Bar, Boteco or Botequim: What's behind Brazil's favorite establishments?
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE:
In the Brazilian Portuguese dictionary, the definitions of "bar," "boteco," and "botequim" are synonymous, although every Brazilian can identify emotionally with one of these words more than the others. Fortunately for us, the word "bar" is native in both Portuguese and English, so any non-Brazilian can understand the title straight away, and therefore the subject of this article. We could find synonyms for this translation in the American English dictionary, but that would be going against the grain of this project. MARGINAL FIC. aims to shed light on Latin American culture, which would make replacing "boteco" with "pub," for example, contradictory; as the cultural origins of pubs are not literally equivalent to the origins of our beloved Brazilian botecos, the subject of this article. Throughout the text below, when you come across the italicized words boteco and botequim, know that we are talking about a bar that reveals the reality of a Brazil you are about to learn a little about.
Luiz Antônio Simas, writer, professor, historian, Brazilian composer, and babalaô in the cult of Ifá, said that experts in etymology guarantee that the remote origin of the word botequim lies in the Greek term apothéké (deposit); which also originated the words botica (apothecary's shop), biblioteca (library), and bodega (wine cellar).
A good botequim is all of these things: a center for the dissemination of knowledge, like libraries; a place where medicines are prepared for the body and soul, like apothecary's shops (the Bode Cheiroso bar serves a drink called Chá de Macaco, or Monkey Tea, that can bring the dead back to life); and a tavern where one can eat and drink with simplicity, taste, and sustenance, like wine cellars.
Bode Cheiroso is a botequim located near the Maracanã neighborhood, in the Northern Zone of Rio de Janeiro city. It survives amidst the illustrious concepts of modernity and hipsters who prefer gentrification and the appropriation of Brazilian cultural symbols to getting their feet dirty in the libraries of public knowledge with a cold one.
This botequim has been open since 1945, keeping generations from the same family busy, and feeding empty stomachs eager for hot food without the bar tab compromising the payment of utility bills. It serves pork legs, pork ribs with tropeiro beans, sururu moqueca, and generous portions of pork rinds, which is the cereal bar of those who often hang out in botecos.
I encourage net surfers from all over Brazil to look for a bar called "Bar Dois Irmãos" on a map. There must be at least two of this bar in every Brazilian neighborhood, surviving an uphill battle. This category of bar has survived over the years without a PR agency or modern design. The secret? The magic of botecos.
No one — to this day — has been able to explain the magic of this widespread, plural, and welcoming space that gathers friends at every corner of Brazil for card games or billiards, where each loser pays for a round of a golden elixir named beer. Children still keep the change to fill their pockets with lollipops.
In a boteco, the generational dispute is a distant reality belonging to the advertising market and the competition between establishments with the same name that were designed for other people. In a typical boteco, older and younger people meet amicably at the end of a workday or on weekends to watch a soccer match or to savor a well-seasoned food that hearkens back to an often-migrant memory.
My father, Antônio, raised me at a bar called "Bar do Tonho" for over 20 years. While my mother went out to work, he, a talented cook, prepared sarapatel, galinhada, and pork rinds, and imported the richest and most varied bottles of cachaça from his hometown: Salinas, in the state of Minas Gerais. We have a lot of photographs in which I'm just a few weeks old in a stroller or on the lap of the most beloved man in the region; in the background, a calendar from the local butcher's shop, a speaker box, and a water infiltration in the wall make up the atmosphere.
Throughout the favela where we lived, the news was spreading: large boxes full of flours, bottled butter, cheeses, bottles of cachaça, and spices had once again landed in São Paulo for the joy of the community. So, everyone knew that the coming weekend would be a warmhearted one.
But it's not just the memory-filled food that keeps these establishments open. At this point, the cultural connection between bar owners and patrons is crucial for the survival of these spaces — even when the paycheck runs out before the end of the month.
In the Brazilian capital of botecos, the city of Belo Horizonte, researcher Geórgia Caetano dos Santos, from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), sought to understand what makes these spaces so important. In the state of Minas Gerais, especially in its capital, what makes botecos so special is the sense of belonging of Mineiros (those born and raised in Minas Gerais).
