tail, he would attempt to put the steer on the ground.

The object of this particular activity is to demonstrate the prowlus at being able to take the cow's tail that is handed it over from the partner and by maneuvering the horse and holding onto the tail, make the cow fall over and if it's successful the judge yells out value boi that's a good one.

Okay here he's coming now and he's got the tail ?

?

.

The estero secures the tail and hands it over to the puxador.

So the estero hands over the tail and at the same time keeps the steer going in a straight line, so the puxador can pull it to the ground.

Most countries that have a strong cattle culture have a sport associated with cows like the rodeo in the United States or polo in Argentina.

In Brazil, it's very clearly the vaquejada that originated here in the northeast.

Portuguese brought the cattle.

They also brought a craft that endures in just a few places in Ceará and almost nowhere else.

Lace making.

Maria José is making a strip, a lace strip that is over 400 meters long and it's being wound up on this roll.

It is probably a world record.

This material becomes the foundation, the basis for most of the garments that are sold made out of lace.

This roll is more than a quarter of a mile long.

It represents two years of work of her life and it's not easy work.

Her fingers are moving almost faster than I can follow.

(Portuguese) I learned how to do lace or renda, when I was seven.

I've been doing this for more than 42 years.

This lace strip here, it will be cut into sections and then it will be sewed to the bottom of blue jeans.

It's almost 400 meters long.

One hundred more meters and it will be taken to the blue jean factory.

This is all done by hand.

No machines are used.

It's called greek lace.

We use cadaro cactus spines.

These needle like separators here are the spines of Brazil's most famous columnar cactus, it's called the mondicaru.

(Portuguese) This is billo.

So this apparatus is called a billo and that keeps the tension, the weight of it keeps the tension on the thread and she moves these back and forth as if these were hammers on a piano.

The little liner here that she works on is made out of the paper from a sack of cement.

(Portuguese) This is thin cardboard, and this is a pillow.

There are sixty lace makers here.

We are all rendeiras.

Just like soccer, the making of lace was introduced into Brazil by the English and now Brazilian women have taken over the industry and the talent and it has become the center of the world's lace production, right here in northeastern Brazil.

When it does rain in the northeast, it usually comes in spurts.

The northeast is also known for its variety of road stops, where you can get out of the rain.

I am lucky to have my friend Ricardo Bezerra with me.

He's a native who knows these special places.

What we've got here is a sugar cane mill and the whole process is done here.

This is actually a working operation.

The sugar cane comes in, put into this grinder, it presses out the juice, the juice goes into the vats over here and underneath the vats they have fires going and from there when it's at the perfect consistency, they bring it over here to pour into the mold or to make these loaves, they call batidas.

The flavoring here is new.

This is looks like it's anise, but the process has been going on for centuries, perhaps 3 almost 400 years.

Ahaha it's hot.

It's hot and what does this have in it?

Peanuts.

That's new because usually they would have just sugar cane or coconut in it.

Nowadays, it's peanuts, pineapple, Cashew.

Cashew.

Wonderfully sweet, but it isn't overwhelming and the taste of peanuts is just perfect.

It's called rapadura.

Papadora means hard, yes.

There's another product of the sugar cane that's a little stronger.

Rum?

Yeah, it's called cachaca.

Cachaca?

That's Brazilian.

Yes.

But not all Cachaca has lobsters in it.

No, no this is something new.

This one I think it's nice.

It's tropical fruits.

Tropical fruits, like pineapple, melon.

The real Cachaca is just a plain, clear liquid, but very, very strong.

They make the Cachaca, from the sugar cane, but you are also in Brazil burning a lot of alcohol in your cars.

That's right our cars are what you call it, alcoholic?

Speaking of cars, let's get on the road and move on.

Yeah, that's good idea.

The rain passes quickly and Ricardo takes me to visit some friends who live close to the land.

This is a typical house in the Sertão, but it's home and it's very well kept, nice wooden table.

You can see the religious icons, very much lived in, the hammocks are here.

This is the bedroom wherever they are, sometimes they'll have a separate room.

Very simple, but perfectly adapted to this usually, fairly dry and very warm environment.

In this area of Ceará, workers produce a product that every car owner in the world can use.

Carnauba wax.

(Portuguese) We tie them up in bundles and then put them into a machine.

The powder is then melted to make the wax.

All the wax is exported.

The collected powder from the carnauba, the raw wax is like this.

It feels waxy, slick.

The finished product after it's been melted and put into forms is like this.

This is the dark or black carnauba, the industrial grade.

This is, this is the more expensive, the white Carnauba, especially valuable for cosmetics.

(Portuguese) I was a small kid when I started harvesting the leaves.

I'm still working today.

Now, I cut down the dry fronds, which are now used for roof thatching.

The dry ones are for roofs and the green ones are for extracting the powder so we can make wax.

In pervious years, it did not have much value.

Nowadays though there's a high demand for the wax and we sell it at a good price.

This has been used a lot.

It's sharp and then pulling it back and forth just cuts the leaves right off.

It takes more experience than I've had to become a good carnauba cutter.

Okay, okay these leaves have barbs on them so you can hook it over the barb and if you know what you're doing.

Hey, hey not bad.

These are barbs, just like a fish hook that tear at the skin and then when they fall down fast, they tend to fall as though they've been shot down like arrows.

