I wanted to let you know that I got the Capybara-Lent connection from reading an article about the animals in National Geographic. This magazine is not necessarily always academic, but in their hundred or so years of publication, I think they know not to over exotify a culture.

While your cause is just, you are defending your country from a precieved misconception, I want to comment that just because you haven’t seen the Capybara-Lent connection nor heard about it, in your experiences doesn’t mean that what the author of the National Geographic piece is all lies.

But I warn you that eating capivara in lent or considering it a fish is the most ludicrous thing I ever heard, and belongs together with the idea of snakes strolling down the streets of Rio de Janeiro. I am Brazilian, have traveled extensively in the interior of my country, and have never heard such a thing. Whoever wrote this (and you happily reproduced here) probably has Carmen Miranda’s movies of the 40′s with all its misplaced clichés and mixed-up prejudices about our “exotic” country as it main source of knowledge of things Brazilian.