History, memory, identity, the stories we tell about ourselves and those told about us by others including those who would enslave us, who are and can become and who decides; all of this is a ground of struggle against systems of oppression, falsification, commodification, and dehumanization, and often a shifting ground, constructed of relative truths as a Rashomon Gate of human being, meaning, and value.
As I write these words Brazil is reeling from the worst incident of police terror and mass murder in its history; even in Brazil of Lula, socialist and champion of the people and of worker solidarity regardless of race, the system of state racist terror and systems of oppression perpetuates itself as police brutality and a rigged justice system enforce racialized elite hegemonies of wealth, power, and privilege. Only love can free us from the Wagnerian Ring of fear, power, and force, from hierarchies of belonging and otherness, and from systems of white supremacist terror, subjugation, and dehumanization. Disarming and abolishing police as a caste of overseers and slavecatchers would also be useful.
In 1974 I fought police bounty hunters and death squads in the streets of Sao Paulo, the summer before I began high school, and despite the glorious victory oner Bolsonaro’s fascist regime little has changed on the ground for the poor and the nonwhite. Over fifty years of liberation struggle, and what have we achieved?
Herein the history and heroes authorized by the state and valorized as exemplars of the human ideal become important; representation matters, symbols bear power, and the ownership of our own stories as witness, remembrance, and aspiration all confer transformative force as seizures of power.
Brazil’s embrace of a national holiday on the date of the great slave revolt leader Zumbi’s death in glorious battle at the hands of colonialist forces is a case study of what I term the Narrative Theory of Identity, in which self construal is a form of revolution and the primary defining act of becoming human.
Celebrate with us the great warrior, King, and figure of liberation Zumbi and his defiance unto death of those who would enslave us, and the free republic of Palmares he led in anticolonialst revolution and a century long war of independence against vast forces of imperial conquest and dominion and systems of white supremacist oppression and terror, whoever he may have been and whatever rebel kingdom he championed, for all that truly matters is that he holds an imaginal space we each of us may step into and become, no matter the wretchedness of our initial conditions.
That a man lived and was real who refused to submit is enough for us to remember and dream into being, for each of us may become that man who we dream.
As written by Tiago Rogero in The Guardian, in an article entitled Brazil celebrates Black Consciousness Day as national holiday for first time: Legacy of African Brazilians honored on 329th anniversary of resistance leader Zumbi’s death by Portuguese forces; “During the more than 350 years during which slavery was legal in Brazil, harsh conditions prompted a string of uprisings, often resulting in the establishment of quilombos – independent communities formed by escaped Africans who were formerly enslaved, and their descendants.
None were more prominent than the one known as Palmares, where, in the 17th century, as many as 11,000 people lived in a string of communities across parts of the north-eastern states of Alagoas and Pernambuco.
But the roughly 100-year history of what historians regard as the most significant resistance movement against slavery in Brazil began to unravel on 20 November 1695, when its most famous leader, Zumbi, was captured by Portuguese colonial forces and killed.
Three hundred and twenty-nine years later, the date will for the first time be marked as a national public holiday: Black Consciousness Day, which has been a longstanding demand of Black movements that still face attacks from the far right.
A series of events – including at least 38 in São Paulo alone – will mark the date nationwide, celebrating Zumbi, Palmares and the ongoing fight for racial equality.
“Palmares was the largest quilombo in the Americas, both in terms of its longevity and population,” said Danilo Luiz Marques, a historian and professor at the Federal University of Alagoas.
Some researchers have described Palmares – whose first records date back to 1590 – as the earliest form of a republic to emerge on Brazilian soil. Marques, however, argues that it was a Bantu kingdom, reflecting the central-African language family to which most Africans brought to Brazil belonged.
Black movements in Brazil have celebrated the names of Zumbi and Palmares since the early 20th century at the earliest, but it was only in 1971 that 20 November became a key date.
Activists had sought a date to contrast with another historically associated with Black people: 13 May, the day slavery was abolished in 1888.
Rather than celebrating Black individuals, however, 13 May had traditionally been used to exalt the white princess who signed the abolition decree: Isabel, then the regent of the Brazilian empire.
“The princess was glorified as if she had granted a favour to the enslaved people; as if she were a heroine,” said Deivison Campos, a historian and professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul.
“The Palmares group sought to counter this narrative, proposing 20 November as a way to honour the collective struggle for the inclusion of Black people in Brazilian society,” he said.
Today, 13 May is still celebrated, with Black activists arguing it cannot be ignored since abolition was primarily the result of Black resistance. However, 20 November has become so popular that November is now informally known as Brazil’s Black Consciousness Month.
The law to make Black Consciousness Day Brazil’s 10th national holiday – signed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in December 2023 – was passed amid significant resistance from conservatives.
During the presidency of far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro, Sérgio Camargo, the then head of the Palmares Foundation – a federal body established in 1988 to promote African-Brazilian culture – harshly criticised the 20 November holiday, labelling it the Day of Black Victimisation, the Day of the Black Mind Enslaved by the Left or the Day of Resentment for the Past.
Some within the far-right even doubt the existence of Palmares or its most famous leader despite extensive historical evidence. “Falsehoods have always been used to attack Black history,” said Marques.
