Tito Rosemberg is best known as a hardcore Land Rover-loving surf adventurer. He has visited over 100 countries, lived and worked in many of them, and surfed throughout. Before all that, however, Rosemberg was one of Brazil's original hardcore carioca surfers, spending his days on the beach at Arpoador, and his nights in the homes, clubs and restaurants of nearby Ipanema and Copacabana, at a time when the rest of the world was falling in love with the bossa nova and carnival and the high-energy urban-tropical swing of Rio de Janeiro.

In 1964, with arms and planning assistance from the United States, the Brazilian military overthrew the left-leaning Brazilian government, which in turn produced the notorious AI-5 decrees in 1968, and the country remained under military dictatorship until 1985. Throughout, but especially from '68 to '74—the Years of Lead— political dissent and artistic freedom were risky, and even at times deadly.

What did this mean for surfers on the beach at Arpoador? For most, not too much. The country was stable financially (more than stable, the fabled Brazilian Miracle took place during this period) and if you didn't know about or think about dissidents being tortured or killed, it was easy to let the party roll on.

Rosemberg was a 17-year-old reporter and photographer in 1964 when the coup took place, and seeing his country grow more repressive over the next few years was the deciding factor in his decision to leave Brazil for Europe in 1968. His memories of living and surfing in Brazil up until that point are bittersweet, but the sweetness almost always comes out on top.

Rosemberg is 77 and living in Rio Grande do Norte, but has plans to hit the road soon.

I believe my surfing life began when I went to the beach for the first time, when I was just a few months old. My parents lived in Urca, close to the beach, which at that time was as clean and crystal clear as a mountain stream. When my older brother, Luiz, fell ill and my mother was forced to spend much of her time in the hospital, my father doubled his work hours to pay the growing expenses. What to do with little Tito? Leave him on the beach with the lifeguard and a bunch of bananas, all day, and pick me up sometime before dinner.

When I was two years old, around the beginning of 1949, my parents moved from Urca to Copacabana. More beach time! Copacabana has an unpredictable sea: it can be a bathtub, but can then quickly turn dangerous, even for experienced swimmers, and drownings here are a regular occurrence. As a child, I saw many rescues and even a few deaths, so I immediately recognized the power of the surf. I spent my childhood with lifeguards at Tower #5, and at the age of seven I was already wearing small American-made swim fins, running out with the lifeguard when they made rescues, and bodysurfing every wave I could catch until my chest hit the sand.

 (alligator) board, and began riding waves on those as well as bodysurfing. These little boards were everywhere in Copacabana, and were sold in stores along Rua Santa Clara, and as a child I wanted to ride all of them!

We lived the best time in the best place in the world. In 1962, none of us imagined our wave-riding poetry would later become Olympic Games material; that some of us would paddle out for money and the elegance of dancing with the elements would be replaced by circus juggling. We were a bunch of rascals. Many were dedicated vagabonds. Our religion was pleasure. We ate badly but we were healthy and we were a tribe—the unproductive people of Arpoador Beach! The wooden planks we rode [madeirite surfboards] opened new perspectives and forged true watermen, who lived for, and dreamed of, surfing.

Of course, the hidden truth was that many of us went to school, others speared fish for a living, and few of us didn't make it in life. One became immensely wealthy—among the richest people in Brazil. He forgot about the waves, the sea, the beach, and even poetry, since money hardens the soul and takes up all your time. Sad fate!

We didn't yet know it, but even back then the repressors were already watching us, and our incredible boards, playing god as we walked on the sea.

When times got more difficult, many of us moved away from Arpoador and went out to find new beaches and waves. But Arpoador never left us!

In the 1960s there were no surf posters for sale in Brazil. Even so, we all had surf photos, mostly cut out from American surf magazines, tacked up on the walls of our rooms. In 1964, when I was 18 years old and working as a magazine reporter for 

, I often went on assignments with a super-nice photographer named Orlando Abrunhosa, who is no longer with us.

One Sunday, by coincidence and without planning, our paths crossed at Praia da Macumba, where I had gone to catch some waves. Unbeknownst to me, Orlando was driving around looking for subjects to photograph for a beach article, and he ended up at Macumba as well. It was sunny, and the waves were good!

Orlando walked onto the beach, took his pictures, and drove off, looking for other subjects. He had no idea I was one of the surfers in the water.

