All photos identified online as Abrico

Once again, Abrico Beach, south of Rio/Sao Paolo, is not a beach Natalia has visited, due to the great distances from her home. So there’s now a lot she has been able to add to it as a location, so it seems an appropriate point to get her input on hat Brazilian naturism means to her and her thoughts on its history and where it is right now. She emailed me right after spending a day on her local beach, Tambaba. Remember, it’s summer south of the equator!

‘I had a great day on the beach with my boyfriend, thanks for asking!

‘I am not a great expert on Brazilian naturism, but I think that we can be grateful to a lady called Luz del Fuego for being the ‘godmother’ to Brazilian naturists. I know she founded a political party called the Brazilian Naturist Party and ran for the Congress in Brazil! She performed as a dancer with snakes! Maybe this even pre-dates European political naturism, I don’t know. This was some time around 1950. Were Europeans standing for representative bodies in 1950? I don’t think so. We Brazilian naturists celebrate her birthdate (February 21st) as the ‘Day of Naturism’.

‘We should not under-estimate Dora’s (Luz del Fuego’s real name) influence on us who are naturist 60 years later! Next year (2017) we will celebrate the centenary of her birth. Maybe SL Naturist will do a feature on her for this date?

‘She was also something of an early pioneer of the extended values that we embrace in naturism. The ecological. The care for nature. She was actually murdered because she was going to expose someone for over-fishing the waters. Of course there was also repression in Brazil during the military juntas of 1964-1985. I think because of this repression naturism maybe thrived a little bit, underground, as an expression of freedoms. My personal thinking is that it attracted radicals and intellectuals. Not so different from Eastern Germany from the end of World War 2 until 1989? I don’t know. I think this might be the case.

‘It began to become more public again in the 1980s. So maybe we need to think of Brazilian naturism, now, as only 30 years old in its modern guise. So we can be proud of what we have achieved in those 30 years with several beaches.

‘I am a Catholic, of course, as most are in Brazil, and maybe there is also a history of Catholicism being in opposition to naturism. It was the Portuguese who clothed native Brazilians following colonisation. I am of Portuguese descent, not indigenous Brazilian. I also look ‘European’ in that respect. What you see in the photos I have found is that there is a difference in skin colour in Brazilian naturists, with those of indigenous history and those of European history mixing simply as Brazilian naturists. In one way, we produce numbers of ‘black’ and ‘white’ naturists. Again, I take pride in this as we are maybe a bit progressive! Hey! It says it on out flag! 🙂 ‘Order and progress’. Brazilian naturists can take pride in the way we have done order and progress in the past thirty years’.

Trine & Natalia