Brazil’s largest television network, Rede Globo, will mark the date with a 50-minute primetime special focusing on the wrongful imprisonment of Black individuals based on photographic identification – a widespread issue in the country.
“In Brazil, Black people continue to be imprisoned, deprived of freedom, a healthy life and the chance to realise their dreams simply because they are Black,” said the special’s creator and presenter, Clayton Nascimento.
“It’s important that 20 November is, for the first time, a public holiday because it allows us to pause and reflect on Brazil’s Black history. We were the ones who built this nation,” he added.”
As written in 2019 by Laurence Blair in The Guardian, in an article entitled History of free African strongholds fires Brazilian resistance to Bolsonaro: Quilombo dos Palmares – founded by Africans who escaped slavery – maintained its independence for 100 years and has become a touchstone for a new generation; “Apalm-fringed ridge rises above the plains of Alagoas in north-east Brazil. Just a few replica thatched huts and a wall of wooden stakes now stand at its summit, but this was once the capital of the Quilombo dos Palmares – a sprawling, powerful nation of Africans who escaped slavery, and their descendants who held out here in the forest for 100 years.
Its population was at least 11,000 – at the time, more than that of Rio de Janeiro – across dozens of villages with elected leaders and a hybrid language and culture.
Palmares allied with indigenous peoples, traded for gunpowder, launched guerrilla raids on coastal sugar plantations to free other captives, and withstood more than 20 assaults before falling to Portuguese cannons in 1695.
“Hundreds threw themselves to their deaths rather than surrender,” said local guide Thais “Dandara” Thaty at the historical site in Serra da Barriga. In her telling, those killed included Dandara – her adoptive namesake – captain of a band of warrior women, whose husband Zumbi is similarly shrouded in myth as a fearless Palmarian commander.
About 5 million enslaved Africans were brought across the Atlantic to Brazil between 1501 and 1888. Many escaped, forming quilombos, or free communities.
Three centuries later, the remarkable saga of Palmares is being seized on once more as a symbol of resistance against Brazil’s rightwing president and the country’s pervasive racism towards its black and mixed-race majority.
A pair of new television and Netflix documentaries, screened in late 2018 and this June, have examined the legacy of Palmares. In March, the victorious carnival parade of Mangueira samba school highlighted Dandara among a lineup of overlooked black and indigenous heroes. Later that month, Brazil’s senate voted to inscribe Dandara in the Book of Heroes in the Pantheon of the Fatherland, a soaring, modernist cenotaph in Brasília.
Angola Janga, a graphic novel charting the rise and fall of Palmares, has won a string of awards. “Many people want an alternative view, to try to escape the one-sided, one-dimensional vision of our history imposed by the Portuguese and Brazilian elite,” said author Marcelo D’Salete, whose painstakingly researched book, including maps and timelines alongside striking monochrome illustrations, has been widely used in classrooms.
“Quilombos in general are very big right now,” said Ana Carolina Lourenço, a sociologist and adviser to one recent documentary on Palmares. Young Afro-Brazilians have even coined a verb, she added – to quilombar – meaning to meet up to debate politics or simply celebrate black music, culture and identity.
This renewed prominence coincides with a sharp rightward turn in Brazilian politics. Jair Bolsonaro has denied that Portuguese slavers set foot in Africa, and vilified the roughly 3,000 quilombos dotted across Brazil today – poor and marginalised Afro-Brazilian communities, often descended from fugitive slaves – branding their residents “not even fit for procreation”.
The president has sought to erode the landholding rights of quilombo communities in favour, critics argue, of the powerful agribusiness sector. Police killings, mainly of Afro-Brazilians, in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo have also risen sharply in 2019 with Bolsonaro’s encouragement.
Earlier this month, footage of supermarket security guards whipping a bound and gagged black teenager for allegedly shoplifting, prompted reflections on the lasting legacy of slavery.
For centuries, writers portrayed Palmarians merely “as runaway blacks and outlaws who rebelled against the crown”, said the Alagoas historian Geraldo de Majella.
It was only in the mid-20th century that historians began to reconstruct its story via Portuguese archives, often in Marxist terms. Meanwhile, “black militant movements took up the flag of Palmares as a movement of national liberation,” De Majella explained. The largest guerrilla group during the 1964-85 military dictatorship – the Palmares Armed Revolutionary Vanguard – counted former president Dilma Rousseff among its members.
Lula, the former president, simultaneously bolstered recognition of Palmares and the legal rights of present-day quilombos. 20 November – the date the Palmarian leader was killed – was officially adopted as the National Day of Zumbi and Black Consciousness in 2003.
In the same year, public schools were legally required to teach Afro-Brazilian history.
But limited archaeological evidence and the absence of Palmarian sources has encouraged freewheeling interpretations. Today, perhaps drawing on the historical presence of advanced metalworking at the site, some compare Palmares with Wakanda, the hi-tech, Afrofuturist utopia of Marvel’s Black Panther.
But the inclusion of Dandara – whose first written mention occurs in a 1962 novel – in the Pantheon divided opinion. “I absolutely defend creative freedom in the way people look at our history,” said D’Salete. “But we need to take care to differentiate between fact and fiction.”
