By DANIEL BRAZIL*
Commentary on the recently released book by Francesc Escribano.
In 1985, a young Catalan journalist, aged 26, Francesc Escribano, traveled to Brazil for the first time to interview another illustrious Catalan: Dom Pedro Casaldáliga. He was confronted with the end of a long military dictatorship, and also with a scenario of violence in the countryside, inequality and poverty that left him shocked. At the same time, he was so impressed by the courage of the frail bishop of São Félix de Araguaia, who had been threatened with death by farmers and gunmen, that he became a reference in his life.
Francesc Escribano returns to Brazil several times, and writes a biography of Pedro Casaldáliga, Barefoot on the Red Earth (1999), which won an award and became a television miniseries in Europe. He wrote other books and got involved in audiovisual production, but the magnetic figure of Pedro Casaldáliga brought him back to where he started.
In 2021, the bishop died after a long struggle (“coexistence”, he said) with Parkinson’s, which left him in a wheelchair at the end of his life. On a journey to reconnect with what gave meaning to his career, the journalist finds a divided, polarized and contradictory country.
Francesc Escribano is now launching the book The Earth and the Ashes, which has the subtitle of Brazil: a trip to the heart of the country of Lula, Bolsonaro and Casaldáliga. The challenge is to try to understand the processes that caused the PT's years in power to result in a conservative reaction that ignored all social advances, or worse, that arose because of these advances.
The author speaks in the first person, revealing his doubts and anxieties as he travels around the country and interviews people of all ideological persuasions. Right at the beginning, he uses Lévi-Strauss and Stefan Zweig to guide the foreign perspective with which he intends to decipher the paradox.
His journey begins in Batatais, SP, where Pedro Casaldáliga died. There he finds a Claretian community (the order to which Dom Pedro belonged), which maintains a university and welfare center. He goes to Brasília, where he talks with representatives of the PT, such as Gilberto Carvalho and Paulo Maldos, international journalists, right-wingers such as Kim Kataguiri, and evangelical leaders from the outskirts of the city.
The religious issue has gained relevance in recent years due to the rise of neo-Pentecostal churches in the countryside and cities, and their close ties with conservative politicians, which led to support for the militia captain. Liberation Theology, represented by Pedro Casaldáliga, was stifled by the Vatican, and the journalist notes, with astonishment, that many communities that emerged from semi-slavery and the oppression of agribusiness thanks to the efforts of “leftists”, now support right-wing politicians.
São Félix do Araguaia itself, where the bishop is revered to this day, has a pro-Bolsonaro mayor, who is duly interviewed. Francesc Escribano talks to several leaders, goes to the MST headquarters, visits indigenous villages, and reports in detail on this ideological turnaround. He skillfully extracts possible explanations from the interviewees, exposing the reader to a range of views with the impartiality that only a foreign observer could have.
Obviously, the author is not immune to political causes, he has sympathy for the left in the area of social policies, but he is not involved with the incendiary passions of Brazilian politics. He presents himself as an individual in search of explanations, and manages to synthesize, in this small but great book, a large part of the Brazilian social enigma.
In the last chapter, after returning to where it all began, the journalist acknowledges that he feels “a contradictory feeling.” He is happy to see that Dom Pedro Casaldáliga’s legacy has left lasting marks, that his battles were not in vain, but “indignant at the continued lack of respect for human life and the systematic destruction of the environment.”
Everything the bishop fought against still persists: slave labor, hunger, indigenous genocide, violence, racism, and poverty. The conclusion is that their causes are still alive and very present. What remains is “the struggle, always the struggle.”[1]
* Daniel Brazil is a writer, author of the novel suit of kings (Penalux), screenwriter and TV director, music and literary critic.
Reference
Francesc Escribano. The Earth and the Ashes. Brazil: A Journey to the Heart of the Country of Lula, Bolsonaro and Casaldáliga. New York, 2024, 192 pages. [https://amzn.to/4e6SEER]
Note
[1] In August 2024, the book was launched in Brazil, with the author present. Coherently, at Armazém do Campo, a symbolic point of resistance and solidarity of the MST in São Paulo.
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