Translator: Claudia Sander Reviewer: Mara Becker
Good morning.
This week, on Tuesday,
I was leaving work as I do every evening,
and down the street there was a car,
it was turned on, with a person inside, probably waiting for someone.
And out of nowhere, a big feeling of fear swept over me.
I kept looking at that car, wondering where could I hide
if two, three armed people got out of it and came toward me.
I saw a garden at left, I guess I would hide there.
But obviously they would find me,
they would put a black plastic bag over my head
and they would take me to a place I would maybe never find out where it was.
Of course this didn’t came out of nowhere.
As I said, it happened this Tuesday, April 1st,
50 years after the military coup.
I've spent the whole day reading testimonials and testimonies,
and this probably stood in my subconscious.
But this fear of something I've never lived
reminded me of a fear I experienced:
the fear I felt last year, in June,
at the end of the protests.
I was running, fleeing from the police in the darkened streets,
afraid that the police would be coward, arbitrary.
This fear - and at the time the police had only rubber bullets -
this perception, this fear led me to another fear,
to another thought:
imagine how bad it must be to live and grow up in a slum,
where you walk down the street and there are children,
adults, young men armed with guns,
but also how bad it must be living in a slum
occupied by a police force that frightens you.
Because the police is the state legitimated.
When someone violates your rights,
you can always call on the state.
But who do you call on when it's the state who violates your rights?
I'm not saying that the UPPs project,
the Pacifying Police Units,
has no advancement, achievements or merits.
Far be it from me to deny it.
But as my right-wing friends love to say,
there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
And the question is: how much are we willing to pay for it?
We pay the police that kills the most in the world
because 72% of the young who die in Brazil
are black.
Seventy-two percent.
Is it worth it?
We live in a militarized state, legitimized by fear.
And fear dehumanizes us.
We get appart from each other,
we stop recognizing ourserlves in the other
and thus we stop caring about each other.
Seventy-two percent of the young who die being black
is just a number to me.
In fact, it is a number, but it's a number of people.
Fear does this to us.
Fear does this to them, and makes us do this to them.
When I say that fear dehumanizes us,
I don’t think fear makes us less humane.
On the contrary, fear is part of the human being,
because each one has their own fears.
And this is to be humane,
what makes you unique, individual.
When I say that fear dehumanizes us,
I mean that fear keeps us away from humanity.
Humanity is what we share and what makes us equal.
Ignoring that the different, the humane,
is also somehow equal, humanity,
turns a man capable of chaining a boy to a pole.
It's for dehumanizing him so much, for reducing him to so little,
that the man no longer cares.
But the question I want to ask is: why a man, a vindicator,
chains a black boy to a pole?
Why does he think that a black, poor,
and probably underdressed boy,
is a burglar and not a student?
Because, in Brazil, out of 3.8 million children who are out of school,
66% are black.
Sixty-six percent.
Black.
Again.
We need to talk,
we need to talk about this.
The biggest problem is that this isn’t our problem.
Because we don't talk about it.
Because if it were, we would talk about it.
What matters to me, what bothers me, I speak out.
Silence gives consent.
There’s a German philosopher, Hannah Arendt -
she was Jewish and was banished from Germany by Nazism -
who wrote a book called "Men in Dark Times",
and at a certain part of the book,
she says that the world isn't humane only by being made ​​by humans,
but it becomes humane
when it becomes the object of our speech.
We need to talk.
Because by talking, we acknowledge that the problem exists.
And more important: we take care of it.
We need to talk about the vindicator and the boy
because the fact that the black boy has less access to education,
the fact that he is more likely to die young,
that the black boy turns into a robber
and the state does nothing about it,
shows that the state failed, the state lacked.
But more than this black boy,
a man, a vindicator, chaining the boy to the pole
shows us that our society also failed.
The society also broke down.
I understand what it means to live in a state
that doesn't guarantee and doesn't respect our rights.
When I was 16, I was invited to attend a project from my school
which every year takes three students and three employees to Marajó Island.
Marajó is in northern Pará
and it is the largest river-sea island of the world.
Eight of its 16 municipalities are among the 50 worst HDIs in Brazil,
including the worst of all.
