Sweet Home Floripa, Florianópolis, Brazil

SHF:  I heard somewhere that you have to have a Brazilian partner—or buy into an existing Brazilian business—in order to get an Investor’s Visa.  Is that true?

Dr. Carlos Zoéga, Senior Partner at Zoéga Coelho & Advogados

CZC:  No, that’s not true.  What you do have to have, though, is a person who is a Brazilian citizen or a permanent resident to be what’s called an “administrator.”  The administrator has to be Brazilian or a (foreign) permanent resident because the government requires someone with a permanent Brazilian address to receive documents on behalf of the company.  An administrator must be appointed when the documents are filed to open the company.  So, someone besides the person opening the business will have to be an officer of the company—at least at first.

SHF:  Well, six months after filing the articles of the company the visa holder will become a permanent resident.  Can he or she them become the administrator?

CZC:  Yes, they can and that sometimes happens.

SHF:  Do visa applicants feel nervous about appointing an administrator to run a company in possession of R150,000 of their cash?

CZC:  Usually the decision to open a business is taken among friends.  People rarely just appoint a stranger or an acquaintance to be their administrator.  Usually it’s an important contact or connection in Brazil.  It’s usually a person that the investor knows well. It can’t be just anyone.

SHF:  Now, let’s talk about once the visa process is completed.   What are the investor’s responsibilities?  I once spoke to a person who has an Investor’s Visa.  I asked him how his business was going and he shrugged, grinned and then confessed that he wasn’t doing much business.  Instead, he was just lying on the beach and drawing the interest on his investment each month. He seemed quite pleased to be getting a steady return. Is that okay?  Or is there some oversight to make sure that you really are running a Brazilian business?

CZC:  No, that’s a problem.  When you take out the Investor’s Visa you have to explain the nature of your business.   Later, the Polícia Federal, which monitors all visas, will ask you to prove that you have been engaged in the type of business stated on your application.  If you have not been involved in business of that nature then you will be asked to leave the country.

SHF:  How long before you have to report to the Polícia Federal and show that you are running a business?

CZC:  It used to be five years.  But now it’s only three.  Many people don’t know about that, but it’s important to know because the police WILL check your economic activity.  It’s not clear yet whether people who received their Investor’s Visas when the period was five years will be checked after only three years, but it is possible.

SHF:  Why did the law change?

CZC:  The law was actually changed as a result of efforts on the part of the Ministry of Labor.  You see, the Investor’s Visa is supposed to give foreigners the right to live in Brazil in exchange for creating jobs in Brazil.  It’s not just a formality, it’s a real policy goal.  The amount a person had to invest in Brazil used to be much higher, but the government lowered it in order to attract investors.  They are working with the assumption that people will bring in their investment money, open businesses, and then hire Brazilians to work for them.  The Ministry of Labor wanted to make sure that these jobs would really appear.  So they shortened the time limit.

SHF:  So, what would happen if you go to the authorities after three years and they see that you have no economic activity to speak of and you say, “Well, I meant to run my business, but one thing led to another, there were so many sunny days, I took up surfing.  I’m very sorry.  I’ll try harder next time.”

CZC:  Well, then you’ll be asked to leave the country.  The police will say that you are obviously a tourist and not a businessman at all.  So you are to leave and return on a tourist visa, which allows you to stay in the country for six months every year.

SHF:  Well, what if you haven’t done any business, but you hire a maid and a gardener?  Does that count?  Will the authorities ask you to leave and take away those jobs?

CZC:  No, that doesn’t count.  Domestic jobs are out of the immigration policy focus. You will be asked to leave the country, because your visa will not be renewed.

SHF:  So, I guess that means that you can’t take your investment cash and buy a house with it?

CZC:  No.

SHF:  Well, what about a hotel?  What if you build a hotel and your house is part of the hotel?

CZC:  In that case it might be okay, but you would have had to list “Hotel” as the nature of your business when you filed the original documents for the Investor’s Visa.

