Back
to an out-of-the-way
Brazilian village
By
Jonathan
Power
April 8th 2004
LONDON - There is a widely held opinion abroad that
Brazil never had the chance of profoundly changing for
the better- shedding its widespread poverty and dire
income distribution- until Lula (President Luiz
Inácio da Silva) came along last year. This is not
entirely false, but neither is it entirely true. Brazil
has long made a kind of progress- in the last century it
was second only to Taiwan as the fastest growing economy
in the world- but it has been appallingly uneven.
Part of the story of contemporary Brazil is clear to
the eye in this small village of 7,000 people in the arid
north east, along with the Amazon the poorest part of
this vast country. Twenty five years or so ago I used to
come to Pilõezinhos regularly when I had a close
friend living here, Valéria Rezende, a radical,
grass roots-stirring nun, part of the Catholic Church
then wedded to liberation theology and the overthrow, or
at least undermining, of the dictatorship that ruled the
country in the 1960s, 70s and early 80s. But until today
I haven't been back for 17 years.
It's still the same sun-beaten village square with
loaded donkeys and the houses of the richer peasants
built in simple Portuguese colonial style with their
yellow and blue facades and roofed with red clay tiles.
It's still the same coconut and banana groves and behind
them the homes of the landless on the hills behind,
rudely built from sticks and clay. Rising into the mist
are the orange groves, the sisal estates and the sugar
plantations of the latifundiario, the large landowners
who from far away- from Recife or even Rio- still give
the orders and take away most of the money. At first
sight its haunting beauty is the kind of place Gauguin
would make famous. At second sight it is a Picasso
mask.
When I used to visit, every day a child died in
Pilõezinhos. The undertaker lived in Guarabira, a
nearby market town, half an hour away along a road,
ravined and potholed that was barely navigable by the
twice daily bus. In his shop were the stacked layers of
children's coffins: blue with white crosses on top. More
often than not the children went alone to the cemetery to
bury their companions. Fathers often only heard of their
children's deaths when they got back home on their annual
holiday from the building sites and factories of Sao
Paulo, a week's journey on the back of a truck.
I wrote at the time that I felt "the will to live in
Pilõezinhos is slowly ebbing". (See IHT of July
2nd and 7th, 1977.) I remember an old man on the bus
telling me his landlord had said that this was the last
year he could rent his small piece of land. His landlord
was going to put down the land for sugar cane to
fabricate ethanol then being pushed hard by the
government as a substitute for high priced oil.
Today there are a few more houses and a couple more
streets. But the square now has half a dozen cars and a
batch of motorcycle taxis that can spin a passenger to
Guarabira on a new metalled road in barely five minutes.
There are two small supermarkets, a bank, a post office,
two dispensaries selling generic medicines and an
agricultural advisor, marketing advice and new seeds to
the peasants. There is a clinic with a resident doctor
who tells me that the children very rarely die these
days. Next door there is a primary school bursting with
young, happy faces and copy books open at a map of Europe
which they have just drawn. (I remember last time, out
walking with Valéria, a peasant asked her what was
that I was talking. He had never heard a foreign language
before and did not know that such a thing existed.)
I am invited in by the deputy mayor. Her house has a
flush toilet and running water. She tells me half the
village has these facilities. She takes me to the
village's pride and joy- a little town hall, a converted
shop front, with a simple square of tables for the
elected councilors and six rows of chairs for those who
want to see how democracy is done.
Seventeen years ago Pilõezinhos seemed struck
by the somnolence of exhaustion. Even the religious
festivals were no longer celebrated. Today the streets
are full and the shops are bustling.
"So all this happened before Lula became president?" I
ask Valéria. She smiles at me, amused at my
naiveté. "Lula has been on the scene and pushing
this country hard for nearly 30 years", she says, "And we
in the Church did our bit too".
As we drove away I add: "and all without a shot being
fired. Not bad!"
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2004 By
JONATHAN POWER
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"Like
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