There I met people who lived in houses with unimaginable conditions of life.
Without basic sanitation at all,
with no other access to water but using the river water for drinking,
for bathing, cooking, toilet flushing.
Most of times, without bathroom at home
no school nearby,
the nearest hospital being a 5-hour boat trip away.
For those who have a boat,
because for those who doesn't, it can take a lifetime to get there.
I remember looking at it
and perceiving the indifference and absence of the state
bothered me so much, because I felt guilty about it.
How could I live in a place
where the state tries so hard to pretend all the time that everything is fine,
and they could live in a place
where the state pretends all the time they don't exist?
But I was only 16 and had no idea
what I could do to change everything.
Then I asked the friar who accompanied us,
"Friar, what can I do when I get back?
I know I'm only 16,
that apparently I can’t do anything, but what can I do?"
And he replied, "Luti, become a multiplier.
Multiply what you saw here,
what you lived and felt here."
It wasn't that much, but it was more than just praying, right?
I got somewhat crazy, I began to introduce myself,
"Hi, I'm Luti, have you been to Marajó?"
And then I showed some photos and videos from there.
What I didn't know at that time
is that multiplying that pain has nothing to do with intensifying it.
You break it.
You share it.
You recognize it and act upon it, you react.
It's about humanizing me and the other.
A year later I went back to Marajó
with an uncle who is a doctor and cousins who were medical students.
And on this trip I got the greatest gift of my life.
I was invited to be Luan's godfather,
a boy for whom I'm extremely passionate.
But on this trip I realized that youth were no longer happy
with the life they had.
They thought they were not important, accountable, useful there.
At this moment I realized
that doing nothing is as relevant as doing something.
Because doing nothing is to become part of it,
is to allow things to continue as they are.
Luan was baptized in February, 2011,
and in December, 2011, I went back to Marajó
to inaugurate our first library
with a little over 300 books.
Much more than just a library, it was the first step on a journey
of recognition, reframing,
reinvention of the young, the people, the riparians,
and their role in the community, in the city and in the world.
Then we decided to organize "Lute Sem Fronteiras"
- "Lute", not "Luti" -
at this library, and it went directly to Facebook.
And on Facebook we heard that books are passports for dreams.
Books are passports for dreams.
And with so many books, so many dreams, so many we have already seen,
soon we were opening new libraries,
making community gardens,
taking care of typical fruits and trees of the region.
We even built a school with over 200 square meters.
Together.
Of course, Lute Sem Fronterias was formalized,
it became a nonprofit NGO,
with the mission of promoting local sustainable development
of coastal communities in Marajó,
but endogenously,
always having their own people responsible for the change.
In these few years we directly impacted more than 400 people,
but this doesn't mean that the state is not flawed.
This is just to say that a failed society
can’t solve a failed state.
Justice is done with rights and examples,
not with vengeance, violence or barbarism.
I remember that, when Lute Sem Fronteiras already achieved some recognition,
a journalist asked me
what was missing for Brazil to become a better place.
If it was more youth as me.
Of course not!
More youth as me would make Marajó a better place, not Brazil.
What is missing, and I say this humbly from where I live and come, is empathy.
And I fail on that too!
If I have more empathy with the janitor of my building,
with the bus driver that I take, with the preppy from school,
with the person who dies in the slum besides my house,
Brazil would be a better place.
And I said "the person" who dies in the slum next to my house,
and not “innocent”, “bandit”, “police”,
because if life differentiates us,
death makes us equals.
Because in the end, the one who lives is the killer.
I think there is a lack of empathy,
because empathy is the greatest proof
of majesty and fragility of the human being.
Because then we are able to feel pain even though it's not our own pain.
Or to feel joy even though we're not the lucky guy.
Because through empathy, humane connects with humanity.
I came here today to multiply.
Multiply pain, fear, dreams, hopes and stories.
I came here today to talk,
talk about issues, about our racist society,
about people who are chained, about vindicators,
about the riparian community that turns my sleep into dreaming.
Hanna Arendt was right.
The world isn't humane only because it is made by humans.
We need to be humanity.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)