SHF:  What about if you open a business, do regular commerce, but don’t hire anyone.  For example, what if you open a translating business and work it yourself.   Or if you open a consultancy business where you are the only employee.  In other words, the nature of your work excludes Brazilians.  What then?

CZC:  When you are applying for an investor visa, you need to attach to the application form a document showing your investment plan, the number of jobs that will be generated, the type of earnings your business will provide, the increase of productiveness, etc. If you declare that your business will not generate a single job, it is very probable that the authorities will not grant you the investor’s visa.

SHF:  Lastly, what about if you open a business and you just can’t make any money.  You hire people, you advertise, you do whatever you can do, but the business just doesn’t cut it?  Can you lose your visa?

CZC:  You don’t have to make a profit.  You don’t have to make a big success.  But  you do have to show that you were engaged in the type of economic activity described on your application.

SHF:  Dr. Zoega, on behalf of Sweet Home Floripa, I want to thank once again for helping our readers understand Brazilian law.

CZC:  My pleasure.  See you next month.

Dr. Carlos is Senior Partner at ZOÉGA COELHO & ADVOGADOS Rua Adolfo Melo, n.38, sala 202 – Centro 88015-090 Florianópolis/SC – Brasil Telefone: (55 48) 3223-4729  Fax: (55 48) 3322-0483

SKYPE: carloszoegacoelho

I rubbed my aching neck.  I had wrenched it while doing Jiu-Jitsu and all the muscles connected to my upper spine had clenched up, hard as rocks.   I could barely move my head. If I looked down, pain flashed through my whole back.

But would acupuncture really be able to help?  It all seemed like mumbo jumbo to me. I shook my head, then gripped my neck in pain.  Ow!  Another episode flashed through my mind:  I remembered sitting in a run-down little clinic in Ecuador while a technician took blood from my vein.  As I sat alone in the rusting metal chair I saw my arm turn dark then black.  The tech had missed the vein and I was bleeding into the muscle.  He didn’t come back for a long time and it took me months to heal up again.

By the time I reached the entrance to the Centro de Ser toward the Lagoa side of Canto de Lagoa my heart was pounding.  I imagined someone sticking needles into my eyes.  Piercing my spine.  Rupturing my brain pan and poking a hole into my brain.  But I was not going to be deterred by fear.  I needed help and I was willing to risk anything to get it. 

A friend had recommended the services of William Bening, M.Sci  L.Ac., an American living in Florianópolis, who is trained in Trigger Point Therapy, acupressure, and also (gulp!) acupuncture.  The word “puncture. . . puncture” kept repeating in my head as I got out of the car. 

William has a shock of surfer- blonde hair and the tanned skin of a guy who likes the waves.  A native of San Diego, William was trained at  Traditional Chinese Medicine University in his home town.  After four years of study William was licensed to administer acupuncture treatment.  He specializes in the treatment of pain–both emotional and physical–especially sports and work injuries.  He is is also trained in nutrition, massage, and Chinese herbology–though he does not pactice herbology in Brazil as of yet.  William explained that Chinese medicine is at least three thousand years old and capable of treatments beyond the reach of modern, Western medicine.   William explained that “Trigger Point Therapy” is like a “golden key” that unlocks quick solutions to all kinds of pain problems.

As I listened to him and grasped his broad understanding of the human body and its intricate workings, I felt more and more relaxed. Until, that is, it was time to hop up on the table. Suddenly my heart began racing and the words “You put the lime in the coconut . . . “ started running in my brain again. 

As soon as I was on the table William grabbed my foot and starting twisting and turning.  I was relieved.  This was the sort of thing I was used to.  In Jiu-Jitsu there’s always someone trying to twist your joint out of place.  William threw the foot down and grabbed the other and began twisting. 

Pop! said the joint. 

