By LEONARDO BOFF*
The Passion of Christ continues throughout the centuries in the bodies of historically crucified black people
On November 20th, we celebrated Black Awareness Day, for the first time at a national level. For this occasion, I wrote this text as a tribute to this date.
The Passion of Christ continues throughout the centuries in the bodies of historically crucified black people. Jesus will agonize until the end of the world, as long as there is a single one of his brothers and sisters still hanging on a cross. With this conviction, the Catholic Church, in the liturgy of Good Friday, places these poignant words in the mouth of Jesus Christ: “What have I done to you, my chosen people? Tell me how I have grieved you! What more could I have done, what was it that I failed you? I brought you out of Egypt, I fed you with manna. I prepared a beautiful land for you, you, the cross for your king.”
Celebrating National Black Awareness Day, we realize that it has not yet been fully embraced. There is a lot of discrimination on the streets and on social media against Afro-Brazilians, affecting many ordinary black people, workers, soccer players and even famous actors and actresses. How many young black men are executed by the police in the favelas of our cities? In a decade, from 2012 to 2022, 79% of male homicide victims were black. The study released by the Institute I'm for Peace It is shocking: 8 out of every 10 men killed by firearms are black.
These data reveal to us that the passion of Christ continues in the passion of these Afro-Brazilian people. The second abolition of poverty, hunger, unemployment and discrimination is missing.
In solidarity with all of them, I wrote this short poem-reflection, inspired by the Catholic liturgy of Good Friday:
“My white brother, my white sister, my people: what have I done to you and how have I grieved you? Answer me!
I inspired you with music full of banzo and contagious rhythm. I taught you how to use the bass drum, the cuíca and the atabaque. I was the one who showed you rock and the samba swing. And you took what was mine, made a name for yourself and made a name for yourself, accumulated money with your compositions and shows and gave nothing back to me.
I came down from the hills, I showed you a world of dreams, of a fraternity without barriers. I created a thousand multicolored fantasies and prepared for you the biggest party in the world: I danced Carnival for you. And you were happy and applauded me standing up. But soon, you forgot me, sending me back to the hills, the favelas, to the harsh reality of unemployment, hunger, discrimination and oppression.
My white brother, my white sister, my people: what have I done to you and how have I grieved you? Answer me!
I gave you my daily meal, beans and rice. From the leftovers I received, I made feijoada, vatapá, efó and acarajé: the typical cuisine of Bahia. And you let me go hungry. And you allow my children to die of hunger or for their brains to be irreparably affected, infantilizing them forever.
I was violently torn from my African homeland. I saw the ghost ship of the slave traders on which so many died and were thrown into the sea. When I arrived here, I was made into a thing, a “piece of work,” a slave. I was the black mother to your sons and daughters. I cultivated the fields, planted tobacco for cigarettes and sugar cane. I did all the work. I helped build much of what exists in this country, monuments, palaces, and colonial churches in which many became great artists. And you call me lazy and arrest me for vagrancy. Because of the color of my skin, you discriminate against me and treat me as if I were still in slavery.
My white brother, my white sister, my people: what have I done to you and how have I grieved you? Answer me!
I knew how to resist, I managed to escape and found thousands of quilombos: fraternal and sororal societies, without slaves, of poor but free people, black men, women, mixed-race people and poor white people. Despite the lash on my back, I transmitted cordiality and sweetness to the Brazilian soul. And you hunted me like an animal, you destroyed my quilombos and even today you prevent the abolition of the poverty that enslaves and the discrimination that hurts from continuing as daily and effective realities.
I showed you what it means to be a living temple of God. And, therefore, how to feel God in your body filled with axé and celebrate Him in rhythm, dance and sacred foods. And you repressed my religions by calling them Afro-Brazilian rites or simple folklore. Often, you made macumba a police case.
My white brother, my white sister, my people: what have I done to you and how have I grieved you? Answer me!
When, with much effort and sacrifice, I managed to move up a bit in life, earning a hard-earned salary, buying my little house, educating my sons and daughters, singing my samba, cheering for my favorite team and being able to have a beer with my friends on the weekends, you say that I am a black man with a white soul, thus diminishing the value of our souls as black men, dignified and hard-working. And in competitions in the same conditions, I am almost always overlooked in favor of a white man. Because I am black, male or female.
And when public policies were devised by a government that cares for the people, to repair the historical infamy, allowing me to do what you have always denied me: to study and graduate from universities and technical schools and thus improve my life and that of my family, most of your people shout: it is against the constitution, it is discrimination, it is social injustice. But finally the Justice system has now done us justice and opened the doors of universities and technical schools to us.
My white brother, my white sister, my people: What have I done to you and how have I grieved you? Answer me!”
“Answer me, please.”
And we white people, those who have the means, the knowledge and the power, generally remain silent, ashamed and with our heads bowed. It is time to listen to the cries of our Afro-descendant brothers and sisters, join forces with them and build together an inclusive, pluralistic, black, mixed-race, fraternal and cordial society where there will never again be, as there still are in the countryside and in the cities, people who dare to enslave other people.
May we be able to shout: “No more slavery.” And by wiping away our tears, we can respond to discrimination with love and understanding, as so many Afro-descendants do. And one day, only God knows when, we will all be able to say together, as in the Apocalypse, without revenge or resentment: “All this has passed.”
*Leonardo Boff He is a theologian, philosopher and writer. Author, among other books, of Sustainability: What it is – What it is not (Vozes). [https://amzn.to/4cOvulH]
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