Connecting the Brazil You Hear About With the Brazil That Exists
A space for nuance, context and lived experience.
I’ve lived in Brazil for more than twenty-five years. Long enough to understand the country from the inside, but still with the distance of someone who arrived from elsewhere. That combination — rooted in daily life yet shaped by an outsider’s perspective — is what guides everything I write here.
Brazil is often described in extremes. It is romanticized or dismissed, praised or condemned, simplified or misunderstood. What rarely appears in public debate is the middle ground: the Brazil that exists beyond stereotypes, beyond headlines, beyond the clichés that travel easily but explain very little.
Link2Brazil was created to explore that middle ground.
What you’ll find here are essays and reflections based on lived experience: how institutions function in practice, how politics and economics shape daily life, how culture expresses itself in gestures, expectations and unwritten rules. Not academic theory, not travel-brochure optimism, but the reality of a country that is complex, contradictory, demanding and endlessly fascinating.
This publication now exists in three languages.
English-language texts can be found under Insights, Portuguese-language texts appear under Conexão. Dutch remains the language of origin, where this project first took shape.
Everything here is free to read.
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Welcome to Link2Brazil — and welcome to a more nuanced Brazil.
André Smeets