NY Times Weekly 20130226

In collaboration with Copyright © 2013 The New York Times TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2013 INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY By SIMON ROMERO RIO DE JANEIRO AT ONE NEW megachurch in São Paulo, a Roman Catho- lic priest who was a personal trainer before joining the clergy energetically belts out songs, rock-star style, before 25,000 worshipers. Other Brazilian priests are don- ning cowboy hats and croon- ing country tunes at Mass or writing best-selling ad- vice tomes emblazoned with heartthrob photographs on the cover. If there is any place that cap- tures the challenges facing Catholicism around the world it is Brazil, the country with the largest number of Catho- lics and a laboratory of sorts for the church’s strategies for luring followers back into the fold. Reflecting the shifting reli- gious landscape that Pope Bene- dict XVI’s successor will contend with, Brazil rivals the United States as the nation with the most Pentecostals, as a Catho- lic monolith gives way amid a surge in evangelical Protestant churches. Despite the Christ the Redeem- er statue that towers over this city, there is deep anxiety among some Catholics about the future of their faith, given rising secu- larization and indifference to re- ligion . Only 65 percent of Brazil- ians say they are Catholic, down from more than 90 percent in 1970, according to the 2010 census. The decline has been so steep that one of Brazil’s top Catholic lead- ers, Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, has remarked, “We wonder with anxiety: how long will Brazil re- main a Catholic country?” Before Benedict announced that he would vacate the papacy at the end of the month, he had been expected to visit Rio in July for World Youth Day, a gathering of millions aimed at bolstering new generations of Catholics. Many of Brazil’s faithful were hoping that the trip would repre- sent a new focus by the Vatican on the threats from evangelical com- petition and secularism. Some here hold out hope that the new pope could still visit Rio early in his papacy, and they are even encouraged that two Bra- zilians, Cardinal João Braz de Aviz and Odilo Scherer, the arch- bishop of São Paulo, are among those mentioned as possible candidates to succeed Benedict. But others seem resigned to what they describe as a combination of Reviving Catholicism in Brazil Con tin ued on Page 3 By PETER LATTMAN The mega-merger is back. For the corporate takeover business, the last half-decade was a fallow period. Wall Street deal makers and chief executives, brought low by the global finan- cial crisis, lacked the confidence to strike the audacious multibil- lion-dollar acquisitions of previ- ous market booms. But in the opening weeks of 2013, merger activity has sudden- ly roared back to life. Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate run by Warren E. Buffett, teamed up with Brazilian investors to buy the ketchup maker H.J. Heinz for about $23 billion. And American Airlines and US Airways agreed to merge in a deal valued at $11 billion. Those transactions come after a planned $24 billion buyout of the computer company Dell by its founder, Michael S. Dell, and pri- vate equity backers. And Liberty Global, the company controlled by the billionaire media magnate John C. Malone, struck a $16 bil- lion deal to buy the British cable business Virgin Media. “When we talk to our corporate clients as well as the bankers, we keep hearing them talk about in- creased confidence,” said John A. Bick, a partner at the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, who ad- vised Heinz on its acquisition by Mr. Buffett and his partners. A confluence of factors has driv- en the recent deals. Most visibly, the stock market has been soar- ing , with the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index recently hitting its highest levels since November 2007. Higher share prices have buoyed the confidence of chief executives, who now, instead of retrenching, are looking for ways to expand their businesses. A number of clouds that hov- ered over the markets last year have also been removed . Mergers and acquisitions activity in 2012 remained tepid as companies took a wait-and-see approach over the outcome of the presiden- tial election and negotiations over the fiscal cliff. The problems in Europe, which began in earnest in 2011, shut down a lot of poten- tial transactions, but the region has since stabilized. Mr. Bick said that mega-merg- ers had a psychological compo- nent: once transactions start happening, chief executives do not want to be left behind. “ Deals breed more deals,” he said. A central reason for the return of big transactions is the big amount of cash on corporate balance sheets. After the financial crisis, companies hunkered down, laying off employees and cutting costs. Today, corporations in the S.