Brazilians excluded from the celebrations of the bicentennial of independence, organized on Wednesday on Copacabana beach, in Rio de Janeiro, question the party, which they consider has not reflected the reality and interests of the country, whose history remains in dispute.
Ten kilometers from Copacabana beach, where an initiative was developed that brought together thousands of people and mixed military presentations with an electoral rally for President Jair Bolsonaro, tour guide Rafael Moraes considered that the political tone adopted in the official act financed with public money resulted in an erasure of the problems that really affect Brazilians.
“It is very sad to see a group taking care of a state party, a national party. The right-wing groups took control and did not talk about those who most need this party to understand the importance of independence because they never felt independent. Black men and women have never seen themselves as independent in this country,” he said, referring to the Afro-descendant population that suffers the highest rates of poverty and violence since they were captured in Africa and enslaved in Brazil.
“It was as if Rio de Janeiro was born out of nothing, but it was born in this region here in Little Africa. Those who built what is today Copacabana, what is today Rio de Janeiro, were the slaves who arrived here. Why was there no ruling on this?” asked Moraes, mentioning Bolsonaro’s speech on his government actions and against an alleged communist threat personified by ex-president Lula da Silva, who said that he and his followers would affirm that he would defeat the presidential elections. in October.
The son of Portuguese parents, Moraes works at the Pretos Novos Memory and Research Institute, located in a central area of the city currently called Little Africa and where the Valongo wharf, a United Nations World Heritage Site, is also located. for Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) since 2017.
The institute operates in an area where the bodies of thousands of captive Africans were dumped and burned between 1772 and 1830, shipped by the Portuguese in Africa, who arrived alive in the ancient capital of Brazil, but died of illness before being enslaved.
Rediscovered in 1996 during reconstruction work, the cemetery exposes part of the mortal remains of these invisible characters, who symbolize the violence perpetrated by the Portuguese and Brazilians who laid the foundations of the structural racism that still exists.
Scenarios of the ongoing revitalization of part of downtown Rio, the Pretos Novos Cemetery, Valongo Pier and other sites in Little Africa make up a changing landscape where neglect is beginning to be reversed by small cultural businesses.
An information center that was not inaugurated, which was already supposed to function as UNESCO required on the Valongo wharf, sums up the difference between the apparent erasure of history by public authorities in the face of the emergence of cultural spaces that have been inaugurated in the area after the pandemic inside historic buildings in Little Africa, which is also home to the iconic Pedra do Sal, cradle of samba.
Social worker Sandra Rabello, 64, a resident of Rio de Janeiro, was one of the people who told the report that they were unable to celebrate the bicentennial.
“I was in Copacabana and I felt violated, my rights violated because I hoped that the President would not promote this electoral campaign that he promoted. I knew his supporters would be there, but I didn’t expect it to be a completely political act,” said Sandra Rabello.
“It was a date in which we could have rethought and discussed independence and we did not do it by choice of the leader of the nation,” he added.
Separated by less than 14 kilometers from Copacabana beach, the urban village of Maracaná, located next to the most famous soccer stadium in the country, is home to two dozen critical indigenous people who were absent from the party promoted by the Bolsonaro government and sympathizers. in Copacabana.
Urutau Guajajara, leader of the group, told Lusa that the native peoples of Brazil are the object of a process of degradation and genocide that dates back to 1500 and, therefore, these acts of independence from Portugal, led by D. Pedro in 1822, a dead foreign king in Europe sounded like a bad joke to him.
“The Government brought a heart that means nothing to us (…) A great mockery of the Brazilian people,” he criticized, mentioning the loan of the heart of the former monarch, preserved for more than 180 years in the Church of Lapa, in Porto, who traveled to Brazil for the bicentennial celebrations.
“We indigenous people do not have independence, we are not independent. We have no land, we have no land, our land belongs to the Government. Indigenous lands are not ours. At most, we only enjoy and preserve the demarcated areas,” added Guajajara, who considered that the supposed freedom resulting from independence was not given to the original peoples, as it was denied to enslaved blacks, effectively liberated in 1888.
The urban town of Maracanã exists on land that houses the ruins of a mansion built in 1862 by the Duke of Saxony, husband of Princess Leopoldina, daughter of D. Pedro II, donated to the Indian Protection Service in 1910.
The Museo del Indio worked there, moved to the Botafogo neighborhood in 1978 and is currently closed to the public.
Since 2006, the area has been occupied by indigenous people who prevented the destruction of the mansion and led protests against its demolition in 2013, before the World Cup in Brazil.
Representatives of the Brazilian state want to recover the land in court, opposing the indigenous people of Maracaná, who dream of founding a university and a town there inside the city that is home to Copacabana beach, Christ the Redeemer and other symbols of Brazil. without any demarcated territory for the native peoples expelled there five centuries ago.
Source: Observadora
