Last Sunday, we had elections here in Brazil. In spite of the fact that day-to-day life is better than it ever has been -- the lowest unemployment ever, reduced poverty, growing GDP, improving environmental conditions -- the far right defeated the party that had brought all of those benefits.

This week, I'm looking at how that happened. Why is the far right so strong in Brazil? The explanation takes us deep into history, into the kitchens and elevators of apartment buildings, and into how Brazilians see race.

In the South of the island of Santa Catarina, nestled between steep hills and the blue bay, twenty small children prepared a performance for their parents and grandparents. Heads and torsos appeared above colorful costumes made of papier-mâché and fabric: Bento was inside a red ox, a friend inside a toucan and another inside a vulture. There was a cowboy whose body poked through a horse; a goat, and the emblematic creature of the Boi de Mamão: the Bernunça. Half dragon and half alligator, with an immense mouth to devour children, this Bernunça came to life with four girls inside it.

The Boi de Mamão — a ritual/game/play (brincadeira) common along the coast of the state of Santa Catarina — serves as a fascinating illustration of how play can function as memory and a power to “sustain the world.”

With clips from the movies “Um boi para as crianças”, “Coragem de Brincar o Boi,” and “Como fazer uma zarabatana”, directed by Rita Oenning da Silva and Kurt Shaw.

When we look beyond the idea that the goal of the game is to win, we see that the game transforms the player; the relationship with the “opponent” transforms the player. When an escola de samba performs or during the Kuarup in Xingu, we can’t talk distinguish between the artist and the work of art or between the subject and the object she manipulates. Nor does this art really fall into the “I-Thou” dynamics so thoughtfully analyzed by mid-century Jewish thinkers like Buber and Levinas. We don’t really know if the Morena de Angola is shaking the shaker, or if the shaker is shaking her, as the classic samba lyrics insists.

With the help of little kids, toys, and farm animal, we learn how play can help us overcome the polarization of the zero sum game.