Review: The Foreigners – Cristovam Buarque
The time is for election campaigns and the result, not publishing world, is the emergence of candidate books (written by themselves), offering a little of his profile and a lot of intellectual ammunition for the endless political debates. Suddenly, no meio destes livros "políticos" angry, emerges The foreigners – Adventure of opinion on the frontier of centuries (The Visionautas Collection – Garamond Publishing).
The book is made up of articles that the author published in the most varied newspapers., selected and arranged by related themes (even without formal divisions), creating a continuity that not only allows us to understand how Cristovam Buarque thinks, as well as Brazil itself.
While reading, the most sensitized reader will oscillate between wanting to close the book and trying to forget everything they have read, and leaving home and doing something for Brazil. Your positions are incisive and clear; It is clear that the selected articles do not want to present a weekend book, to read without obligation.
The pertinence of the criticisms and the author's ability to expose profound truths in two or three pages draws attention.. The book is dedicated to Celso Furtado and Gilberto Freyre, two exponents of Brazilian intellectuality whose voices are echoed and updated in these pages by Cristovam Buarque.
Explaining Brazil is difficult, especially when you are afraid of hurting the pride of this or that group. The author's thinking overcomes this problem because he understands that Brazil is made by Brazilians, and we all share the same historical-social imaginary. In the author's own words, "o maior entrave à erradicação da pobreza está no fato de que o brasileiro deseja ser rico antes mesmo de deixar de ser pobre" (p. 77).
The social principles that are presented to us during the reading reveal to us. But it is a nude that is only ours, Certainly a foreigner will not be able to understand all the messages that the book brings; However, many of us won't be able to either (or will we want?) to understand, veremos um livro de coisas "instrangeiras".
A small selection of excerpts shows a little of this Brazil seen by Cristovam Buarque and ignored by so many of us.
Elite-people relationship and Brazilian world-elite relationship: "A elite brasileira se surpreende ao perceber que o capital global trata como pedintes todos os brasileiros, including the rich" (p. 59).
Inequality is not synonymous with difference: "Estas elites viam o povo como diferente, no resemblance to them, as much as today's rich Brazilians see the poor" (p. 66).
Unjust everyday events are soon seen as normal: "Nós já estamos acostumados a volta ao normal depois de chacinas, child murders, disclosure of the worst social indicators in the world, corruption in politics, fires in the Amazon. It's a rare week when something like this doesn't occur and everything continues as normal." (p.69).
The role of the State: "A erradicação da pobreza só será conseguida quando o Estado brasileiro sair do paternalismo a favor dos ricos e se transformar em mobilizador do imenso potencial que existe nas massas brasileiras, channeling it towards producing what they need to escape poverty" (p. 75).
The elite and the country: "O maior problema brasileiro não é a falta de dinheiro para criar os empregos necessários aos desempregados, but the elite's lack of sensitivity towards social problems, the kidnapping of the Brazilian imagination by traditional economic thought and the imprisonment of economists by an economic logic incapable of creating jobs" (p. 99).
Reading is enormously enriching when we keep in mind that the author is more than an intellectual, & Eacute; & iacute one inch, typical, that turns your ideas into practice; who does not use his words in an exercise of rhetoric but in an exercise of dialogue.
Perhaps among the main characteristics of the author, is precisely the one that is most important for a politician: the indignation. Politics cannot be the art of appeasing speeches, must be the path to building a society and this requires us to stand up against injustices.
"O quadro brasileiro pode ser menos impactante do que as chamas e as ruínas concentradas das torres americanas, but it is no less serious – and the number of victims is certainly many times greater. Therefore, naturalness as tolerated by our rulers is not justified. The same ones who are teary-eyed by the tragic spectacle of the ruins in New York and don’t even visit the kingdoms of ‘our towers’, they don't talk to our survivors, do not wage war against social terror" (p. 142). Originally published in:
magazine Author
Culture
Year II – N. 13 – July 2002
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