& P. 500 are sitting on more than $1 trillion in cash. With interest rates near zero, that money is earning very little in bank accounts, so executives are looking to put it to work by acquiring businesses. The private equity deal-mak- ing machine is also revving up again. The proposed leveraged buyout of Dell, led by Mr. Dell and the investment firm Silver Lake Partners, was the largest private equity transaction since July 2007, when the Blackstone Group acquired the hotel chain Hilton Worldwide for $26 billion . But perhaps the single biggest factor driving the return of corpo- rate takeovers is the banking sys- tem’s renewed health. Corpora- tions often rely on bank loans for financing acquisitions, and the ability of private equity firms to strike multibillion-dollar transac- tions depends on the willingness of banks to lend them money. For years, banks, saddled by Con tin ued on Page 3 With Rise in Confidence , Mergers Make a Comeback Companies eager to spend cash, and banks eager to lend . 7 MONEY & BUSINESS Britain faces risks if it leaves the E.U. 4 WORLD TRENDS Clearing hurdles to ride Cuba’s waves. 12 ARTS & DESIGN Spanish arts see funding dry up. INTELLIGENCE: Blight on the beautiful game, Page 2. MAURICIO LIMA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES The Roman Catholic church has been losing ground in Brazil. Outside a São Paulo cathedral. 2 UNITED DAILY NEWS TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2013 W O R L D T R E N D S THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY THE NEW YORK TIMES IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY IN THE FOLLOWING NEWSPAPERS: CLARÍN, ARGENTINA � ARUBA TODAY AND BON DIA ARUBA, ARUBA � DER STANDARD, AUSTRIA � LA RAZÓN, BOLIVIA FOLHA AND JORNAL O POVO, BRAZIL � THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR AND TORONTO STAR, CANADA � LA SEGUNDA, CHILE � CHINA DAILY, CHINA � EL ESPECTADOR, COLOMBIA � LISTIN DIARIO, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC � LE FIGARO, FRANCE SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG, GERMANY � PRENSA LIBRE, GUATEMALA � LA REPUBBLICA, ITALY � ASAHI SHIMBUN, JAPAN � CABO SAN LUCAS, DIARIO DE YUCATÁN, EL NORTE, MURAL AND REFORMA, MEXICO � EL NUEVO DIARIO, NICARAGUA � LA PRENSA, PANAMA � MANILA BULLETIN, PHILIPPINES � TODAY, SINGAPORE � EL PAÍS, SPAIN � TAGES-ANZEIGER, SWITZERLAND � UNITED DAILY NEWS, TAIWAN � SABAH, TURKEY � THE OBSERVER, UNITED KINGDOM � THE KOREA TIMES, UNITED STATES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY NANCY LEE Executive Editor TOM BRADY Editor ANITA PATIL Managing Editor The New York Times International Weekly 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10018 EDITORIAL INQUIRIES: nytweekly@nytimes.com SALES AND ADVERTISING INQUIRIES: nytweeklysales@nytimes.com Ever since John recorded his best-selling hallucinatory revelations on the Greek isle of Patmos in the first century, imagining — and preparing for — the end of the world has offered busi- ness opportu- nities. These days, instead of eternal salvation and hair shirts, we now have the “prepper” movement and the “bug-out bag.” To be slung over the backs of preppers — those getting ready to survive a catastrophe — a bug-out bag may include: freeze dried food, a hand-cranked flashlight, bolt-cutters, a gas mask, an ax that doubles as a shovel, an actual shovel, water canteens, duct tape, a tent and, perhaps for sunnier days on a coastal escape route, a beach towel. The bags are selling briskly to all kinds of people these days. Like artisanal mi- crobrews, locally sourced beef and trucker hats, the survivalist movement has migrated from rural America to New York. In the old days, the typical American survivalist was seen as a rural libertarian fending off a threat from Big Government. Today’s prepper could be an ur- ban doctor, small businessman or schoolteacher looking to flee any number of threats: asteroid strike, power grid failure, storm or even the traditional cosmic event. And it is no surprise that after the shock of Hurricane Sandy, the number of preppers is growing in New York. Times reporter Nick Bilton recently documented how he himself became a prepper. After contemplating the instability of the world financial markets for a while, Mr. Bilton wrote, “I began to form a picture of the world as a system of unsustainable sys- tems, a rickety Rube Goldberg machine in which the loss of any one piece — cheap oil, say — could derail the whole contrap- tion, from truck transportation to the distribution of food.” Certainly, the world can be a fragile place and the unlikely can happen. A violent reminder came on February 15 when a meteor crashing through the atmosphere over Siberia caused a blinding light and a shock wave injuring more than 1,000 people and damaging buildings for kilo- meters. Extinction caused by an intruder from outer space didn’t seem so far-fetched anymore. So when is preparing for disas- ter a delusion and when it is rea- sonable caution? It may depend