Car Commercials and Primitive Peoples

It could have been just another dull TV ad featuring an Inca boy, Maori warriors, or Maasai dancers–heck, why not throw them all in there–and filed as such in the archives of car-plows-through-exotic-river-bed commercials.

But then we find out through this making-of clip “no Indian was hurt during the shoot” (around the 3:00 mark: “…nenhum índio foi ferido na filmagem”). So, now this commercial becomes something else. It becomes a reminder of Brazil’s past and present fraught with racial discrimination and we forget what the ad was trying to sell.

Further Reading

Slow death by food

Illegal gold mining is poisoning Ghana’s soil and rivers, seeping into its crops and seafood, and turning the national food system into a long-term public health crisis.

A sick health system

The suspension of three doctors following the death of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s son has renewed scrutiny of a health-care system plagued by impunity, underfunding, and a mass exodus of medical professionals.

Afrobeats after Fela

Wizkid’s dispute with Seun Kuti and the release of his latest EP with Asake highlight the widening gap between Afrobeats’ commercial triumph and Fela Kuti’s political inheritance

Progress is exhausting

Pedro Pinho’s latest film follows a Portuguese engineer in Guinea-Bissau, exposing how empire survives through bureaucracy, intimacy, and the language of “development.”

The rubble of empire

Built by Italian Fascists in 1928, Mogadishu Cathedral was meant to symbolize “peaceful conquest.” Today its ruins force Somalis to confront the uneasy afterlife of colonial power and religious authority.