Thread: Drawn into debate=Boston

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Drawn into debate
By Liz Mineo/ Daily News Staff
Thursday, August 17, 2006 - Updated: 01:55 AM EST

Ze Brasil and Tiao Mineiro, two Brazilian immigrants who don’t speak English, take the T in the morning and stay in it until night because they didn’t understand the driver’s instructions to get off the train.

Back at home, they complain about their landlord’s abuses, and Taio says to Ze he’d confront the landlord if only he had money, was a legal resident, spoke English, and had a place to go to.

These are vignettes of the daily lives of Brazilian immigrants in the United States, according to Brazilian cartoonist Daniel Nocera, who draws a comic strip depicting the struggles of Brazilian immigrants as they try to adjust to a new life in a foreign land.

Nocera’s strip is featured in a Brazilian weekly newspaper called Metropolitan Brazilian News, and is one of the most popular features in the paper, which is read by immigrants across the region. The 8,000-circulation paper is distributed in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire.

Nothing escapes Nocera’s pen. His strip depicts many hurdles Brazilians face in their day-to-day lives -- from language barriers to cultural shock, from loneliness to exploitation, and from living in the shadows to having a hard time making ends meet.

"I try to paint a portrayal of the reality as it is," said Nocera, on a recent morning a local Brazilian bakery on Concord Street in Framingham. "But I do it with humor to make people laugh and think at the same time."

The cartoons are based on two characters, Ze Brasil and Tiao Mineiro, two young single men who work as painters and live somewhere in Massachusetts. Ze Brasil and Tiao Mineiro are illegal immigrants from Brazil who came seeking a better life in the United States, but instead found themselves living in overcrowded houses with other struggling immigrants, working two or three jobs to send money home, and living in constant fear of deportation.

Like many cartoonists, Nocera paints a portrayal of reality as it is, warts and all. Even though he tries to depict the life of an immigrant from an immigrant’s perspective, he doesn’t gloss over some hot topics, which has made him subject to criticism within the Brazilian community.

Among those hot issues are the use of fake documents to find jobs, the illegal crossing through the U.S.-Mexican border, the exploitation at the hands of other Brazilians and the use of several identities to avoid being caught by immigration agents.

"Some people don’t like that I talk about those things, but I feel my role, as a cartoonist, is to show the reality of the Brazilian immigrant community," said Nocera.

In one strip, a man tells his two sons to keep quiet while they’re inside moving boxes he’s shipping to Brazil. "Don’t make any noise," says the man, who as an illegal immigrant cannot leave the country. "Grandpa will ship you back after Christmas."

In another strip, Tiao says to Ze that life in the Unites States is worse than in Brazil because back home he’d spend most of his time running away from street robbers, and here, he spends most of his time running away from the police, immigration agents and the "coiotes," the term in Portuguese for human smugglers.

Nocera, 32, a musician turned cartoonist, came here six years ago in hopes of expanding his musical horizons and to polish his English skills. Nocera, who has a degree in advertising, began drawing cartoons less than two years ago.

He plans to publish a collection of his vignettes by the end of the year under the title, "Ze Brasil and Tiao Mineiro, Dos Brasileiros na America," (Two Brazilians in America). He hopes it will be a hit among Brazilian immigrants.

"They work so hard and are so stressed," he said. "They need something they can identify with, something to have fun with. My goal is to make them laugh and have a good time."

For more information on Nocera’s work, check his Web site at www.space.msn.com/noceradaniel.

Liz Mineo can be reached at 508-626-3825 or at lmineo@cnc.com.)





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Cartoonist Daniel Nocera of Malden displays a sample of his work. (Ken McGagh photo)



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bh.heraldinteractive.com: 0.055568:Thu, 17 Aug 2006 05:55:48 GMT Cache_Lite : Unable to write cache file :

"They work so hard and are so stressed," he said. "They need something they can identify with, something to have fun with. My goal is to make them laugh and have a good time."

While they're breaking the law.

I'm glad he shows life as an illegal alien, warts and all.