Is DC battling against Portuguese? or DC's mishandling of Fire's native language

"I totally disapprove of some writers' practice of using any old foreign phrase, regardless of its meaning, to give the supposed 'feel' of a foreign language. This I believe, is an (however unintentional) insult to everyone who speaks that tongue (...)I don't want spread linguistic misinformation any more that I'd want spread wrong info about anything else"

Roy Thomas

These words are quoted from the letter column of Infinity INC. #33, back in 1986, in which Roy Thomas was answering a compliment for the way he was the dealing with the usage of Spanish by Wildcat II (Yolanda Montéz), seem to be foreseeing the way DC's Brazilian character Fire (then known as Green Flame) would be handled for the years to come. The story arc contained in Infinity INC. #34-36, in which the Infinitors and the Global Guardians fight Injustice Unlimited was when we last saw Beatriz da Costa speak her true native language - Portuguese. From them on, the character, though acquired far much more popularity after joining the Justice League International during the Giffen, DeMatteis and Maguire era, was totally mishandled in terms of her native language.
Fire, as we all know, is Brazilian. She's Brazil's national heroine, born and grown in the beautiful city of Rio de Janeiro. What that powers that be at DC Comics seem to have thrown into oblivion is the fact that Brazilians speak Portuguese, their one, only and official language, not Spanish, or some parody of it. Brazil, world's fifth biggest and sixth most populated country, which accounts for roughly 40% of Latin America population, was colonized by Portugal, and therefore is a Portuguese-speaking country. There isn't even a significant Spanish-speaking minority within Brazilian borders. Despite all this, it's been a long time DC comics portray Fire speaking Spanish, revealing a great deal of ignorance on Geography and Linguistics and upsetting all of DC's Portuguese-speaking fans, especially the Brazilian ones, like me. E. Nelson Bridwell made a truly professional work when he created Green Fury in the late seventies. Fire (then Green Fury) was Beatriz da Costa (written exactly this way - two separate words, like in Portuguese- and not a spanishy DaCosta), who usually was shown speaking some Portuguese words, like hundreds of millions of people do everyday throughout the world (Portuguese is the fifth most spoken language in the world, according to the United Nations). Bridwell used to make her speak words such as "sim" (yes), "não"(no), "senhor" (Mr.). His stories really made us Brazilians identify ourselves with the character. When Roy and Dan Thomas wrote the Global Guardians and Infinity INC. team-up story arc, they kept Bridwell's brilliant work and were the last ones to do so.
After the Global Guardians lost UN support, Green Flame managed to join the Justice League International. We cannot put all the blame on Giffen and DeMatteis, they deserve congratulations for bringing Fire to the spotlight and making her more popular in the DCU, but they really should have been more careful with the character. They acted as if they simply took for granted a character that no one wanted. If they had studied some more on Bea's background, they would not have let her mother tongue subject run out of control.
Matters really got worse when the Bierbaums wrote Green Flame's secret origin in Secret Origins 33. She was Beatriz DaCosta (a Spanish, not Portuguese, surname), but she went to work at club owned by a man called "Dom Diablo" (Hey, this is Spanish! No one in Brazil is called like this, it would be "Sr. Diabo" or "Seu Diabo") (1). After quitting the job for "Dom Diablo", she goes to work at the Brazilian espionage network (Espiaos Nacionales de Brasil(2)- see page 4 - this phrase is in fact a bizarre mix of Portuguese and Spanish. In Portuguese, it would be Espiãos Nacionais do Brasil, in Spanish, Espias Nacionales de Brasil, but, as I'm trying to explain WE DON'T SPEAK SPANISH!). Finally, she fights "Menino do Diablo" (another weird mix of Spanish and Portuguese, "menino do" is Portuguese; "diablo", Spanish. It seems to be intended to mean "Devil's boy", in English, "Menino do Diabo", in Portuguese, or "Niño del Diablo", in Spanish) blewing up his lair with her pyroplasm gun, what unleashes her metagenetic powers.
Some of you must be asking, "So, why did he waited about 10 years to complain about this?" Simple answer: "I didn't know about it". As a Brazilian, I used to read DC Comics through its Portuguese translations of its Brazilian publisher (3) , which conveniently hid these details from Brazilian and Portuguese readership. Then I bought DC's Martian Manhunter #10, in which Fire's guest stars. To my deep frustration and disappointment, I witnessed one my preferred writers, John Ostrander, making Fire speak Spanish, or something between Spanish and Portuguese, Spanish prevailing. I sort of liked the story for raising the issue of sexism in Latin America. There is sexism all over Latin America, no matter the language. But "sí" is Spanish ("sim", the correct Portuguese), "muy macho" is "muy" Spanish (in Portuguese, one would say "muito macho"), "es" "es" (is) Spanish (it's "é" in Portuguese) and "el hombre verdad" too. (By the way, what did Mr. Ostrander mean when he wrote "el hombre verdad"? In Spanish, this means "The Truth-man", I thought J'onn J'onzz was known as the Martian Manhunter...). I immeadiately tried to buy as many DC comics in which Fire appeared and realized all this linguistic mess into which she was thrown.
All this detailed and perhaps tiresome exemplification is intended only to show you all how we, the Portuguese-speaking readers, feel insulted when we have to cope with this disregard to our mother tongue. I'm not saying that everyone at DC has to know every language in the world. But, if one really wants to deal with a foreign character, it's no absurd asking him to study just a little about the country from where this character comes from in order to avoid spreading wrong information on a a nation and upsetting foreign readers. In Fire's specific case, it's more serious now that DC even has some brilliant Brazilian artists on her payroll, such as Deodato. DC can and must respect more her foreign readers.
As for Fire, if any DC writer wants to use it and is in doubt of how to use her Brazilian roots, just drop or any Brazilian DC fan an e-mail that he or she would be very pleased to freely help him/her with the Portuguese.