on what you’re preparing for. When the end of a cycle in the Mayan calendar was recently interpreted to signal the end of the world on December 21, 2012, the prediction spread . Many, including Mayans themselves, were bemused. A Times head- line in December read: “Brook- lyn’s Mayans Pretty Sure World Won’t End Friday,” reflecting an attitude that may have been more New York than Tikal. Indeed, how a country reacts to imminent catastrophe can often reflect a national charac- ter. Writing in the International Herald Tribune’s Latitude blog, Masha Gessen, noted that the exploding fireball over Siberia was met in that region with a sort of fatalism. “Why? Because they expect disaster to strike anytime.” Given their history, Ms. Ges- sen wrote, “Russians do not generally expect to control what happens to them and see little point in trying.” The other fac- tor, she added, “is a pervasive distrust of the authorities: The fire alarm is always presumed to be a false one.” PETER CATAPANO RICHARD VOGEL/ASSOCIATED PRESS Many Ways to Confront Doomsday LENS For comments, write to nytweekly@nytimes.com. LONDON Who loves the unbeautiful game? No sport arouses global ardor like football — known to Ameri- cans as soccer — but the passion has turned ugly of late. When I was in Israel last month fans of the Beitar Jerusalem club, incensed by the plans of their Russian-Israeli oligarch owner to sign two Muslim players from Chechnya, unfurled a banner saying “Beitar pure forever.” The incident happened to occur on Holocaust Memorial Day. At about the same time, the fu- rious repercussions of last year’s riot at the Port Said stadium in Egypt that killed more than 70 people continued to claim lives. Death sentences for the accused prompted further killings as the “ultras” of two leading clubs, Al Ahly of Cairo and El Masry of Port Said, traded accusations. A few weeks earlier, A.C. Mi- lan’s Kevin-Prince Boateng, a Ghanaian-German midfielder, reacted to racist abuse during a friendly match against another Italian club by walking off the field — and was eventually fol- lowed by his teammates. His rebellion provoked a wave of Twitter-support from fellow players outraged by the failure of football’s governing body FIFA to get tough on racism. Boateng’s gesture in leaving the field has been compared to that of Rosa Parks in not leaving her bus seat in Alabama. Then in Serbia there were the monkey chants that rained down last October on two black players for the England Un- der-21 team who ended up being reprimanded for losing their tempers at the end of the game. The Serbian team got off with a mild fine. Zero tolerance for racism, the vow of footballing authorities, is no more than an empty promise. Racism is not new to football, of course, but the world has changed around the game. The current wave of bloodshed and bloody-mindedness comes 15 years after France won the World Cup with a team of such Afro-Arab-Caribbean mingling that Jean-Marie Le Pen, then the leader of the anti-immigrant National Front, fumed that the team was not really French. It was the triumph of “Black, Blanc, Beur” (“black, white, Arab”). A dozen years later, at the South African World Cup, a fine German team emerged with the likes of Mesut Özil, a Muslim of Turkish descent, Sami Khedi- ra (half Tunisian) and Jerome Boateng (the brother of Kevin- Prince by a Ghanaian father and German mother). “My technique and feeling for the ball is the Turkish side to my game,” Özil commented. “The discipline, attitude and always- give-your-all is the German part.” Germany had moved on from the “Volkisch” view of national- ity — one based on the bloodlines of the German Volk — and that seemed like a reflection of a broader opening of minds. The limits of that opening are now clear. The tribal runs deep in football. Club is identity. It is an outlet for frustration at a time when there is plenty of that about. It subsumes the personal in the crowd: Nobody can be sure which throat that monkey chant emanates from. It is also big bucks. The authorities do not want their multibillion dollar franchise tainted with racism, but nor do they want it politicized through a mass movement of Boateng-like walkouts. So they fudge and seem feeble. Sepp Blatter, the FIFA presi- dent, was mealy-mouthed after the Boateng incident, saying there was zero tolerance for racism but Boateng’s protest was not “the solution.” He had missed the political significance of a star player’s statement that he had had enough. Football has long been the realm where the talent of poor kids, no matter their back- ground, could carry them to the heights of fame and fortune. Zinedine Zidane, the star of that World Cup-winning French team, a player of effortless art- istry, was the son of Algerian immigrants in Marseille — and became an inspirational figure in France. But the sport that opens doors cannot be the sport of racist bigotry. Boateng set an example that should be followed. If matches stop when racist chants begin, fans will get the message. So will embarrassed authorities, who might finally get tougher on racism. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was one of those outraged by the behavior of Beitar fans. “We cannot ac- cept such racist behavior,” he said. “The Jewish people, who suffered excommunications and expulsions, need to represent a light unto the nations.” That sounded good. But the game will not return to its beauty — any more than peace will break out in the Middle East — through fine exhortations alone. Send comments to intelligence@nytimes.com. INTELLIGENCE/ROGER COHEN An Unbeautiful Game BERNAT ARMANGUE/ASSOCIATED PRESS Burned Beitar Jerusalem trophies in the offices of the Israeli football team, which were set on fire on February 8. There is profit in preparing for the end of the world. Gas masks and other gear for sale at a store in Los Angeles. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2013 UNITED DAILY NEWS 3 W O R L D T R E N D S THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY 0 20 40 60 80 100% Catholic Evangelical Other No religion 201019801940 Source: Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics THE NEW YORK TIMES Religion in Brazil Self-identified religious affiliation. the toxic mortgage assets weighing on their balance sheets, almost stopped lend- ing. But with the housing cri- sis behind them and economic conditions improving, banks are again lining up to provide corporate loans at record-low interest rates . Mergers and acquisitions in the United States total $158.7 billion so far this year, accord- ing to Thomson Reuters data, more than double the amount in the same period last year. Mr. Buffett declared that the banks had repaired their busi- nesses and no longer posed a threat to the economy. “The capital ratios are huge, the ex- cesses on the asset side have been largely cleared out,” said Mr. Buffett . Most deal makers temper their comments about the current environment with warnings about undisciplined behavior like overpaying for deals and borrowing too much to pay for them. Though private equity firms were battered by the financial crisis, they made it through the downturn on relatively solid ground. Many of their megadeals, like Hil- ton, looked destined for bank- ruptcy after the markets col- lapsed, but they have since recovered. The deals have benefited from an improving economy, as well as robust lending markets that allowed companies to push back the large amounts of debt that were to have come due in the next few years. But there are still plenty of cautionary tales about overpriced, overleveraged takeovers. Consider Energy Future Holdings, the biggest private equity deal in his- tory. Struck at the peak of the merger boom in October 2007, the company has suffered from low natural gas prices and too much debt, and could be forced to restructure this year. Its owners, a group led by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and TPG, are likely to lose bil- lions. Even Mr. Buffett made a mistake on Energy Future Holdings, having invested $2 billion . He admitted to share- holders last year that the in- vestment was a blunder . “In tennis parlance,” Mr. Buffett wrote, “this was a ma- jor unforced error.” neglect and condescension from the Vatican. “I think they’re going to main- tain the same line of Benedict,” said Silvia Fernandes, a sociolo- gist at the Federal Rural Univer- sity of Rio de Janeiro who special- izes in Catholicism. Ms. Fernandes said that big schisms persisted within the church in Brazil, between bishops in the Amazon who are focused on human rights, illegal defores- tation and indigenous struggles, and the more conservative and traditional Catholic leadership in relatively prosperous southeast- ern Brazil. Then there are the singing priests who belong to Brazil’s Charismatic Catholic Renovation, a movement seeking to invigorate services with the liveliness that parishioners often find at other churches. These priests have been embraced by the Vatican, to a point. The most famous among them, the Reverend Marcelo Rossi, a 45-year-old former per- sonal trainer, has sold more than 12 million CDs and has celebrated Mass in a stadium filled with tens of thousands of worshipers. “Through this movement, many people are finding them- selves again inside the church,” said Almir Belarmino, 53, a tech- nician at a sewage treatment company who was one of 1,200 people attending a retreat here for people in the charismatic movement. “Why not dance in the place where the presence of God is so great?” Mr. Belarmino asked. “Joy and excitement are part of the worship we do.” Blending new practices into services is nothing new in Brazil. Many people say they are Catho- lic while practicing African-de- rived religions like Candomblé, which merges the identities of Roman Catholic saints and Afri- can deities. At the same time, successful evangelical churches are build