Fernando Holiday, an Afro-Brazilian YouTuber and conservative activist, has noted that Palmarian society had monarchical elements and also kept captives. “I’m sorry to disappoint leftist and black leaders, but today we’re commemorating a farce,” Holiday said in a video. “Zumbi wasn’t a hero of abolition.”
But Palmares and other examples of revolt and resistance, D’Salete argued, “are important as other ways of understanding our history … so people can imagine and build another kind of society that is very different to one just based on violence and oppression”.
That legacy of violence is apparent in Tiningu, a remote quilombo in Pará state. The community has battled to receive legal recognition, threatened by the ranchers and landowners who have cut down much of the surrounding rainforest. One resident was murdered by a rival soybean farmer on the eve of Bolsonaro’s election. Here, Palmares is not merely history but a source of hope.
“Zumbi was the beginning of everything,” said local teacher Joanice Mata de Oliveira, whose school is daubed with the names of African nations. “He was the one who began our fight.”
As I wrote in my post of January 12 2023, A History of the Revolution in Brazil and Fascist Counter-Revolution: Liberty Versus Tyranny, Lula Versus Bolsonaro; In the wake of the collapse of Bolsonaro’s fascist counter-revolution and coup attempt in Brazil, Lula’s swift reaction in the mass arrests of the treasonous brownshirts who stormed the offices of the government in imitation of Trump’s failed January 6 Insurrection, itself modeled on Trump’s idol Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch, and the stunning nationwide repudiation of Bolsonaro and his failed capture of the state by the victorious peoples of Brazil, has now begun a new phase of struggle with the manhunt for those who fund and organize fascist tyranny, much like that ongoing now in America for two years.
An insidious and far reaching conspiracy against democracy linking the Trump and Bolsonaro crime families and the forces of reaction in America and Brazil begins to emerge, mixing familiar malefactors and Fourth Reich apologists like Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson with unknown freaks of nature like Luiz Philippe de Orléans e Braganza, who seeks a return to the throne of Brazil through Trump and Bolsonaro as proxies and is now scuttling from beneath his rock like the ravenous and vile crawling thing all aristocrats are beneath their gold paint, conspiracies which widen to engulf whole networks of white supremacist terror, theocratic patriarchal sexual terror, plutocratic and oligarchic theft of public wealth as terminal stage capitalism seeks to free itself from its host political system, and the xenophobic and self-righteous carceral states of force and control which they spawn as instruments of elite wealth, power, and privilege.
Our great enemy is the global Fourth Reich, which transforms itself ceaselessly and adapts to the conditions of whatever nation it targets for subversion and capture, and the interconnections between regimes of fascist tyranny are manifold and subtle. Fascism wears many masks, and like an ambush predator in nature moves among us behind mirages of lies and illusions, rewritten histories and stolen voices, images which capture and distort. Here is a ground of struggle in which we all of us must fight, if we are to seize control of our own identity under falsification and division as imposed conditions of struggle.
As written in the Netflix series Wednesday, episode three Friend Or Woe:
“Principal Weems, bracing Wednesday in her office for sabotaging the celebration of the Pilgrim leader who burned the original Outcasts alive and built the town on their stolen land and graves, a story repeated endlessly in our all too real history; “You’re a trouble magnet.”
Wednesday: “If trouble means standing up to lies, decades of discrimination, centuries of treating outcasts like second-class citizens or worse…”
Principal: “What are you talking about?”
Wednesday: “Jericho. Why does this town even have an Outreach Day?
Don’t you know its real history with outcasts? The actual story of Joseph Crackstone?”
Principal: “I do. To an extent.”
Wednesday: “Then why be complicit in its cover up? Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.”
Principal: “That’s where you and I differ. Where you see doom, I see opportunity. Maybe this is a chance to rewrite the wrongs, to start a new chapter in the normie-outcast relations.”
Wednesday: “Nothing has changed since Crackstone. They still hate us. Only now they sugarcoat it with platitudes and smiles. If you’re unwilling to fight for truth…”
Principal: “You don’t think I want the truth? Of course I do. But the world isn’t always black and white. There are shades of gray.”
Wednesday: “Maybe for you. But it’s either they write our story or we do. You can’t have it both ways.”
Here is a History of the Revolution in Brazil as I have lived it;
As I wrote in my post of October 30 2022, Victory in Brazil: “We are going to live new times of peace, love and hope” vows Brazil’s New President Lula as He Begins the Restoration of Democracy; We celebrate a Forlorn Hope vindicated and become glorious in the victory of the peoples of Brazil and their champion Lula, with dancing in the streets and running Amok beyond the boundaries of the Forbidden.
A monster and tyrant has been driven from his castle, and this is always cause for celebration. We will always have this moment of triumph, and the hope it holds for our future, regardless of the trials to follow. Whether such hope is a gift or a curse is up to each of us to live and make real; but things are now possible which yesterday were not, and this I call victory.
With the words of Glinda to Oz I congratulate Lula and the peoples of Brazil; ‘We’ve waited a long time for you, Wizard.” And we really need you to be the Wizard we hope you are.
A great work now begins, as like we once hoped Biden would in America before our recapture by the Fourth Reich, Lula in Brazil leads the Restoration of Democracy in a nation whose systems, structures, institutions, values, and ideals have been damaged by fascist subversion, disruption, and fracture, but whose people emerge from the crucible of their forging unconquered and renewed.