William explained that through constant use our joints gradually slip out of place.  His job is to pop them back into place—realign them.  He did the same for my hands.  Then he asked me to turn onto my stomach.  He stepped away and produced a large, metal rod, rounded at the end and with various extensions sticking out.  At the end of the extensions were iron balls.  William explained that this instrument was called a thera-cane.

William began to push on various places on my back and ask me if the pain radiated outward toward other parts of the body.  If I said yes, then he would apply direct pressure to the spot and hold it there for ten to twenty seconds.  William, it turns out, is a pretty strong guy.  But the more he pushed on these areas with his device, the more I felt them relax.

William moved quickly from spot to spot, working on me. 

“Feel this?” he asked, poking the muscle at the base of my neck. “This muscle is full of little bumps.  That means that it’s contracted and doesn’t know how to relax. That’s what I’m going to do now.  Just remind it to unclench.”  He pushed down hard on the muscle, when he released the pressure blood flowed in and I could feel that everything was returning to normal. 

When he had finished with my back he began to press points along the nape of my neck.  I felt a muscle at the base of my skull pop.  Then pop again. 

“Perfect,” he said.  “That’s exactly what you want.”

When he released his grip I felt the muscle go all loose and soft.  What bliss!  I gave myself over to William’s therapy, understanding that he knew exactly what to do in order to make my twisted neck relex again.   

When he was finished with the pressure points William said, “Okay, now it’s time for the acupuncture.”  I felt a slight twinge of fear, but now I was too relaxed to really be afraid.   

I noticed a slight prick as the first needle went in, but really it was nothing like a hypodermic needle.  William explained that the acupuncture needle is just a tiny fraction of the width of a hypodermic.  I felt the needles going in, but it wasn’t painful at all.   

“Now,” he said after he’d lodged the last needle in the top of my skull, “just lie there and relax.  Many people fall asleep.  Others go into a dream state.  This acupuncture pattern is a simple tonic.  When you come out of it you will feel calm and energized.  I’ll be right back.”

My mind went lax and colors and images drifted before me.  I thought of the lake, still as mirror beneath drifting clouds.  Of the long legs of the blue crane I’d seen wading there that morning.

“Okay, that was just a brief session,” William said, startling me out of my reverie.  “You were only under for like twenty-five minutes.   Usually it’s more like forty-five.”

“Twenty-five minutes?” I asked.  “It felt more like five.”

William smiled.  I stood up and looked around.  I felt calm and centered.  I turned my head this way and that, up and down.  It was as loose and flexible as I could ever remember.

William Bening, M.Sci  L.Ac, is trained in Trigger Point Therapy, acupressure, and  acupuncture. You can contact him via email at Noland3000@gmail.com  or via mobile at (48) 8818-4348.  He attends clients at Centro do Ser, on Canto da Lagoa about a 100 meters south of  Nave Mae, Rua Laurindo do Januario da Silveira 1408, Florianópolis, SC, Brazil.  Tel. 55(48) 3233-5097. 

Raindrops are tapping the window panes of Janela de Marcia today. Carnaval is over now. The tourist season is entering its last lap. The tourists have mostly gone home, taking the summer heat with them. Life is returning to normal. I feel the need to look back at the long path that led me to this moment, to retrace the steps that led me to starting Janela de Marcia, and see how my grand plans have played out in reality. The

I was at a crossroads in my life, at the beginning of a new era for me.  I had to find a new way of life.  I was staying at the villa of a friend in a small French town.  It was a beautiful house with so many bedrooms.  The idea came to me suddenly:  wouldn’t it be interesting to own a bed and breakfast, to meet all the interesting people that would come to stay with me, to hear their stories, to get to know them, even if only for a while?  I have always loved entertaining, showing hospitality, opening my home to others.

