“Brazilian democracy reached the knife edge several times, to the point of complete collapse, and then suddenly we were surprised, and learned how to deal with tyranny and threats of coups,” writer and composer José Miguel Wisnik said at the launch of the book “A Palavra eo Poder – uma Travessia Crítica por 40 anos de Democracia Brasileira” in Lisbon on Wednesday (26).
Wisnik pointed out the coincidence between the launch of the bulletin and the news coming from the country. “Brazil has not reached the abyss of the coup attempt and is being punished.”
partnership Bound From the Record’s editorial collection, the book collects 41 texts published in the newspaper over 40 years of democracy, contextualized and commented on by journalists and relevant figures in Brazilian public debate.
The project was launched at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, a symbolic landmark for the restoration of democracy in Portugal. There, in 1975, the headquarters for counting the country’s first elections after the end of the Salazar dictatorship was established.
The launch committee brought together Brazilians Wesnik and Milena Brito, two of the three curators of the exhibition “Complexo Brasil,” on display at the same Gulbenkian Museum; Portuguese Capicua and Rodrigo Tavares, is a rapper and writer, and is the author of the book and one of its organizers (along with journalists from Bound Flavia Lima and Naif Haddad); Journalist Mafalda Angus is the moderator of the conversation.
Executive Editor L BoundVinicius Motta was in charge of the opening speech.
Milena Brito, a professor at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), spoke about politics and culture, bridging the gap between the book “A Palavra eo Poder” and the exhibition of which she was one of the curators. He said, “We celebrate the bright side of democracy, but there is also a dark side. There are those who use democratic principles for purposes that are not necessarily democratic.”
“At this moment, we are often saved by art and culture, by the words that come from the streets and turn into struggle and resistance.”
Capecoa stated that Brazil is a source of cultural production and manifestations of civil society. “I feel proud that I speak the same language and have access to all of this,” she said.
According to her, “In Brazilian democracy, it is interesting to follow the growth of manifestations such as feminism, especially black Brazilian feminism.”
Rodrigo Tavares, a professor at the Nova de Lisbon University, compared the processes of restoring democracy in Brazil and Portugal. “Both countries came from very long dictatorships and from the beginning tried to create social rights in their constitutions – we had no SUS in Brazil and no equivalent, the SNS, in Portugal.”
According to him, “Brazil and Portugal also have similar perceptions. The two oscillate between backwardness and the desire to become a power. Portugal looks to the past, and Brazil to the future.”
In his intervention, Vinicius Motta pointed out that the text published in Bound About the Carnation Revolution, in April 1974, was written by the Portuguese journalist Victor Cunha Rego, who was influential in the formation of Otavio Frias Filho, responsible in the 1980s for modernizing and professionalizing the newspaper.
“Journalism moves away from sectarianism and approaches the public when all powerful people, despite their ideological inclinations, are subjected to the same sieve of criticism,” Mota said, recalling the common belief of Frias Filho and Cunha Rigó.
In his final speech, Tavares highlighted the strength of Brazilian civil society as one of the engines of restoring democracy in the country. In the 1970s, during the dictatorship period, in a pioneering way,… Bound It opened its pages to champions of civil society, who criticized the regime in the role of columnists and collaborators.
This was followed naturally by the newspaper’s leading role in the Diretas Já campaign, with the slogan “Use yellow for Diretas”. Tavares pointed to the text written by Ulysses Guimarães in the midst of this campaign, on January 25, 1984, as one of the highlights of the book.