"The interviewees (during the research for the thesis) recounted their connection with the bars with a lot of nostalgia. They mentioned moments from their childhood when they were in botecos with their fathers, uncles, and grandfathers and played around. It's a memory of good times for most of them," Geórgia told Abrasel.
The capital of Minas Gerais has 40,620 gastronomic establishments, according to data from the Municipal Registry of Corporate Taxpayers from May 2022. Of these, around 14,000 are bars. Despite competitiveness, Geórgia believes that good differentiation strategies must include traditional elements of each location, regional cuisine, and beers that are always served perfectly chilled. It's also essential that people are welcomed, preferably, by the owner of the boteco.
But a boteco is not just an open-air library. In a boteco, there's also healing. A long time ago, before there was any talk of Brazilianness, apothecary's and grocery shops were already selling medicinal bottles made from jurubeba, catuaba, and urucum. Researcher and mixologist Néli Pereira dedicated herself to studying these Brazilian ingredients.
In her book, "Da Botica ao Boteco: Plantas, garrafadas e a coquetelaria brasileira," which is only available in Brazilian Portuguese, Néli takes us on a fun journey through the history of drinks until they became the ones we know today; from remedies developed for kings and pharaohs to the discovery of techniques to activate active ingredients that were once used for healing and today add flavor to alcoholic cocktails. Néli, who is always asking questions, shows how ancestral wisdom became commercial products and medical usages became a step-by-step guide to a nice drink.
These establishments also represent political resistance and advocate for the right to the city. In large metropolises like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, botecos are surviving against a wave of gentrification that is appropriating their meaning and emptying them in every corner of the cities.
Recently, in the capital of São Paulo state, one of these specimens went viral on TikTok. A bargoer starts a video by commenting on a new aberration-development in Pinheiros, one of the coolest neighborhoods in São Paulo city: a bar that carries the promise of a boteco in its visual narrative, but is nothing more than another millimetrically calculated Southeastern development; culture, identities, and people lie there, but the ambition of São Paulo's middle class survives.
There, where one sips wine and enjoys poorly prepared appetizers, devoid of spice and history, a tremendously horrible future is projected for those who still live in Brasil with an S — that is, while the country's name is still written like this in Portuguese, bearing its origins, and is not foreignized. The invention of others materializes after many branding and strategy meetings with qualified professionals who claim to know what is most important to have in a boteco.
These preconceived establishments in the advertising imaginary don't even grant us the honor of enjoying the party of sociodiversity — which is only possible in a specific environment with the latest in the musical genres of piseiro, brega, sertanejo, forró, funk or the most iconic international songs from the 80s as ambient sound.
What these spaces need is far from being a makeover undertaken by large corporations in social initiatives with a group of stakeholders. One of these corporations once challenged bar owners from the outskirts of the city to deal with a shortage of supplies during the hottest time of the year. What also began as a great franchise opportunity, with improvements to the environment, ended up limiting the variety of products distributed in these establishments.
A boteco is more than just a drinking establishment in Brazil. It's a place to meet, bond, and exchange knowledge, and it's where Brazilian workers heal from their busy days. It should be encouraged so that it can embrace more families and people from the community, without distancing itself from its roots and influences. Botecos themselves already contain magic, but within these enchanting environments, there is still room for innovation and allure.
What makes a good boteco is its owner who keeps in the fridge the golden nectar that caresses the hearts of construction workers, young university students, and the grandparents of some of us; the owner who keeps the stories of the neighborhood in his wandering mind that sees everything.
The challenge for the families who make a living from bars and botecos lies in the structural issues of these houses of knowledge. We don't deny that their toilets could be better and that cards are missing from the deck, but it's not by standardizing these spaces that their financial sustainability will be maintained, nor the imagery of botecos.
What lies behind Brazil's favorite establishments is precisely what makes them so resilient to time and important to the community: the stories that are made at the red, white or yellow plastic table. There, a couple had their first date, old ladies met to celebrate a matriarch's birthday, a son celebrated his acceptance into a hotly contested university, and a man drowned his sorrows after being cheated on.