View over the canal in Recife
Boy fliying kite in the favela in the outskirts of Olinda
View from the square in Olinda, Recife in the distanceIt was a great, yet sad coincidence that I happened to be staying in Pernambuco at the height of the political crisis in Brazil. Sad because in my opinion and for the interest of the greatest majority of Brazilians it should have never happened, because I everyone around me cried, lost all faith, fell into desperation and I had no clue how to console them, apart from saying that changes in the end always bring about something positive…
My first days in Pernambuco were actually spent in Olinda at Mamelouco hostel. The pretty old town is Recife’s fairyland, where everything is like in a painting and everyone is happy. A cinema festival took place during my stay, the old abandoned cinema had been occupied in protest to request its re-opening, local documentaries were screened outside showing scenes of the crazy carnival, of the local ocarina craftsman, of the erosion power of the sea that in the past decade had been destroying houses until the villagers built a harbour for protection. I walked around Olinda drinking the local licor made of cachaça, cinnamon, cloves and guarana seeds called Axè, meeting travellers and admiring the artwork of COAS, a funny Chilean and the only other host at Mamelouco in those low season days, he decorated the hostel with his creepy visible souls.
In Olinda I also saw invisible hunted souls of old black characters from Bahia incorporate into people of faith in a Jurema Preto Velho ceremony. We sat for hours singing traditional songs that tell stories of the daily life of the spirits in old times Bahia, as one by one, most of the participants would start shaking incessantly as if with affected by a late stage of Parkinson disease. These trembling hunched-back believers of the Afro-Brazilian-Catholic religion were invoking the ancient spirits and allowing them to enter their body. Being spirits of old people, their bodies would therefore behave as if gone suddenly old. Other participants would accompany them to the altar were a very old lady distributed a green scented liquid to clean from any negative energy.
I sat, trying to sing along to the funny mantras telling stories about animals and village life; watching the incorporated people and the parrot in the cage behind them, felling the powerful, positive energy of the church. I admit I did not comprehend most of the ceremony, but I felt fascinated by the power of the souls, and by the effects of the unusual combination of different religions. Similarly to umbanda and candomblé, in fact, jurema has origins in ancient Africans religions, imported into America by the slaves, merged with native wisdom of nature and hidden to avoid persecution behind Catholic saints and icons. the combination is a rich view, inside of the church, of various colourful images, where Saint Mary and other saints wear necklaces with seeds, plants and symbols decorate the altar…
It leaves me to wonder, given the power a stranger like myself could assist in a church merging three different beliefs, what strength could be evoked by fusing ALL religions, concentrating all faiths, all the love into one stream… I does make sense since most religions all do have the same principles, the same morals, the same idea of a great, good, forgiving and loving God! Since religions are just the interpretation of God trough culture and tradition, in this globalizing world why isn’t religion being globalized as well, instead of becoming even weaker and divided? In Brasil new religions and churches open every day, more and more believers actively search for their spiritual home and while few benefit from such a phenomena, it seems like the overall effect is just a waste of love and energy…
Outside the Jurema churchI moved in with Kayo and his family during my second week in Pernambuco; when the rain and the political mess was so strong/fucked it didn’t seem at all safe to travel. In the accelerated developing favela of Aguas Frias, the evening I arrived under a stunning sunset the city was in exhilaration as the two major football teams where competing in some final game. At the victory of Santa Cruz, the most popular team at least clearly where I was staying, fireworks went off as if it was new years, everyone ran to the streets flying the team’s flag, drinking, shouting, celebrating…
May 2nd, the next night: senators of the Parliament in Brasilia stood up in ridicoulus speaches to justify an impeachment against the PresidentA Dilma. The next morning the lower class of Brazil woke up to cry with the sky, to discover that the government that had brought food and education into their homes was being kicked out under highly questionable grounds. “For my party, for my family, for my neighbourhood… I vote for impeachment against Dilma!” was the statement of one of the senators. On RedeGlobo, the free TV channel controlled by the opposition, after Dilma left the Parliament from the front door to hug the masses offering their support, an aggressive propaganda of the opposition party started rolling with epic tunes, touching images and hypocritical phrases such as “for the future of Brasilian women” – we are giving power to a non-democratically elected government with no women?!? I felt a little bit sick.
Kayo and I left the TV and went up onto the roof. The favela was crying under our eyes as we applied a rape and smoked weed, trying to focus on positivity while it seemed like the country was crumbing to pieces. Apart from falling back into a system that favours the few rich entrepreneurs living in Sao Paulo, Kayo personally felt desperate as he was trying to protect his rights against racist police who had filed a case in court against him under false excuses, hating him for being black, and smart too.
I had met Kayo at La Terca Negra, a monthly event to remember the slave's liberation. Unuasuly, it took place in Plaza do Derby, the square was under occupation by the Movement of no-land farmers, the strongest alternative movement in Brazil: an organization of farmers who travel occupying, reforesting and organically farming abandoned and abused land. They had been joined by the feminist movement, the gay movement and many other active groups in the city, camping under the rain in the square for the 3 weeks building up to the Senate’s election day…
Occupation and protests continued in Brazil. With the new government’s closure of the Ministry of Culture, all the offices in the different capitals where occupied by students in protest, keeping by force the ministry active as a centre to defend diversity and freedoms. On the last day of August 2016, the impeachment process was finally concluded, and Michel Temer (his name means FEAR) became the new president of Brasil in what many consider a coup against democracy.
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