By LUIZ ROBERTO ALVES*
On behalf of the family, many vote for Bolsonaro, not realizing that a family without rights and guarantees is no longer a family, but a group of servants and slaves.
A few weeks ago, a sister participating in an evangelical community criticized the attitude of the President of the Republic during the pandemic, but said that she can vote for him because she defends the family. The lady's attitude deserves respect, because she lives her reality and her conscience at this moment in her life. In this way, what the current president has done, such as denial of vaccines, mockery towards those who took them (the case of Jacaré), contempt in the face of more than 660 dead (members of families now suffering) and the impoverishment of millions of families for the wrong economic attitudes, none of that was enough in the face of the fact that he "said that he preserves the family". The sister is defending a family that she has learned to love and respect from her life experience. From what she has seen, read or heard, the president defends the family, or rather, he defended it during his government.
Of course, building and valuing the family are important values, but families vary greatly in different places on our planet. There are families that go far beyond those “by blood” and are huge. There are small families, as the members consider that only the small group is family. There are families that develop around the woman and the sister thought of here probably imagines a different family, with a man capable of providing the basic needs, although the woman always has a role of the greatest importance. For quite some time now, governments have given the keys to popular houses in the hands of women in the family group, because many, millions of families do not have men at their head. Women are the great organizers.
The facts and data involving families are complex. Nothing simple. Even the treatment that people like within churches – sister and brother – shows that family never means a closed group. Jesus perhaps had a small family, starting from the experience of Nazareth, but he devoted much attention to larger groups that respected each other, that stayed together, that celebrated in common. It also happened that divorce has been known, in different forms, for a long time and in the biblical context it was a normal and regular reality. Jesus sometimes showed anger towards people who only accepted the truth “from their group”, “their family of faith” and that is why he valued the brotherhoods that seek to transform the world from injustice to justice. By the way, these groups, kind of families, do not exist only in Christianity. In addition, a family that is broken by separation can be put back together, but it will never be the same. The idea of family changes according to life's experiences.
Respect for the family thought of by the sister does not exclude reflection and perhaps conversation. Unfortunately, most churches do not feel part of Brazil, misinterpret the Gospels and, therefore, do not practice citizenship, which would mean holding meetings to discuss the country's course in this world and the needs of the people. As a result, people who participate in churches would make decisions about the best candidacies to get Brazil out of the moral, cultural, educational and economic quagmire it is in.
Let's go back to the family. It is not possible to impose or project “my” idea of family onto others. It is very likely that the sister of the faith community knows this, but the beautiful meaning of family that she has in her head is a reason to vote for the president again, just because he speaks in favor of the family. But he himself has been married three times, which is a problem when family and social life is well directed towards creating other families and ensuring the care of sons and daughters. All this is possible in the huge human society in which we live.
But certainly the president of the republic's idea of family is not the same as that of his sister, who has probably lived in his family for a long time, her husband and children, who still haven't left home, or who knows have left and returned. If the president were an honest and open person, he would speak more broadly about the family and recognize the problems of Brazilian families. In fact, to the extent that he throws the idea of family as a bait to catch the fish voters, who are those who believe that the family is what the sister of the church thinks, something does not add up. You can't believe him, because in fact he seems to know nothing about family, he has never studied or thought about the differences between families and he doesn't know or believe in that sister's family, although he wants her vote. He throws the word family, associated with God, into the air, not because he defends it, but because he wins votes.
If the president believed in the family and wished for their happiness, he would do the opposite of what he did in government and run after vaccines for Covid in order to start vaccinating three months earlier than we started. How can a man like that care for his family if he has helped to dismantle thousands of them with his Covid-19 denial? In the midst of an unknown and violent illness, he defended the economy and companies and not Brazilian families. Money was much more important than family. He only bought a vaccine after many protests, a lot of pressure and people dying.
Does he like poor families who gnaw bones for want of meat? If he liked it, he would have another political-economic plan. Or the black and mixed-race mothers who lose their children under the gunfire of ill-prepared and unethical police? Was he not able to see that in losing children families can lose themselves in life? No family is reconstituted many times; it changes, often for the worse. There is no known completely fixed concept of family. What really matters in the group that comes together to live is that it is happy, both the elders and their descendants.
A few days ago, at the Marcha do Silêncio, held in Ibirapuera Park, in São Paulo, which commemorates people murdered by governments and the Brazilian state, the mother of one of the boys killed in Paraisópolis, Denis, was present. Has anyone seen or heard the president of the republic show any feelings for the nine dead boys and girls? Did he not know that the violence of the police determined the destruction of several families? Did he worry about the despair of the mothers of the family? Could it be that your "family" is not just lip service? But spoken families do not exist. What exists is the family lived in reality.
It would be good for the sister to know that the family is not the one we think it is, but in fact the one we can build. Nothing to do with the family that is in the president's mouth. It is not the idea of family that matters, but the concrete life of the family in the real world. Was this not read in Judeo-Christian texts? Or are some pastors not at all prepared for their work?
