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Old 04-14-2019, 08:28 AM   #9
Icelander
 
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
Default Re: [MH] Brazilian Secret Monster Hunters

Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
They'll have people in their embassies whose job is to report on local events. Those will be most interested in places that Argentina and Chile have a lot of trade with, especially wherever their oil supplies come from.
Good point. An excellent stsrting point is to check if a particular Caribbean nation has an embassy from Brazil, Argentine or Chile. If it doesn't, then it would require very special circumstances for there to be any kind of clandestine intelligence presence. If it does, then there is at least a possibility, especially if important national interests are involved and/or there is the potential for a major security threat to that nation.

Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
It sounds as if Argentina, Brazil and Chile might be starting to plan countermeasures to the Andean criminal organisations. This will result in them acquiring evidence of the supernatural in a while, but probably not for a year or two.
Brazil is usually secretive about its knowledge on the supernatural, largely because attempts to reach out to allies have in the past resulted in disbelief and ridicule almost regardless of evidence. It seems more productive to ally with powers already aware than try to educate allied powers who deny the existence of the supernatural.

Of course, this doesn't prevent Brazil from working in concert with other nations when they can frame the actions as counter-terrorism or law enforcement cooperation. On the other hand, from the perspective of any security service where supernatural explanations are not accepted, Brazilian monster hunters are seen as extrajudicial death squads operating on the behalf of some sort of Deep State inside the Brazilian intelligence, military and security services. This tends to limit how willing neighbours are to cooperate on law enforcement issues of mutual concern, especially if Brazil wants to run operations against their citizens or inside their borders.

The fact that Chile, to take an example, has no coherent supernatural threat strategy and most politicians and officials disbelieve in the paranormal also tends to mean that the machinery of government is vulnerable to supernatural subversion. Men who might not be subject to bribery or criminal intimidation might be more vulnerable to mental influence, supernatural seduction, coercion through undetectable and unstoppable magical threats or even full-blown mind-control.

I'm not proposing that Chile is governed by puppets of supernatural powers, but the generals and intelligence chiefs who control Brazil's supernatural defence are hesitant to trust anyone who isn't vetted by their counterintelligence people. To some degree this is sensible, but the Brazilian monster hunters also take a very hard line against the supernatural, considering any use of magic or paranormal powers a sign that a person is in league with dark powers.

Another reason I think I need to develop the Brazilian hunters early is that they are easily the most active of all the factions aware of the supernatural and consider themselves to be at war with an invading force from beyond this world, albeit a secret and undeclared war. If they perceive something as a threat to their borders, citizens and interests, they'll destroy it with extreme prejudice, whether it's a vampire gangster with delusions of grandeur or a naive academic messing with forces he doesn't understand.

Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
Neither did I: I looked up the Portuguese language and found them that way.

I have no specific knowledge, but I would expect Papiamento to be easy to learn for Portuguese speakers.
From minimal research, it seems that the link with Portuguese is distant enough to be legitimately disputed by linguists and even if Papiamento developed from 17th century Portuguese (rather than other Iberian languages), it's at least as much West African as Iberian and in any case heavily influenced by Dutch, Spanish and English as well.

It might be no easier to learn for a Brazilian than it would be for any other person from Latin America or Spain, i.e. it could take years of study as with any language, despite a theoretical historical relationship. Despite being more closely related to Icelandic linguistically, I never found Danish or German meaningfully easier to learn than Spanish (but I'd rate Spanish as simple enough to be a full step easier than ordinary languages to learn enough to get by).
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