Fronteiras Braskem do Pensamento [Braskem Thought Frontiers] Program, a great success in Porto Alegre and Salvador, débuted in São Paulo on Tuesday, June 8, at Pinacoteca do Estado [State Art Gallery]. The speaker for this first meeting was Argentinean writer and literary critic Beatriz Sarlo. From the quality and intensity of the debate after her lecture, one can see that the impact of her ideas over the attending public was vast.

The place chosen for the presentation was Pinacoteca, the oldest art museum in the São Paulo capital city and certainly a major one in Brazil. The presence of the writer- who was a professor at Buenos Aires University for 20 years, with jobs also at North-American universities such as Columbia and Berkeley - contributed to bring the cultures together, since she analyzes Argentinean writers such as Jorge Luis Borges and communication means that multiply information and literary works of this author and of so many other authors from Argentina and all over the world.

During this year, São Paulo will also be the scene for three meetings of Fronteiras Braskem. On October 14 Cuban writer Pedro Juan Gutierrez will speak about his works, which deal with the environment of Havana. Tariq Modood shall be onstage on the 28th. A Pakistan sociologist, multiculturalism theoretician and professor at Bristol University, England, he is a leading authority in ethical issues, and researches the theory and politics of racism and racial equality.

In November, Fronteiras Braskem do Pensamento shall host in São Paulo a British historian who is an expert in the French Revolution, Simon Schama. He is famous for his series of documentaries for BBC British TV network and is a professor of History and Art History at Columbia University, in the United States.