There is no such family in time and space. Much less the families of pastors of churches similar to the sister's, many of whom want to impose the president's family talk when they don't practice that idea of family. They are inconsistent.
What exists in real life are constructions of families according to affections, values, needs, desires, thoughts, historical situation. But if we consider what this president has done since 2019, the families he prefers are those that existed in colonial times, who lived in big houses, while the families of the poor lived in small houses and ate the crumbs given by the rich. or from the movie Godfather, because the president is always wanting to govern alone, as in dictatorships and in the patriarchal family, as well as encouraging the indiscriminate use of weapons by men.
Likewise, he must adore the families that are going to privatize Brazilian beaches, preservation units, the wetlands, indigenous lands and forests. Incidentally, the president's deputies do not stop presenting projects for this. Every day. The president's family (including his "relatives" in the House and Senate) does nothing but make Brazil worse, destroy its beauties, burn its trees, liquidate its flowers and water, increase the deaths of black people and the destruction of their families, denying food and employment, and lowering everyone's wages, even college students.
One can imagine that the family of the sister who is considering voting for the president will find privatized beaches and other beautiful places privatized, which her family will not be allowed to enter. In this case, the family ceases to be a citizen and loses rights. At this time, is the idea of family or life worth it? What are families where there are no guaranteed rights to citizenship? The family without rights and guarantees is no longer a family, but a group of servants and slaves.
Nowhere in the sacred texts is it written that we came to this world exclusively to die and gain eternal life. If that were so, Jesus as a person would only have lived a few days. Or not even that. We are in the world to perform actions in a lifetime that will improve life and the world, not for a small group of heirs and owners of billions, but for everyone. By doing so, death does not matter, because Easter means, for those who have faith, the death of death.
At the time of the Inquisition, there were whistleblowers who called themselves “relatives of the Holy Office”. It was a terrible time. They denounced people to the Inquisitors for anything they saw or heard that didn't seem in line with what the Church preached. With that, they destroyed families and led many people to despair, death or prison. When the president said, in all letters, that he had his own information system (remember that absurd government meeting?) and that the federal police did not help him, he demonstrated that his informants were the same type of “family members” of the Holy Office. Hence, he was well informed to defend “his children” and friends, even from the bad things they did. What family is this?
Let it be clear that an evil family is not a family; it's gang. Even with the family name.
Now, in the same way, the families created by the Mafia are so sacred, so defended, apparently so “upright” and, nevertheless, among them there are violent deaths, betrayals, scandal even among those who kissed every day. Defending the family sometimes, as in the case of this type of family mentioned, really means defending money, power, the myth of the family, interests and even deaths, evil. One cannot believe that the sister remembered here likes or appreciates this type of “family”.
But the president's family likes violence, shootings, jobs for ghost people who never work, privilege to buy a lot of things. Has the sister's pastor never seen this, or is he himself earning some "money" or privileges to defend the president's "family"? At MEC, the Ministry of Education, a kind of family of supposed “believers” was formed who stole money from children and young people studying in Brazil to invest in constructions that were much less important than education. Who appointed the "brothers" to do this was the president. What a beautiful family, isn't it?
If the president's family is all screwed up and his work has destroyed millions of families, which family is he defending? Probably none.
This April, the sister is thinking about voting for the president because he talks about the family, he defends the family. But family is not a word: it is body, blood, affection, presence, memory, care, creation. Now, if the president has not worked for the families of the poorest, who make up more than half of all Brazilians, then he is against the family that actually lives and exists. Apparently, he is against them because his government policies have broken families. And they have died. In this way he denies the family. Those who like family can only build, never destroy. He was destructive. And this is the truth that we have seen, heard, read, followed three years ago.
One would think that those who care about their family and think about voting for the president have a very confused idea of family. Or they still haven't analyzed the things that have been happening in Brazil. Or don't be bothered about using God's name in vain either.
The president chose the worst word to throw in the election campaign, in the name of God. Let's not talk about God, or G's, because even the president must ask Him for forgiveness for the absurd use he makes of his name. Anyone who worked for the dismantling, poverty, hunger and disorientation of Brazilian families could never invoke that name in vain. In fact, he deserved excommunication, not acceptance or the vote of Brazilian men and women. Even faith requires concrete, constructive works to secure redemption. The president demonstrates that he has neither faith nor works.
Thus, family for him is nothing more than a set of sounds and a few letters on paper. In fact, the royal family is this world of groups that come together for affection and for their different projects. What matters, if the sister allows it, is that the groups of affection discuss what they really want for Brazil, whether in education, health, housing, food, decent employment, transportation and, above all, the end of the misery that the country suffers from. president made it grow by his very little work.
What more could one wish for than for the sister to discuss, until October, with those who come to seek her vote, what is the project to change Brazil and make it fair, beautiful, happy. Families, although different from each other, have a lot of strength to demand this.
* Luiz Roberto Alves is a senior professor at the School of Communications and Arts at USP.