One day we will be a United Humankind and a free society of equals, and Lula like Biden and all our flawed and failed champions of liberty will be remembered for as long as there are human beings as among the founders of a new humanity and civilization or who could have been, whose vision will or can yet shape our being, meaning, and value, inform our choices about how to be human together for millennia, and motivate our discover of the limitless possibilities of becoming human.
Let us each do what we can to make the dream of democracy real.
As I wrote in my post of June 3 2021, Brazilians Seize the Streets to Demand the Resignation of Bolsonaro; The horrific death toll of Bolsonaro’s inept and corrupt handling of the Pandemic, the campaign of ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples, the plunder of public wealth and natural resources by a plutocratic elite, the vast precariat of a nation poised on the edge of collapse; all these and one thing more have brought the people of Brazil into the streets this week to demand the resignation of the tyrant Bolsonaro; the brutal repression of a kleptocratic fascist regime of force and violence.
The use of force and violence fails at the point of resistance and refusal to submit, and power is a fragile and hollow illusion which may be dispelled by exposure and challenge of authority, for who cannot be controlled is free. Regardless of the death squads and sexual terror, of the enormous military might of the government of Brazil as a host structure of racist elite hegemony, a people who do not recognize the authority of the state and who meet repression with disobedience cannot be subjugated.
Every Brazilian in the streets today who challenge and defy state terror has won their freedom, for they cannot be enslaved by those who would be our masters. So begins the end of tyranny in Brazil; we can help the people of Brazil liberate themselves and establish a true democracy as a free society of equals by shaping our policy to such ends.
The people of Brazil have spoken; how shall we answer them?
As I wrote in my post of March 11 2021, Brazil Reclaims Its Heart: the Return of Lula da Silva, Champion of the People; Lula da Silva, Champion of the People, has had the false corruption charges against him overturned and is now free to challenge Bolsonaro for the Presidency of Brazil once again.
This is a historic example of class war, which pits labor leader da Silva directly against capitalist kingpin Bolsonaro, whose regime creates wealth for elites by the de facto enslavement of Blacks and the precariat and the plunder of resources from indigenous peoples, and whose government is controlled from within by a network of some six thousand military officers who enforce his kleptocracy with brutal repression.
Racism, patriarchy, oligarchic and plutocratic wealth, de facto military rule; Brazil today meets all the criteria of fascist tyranny. I look now to Lula to change the balance of power and restore democracy in Brazil.
Of my connection with Brazil and her peoples, stamped into my soul by the trauma of my near-execution by police while rescuing abandoned street children whom they were bounty hunting for the wealthy aristocratic elite, who like America’s homeless are terrorized by the carceral state and the hegemonic elites its serves not merely because they are unsightly but because their existence gives the lie to capitalism as a system of oppression, I have written in my post of July 15 2022, Let Hope Overcome Fear: Lula 2022; Among my personal role models in antifascism and revolution is the fictional character of Harry Tuttle played by Robert de Niro in the film Brazil, whose line “we’re all in this together,” echoes through forty some years of my life and adventures.
Let me place this in context; Brazil was my first solo foreign travel experience, flying to Sao Paulo when I was fourteen, in the summer of 1974, to train with some fellow fencers for the Pan American Games which were planned to be held there, though later the venue was moved to Mexico. I had some newly learned conversational Portuguese, an invitation to stay at the home of a boy my age I knew from the fencing tournament circuit with whom I could discover the local mischief, and visions of beach parties.
So it was that I entered a world of courtly manners and white-gloved servants, gracious and brilliant hosts who were local luminaries and threw a magnificent formal ball to introduce me, and a friend with whom I shared a mad passion for martial and equestrian sports, but also a world of high walls and armed guards.
My first view beyond this illusion came with the sounds of rifle fire from the guards; when I looked from my balcony to see who was attacking the front gate I discovered the guards were firing into a crowd of beggars, mostly children, who had mobbed a truck carrying the weekly food supplies. That day I made my first secret excursion beyond the walls.
What truths are hidden by the walls of our palaces, beyond which it is Forbidden to look? It is easy to believe the lies of authority when one is a member of the elite in whose interest they claim to wield power, and to fail to question one’s own motives and position of privilege. Terrifyingly easy to believe lies when we are the beneficiaries of hierarchies of exclusionary otherness, of wealth and power disparity and inequalities systemically manufactured and weaponized in service to power, and of genocide, slavery, conquest, and imperialism.
Always pay attention to the man behind the curtain. For there is no just authority, and as Dorothy says in the Wizard of Oz, he’s “just an old humbug”, and his lies and illusions, force and control, serve no interests but his own.
Being a naïve American boy, I felt it was my duty to report the incident; but at the police station I had difficulty making myself understood. They thought I was there to place a bet on my guard in an ongoing monthly contest for which police officer bagged the most street children; there was a chalkboard on the station wall for this, like for horse racing. This was how the elites of Brazil had chosen to solve the problem of abandoned street children, fully ten per cent of the national population. Another betting game called “the Big One”, was for which policeman kicked the most pregnant girls in the stomach and ranked among the top ten causes of death in Brazil for teenage girls, invariably living within slum zones containing the most impoverished and most Black of citizens; this in a city founded by escaped African slaves as a free republic.
