Is Brazil Latin America's India?

I'm taking a page from Stephen Colbert's playbook, where he wonders whether Oregon is California's Canada or Washington's Mexico. Quite a brain-twister!

The reason I link India and Brazil is that they both seem like such enormous, diverse, troubled, beautiful, vast, and complicated places. Speaking of Brazil, I think that translating one of Paul Coelho's shorter novels will be a great way to explore Portuguese. I currently receive the BBC's Brazil news page each day, and do some translating of it.

Of course, Colbert uses geography as the basis for his humorous question, whereas I use culture, but still.

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