BASED ON THE BOOK BY DARCY RIBEIRO
"THE BRAZILIAN PEOPLE"
The Brazilian culture...
is like a quilt. The only unique things in it...
come from the imagination of a Brazilian man...
a free man, a free poet...
a free novelist...
or even a free artisan.
But culture is, above all, what the masses remember.
A new people, formed by nude uneducated native lndians...
who were carriers of great wisdom...
who could live in the jungle and teach us how to live in the jungle.
The native lndians got culturally mixed...
with the Portuguese...
and with the Black people coming from Africa.
"From that human breeder...
came the nation of 150 million people we are today...
unified in terms of culture and language...
certain and secure of its own national identity...
formed by people who now are not either lndians, Afros or Europeans.
They are now a new people.
Brazil is the result of the fusion of a million different peoples.
A genetic fusion, since the mixing of races in Brazil...
has always been allowed...
and free from the concept of crime or sin.
It is also a spiritual fusion, due to the cultural confluence...
of the cultural patrimonies of our many matrixes.
All that has shaped us as a mixed people, both in flesh and spirit.
Therefore, we are the heirs of every neurosis and talents of human kind. "
That mixture still goes on.
SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES
1 st ACT
First, we have to consider...
the moment of the great finding, or coincidence...
when the Europeans arrived here.
I can only imagine the scenario.
The native lndians on the shore...
all yelling and making a fuss...
all saying: "You have to see this! You have to see this!"
They came closer to the shoreline...
all nude, their bodies covered in paint, which was their clothing.
Their heads covered in feathers...
their hips covered in huge skirts...
made of feathers.
Those handsome native lndians, thousands of them on the shore...
looking out in the sea.
From the ocean...
things they had never seen were coming, humongous ships...
propelled by tall, bowed sails...
fed by the wind. They were like butterflies.
The natives said to each other, "What's that?
People sent by Maíra. People sent by God.
People sent by Maíra, by God !"
And what did the Portuguese see?
The letters are here to prove. They looked at the shore...
Pero Vaz de Caminha said: "All the girls were nude...
exposing their privates, with no apparent shame.
They proudly exhibited their traits.
They were prettier than the Lisbon girls. "
The Portuguese were charmed by the new and blossoming group of people.
"On this land, my king...
there's no sign of gold or silver.
However, it has an agreeable weather...
somewhat cold and lukewarm.
From top to bottom, it's all palm trees and beaches...
of flat and beautiful sands.
From the sea, the dry-lands seemed to be vast.
It is surrounded by infinite water.
And it is gracious in such a way that...
if you want to plant crops, anything will grow..
Due to the huge amount of water.
However, it seems to me that the best fruit of this land would be...
saving its people. "
From day one, the royals took for granted our Brazilian land.
Their attention was turned to Asia and its infinite promising riches.
Our History starts to happen ofF the record...
with coincidences, accidents, individual ventures...
and private initiative.
"The New World.
Refuge and support to the desperate ones.
Shelter to the bankrupted, escape to the homicidal...
protection to the gamblers, magnet to career women.
A common mistake for many, and a private medicine for few "
Brazil was founded by a few Portuguese...
and by the native lndian wisdom...
of incorporating each and every coming European...
turning him into the middle-man in order to achieve tools...
and incorporating him into the lndian family by giving him a virgin.
Every village would give away a virgin to the European man.
The natives had the right to ask him for anything...
and the European had the right to order his 10,000 brothers-in-law...
to cut Brazil-wood trees down.
"Ibirapitanga" the Brazil-wood tree...
whose trunk was the color of red which produced a fabric dye...
valued by the European community.
In exchange for beads, mirrors, fabric and knives...
the lndians were responsible for finding the tree, cutting it down...
and load it into the ships leaving for Europe.
In Brazil, two populating and miscegenation centers...
were the most important at that initial period.
They had as their patriarchs Diogo Álvares Caramuru and João Ramalho.
And Caramuru crossed the Atlantic Ocean.
His name was Diogo Álvares Correia.
His ship was wrecked around here...
in 1510, 1512.
Can you imagine crossing the Atlantic Ocean...
and end up stuck among these rocks?
And then, he landed here and had to choose a place to live.
Caramuru chooses between Ponta do Padrão, currently Farol da Barra...
and Colina da Graça.
There, he settles...
a village we could define as "Euro-Tupinambá".
That's how Brazil started.
It was with Caramuru here...
and with João Ramalho in São Paulo...
that what we now call Brazil starts to exist.
This adventure didn't happen because the Portuguese crown decided so.
It happened thanks to the courage of each individual...
who helped to shape, along this coast line...
an adventure called Brazil.
They say João Ramalho was married to Bartira. That's a lie.
The Jesuits blessed Bartira and said to him, "This is your official wife".
But he had more than 30 women.
And each one of his sons had 30 women.
And they all slept together.
São Paulo was formed upon the joy of that orgy...
with the birth of the "mamelucos"
The Portuguese man got the native lndian girl pregnant.
She has a baby. Who's that baby?
He's the lndians'.
He's not a native lndian, and he does not want to be one...
because the natives were oppressed.
That baby's going to become a native lndian hunter.
He's not European, and his father doesn't see him as equal.
He's a son of the native land.
So, we start to see a bunch of people who are nobody.
He can only step up from that "being nobody" state...
by becoming something else.