I learned much in the weeks that followed; above all I learned who is responsible for these inequalities; we are, if we do not challenge and defy tyranny and unjust systems.
During the nights of my adventures beyond the walls and actions to help the bands of child beggars and obstruct the police bounty hunts I had a traumatic near death experience, similar to the mock executions of Maurice Blanchot by the Nazis in 1944 as written in The Instant of My Death and Fyodor Dostoevsky by the Czar’s secret police in 1849 as written in The Idiot; fleeing pursuit through a warren of tunnels with an injured child among others and trapped in the open by two police riflemen who took flanking positions and aimed at us while the leader called for surrender beyond the curve of a tunnel. I stood in front of a boy with a twisted leg who could not run while the others scattered and escaped or found hiding places, and refused to stand aside when ordered to do so. This was reflexive and a decision of instinct beneath the level of conscious thought or volition, where the truths our ourselves written in our flesh are forged and revealed. Asked to let someone die to save myself, I simply said no. When thought returned me from this moment of panic or transcendence of myself, I asked how much to let us walk away, whereupon he ordered his men to fire. But there was only one shot instead of a demonstration of crossfire, and that a wide miss; he had time to ask “What?” before falling to the ground.
And then our rescuers revealed themselves, having crept up on the police from behind; the Matadors, who might be described as vigilantes, a criminal gang, a revolutionary group, or all three, founded by Brazil’s notorious vigilante and criminal Pedro Rodrigues Filho, infamous for avenging his mother’s savage murder by killing his father and eating his heart, who had been arrested the previous year after a spectacular series of one hundred or more revenge killings of the most fiendish and monstrous of criminals, powerful men beyond the reach of the law or who were the law who had perpetrated atrocities on women and children. Into this fearsome brotherhood I was welcomed, with the words; “You are one of us, come with us” and in the streets of Sao Paulo that summer I never again stood alone.
“We can’t save everyone, but we can avenge”; so they described themselves to me, and this definition of solidarity as praxis or the action of values remains with me and shadows my use of the battle cry Never Again! As Shakespeare wrote in The Merchant of Venice, Act III, scene I; “If you wrong us, shall we not avenge?”
From the moment I saw the guards of the aristocratic family with whom I was a guest firing on the crowd of homeless children and beggars swarming the food supply truck at the manor gate, naked and skeletal in starvation, scarred and crippled and misshapen with diseases unknown to any people for whom healthcare and basic nutrition are free and guaranteed preconditions of the universal right to life, desperate for a handful of food which could mean one more day of survival; in that moment I chose my side, and my people are the powerless and the dispossessed, the silenced and the erased; all those whom Frantz Fanon called the Wretched of the Earth.
Join us, for a United Humankind cannot be enslaved, conquered, dehumanized, falsified, or commodified, nor can tyranny stand against liberty when the people refuse to submit.
For we are many, we are watching, and we are the future.
Brazil celebrates Black Consciousness Day as national holiday for first time
Legacy of African Brazilians honored on 329th anniversary of resistance leader Zumbi’s death by Portuguese forces
History of free African strongholds fires Brazilian resistance to Bolsonaro:
Quilombo dos Palmares – founded by Africans who escaped slavery – maintained its independence for 100 years and has become a touchstone for a new generation
Wednesday transcript of episode three, Friend Or Woe
the fight for equality in Brazil in November 2025
Thousands join protests in Rio favela after deadliest ever police raid – video
Thousands join protests in Rio favela after deadliest ever police raid
Demonstrators demand inquiry after operation on Tuesday in which at least 121 people were killed
‘This was a slaughter, not an operation’: the favela reeling from Rio’s deadliest police raid
Residents of Vila Cruzeiro gather bodies after more than 130 were killed in pre-dawn assault
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/29/favela-reeling-rio-deadliest-police-raid-brazil
Portuguese
20 de novembro de 2025 O Brasil celebra sua herança de resistência negra, revoltas de escravos, repúblicas negras livres e luta de libertação
História, memória, identidade, as histórias que contamos sobre nós mesmos e aquelas contadas sobre nós por outros, incluindo aqueles que nos escravizariam, que são e podem se tornar e que decidem; tudo isso é um terreno de luta contra sistemas de opressão, falsificação, mercantilização e desumanização, e muitas vezes um terreno mutável, construído de verdades relativas como um Portão Rashomon do ser humano, significado e valor.
A adoção pelo Brasil de um feriado nacional na data da morte do grande líder da revolta de escravos Zumbi em uma batalha gloriosa nas mãos das forças colonialistas é um estudo de caso do que chamo de Teoria Narrativa da Identidade, na qual a autoconstrução é uma forma de revolução e o principal ato definidor de se tornar humano.
Celebre conosco o grande guerreiro, rei e figura da libertação Zumbi e seu desafio até a morte daqueles que nos escravizariam, e a república livre de Palmares que ele liderou na revolução anticolonial e uma guerra de independência de um século contra vastas forças de conquista e domínio imperial e sistemas de opressão e terror da supremacia branca, quem quer que ele tenha sido e qualquer reino rebelde que ele defendeu, pois tudo o que realmente importa é que ele detém um espaço imaginário em que cada um de nós pode entrar e se tornar, não importa a miséria de nossas condições iniciais.
