"The biggest anything" syndrome

The idea for this post came to my mind while I was reading a newspaper from Recife (the city where I grew up in Brazil). In ten pages I saw "the biggest", "the greates", "the best" associated so many times a local manifestations and personalities that is difficult not to laugh thinking how big is your ego... =) Well, we have some reasons to be proud of our history, but sometimes it's too much!

Here below I show you 3 reasons to be proud of... And one not to.


The biggest Carnival manifestation :


The cities of Recife and Olinda hold the most authentic and democratic carnaval celebrations in Brazil. But the largest carnaval in all of Brazil is Galo da Madrugada, which takes place in downtown Recife in the Saturday of carnaval. More than 1.5 million people smash each other to follow the eletric "trios" and dance the frevo!!! (consider that there are 1.515.053 people residing in the city and 3.646.204 people in Metropolitan Area)


The biggest indoor arena for concerts (in Latin America):



The Chevrolet Hall has a 2700o m2 area, 1000 m2 only for the stage!!!

The richest ecosystem in the world:


The mangrove is a very complex and rich ecosystem on which we can find the largest variety of vegetal and animal species per m2. A mangal is a plant community and habitat where mangroves thrive. They are found in tropical and sub-tropical tidal areas, and as such have a high degree of salinity. Areas where mangals occur include estuaries and marine shorelines.

A curious thing is that we can find mangroves all over the world, but it is so typic in Recife that we even have a cultural movement that took inspiration from it. It was created circa 1991 in reaction to the cultural and economical stagnation of the city. The movement largely focuses on music, with the result being a mixture of local traditional styles such as maracatu and ciranda) with the imported culture of the MTV generation (rock, rap and hip-hop). The original movement named itself mangue bit, mangue referring to Recife's mangroves and bit to the computer bit central to the movement's electronic music influences.


The biggest unemployement rate from all Brazilian capital citiesl:

Such a shame. 16,5% of the population in Recife doesn't have a job. And the worst is that lots of experts say that if we used our touristic potential in a structured and organized way, we could arrive at 8 or 9% only.