Then it emerged again the next year, 2009.  I had been invited to a Meeting of Elders on the Hopi-Navaho Reservation in Arizona.  I was honored to be invited and also proud to be acknowledged for my heritage as a

ple of Acre in the western Amazon.  It was a closed gathering and the elders spoke about the need to connect the older generation to the younger generation.  They also spoke about the growing divide between the head and the heart.

It was a subject I’d been thinking about for a long time.  I had always tried to bring people from Brazil to the United States—so that “people of the heart” (Brazilians) could meet “people of the mind” (Americans).  I had been thinking of returning to my native Brazil for some time and then it struck me, perhaps I could bring people from the United States to visit Brazil, so that they could experience the warmth and generosity, the spontaneity and liveliness of Brazilians. 

The idea of the bed and breakfast shone in my mind once again.  What if I could offer people a chance to know the real Brazil, the Brazil of samba and Carnaval, the Brazil of joy and bliss?

The idea lingered and quietly grew inside me.  I wanted my children to know Brazil, to know Latin culture, to know a world beyond America.  Together with a good friend we sent our children to overseas programs in Nicaragua and Costa Rica and they returned with a much broader understanding of life lived in other countries and the experiences of people whose lives are completely different. 

But why send them to those countries when Brazil was where they should be living?  I resolved to return to Brazil.   I packed up my home in Austin, Texas and was gone within a couple of months.  That’s just how I am.  I love to travel.  I’ve seen so much of the world and feel at home everywhere.  So where easier to move than back to my own country?

In Brazil, in Florianópolis , I could breathe again.  The air was full of the scent of trees and forest, the soil, the earth.  Everything was beautiful and everything was alive.  I was thrilled to be home again, playing maracatu with my group in Lagoa, dancing and having fun in the way that only Brazilians know how. 

I wished that my American friends in Austin and New York could know this joy.  The idea of the bed and breakfast resurfaced once again and I knew it was time to make this vague fantasy into a practical reality.  I quickly found the right place to launch Janela de Marcia.  Soon people began to appear and accept the hospitality that I was offering.  It has given me great satisfaction to see the smiles on the faces of these visitors to the island of Santa Catarina and, in quite a few cases, to give them the first-hand experience of the joy of life in Brazil.

One pair of guests stands out in my mind:  a young couple from Ireland and they’d come to Florianópolis for Carnaval. I saw this as an opportunity to open the doorway to the real Brazil, to the party that Brazilians wait for all year long.  I took them with me to a performance of the samba school I belong to:  União da Ilha da Magia.   There are about fifty of us drummers and when we all began to drum together, as one person, I saw the faces of my Irish guests couple light up.  This is what they had come to see.  This is what they had wanted to be a part of in Brazil.  Later I took them to drink beer in the little boutequim—or, bar—just off the park.  It was just a simple place, but the sort of bar where Brazilians feel at home, let themselves unwind, relax and enjoy one another. 

Other friends from the samba school joined us there and we drank and talked and laughed and cracked jokes until the early hours of the morning.  After all, it was Carnaval!   It was time to celebrate.  Afterwards, my Irish guests glowed with happiness.  They had found what they had come to Brazil to find.  The long journey, the expense, the uncertainties of travel, had all been worth it.

Now the summer is ending.  The rain drops are tapping at the window, turning into tiny rivers that run down the glass pane.  I feel that my moment of unexpected inspiration in the French Alps has become reality.  I have been able to show my guests the way into Brazil—the real Brazil of boutequims, samba, and felicidade geral!

The office that Marcos Frugoli shares with his partner Daniela Leindecker sits high up in the bambuzel, a thick grove of bamboo that stands just off Canto de Lagoa. The office is full of windows that look out over the tops of trees and bamboo and feels more like a tree house than an architect’s office. I met with both of them there recently to talk about architecture, Florianópolis, and a subject they are both passionate about: marrying beauty and simplicity in a harmonious, architectural style. Knowing of Marcos’s long relationship with the bambuzel I first asked him how he first came to the area and what it was like then.