Que um homem viveu e foi real que se recusou a se submeter é o suficiente para nos lembrarmos e sonharmos em ser, pois cada um de nós pode se tornar aquele homem que sonhamos
12 de janeiro de 2023 Uma História da Revolução no Brasil e da Contra-Revolução Fascista: Liberdade Versus Tirania, Lula Versus Bolsonaro
Na esteira do colapso da contra-revolução fascista de Bolsonaro e da tentativa de golpe no Brasil, a rápida reação de Lula nas prisões em massa dos camisas marrons traidoras que invadiram os escritórios do governo em imitação da fracassada Insurreição de 6 de janeiro de Trump, ela mesma modelada em seu ídolo O Golpe da Cervejaria de Hitler e o repúdio nacional impressionante a Bolsonaro e sua captura fracassada do estado pelos povos vitoriosos do Brasil, agora começou uma nova fase de luta com a caçada para aqueles que financiam e organizam a tirania fascista, muito parecido com o que está em andamento agora na América por dois anos.
Uma conspiração insidiosa e de longo alcance contra a democracia, ligando as famílias criminosas de Trump e Bolsonaro e as forças da reação na América e no Brasil, começa a emergir, misturando malfeitores familiares e apologistas do Quarto Reich como Steve Bannon e Tucker Carlson com aberrações desconhecidas da natureza como Luiz Philippe de Orléans e Braganza, que busca um retorno ao trono do Brasil através de Trump e Bolsonaro como procuradores e agora está fugindo de debaixo de sua rocha como a coisa rastejante voraz e vil que todos os aristocratas são sob sua tinta dourada, conspirações que se ampliam para engolir redes inteiras de terror supremacista branco, terror sexual patriarcal teocrático, roubo plutocrático e oligárquico da riqueza pública e os estados carcerários xenófobos e hipócritas de força e controle que eles geram como instrumentos de riqueza, poder e privilégio da elite.
Nosso grande inimigo é o Quarto Reich global, que se transforma incessantemente e se adapta às condições de qualquer nação que vise para subversão e captura, e as interconexões entre regimes de tirania fascista são múltiplas e sutis. O fascismo usa muitas máscaras e, como um predador de emboscada na natureza, move-se entre nós por trás de miragens de mentiras e ilusões, histórias reescritas e vozes roubadas, imagens que capturam e distorcem. Aqui está um terreno de luta no qual todos nós devemos lutar, se quisermos assumir o controle de nossa própria identidade sob falsificação e divisão como condições de luta impostas.
Conforme escrito na série da Netflix quarta-feira, episódio três Friend Or Woe:
A Diretora Weems, preparando-se na quarta-feira em seu escritório por sabotar a celebração do líder peregrino que queimou vivos os Párias originais e construiu a cidade em suas terras e túmulos roubados, uma história repetida infinitamente em nossa história real; “Você é um imã de problemas.”
Quarta-feira: “Se problemas significam enfrentar mentiras, décadas de discriminação, séculos tratando párias como cidadãos de segunda classe ou pior…”
Diretora: “Do que você está falando?”
Quarta-feira: “Jericó. Por que esta cidade ainda tem um Dia de Divulgação?
Você não conhece sua história real com párias? A verdadeira história de Joseph Crackstone?
Diretora: “Sim. Até certo ponto.”
Quarta-feira: “Então por que ser cúmplice em seu encobrimento? Aqueles que esquecem a história estão fadados a repeti-la.”
Principal: “É aí que você e eu diferimos. Onde você vê desgraça, eu vejo oportunidade.
Talvez esta seja uma chance de reescrever os erros, de começar um novo capítulo nas relações normie-párias.
Quarta-feira: “Nada mudou desde Crackstone. Eles ainda nos odeiam. Só que agora eles adoçam com platitudes e sorrisos. Se você não está disposto a lutar pela verdade…”
Diretor: “Você não acha que eu quero a verdade? Claro que eu faço. Mas o mundo nem sempre é preto e branco. Existem tons de cinza.”
Quarta-feira: “Talvez para você. Mas ou eles escrevem nossa história ou nós. Você não pode ter as duas coisas.
30 de outubro de 2022 Vitória no Brasil: “Vamos viver novos tempos de paz, amor e esperança” promete o novo presidente Lula ao iniciar a restauração da democracia
Celebramos uma Esperança Desamparada vindicada e nos tornamos gloriosos na vitória dos povos do Brasil e de seu campeão Lula, dançando nas ruas e correndo descontroladamente além dos limites do Proibido.
Um monstro e tirano foi expulso de seu castelo, e isso é sempre motivo de comemoração. Sempre teremos esse momento de triunfo e a esperança que ele reserva para o nosso futuro, independentemente das provações que virão. Se tal esperança é uma dádiva ou uma maldição, cabe a cada um de nós viver e tornar real; mas agora são possíveis coisas que ontem não eram, e isso eu chamo de vitória.
Com as palavras de Glinda a Oz felicito Lula e os povos do Brasil; ‘Esperamos muito tempo por você, feiticeiro. E nós realmente precisamos que você seja o Mago que esperamos que você seja.
