End of dignity
It’s been almost two years, we left our country and now live in Toronto. This city is really AWESOME. I am no longer a journalist who would work to other areas for money and collaborate with causes for idealism, but a survivor who needs to make a living in a strange but better world, in the middle of a global pandemic that stopped everything.
Some people ask me why did I leave Brazil, but it is so hard to express everything. Recently, I read something here at Medium and remembered I had an account too. After reading my last text, I felt it should be translated, so maybe I’ll review it and get a short and more comprehensible explanation. I can not just keep saying: “Just don’t go there right now…”
I wish I had more experience writing in English since I want to live and work here. Still, all I did in Brazil was some subtitle translations, news, and web articles translations, all about what foreign media was talking about the country during the coup d’etat that impeached the first female and possibly the less corrupt president in Brazil’s history. Nothing was proved against her; none of the allegations were true. After this, everything started to fall apart in the name of profit.
It was like seeing hungry beasts feasting on their defenseless prey. Because after two decades of a “kind of” left-wing government by a so-called Worker’s Party (PT), that was able to give dignity to the hungry people who used to work for food, just like slaves. This so-called Worker’s Party also made Brazil great as never before, banks and agribusiness, and the national oil company, Petrobras, never profited like that (and never did again, it has been sold for a banana price to foreign companies). So, I will stop here before I get too angry to translate the last text from my Portuguese Medium space. The text is summarized below:
The end of dignity
That is how I feel about Brazil now, and for the next few years, the dignity that the country once had achieved is totally gone. It wasn’t much, let’s be honest, but it was some. We were celebrating leaving the hunger map, you see. It’s not a big deal, and it’s the minimum if we consider that we already believe that this is the “country of the future” full of natural resources and blessed by God! We even rejoined the UN Security Council — which will not happen again until 2033 — and we had the audacious intention to mediate the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis…
God was used to diminishing the dignity of the miserable, of all of those already marginalized, those who never had a chance. The Christian church is also responsible for demonizing diverse thinking, preaching material wealth as an ideal of prosperity, as a gift from God, and not due to capitalism and social inequality. Christ himself spoke against these Pharisees: “… they do not practice what they preach. They tie heavy burdens and place them on the shoulders of men, but they themselves are not willing to lift a single finger to move them. ”
Men, people of Brazil are very diverse and financially needy. There are all kinds of people, it cannot be said that just because someone is poor, such a person is ignorant, but privileges enable experiences. Some people — mainly women — spend their whole lives without ever leaving the city where they were born… There are many places forgotten even by God here (but never by the churches!). Brazilian people want to be good, but they have been indoctrinated for decades to be just workforce, preferably qualified, but mostly cheap. Also indoctrinated to be very humble and grateful for the possibility of being just that, “the labor dignifies the man” is repeated a lot since we are a child. It doesn’t matter that your hard, daily, tiring, or monotonous work doesn’t pay enough for you to live with dignity — the work itself dignifies it, so if you already work, be thankful and feel worthy for it.
I feel it’s the end of dignity, and it’s getting worse. I began to feel this when the law on unemployment insurance was changed. Previously the worker was entitled to insurance after a semester of work and contribution, now only after two years. Now, imagine having to spend two years in a bad job to have the security of an unemployment insurance salary while looking for a new position. Anyone who has actually looked for a new job knows that it is not that easy to do interviews and participate in selections while being employed and meeting goals and schedules in a position that you want to leave. Two years. Some workers applauded because “these arrogant young people keep jumping from job to job and don’t dedicate themselves! Back in my days, one had to be a doormat to get a tip! ”. Some people hate the concept of evolution.
Dilma was still president, elected by the so-called Workers’ Party. As she did not veto this change, it hurt and turned on a warning light, but I didn’t want to see it. I was one of those naive who were sure that Alckmin would win this election because it was a somewhat predictable path. Globo (the leading Brazilian broadcast company) gave the cards as usual and electing its favorite.
I am still shocked by the election of the fascist. It is the end of our dignity in the world, a lot of press has reverberated everywhere that the president-elect here has very authoritarian characteristics or worse. Our pride was shaken when we elected and let the first female president of Brazil be taken away by blow — who proved innocent and will never be able to reward that woman for what she suffered for that country. Now it’s over for good. We elected via direct vote a fascist who promises to barbarize. It wasn’t a scam. We allowed this guy to grow up ourselves. We underestimate the results of the impunity of the last dictatorship.
That’s it now. Our dignity went to shit, and it is not for less. Some delusions compare the fascist with Trump, in a delirium of the grandeur of those who think that Brazil can compare itself to the USA as if the effects of social inequality were not much more devastating here.
Resistance is necessary, it is beautiful, it is extremely courageous or inevitable for the vast majority, but it is not for me now. Not with four children to raise and being able to leave. We are researching options to leave the country, and I probably won’t be back. I don’t think my kids will want to come back too. If they grow up elsewhere, they will also grow roots…
And maybe my grandchildren, in another place in a new time, will not forget this escape in search of more dignity for them, maybe they will not embarrass our memory by ending the grace of the place where their ancestors — we — believe it to be a better place, a country of the future.
