Matheus Moraes is an 11-year-old rock star for God. He started preaching when he was six. In 2006, at the age of nine, he preached 250 sermons all over Brazil. Vice magazine talked to Matheus Moraes and two other child preachers in the country. The conversations are bizarre, sad, and, at times, profound. Here's an excerpt:

Vice: Was there anything especially religious about your birth?

Matheus: I was born in Rio on the 18th of May, 1998, after a promise. God sent a prophet to earth who told my mom that she would get pregnant very soon and that the baby she was going to give birth to would have a very special gift. He would be a son of God.

At what age did you start preaching?

Officially, I started preaching in 2003. My parents told me that I mumbled Bible phrases when I was a baby—even when I wasn’t able to read. I spent most of my childhood in church and had a pretty close connection to the pastor. At some point he asked me if I would like to give sermons, and so I started to walk the path to God.

Do you have a lot of fans?

Every time I go back to a city there are always people with signs and posters. They ask me for signatures, too, and bring me gifts. Most of them buy my DVDs, and that is really good because I can make some money and give it to my parents.

Here's Matheus in action:

Source: Vice

In an exercise in terrifying imagery, more than 400 dead baby penguins have been washing ashore in Rio de Janeiro over the past couple of months. 

The Associated Press reported last week that no direct cause for the penguicide has been found yet, though theories abound. Thiago Muniz, a veterinarian at Brazil's Niteroi Zoo, thinks overfishing could be to blame by sending the penguins on longer hunts for fish away from their native shores in Antarctica and Patagonia. "That leaves them more vulnerable to getting caught up in the strong ocean currents," he told the AP.

Erli Costa, a biologist from Rio de Janeiro’s Federal University, theorizes that global warming could be the culprit. Costa claims that climate change has caused an increase in cyclones and harsher currents, which make the seas rough on the young birds.

Global warming has already taken a heavy toll on penguins. The UK's Daily Mail reported earlier this month that the Antarctic Peninsula's average temperature has risen by three degrees to an average -14.7 degrees Celsius (about six degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 50 years, which in turn has caused freezing rain to be much more common than snow. Baby penguins don't develop water-protective feathers until 40 days after their birth, leaving them susceptible to hypothermia. Estimates are that, with tens of thousands of baby birds freezing to death, Adelie penguins could be extinct within 10 years.

(Thanks, TreeHugger and NYCsceneQueen.)

Image by Aaron Jacobs, licensed under Creative Commons.

The cultural history of Brazil is in danger. The roots of the country’s world-famous music, as well as its folk medicine, storytelling, dances, and visual arts, lie in traditions that could die out as the older generation ages. The government-sponsored Griô Action program is designed to protect this endangered culture by finding the keepers of historical knowledge and helping them pass on their music, games, and traditions to a new generation.

In this video, Elizabeth Dwoskin, author of “Slave Songs in Brazil” in the March-April issue of Utne Reader, talks about the Griô Action program and defenders of Brazil’s traditions.

—Bennett Gordon

To hear more Brazilian music from the members of Griô Action, click on the links below. 

Listen Now:

 Lullaby: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

Listen Now:

 More music: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

You may not have heard of the most popular, and perhaps most violent, Brazilian film of all time. Tropa de Elite, which came out last year in Brazil and is now in limited release in the United States, follows Captain Nascimento of BOPE, an elite military police battalion, as he prepares Rio de Janeiro for an upcoming visit from the pope. This involves the gruesome torture and murder of countless Rio residents, suspected drug dealers, and crooked cops. The film has been widely criticized for its depiction of brutality against civilians and its seeming advocacy of vigilante violence.

In an article for In These Times, Homes Wilson examines the film and the political undertones of its stunning popularity. The problem with Tropa, Wilson believes, is that the consequences of its gratuitous violence are ambiguous. Whether it is interpreted as destructively immoral, as director José Padilha intended, or as a necessary evil in Brazil’s war on drugs completely depends on the viewer’s point of reference. “If the filmmakers had purposely set out to weave Rio violence into a fascist propaganda piece,” Wilson writes, “it’s impossible to imagine them doing a better job.”

Recalling a police barbecue he attended after watching Tropa, Wilson describes the cops’ excitement about the film by comparing it to geeks’ love of Star Wars, leaving us to wonder what a Tropa de Elite convention might look like. If Brazilian police view the film’s vigilante violence against civilians, some of them children, as glorious rather than cautionary, then Brazil may be moving in a frightening direction indeed.

—Morgan Winters