Um grande trabalho começa agora, como Biden na América, Lula no Brasil lidera a Restauração da Democracia em uma nação cujos sistemas, estruturas, instituições, valores e ideais foram danificados pela subversão, ruptura e fratura fascistas, mas cujo povo emerge do cadinho de seu forjamento invicto e renovado.
Um dia seremos uma Humanidade Unida e uma sociedade livre de iguais, e Lula como Biden será lembrado enquanto houver seres humanos entre os fundadores de uma nova humanidade e civilização, cuja visão moldará nosso ser, ou seja, e valor, informar nossas escolhas sobre como sermos humanos juntos por milênios e motivar nossa descoberta das possibilidades ilimitadas de nos tornarmos humanos.
Vamos cada um fazer o que pudermos para tornar o sonho da democracia real.
7 de setembro de 2022 Brasil comemora seu bicentenário de independência, e Bolsonaro o usa para armar o patriotismo a serviço de seu regime em um comício Trump-Nuremberg
Nesta gloriosa e jubilosa celebração de dois séculos de Independência do Brasil, que significam a libertação do colonialismo imperial e da aristocracia feudal, as sombras de nossa história ameaçam ressurgir e nos tomar mais uma vez em uma tirania de poder desigual sistêmico e hegemonias elitistas de riqueza e privilégio.
E a isso devemos resistir. Demos à tirania fascista a única resposta que ela merece; Nunca mais.
Bolsonaro citou Richard Nixon em seu comício Trump-Nuremberg; “Eu não sou bandido.”
Como em todas as grandes mentiras, um criminoso é exatamente o que é.
Da minha ligação com o Brasil e seus povos, estampada em minha alma pelo trauma de minha quase execução pela polícia ao resgatar meninos de rua abandonados que estavam caçando recompensas para a rica elite aristocrática, escrevi em meu post de 15 de julho de 2022, Deixe a esperança vencer o medo: Lula 2022; Entre meus modelos pessoais no antifascismo e na revolução está o personagem fictício de Harry Tuttle interpretado por Robert de Niro no filme Brasil, cuja frase “estamos todos juntos nisso”, ecoa por quarenta e poucos anos de minha vida e aventuras.
Deixe-me colocar isso no contexto; O Brasil foi minha primeira viagem solo ao exterior, voando para São Paulo quando eu tinha quatorze anos, no verão de 1974, para treinar com alguns colegas esgrimistas para os Jogos Pan-Americanos que estavam planejados para lá, embora mais tarde o local tenha sido transferido para México. Eu tinha um pouco de português de conversação recém-aprendido, um convite para ficar na casa de um menino da minha idade que eu conhecia do circuito de torneios de esgrima com quem eu poderia descobrir as travessuras locais e visões de festas na praia.
Foi assim que entrei em um mundo de maneiras corteses e criados de luvas brancas, anfitriões graciosos e brilhantes que eram luminares locais e deram um magnífico baile formal para me apresentar, e um amigo com quem eu compartilhava uma paixão louca por esportes marciais e equestres , mas também um mundo de muros altos e guardas armados.
Minha primeira visão além dessa ilusão veio com os sons de tiros de fuzil dos guardas; quando olhei da minha sacada para ver quem estava atacando o portão da frente, descobri que os guardas estavam atirando em uma multidão de mendigos, a maioria crianças, que assaltaram um caminhão que transportava os mantimentos semanais. Naquele dia fiz minha primeira excursão secreta além das muralhas.
Que verdades estão escondidas pelas paredes de nossos palácios, além das quais é proibido olhar? É fácil acreditar nas mentiras da autoridade quando alguém é membro da elite em cujo interesse eles alegam exercer poder e deixar de questionar seus próprios motivos e posição de privilégio. Mentiras terrivelmente fáceis de acreditar quando somos beneficiários de hierarquias de alteridade excludente, de riqueza e disparidade de poder e desigualdades sistematicamente fabricadas e armadas a serviço do poder, e de genocídio, escravidão, conquista e imperialismo.
Sempre preste atenção no homem atrás da cortina. Pois não existe autoridade justa, e como Dorothy diz no Mágico de Oz, ele é “apenas um velho farsante”, e suas mentiras e ilusões, força e controle, não servem a nenhum interesse além dos seus.
Sendo um menino americano ingênuo, senti que era meu dever relatar o incidente; mas na delegacia tive dificuldade em me fazer entender. Eles achavam que eu estava ali para apostar na minha guarda em um concurso mensal em andamento para o qual policial pegasse o maior número de crianças de rua; havia um quadro-negro na parede da estação para isso. Foi assim que as elites do Brasil escolheram resolver o problema das crianças de rua abandonadas, dez por cento da população nacional. Outro jogo de apostas chamado “o Grande”, foi aquele em que o policial chutou a barriga das mais grávidas e ficou entre as dez maiores causas de morte no Brasil para adolescentes, invariavelmente vivendo em zonas de favelas que abrigam as mais pobres e negras do mundo. cidadãos; isso em uma cidade fundada por escravos africanos fugidos como uma república livre.
Aprendi muito nas semanas que se seguiram; sobretudo aprendi quem é o responsável por essas desigualdades; somos, se não desafiarmos e desafiarmos a tirania e os sistemas injustos.
