The story that follows is perhaps a kind of novela, a Brazilian soap opera, of the sort that occupies the imagination and national psyche of the Brazilian people on prime-time TV nightly and for periods of two to four months, depending on its popularity and success. This is not an exaggeration. The prime-time novela in Brazilian life is pervasive, reaching every Brazilian in some form or manner regardless of class, status, education, or profession, excepting perhaps the Indians and the very isolated of the frontiers and rural backlands. In traveling to the most remote towns, one finds that a single television in a church or open plaza will gather the people nightly to define and standardize by example the national dress, music, humor, political state, economic malaise, the national dream, despite the fact that Brazil is immense and variegated. Yet even as it standardizes by example, the novela’s story is completely changeable according to the whims of public psyche and approval, although most likely, the unhappy find happiness; the bad are punished; true love reigns; a popular actor is saved from death. Still, the basic elements must remain the same. And what are these elements? Claude Levi-Strauss described it all so well so many years ago: Tristes Tropiques—an idyll of striking innocence, boundless nostalgia, and terrible ruthlessness. I thank you for tuning in.