title: ascii codec can't encode character
body: <p>I'm trying to create a string with special characters from portuguese-brazil (e.g. á, à, â, ç)</p>
  
  <pre><code>push_message = 'á'
  push_message.decode().encode('utf-8')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But I'm getting this error:</p>
  
  <pre><code>UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe1' in position 0: ordinal not in range(128)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I need to send this to Parse Api, and Parse Api just allows utf8 encoding.
  What can I do to solve this?</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT</strong></p>
  
  <p>When I try</p>
  
  <pre><code>push_message.decode('utf-8')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I get</p>
  
  <pre><code>UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe1' in position 0: ordinal not in range(128)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>When I try</p>
  
  <pre><code>push_message.decode('latin-1')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I get</p>
  
  <pre><code>UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe1' in position 0: ordinal not in range(128)
  </code></pre>