They can take away a lot of your hide.

One thousand palm fronds makes approximately 13 - 15 kilos of powder.

A thousand of these fronds will yield about 15 kilos about 33 - 43 lbs of carnauba wax, so it takes a lot of effort to gain that, but once you've got the wax, it's the best in the world.

A hundred miles away is the small religious town of Canindé.

It's not your ordinary religious town.

Brazil has the largest catholic population of any country in the world.

The most important shrine for Catholics in all of Brazil is in the small town of Canindé, sitting out in the broad spaces of the Sertão.

The legend goes like this.

Three brothers owned these lands.

When they refused to allow a church to be built here, the oldest got sick and he died.

The second brother also became ill and he died.

When the third brother fell ill, he declared that the church could be built as long as he got better.

He did and St. Francis or Saint Francisco chapel was built here.

The statue of St. Francis that you see behind me is over 100 ft tall.

Probably the tallest statue of St. Francis in the world.

One of the reasons that hundreds of thousands of pilgrims come to Canindé is not just venerate Sao Francisco, but because of the widespread reports of thousands of miracles.

This is the house of miracles.

This wall is covered with photographs of people who believe that as a result of their pilgrimage here to Canindé.

They were cured.

An accident was taken care of.

A genetic problem was healed.

The custom here is that if you have a certain injury or a part that needs to be healed, you bring it with you on the pilgrimage to Canindé and here we have a wild variety of wooden and plaster and some even plastic things that people have brought leaving them here with the hope that the cure would happen that an amish to Sao Francisco, some power would come down to them and they would be healed.

So many of them come here that this bin fills up every two months.

That's how powerful the faith is.

(Portuguese) People come from all over the world to see firsthand the phenomenon of Saint Francis to Canindé.

We are the largest Franciscan pilgrimage site in all of the Americas.

We recently celebrated 500 years of Franciscanos in Brazil.

(Portuguese) It is faith that feeds the poor and hungry people.

Sao Francisco is our doctor, our friend.

He is a saint of the poor.

Canindé is the largest pilgrimage site in the western hemisphere.

I used to suffer from rheumatoid arthritis.

Sao Francisco, he cured me.

My body was covered with welts and I made a promise to our saint and he responded, you will get better.

I was never sick ever again.

Legend has it that the first miracle here in Canindé occurred when a stone mason was working this very tower and he slipped and fell over the edge and would've fallen a couple hundred feet to his death, but his shirt got caught on a projection and he dangled until friends could come up and rescue him and if anything is a miracle, that was.

Now it's time to hurry back to Fortaleza for a big soccer match.

No one knows soccer better than my friend Marcus Machado.

He will meet us at the stadium and will introduce me to some of the finer points of this Brazilian passion.

We're in the stadium of Fortaleza, where two big time teams usually play.

This game is Fortaleza against a smaller town, which is about 500 km away.

I'm wearing a special uniform, which is required of anyone who gets to go down on the field, but the reality here is that this is not just a game.

This is pageantry.

There is all sorts of choreography going on.

Each team has its chants, its banners, its decorations, its own anthem.

The capacity of the stadium is 70,000.

There are a few empty seats because they are playing a small team, but it's probably 40,000 people here.

They are chanting things that I am told should not be repeated on television or around tender ears.

That's part of the reality of soccer.

Soccer is a kind of religion for us.

This is a very very important sport for us.

And I have heard that soccer was introduced to Brazil by the English, by the British.

Is that correct?

Yes, yes that's correct.

They discovered the soccer, they created the soccer and I would say that Brazil adopted it And made it the best in the world.

Yes, the best in the world.

They have this year around 500 soccer team professionals.

Professionals?

Yes.

So that means every medium sized city, small city has their own professional team and some of them more than one.

In this state, we have around 30 soccer professional teams.

In Ceará alone?

If you have been to Brazil and have not attended a real soccer match, you have not been to Brazil.

Probably, you have not been to Brazil.

That's like going to Italy and not seeing the pope.

It's almost the same thing.

How old are little boys and girls when they get their first gift of a soccer ball?

When they get born.

When they get born?

As soon as they get born, they get a soccer ball.

If it's a boy, the father just bring a t-shirt from the team and when I was born my father brought me a t-shirt the day that I was born.

Fortaleza is just about to win the match and if you think they are excited now, wait till the end comes, the fireworks have begun, the fans will run out into the field and will be able to see real fireworks.

It's going to be mayhem around here.

The state championships is in the hands of the city of Fortaleza team.

Fortaleza is the champion of the state of Ceará, time for the trophy and the celebration and the confetti.

It's getting pretty wild here.

It's just another day in northeastern Brazil.

Join us next time In the Americas with me David Yetman.

For the last half of the 20th century, the nation of Colombia gained a dubious reputation around the world for violence and conflict.

Colombians have undertaken a campaign to reduce that reputation and demonstrate to the world that they can be leaders in urban development, conservation, and economic progress.

Two places that they now point to with pride are a world's apart, but equally fascinating.

My hat's from Australia, his is handmade here and made out of leather.

So we will see who has the better hat.

It's a little bit heavier, but I think his is more stylish.

Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Agnese Haury.

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Please mention the episode number and the program title.

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