have those serious ethnic, religious, sectarian, linguistic cleavages, so it puts Brazil in a pretty amazing position. ERIC VAN BEMMEL Whether they rise or fall economically, from here on, the Brazilianness will remain. MARSHALL EAKIN And it's - what they know now, it's in their hands.  This is - unlike a small place in Latin America which is weak, small economy, small population, this is a place which has its destiny in its own hands and so this notion of Brazilian identity is, all right, we can pull this off, we know who we are, we can make this happen.  So I think that, in that sense, Brazil is in a very elite group in that sort of sense.  Out of a couple of hundred countries in the world, there are not very many of them that have that ability, that capacity to shape their own destiny. ERIC VAN BEMMEL Marshall, we'll leave it there, thank you very much for joining us on Up Close. MARSHALL EAKIN Thank you. ERIC VAN BEMMEL That was Marshall Eakin, Professor of History from Vanderbilt University.  We've been discussing notions of national identity and nation building in Brazil.  Relevant links, a full transcript of this and all our episodes can be found at our website at upclose.unimelb.edu.au.  Up Close is a production of the University of Melbourne Australia.  This episode was recorded on 29 August 2012 and produced by Kelvin Param and me, Eric van Bemmel, audio engineering by Gavin Nebauer.  Up Close was