"It was those useless settlers...
who prepared the land for the only colonization process...
viable to take place in Brazil :
the formation of a hybrid society through polygamy.
It must have felt like a protection padding...
that soothed for the Portuguese...
the violent shock of being in contact with entirely different creatures. "
2nd ACT
Vera Cruz island, Terra Nova, Terra dos Papagaios...
Terra de Vera Cruz, Terra de Santa Cruz...
Terra Santa Cruz do Brasil, Terra do Brasil...
Brazil, 1530.
According to the parts of the world given to Portugal and Spain...
by the Church...
Portugal was allowed to invade, to take over...
to steal the land and the assets of the Brazilian natives...
and to slave those natives.
But our tropical exuberance lurked the greed of traders and pirates...
coming from the Netherlands and from France.
Highly concerned, the Portuguese come to Bahia in 1531...
to explore the coast and the inland and to defend the territory.
The founding of the Piratininga and São Vicente colonies...
was the official beginning of Brazil's colonization process.
"We all liked this land so much...
that Captain Martim Afonso decided to populate it.
And he was very fair about it, so much so that people...
were very pleased to see the villages populated and regulated...
and the marriages being blessed.
Now, each one of them has their land, they cover their privates...
and have everything pertaining to a safe and decent life. "
They intended to transform Brazil into a productive colony.
The economy ceases to be ruled by paternalism...
and begins being ruled in other ways.
It goes from trading habits to slavery.
"In Brazil's colonization process...
two methods are as divergent as water and oil.
The colonial one intended to bribe the natives and make them work.
The religious one wanted to form a holy nation with the natives.
The genocide and the ethnocide caused by slavery and conversion...
opened the path to the inevitable hodgepodge. "
Each and every native lndian tribe died right there...
preserving their ways and traditions.
The only way to destroy an lndian tribe...
is preventing it from going on existing.
If you take children, as the missionaries would criminally do...
children from different tribes and mix them all up...
forcing them to speak a common language, Portuguese...
those children will never be native lndians...
and they'll never be Brazilians.
They will be pariahs.
Even though the natives were numerous...
they all ended up being worn out...
by slavery, of course...
but much more so by the European malaises.
Every epidemic crisis would kill half a tribe.
A certain tribe of 40, 000, after the arrival of the Jesuits...
was left with 4, 000.
So it was like a biological war.
Men from São Paulo hunted the lndian girls to get them pregnant...
and they sold the lndian men to Pernambuco State...
where they worked the sugar cane fields.
Then, they realized the lndians ran away because they weren't slaves.
If a native was loose in the crop, he'd run away...
because he'd never work for such a cruel boss.
But the cruelty with the Black people...
was that white men would go to Africa...
they'd hunt down Black men and women...
and they'd crowd the galleys of the ships with them.
They'd cross the Atlantic Ocean...
and they'd get here totally worn out.
Then water would be squirted on them...
and they were taken to the market and sold.
All those Black people...
were the one different component...
from the natives, the Portuguese, and the mamelucos...
and they changed the whole color of the picture.
The traffic of slaves was an international business.
Businessmen from Africa and Brazil got together...
in a highly lucrative enterprise...
which turned the economy of both countries for centuries.
For each 4 or 5 Black men, they'd bring a cute Black girl.
A child,
One of the luxuries of being the owner.
That little girl, and other Black women who came here...
after sleeping with their white owners...
gave birth to "mulatos"..
Who were born speaking Portuguese. If they were sent to Africa...
they'd be considered foreign people.
They were from here, they were not Africans.
They were not native lndians nor Portuguese. Who were they? Nobody!
The Black John Doe, along with the other John Doe, the native lndian...
started organizing and forming...
the current Brazilian people.
3rd ACT
"Every Brazilian, however white and blond-haired...
carries in his soul, if not also in his body...
the shadow of the native lndian or the Black...
especially of the Black people...
because of his tenderness, his excessive gesturing...
his music, his way of walking and talking...
his way of singing nursery rhymes.
We are a new people formed by millennial people. "
My name is Carlão, and I was born in Pau-Brasil, Bahia.
My name is Antônio Varjão, and I was born in Canudos.
My name is Canhaduras, and I was born in Coroa Vermelha, Bahia.
My name's Quirino Serutti, and I was born in Garibaldi, R. Grande do Sul.
My name is lri Carlos, and I was born in lpiúma, Espírito Santo.
I am Ernani Brasil, and I live in Iago Dubim, Manaus.
I'm lreno, from Taquari, Rio Grande do Sul.
My name is José Bonifácio...
and I live here, in Fundo do Tiririca, Amazonas.
We are all cross-bred. Every people in the world is.
Every nation is the product of different cultures and peoples.
The contribution of the differences is the originality of each culture.
Every nation, in a certain way...
has seen itself as a pure nation...
trying to achieve authenticity in the beginning of times:
"I'm French" or "I'm German" etc.
A valuable lesson Brazil can teach other nations...
is to accept the challenge of miscegenation...
to accept the challenge, the idea of...
not having a pure essence, but being cross-bred...
and from that we have to create a way to exist in the world.
"In such energy field, Brazil created and invented itself...
allowing the survival, within Brazil's face and spirit...
of the symbols of its multiple ancestral roots. "
FOR SARA AND SALOMÃO GRINSPUM
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