's darkroom and came across Orlando's photos. I was taking photos myself by then, and whenever I could I tried to learn from the magazine's great photographers, including Gervásio Batista and Helio Santos. Noticing that there were some surfing pictures, I leaned in for a closer look and, to my surprise, there were some pictures of me. When the article came out, one of my photos was used on a double-page spread! I was incredibly happy, and at the end of the day I went for drinks with Orlando and we laughed at life's happy coincidences.

I left Brazil not long after that and was gone for a long time.

Years later, in a Santos nightclub, I once again saw Orlando's photo of me surfing—except this time it was printed on a poster. It seems that 

 had sold it to the first poster company in Brazil. Apparently, the poster had been on sale for a few years and had long since gone out of print. The following night I went back to the club and offered a small fortune to the manager and, today, 56 years later, it is still here on the wall at home.

The colors on the slide are fading but the memory is still bright. I know one of this group has already passed on, and three have disappeared—Joni; the owner of the jeep, Marcos Garcia; and the other whose name I forget. The photographer is still around. The landscape has changed so much that it has become unrecognizable. The year was 1965 and the place is now the crazy Avenida das Américas, in Barra da Tijuca, right next to Barra Shopping. At that time, there wasn't a single building. We thought it was the end of the world, and we had no idea what would happen if the car broke down. In 1965, catching a wave at Macumba Beach was an adventure.

I started my life as a reporter at age 17, at 

magazines. It was early 1964, and Brazil was on the boil. It was in the editorial office of these two weekly magazines that I fell in love with the profession. At the same time, already an a fan of the eclectic life, I surfed at Arpoador and did experimental theater at night with director Heitor O'Dwyer.

I loved the tension of the newsroom, with reporters and photographers rushing in with new information or rushing out to cover events. On April 1, 1964, the newsroom went into a short circuit when we learned that the military had staged a coup, that the army had taken over the streets of the cities with tanks and cannons, and the police had allied with the coup leaders. Nonetheless, some people were already rebelling against the coup.

My editor-in-chief, Arnaldo Niskier, sent me to downtown Rio with veteran photographer Alberto Jacob, to see how the situation was going. It didn't take long to see just how bad things were. I saw police in vans chasing, beating, arresting, and taking away civilians. On the corner of Rua São José and Ave Rio Branco, right in front of me, an open military truck full of soldiers was hit by a desk thrown from the top of a building. Soldiers on horseback chased demonstrators who threw marbles to the ground behind them to make the horses fall. I saw the body of a protester dumped in the street near what was then the American Embassy. This was urban warfare.

For several days I went out, looked around, took notes, and returned to the office to write articles—most of which were not published because the editors, correctly, feared that the government would act against the magazine. I saw the siege of the Laranjeiras Palace, the uprising at the Copacabana Fort, and other things that, to this day, bring me great sadness.

I was only 17. I didn't know it at the time, but my life of emotions was just beginning.

My dear friend Johnny Hansen got in touch with SURFER about putting together an article for the magazine. This was in 1966. I gathered the photos and together we wrote the text. Our agreement with John Severson, SURFER publisher, was that he would run the story as offered. But then filmmakers Greg MacGillivray and Jim Freeman passed through Rio, along with Mark Martinson and Dale Struble, and they sent photos back to SURFER. Severson at that point decided to mix my photos with those of MacGillivray and Freeman, and the article even came out without crediting the authors.

That's how publishing works. The photographer sees it one way, the reporter writes another, and the editor has to put everything together. Sometimes it gets better, sometimes it gets worse. But in the end, Rio was recognized as the "City of Love and Surf," and that meant a lot.

In January 1969, weeks after Brazil entered one of the most repressive periods in its history, I realized that if I stayed here, I would stagnate. If universities, artists, and all forms of politics and culture were muzzled here, outside the country I could pick up new ideas and grow as a person. So I decided to go and meet a friend who had already left the country, and was now washing dishes in London. I figured, "If he can do it, I can do it too."

I was in a self-exile from ugliness. It was the first time I left Brazil.

[Photos, top to bottom: Tito Rosemberg, left, with Rossini "Maraca" Maranhão, Massambaba Beach, 1967. Rosemberg, about two years old, on the beach at Copacabana. Rosemberg on the left, with Edgard Gordilho. Arpoador surf scene, around 1964, all photos by Rosemberg. Tito surfing at Macumba, photo by Orlando Abrunhosa. 1964 ID badge for Manchete magazine. 1968 street protest in Rio. Tito and Johnny Hansen, 1966. "Rio: City of Love and Surf!" SURFER Magazine, 1967.]

DAYS OF SUN, YEARS OF LEAD: TITO ROSEMBERG REMEMBERS RIO IN THE 1960s

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