On March 21st, 2003 (the first full day of Shock and Awe in Iraq) after an all-night flight from New York City, I found myself on a Brasilian beach, totally mesmerized by the sheer brilliance of the colors—the color of the water, the trees, the flowers, the earth and, of course, the Brasilians themselves with their beautiful, coffee-colored skins and their dangerously skimpy beach attire (or non-attire as some would say.)
I asked a beautiful Brasileira who spoke just a spattering of English what beach on the Island was most popular with the locals. She told me that the natives congregated in droves every weekend at a place called Bar do Chico on the east side of the island. To my utter delight, I found that small piece of heaven the next morning and it changed my life. The proprietor, Fransisco 'Chico’ Daniel, was an octogenarian native of the island with a very large family (13 children and myriad grandchildren, nieces and nephews, etc.) He supported his household mostly as a fisherman— but had more or less retired in his mid sixties to run this little oceanfront bar and grill.
As it turned out, I settled in there in Campeche for almost five years. I visited Seu Chico’s restaurant almost every Saturday and Sunday, and lots of weekdays too. You might say, I became a 'Chicorite' regular, and thereby a sort of local in my own right. I cooked a whole hog for Chico's 84th birthday party in 2004, and from that day forward, the old man and his family adopted me as their own.
I’ll write more about my adoptive father, 'Seu Chico,' some other time (There is a lot to tell.) but today’s post is an obituary—not for the man (he’s still doing fine at 90) but for the beautiful, eclectic, little fisherman’s hut, which he had converted into a rustic, seaside bar. Nestled in the dunes of a beautiful, wide stretch of white sand, Bar do Chico was situated almost directly across from Ilha de Campeche, a small, uninhabited island about three hundred yards out in the Atlantic Ocean.
Ilha da Campeche
Sadly, I got a message yesterday that my beloved Bar do Chico had finally been razed to the ground by the state's bulldozer last week.
This was the culmination of years of negotiation and controversy. The problem is that the Brasiliansare very protective of their sand dunes. Unlike us, (we’ll build on piers right out into the sea) the Brasilians understood years ago that once the dunes are gone the beach is sure to follow. So it was illegal to build or inhabit any structure that was not hundreds of feet from the shoreline and well back of the dunes. But because Seu Chico’s fishing hut had been there for so many years, the bar was more or less “grandfathered” in for a time. That did not, however, stop the state from threatening to knock it down. Every spring, some bureaucrat would show up with a "this property is condemned" notice and would post a sign with a date certain that they were coming to destroy the place. But every time they showed up with their bulldozers and dump trucks to do the terrible deed, they would find hundreds of Chico’s family and his faithful customers holding hands in a huge circle around the whole building-- a human shield barring the big machines from their task. Each year, there was dramatic news coverage of the whole thing and the bar was saved for another season. But this time, there had been no warning. The g-men just showed up early one morning and razed the building to the ground before anybody knew what was happening.
I really don’t know if I will ever get back to Brasil or not. But one thing is certain: if I do manage to survive long enough to get back there, I will certainly go for a swim right in front of Ilha da Campeche and I will think about my old friend, Seu Chico and my Brasilian family, the beautiful Daniels of Campeche.
