Bureaucracy—not a bug but a feature

When I lose my patience with bureaucracy in Portugal, my Brazilian husband grins at me and says: “Oh, let’s just go back and live in the US.” Because he knows the only thing I dislike about Portugal is the glacially slow bureaucracy. The same is true for Brazil. But I love both of my adoptive countries beyond measure. So, I try to reframe the bureaucratic delays as the universe teaching me to slow down. Or something like that.

I certainly don’t mean this post as a complaint. This post is about Brazil. But it could be about Portugal. Or, well, anywhere that things take a looong time. My American friend who lives in Italy says, “It could be worse, you could be in Italy.” And she explains it as the difference between the old world and the new world. But that doesn’t really work if you’re talking about Brazil.

So, I begin this story with my quest to get a CPF, or cadastro de pessoas físicas, meaning the registry of physical persons. There are also pessoas jurídicas, which means abstract person, or abstract entities, what might be called agencies or businesses. Anyway, the CPF is like a social security number in the US. But unlike the US, where the use of the social security number is limited because of fraud and abuse, the CPF is required to do just about anything in Brazil.

I’ve been married to a Brazilian citizen for 36 years; I’ve been eligible for permanent residency all that time. It wasn’t until a decade ago that my husband and I applied to establish this status for me, and it was a predictably long and difficult process, but I was thrilled when it was finalized. For all those years I didn’t feel the need to have a CPF and was able to use my husband’s in most every situation. But this year it became clear that I needed to proceed with getting a CPF.

So, I went to the agency that provides the CPF. I made an appointment online, very easy and efficient. So far so good! I appeared at the agency on the date and time required. A very nice young woman handled my application. She then asked me to check the box on the application saying I wasn’t a resident. She corrected my “error” where I checked “resident” with liquid white-out, which I haven’t seen in many years.

I said, “But I am a resident.”

She said, “But you live in Portugal.”

I said, “But I am a resident. I have permanent residency. And an address (my mother in law’s).”

She said, “No, you aren’t a resident. Check the box.”

She then said I would receive an email in three business days, and I could also check the website. Three days later, no email. One week later, the website showed no evidence I had a CPF.

I made another appointment. When I got to the desk of the person designated, they said. “Hmm, let me check.”

Then a supervisor came and told me that my CPF wouldn’t show that it was active until I paid taxes. What??? This obviously made no sense. So I protested, and they redid my application. This time it said I was a resident, but for some reason it also failed. A week later, I made another appointment and went back. This time I told the person I wanted to talk with a supervisor, and I didn’t mean to be acting ugly (like an American), but I was losing my patience with what seemed to be my right as a resident, to get a CPF. Lo and behold, just two days later I received an email with my CPF. Hallelujah!

This was a few months ago, and now I am again in Brazil and needing to open a bank account. The Bank of Brazil (Banco do Brasil) online gave me an error message and said I wasn’t eligible. I’d heard the bank Bradesco had an account for foreigners, so I went to an agency.

The security guard (they are so often fonts of information by default, since they are the only persons you can ask) nicely told me I didn’t need to get a ticket, someone would help me, just please have a seat. There were several people waiting. I sat down, and an older gentleman arrived and told the guard he just had a quick question. The guard told him to get a ticket. The gentleman balked, pointed at me and asked why I didn’t have to get a ticket, and paced back and forth, repeatedly trying to interject his question to the staff. They pointed him to the place to get tickets.

When a staff member spoke with me, they asked me my address, and told me that yes, I could open an account, but I would have to go to the agency nearest my address, up north at the satellite city of Sobradinho. I sighed and prepared to leave, but not before the very nosy gentleman waiting expressed his opinion.

“That’s just crazy, what a bunch of nonsense. Imagine that! You have to go to another bank. My dear, I am so sorry.” He reached to shake my hand.

Amused, I smiled and said, “Well, you know, bureaucracy. But it’s sometimes worse where I live, in Portugal.”

He threw up his hands. “Well! What do you expect! That is our mother country, the origin of all this craziness! May God be with you.”

So Monday morning, I was at the Bradesco in Sobradinho when it opened, bright but not early at 11 AM. Took a ticket. Waited 20 minutes. The security guard looked sympathetic, and also I am often the subject of interest because I look kind of weird, like I’m not from around here (Okay, guilty as charged, I’m not). Wrong ticket, said the security guard. He punched in another area and gave me a ticket. Waited 10 minutes. Went to the counter with my ticket, wrong place. Not for opening accounts. Okay, I still had the other ticket, which hadn’t been called yet.

Ten minutes more, then my ticket number was called. The young woman asked for my documents. No problem, she said, you just have to go over to Casas Bahia and open your account. What?? She was telling me to go to a sort of department store to open my account. When I asked she explained, “They work with us. Open your account there, then come back here, you won’t have to wait in line again, we’ll complete the process.” She gestured vaguely down the street.

I said I knew Casas Pernambucanas, was Casas Bahia next to it? (Bahia and Pernambuco are Brazilian states, and perhaps in a later blog post I’ll figure out why they have department stores named after them). The woman said no and gave me more specific directions. Cross the street, then in a couple of blocks turn right and there you are.

Off I went. When I got to Casas Bahia, a nice young woman in front of the store asked if she could help me. I very tentatively asked, “open a bank account?” She pointed to the side of the store and said, go up the stairs. Up a stairway, I landed in the area selling sofas and mattresses. When I asked a salesman he pointed to a little desk with a computer and invited me to have a seat, the young lady would be back soon. Twenty minutes later, she appeared. Half an hour of back and forth with her iPad and various documentation, including taking my photo, she smiled and said it was all done. And she would walk with me back to the bank.

Arriving back at the bank, the promise of no waiting in line proved false. Thirty minutes later, after pacing back and forth like a typical American at long last displaying my impatience and another twenty minutes of downloading an app, which to be honest was highly secure and while this part may have taken time I have no objection, the process was complete. More than two hours total.

Voilà! I have an account but can’t use it until I receive a card in the mail, and return to the bank to do biometrics. I’m hoping for the best from here on out, with a successful closure to Bureaucracy 101, Brazil Banking Chapter.

Most importantly, I have to say how very nice and kind and friendly everyone is. I do my best to be patient, but I’ve discovered my limit for that is about two hours. Driving back home, late for lunch with my family, I marveled at the beautiful clouds billowing up over the altiplano to create a thunderstorm, dodged a semi-trailer truck that swerved in front of me to pass another more slow-moving truck, and chuckled to myself about the whole crazy experience I am privileged to have in this amazing country. Brazil, I love you, damn it.