by David Whitman

The idea that a place could be identified with just one color came to me while reading about someone spinning around high on a hill overlooking Rio de Janeiro, taking in the dizzying images of sky, bay, buildings. She described her sudden realization that Rio is a “blue” city. I intuitively understood what she meant, for I often see the world in the colors of an artist’s palette.

If Rio is blue, then yellow is the color of Brazil. It is everywhere, announcing itself radiantly and unselfconsciously. Luscious yellow fruits, flamboyant yellow feathers, ubiquitous yellow soccer jerseys. Flowering trees, wooden boats, beach umbrellas, passion fruit, gold, parrots, buildings, swimsuits, license plates. The word in Portuguese, amarelo, even contains the verb amar, “to love, to adore.”

The color yellow flows through Brazil like the Amazon. Even in the countless shades of green, there is always underlying yellow, kissed by blue. Yellow transforms red, too, into rich orange earth and fiery reflections of the equatorial sun rising from the sea. And in the stunning diversity of Brazil’s people, irises from pale green to amber to darkest brown are all tinted by yellow.

Surrounded by luminescent blues and greens, yellow is the reigning color of Carnival. From Rio’s Sambódromo to São Luís do Maranhão and beyond, glorious, exuberant, pulsating yellow announces Brazil to the world. It radiates confidence, attracts attention, seduces. Yellow in Brazil has no close rival.

Brazil has given me a profound appreciation of yellow, and I’ve surrounded myself with the color here in Miami. Accent walls in my beach studio are yellow, and outside are yellow-green coconut palms against the ocean, where yellow mixes with blue  to create Caribbean turquoise and sea-green. Even my car, the “mangomobile,” is orange-yellow. At the tropical garden where I work, I often see the sunlit, brilliant yellow and contrasting blue feathers of wild macaws flying overhead, reminding me of Brazil.

It’s the color of joy, yellow…and the color of my Brazil.

“Yellow is the color of my Brazil” appeared originally on InfoBrazil.com, a site dedicated to independent analysis and opinion on Brazilian issues and current affairs.