Durante as noites de minhas aventuras além dos muros e ações para ajudar os bandos de mendigos infantis e obstruir as caças de recompensas da polícia, tive uma experiência traumática de quase morte, semelhante às execuções simuladas de Maurice Blanchot pelos nazistas em 1944, conforme escrito em The Instant de Minha Morte e Fiódor Dostoiévski pela polícia secreta do Czar em 1849, conforme escrito em O Idiota; fugindo da perseguição por um labirinto de túneis com uma criança ferida entre outros e presos a céu aberto por dois fuzileiros da polícia que tomaram posições de flanco e apontaram para nós enquanto o líder pedia rendição além da curva de um túnel. Fiquei na frente de um menino com uma perna torcida que não podia correr enquanto os outros espalhavam uma e escapou ou encontrou esconderijos, e se recusou a ficar de lado quando ordenado a fazê-lo. Isso foi reflexivo e uma decisão do instinto abaixo do nível do pensamento consciente ou volição, onde as verdades que nós mesmos escrevemos em nossa carne são forjadas e reveladas. Pediram para deixar alguém morrer para me salvar, eu simplesmente disse não. Quando o pensamento me fez sair desse momento de pânico ou transcendência de mim mesmo, perguntei quanto nos deixaria ir embora, e então ele ordenou que seus homens atirassem. Mas houve apenas um tiro em vez de uma demonstração de fogo cruzado, e isso foi um grande erro; ele teve tempo de perguntar “O quê?” antes de cair no chão.
E então nossos socorristas se revelaram, tendo se aproximado da polícia por trás; os Matadors, que podem ser descritos como vigilantes, uma gangue criminosa, um grupo revolucionário, ou todos os três, fundados pelo notório vigilante e criminoso brasileiro Pedro Rodrigues Filho, famoso por vingar o assassinato selvagem de sua mãe matando seu pai e comendo seu coração, que havia sido preso no ano anterior após uma série espetacular de cem ou mais assassinatos por vingança dos criminosos mais diabólicos e monstruosos, homens poderosos fora do alcance da lei que haviam perpetrado atrocidades contra mulheres e crianças. Nessa temível irmandade fui acolhido, com as palavras; “Você é um de nós”, e nas ruas de São Paulo naquele verão nunca mais fiquei sozinho.
“Não podemos salvar a todos, mas podemos vingar”; assim eles se descreveram para mim, e essa definição de solidariedade como práxis ou ação de valores permanece comigo e obscurece meu uso do grito de guerra Nunca Mais! Como Shakespeare escreveu em O Mercador de Veneza, Ato III, cena I; “Se você nos ofender, não devemos nos vingar?”
A partir do momento em que vi os guardas da família aristocrática com quem eu era hóspede atirando contra a multidão de crianças sem-teto e mendigos que fervilhavam o caminhão de alimentos no portão da mansão, nus e esqueléticos de fome, cheios de cicatrizes, aleijados e deformados com doenças desconhecidas a qualquer povo para quem os cuidados de saúde e a alimentação básica sejam gratuitos e pré-condições garantidas do direito universal à vida, desesperados por um punhado de alimentos que possam significar mais um dia de sobrevivência; naquele momento eu escolhi o meu lado, e meu povo são os impotentes e os despossuídos, os silenciados e os apagados; todos aqueles a quem Frantz Fanon chamava de miseráveis da terra.
Junte-se a nós, pois a Humanidade Unida não pode ser escravizada, conquistada, desumanizada, falsificada ou mercantilizada, nem a tirania pode se opor à liberdade quando o povo se recusa a se submeter.
Pois somos muitos, estamos observando e somos o futuro.
Brazil, a reading list
History
Brazil: A Biography, Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, Heloisa Murgel Starling
A Death in Brazil: A Book of Omissions, Peter Robb
Dancing with the Devil in the City of God: Rio de Janeiro on the Brink,
Juliana Barbassa
Carnival under Fire, Ruy Castro
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/136466740-rio-de-janeiro?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_34
Angola Janga: Uma História de Palmares, Marcelo d’Salete
After Palmares: Diaspora, Inheritance, and the Afterlives of Zumbi, Marc A Hertzman
Fiction
The War of the End of the World, Mario Vargas Llosa
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53925.The_War_of_the_End_of_the_World
The Slum, Aluísio Azevedo
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/949601.The_Slum?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_27
Macunaíma, Mario de Andrade
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1099648.Macunaima?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_30
City of God, Paulo Lins
Captains of the Sands, Jorge Amado
The War of the Saints, Jorge Amado
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/214841.The_War_of_the_Saints
Tent of Miracles, Jorge Amado
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/214836.Tent_of_Miracles
Shepherds of the Night, Jorge Amado
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/802468.Shepherds_of_the_Night
Reading with Clarice Lispector, Hélène Cixous
The Complete Stories, Clarice Lispector, Katrina Dodson (Translator),
Benjamin Moser (Introduction / Editor)
The Passion According to G.H., Clarice Lispector
The Book of Chameleons, José Eduardo Agualusa
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1159038.The_Book_of_Chameleons?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_47
The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts, Louis de Bernières
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3394.The_War_of_Don_Emmanuel_s_Nether_Parts?ref=nav_sb_ss_2_60
Torch of Liberty 