Everyone Loves Brazil; The world has fallen hard for the boisterous culture that gave us caipirinhas and capoeira.

Byline: Mac Margolis (With Rana Foroohar in London, Karin Bennett in New York and Hideko Takayama in Tokyo)

Roberto Dultra knows his way around. For better than three decades, the Rio de Janeiro travel agent has lured foreigners to Brazil from just about everywhere. But Dultra--who speaks Portuguese and English but not a word of French--had never been to Paris. When he arrived there on his first business trip earlier this year, he promptly hit the storied Francophone stone wall. "No one gave me the time of day, not even the receptionists," he confessed to a friend after two straight days of ringing French travel agencies to sell packages to Brazil. So on his friend's advice, he changed tack. "I'm sorry I don't speak French," he began again, in his most diffident English. "I am from Brazil." And suddenly the walls came tumbling down. "Ah, Bre-sil!" bubbled the solicitous voice on the other end. "I'll put you right through."

Talk about opening doors. Not long ago, mentioning Brazil conjured images of street children or mountains of foreign debt or, at best, a lady in a tutti-frutti hat. For all the world knew, or cared, Brazil was just another big, affable Latin country--Mexico on steroids--tucked away somewhere below the equator. Even some heads of state seemed clueless. "It's nice to be in Bolivia," Ronald Reagan told an audience on his first state visit to Brazil in 1982. His hosts took it sportingly. "The people of Bolivia welcome the president of Canada," read the next day's newspaper. But beyond the gaffes and guffaws was a major hole in the mappamundi of the Western mind.

No longer. Though the number of foreign tourists to Brazil has increased only modestly in the past several years, Brazilians--or Brazilian culture--now reach nearly every corner of the world. Forget Gisele or Ronaldo, who are well on their way to becoming universal properties. Whether it's the caipirinhas flying off the bar at Sushi Samba in lower Manhattan, samba diva Elza Soares bringing down the house at London's Jazz Cafe, capoeira classes in Toronto or the sun-kissed sylphs dominating catwalks from Milan to Guangzhou--almost anywhere you turn, there's a bit of Brazil in the air.

The Brazilian contagion goes beyond the familiar enclaves of fashion and football. New Yorkers line up to hear two-time jazz Grammy nominee Luciana Souza, whether she's purring silky samba standards at Joe's Pub or loosing arias in an Osvaldo Golijov opera at Avery Fisher Hall. In May, Selfridges, the London department store, turned over its entire building to Brazilian food, fashion, music and art--and crowned it all with a four-meter replica of Rio's art deco Christ the Redeemer statue. Through September, London's Design Museum will feature the rococo creations of haute furniture makers Fernando and Humberto Campana--including the favela chair, patched together with sticks like Rio's shantytowns.

Much of the frisson is fueled by the spread of expatriate Brazilians. New York and Boston are crawling with them. Some 280,000 Brazilians of Japanese ancestry make their home in Japan. Brazilian fashion models are the workhorses of today's Asian fashion industry.

But to an unprecedented degree, Brazilian culture is now rubbing off on the locals. On the last Saturday of every August, Tokyo's traditional Asakusa district reels with the cacophony of a full-blown Brazilian carnival--and it's the native Japanese wearing the feathers and paint. Fogo de Cho, which pioneered "rodizio" barbecue franchising, has launched four restaurants in the United States since 1997, and plans to open one a year "for as long as the market bears," says owner Arri Coser. And American and ...