“I first came in 1984 or 1985.  Canto de Lagoa was completely rural in those days.  The road was just a dirt track at that time.  There were only local people here, no one from the outside.  They considered me to be a foreigner.”

“That’s how quickly Florianópolis has changed.  But I was enchanted.  It was just beautiful here.  I’m from São Paulo, originally and this was just so different from São Paulo.  I just loved it right from the beginning.”

“But,” I asked him, “Why did you leave São Paulo?  There’s so much more opportunity there.  So much more construction.  Florianópolis was isolated and remote at the time.  Cut off from the rest of the world.”

“I was never interested in getting really rich, in being insanely busy.  My mother has a large landscaping firm in São Paulo.  She’s very well connected.  But I didn’t want that.  I wanted a life of tranquility.  Florianópolis used to be a place you could live very simply.  Just have a little place to live, make some money for food and gas.  Everyone who moved here from the outside was looking for that sort of lifestyle.  Florianópolis was ideal.  You really didn’t need to make much money.  I volunteered for several early city projects—I designed the center at the Parque de Peri.  I helped with the urban design of the city.  But I did it for free.”

Looking at the wood floors and large windows of their studio I saw that the impulses that had originally brought Marcos to Florianópolis were still very much in evidence today.

I asked him about his creative process and how he goes about designing a house.

“First,” he said, “An architect can’t be vain.  An architect must be selfless, must be the interpreter of other people’s desires.  I’m not there to impose myself on them.  I’m there to translate their dreams into reality.  At the same time, I strive to create harmonious spaces.  My designs are based on simplicity.  I never design pompous, flashy houses.  My designs are not formal and stiff.  I strive to create a flux that connects the inside to the outside.  That creates a harmonious continuum between the interior and exterior world.  I think a lot of people move here for that reason:  to have a harmonious relationship with the natural world around them.  I strive to design houses that satisfy that desire. Still, it all depends on the individual and what they want.”

I asked about how Marcos and Daniela work together.  “I do the meetings,”  said Marcos. “I like to talk to people.  I have no problem with meetings.  We both work on the initial design—the croqui.  I circle back to confer with her throughout the process and we make decisions and solve problems together.”

I asked Daniela about her aesthetic sensibility.  “I believe in ‘honest’ architecture.  What I mean by that is, I put a lot of emphasis on functionality. I don’t like artificial architectural affectations.  I think a design should be based on what is necessary and no more.  I don’t design false cement ornaments and so on.  I think that form should closely follow function.  That’s the beauty I strive for.  Only the necessary structural elements should be visible.  Nevertheless, that functionality should be based on the individual needs of the client.”

What about the relationship between the design and nature?

“My designs are full of windows—maybe a little too much, even—but I think that we live in such a beautiful place that people should be as connected with the natural beauty around them as possible.  That makes for an inner beauty.”

Marcos added that, “in Florianópolis, air circulation is very important.  There is a lot of humidity, heat, cold, molds.  I start my designs by considering air circulation through the house.  Windows facilitate that.  But after living here for nearly thirty years I really understand the winds, the angle of the sun, and the other crucial considerations that are very important in the long term.”

It’s this close attention to the basic elements of nature, the environment, and fundamental elements of the natural world that so distinguish the designs of Marcos and Daniela.  For those who come to Florianópolis looking for a closer connection to nature, a simpler, more harmonious life, and a clean-line design, this team of experienced architects may be the right people to design your home.

Sweet Home Floripa will meet with Marcos and Daniela again in the near future to discuss the new architectural master plan that will soon be coming up for a vote.  The plan has many innovative features that preserves much of Florianópolis’s natural beauty, but makes Campeche one of the centers of rapid development in the near future.  So stay tuned for that article!

Marcos and Daniela can be reached at mfrugoli@uol.com.br .  Their office is located at  Rua Laurindo Januario da Silveira n.5110 casa 10, Canto da Lagoa, Florianópolis.