freedom to enslave

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By ALEXANDRE ARAGÃO DE ALBUQUERQUE*

Slavery marks the trajectory of our violent history, from our hearts and minds, to the present time.

Brazil, since its genesis, has revealed itself in the scenario of nations as the society in which the greatest inequality – human slavery – was implanted and naturalized by the social, political and economic system: by governors, bishops, powerful lords with their families. Also noteworthy is the fact that very late, only at the end of the XNUMXth century, Brazil ended such a horror, recorded in the verses of the Bahian poet Castro Alves: “Lord God of the disgraced! You tell me, Lord God! If it's madness... if it's true, such horror before the heavens?! (...) There is a people that the flag lends, to cover so much infamy and cowardice! And let her transform herself at this party, into an impure cloak of cold bacchante!”.

Since its inception, the enslavement of humans of African origin, in Brazil, had been naturalized in several dimensions, either by its unlimited perpetuation, through a sociopolitical system of continuous reproduction, with no defined deadline for future generations to become free, added to the absence of imposition of limits to the manorial power over the enslaved, even by the action of some religious people who preached the need for a “Christian ethics for the enslavement, for the commerce and for the possession of these humans”, “requiring the prohibition of severe penalties for those enslaved, as such violence would be contrary to civil and natural laws, and, above all, to the Gospel and the sacred canons”. (DEMÉTRIO, Denise Vieira et alii. Twelve chapters on enslaving people and ruling slaves. Mauad Editora).

Among the “masters of slaves” there was a diversity of categories; far from constituting a homogeneous and cohesive group, its composition points to a diverse character. Among the large slaveholders are cattle ranchers and the powerful plantation owners, owners of hundreds of African humans. But there were also those small landowners, who counted their slaves on the fingers of their hands, in addition to those who were officials of the Crown. Therefore, since the formation of Brazil, freedom was not a universal right; it was a privilege enjoyed and guaranteed only to a portion of the population.

This characteristic aspect of such deformation of freedom, experienced in Brazil – the freedom to enslave humans – is a complex issue that will mark the trajectory of our violent history, of our hearts and minds, until the present time: freedom of command, naturalized and without limits, of members of the ruling class over the lives and bodies of enslaved humans.

It is in defense of this deformed conception of freedom that he deals, in the present time, with the Unnamable in his aberrant insults through social media, with his project of power, supported by the Brazilian military cheerleaders. For him, only the so-called discretionary and violent freedom is valid, guaranteed by the force of arms and not by the universal rule of law for all citizens of a country. By deceitfully proclaiming himself head of the Armed Forces, he reaffirms the narrative and purpose of imposing the regime of force on the country, to the detriment of the democratic regime.

Its heroes are the torturer Ustras; the Adrianos, heads of crime offices, decorated by their family; the Queiroz issuing micheques; the pastors and priests greedy for the vile metal, who shoot, without the slightest shame, shrapnel of bullets through the country's airports and attack the coffers of Brazilian public education.

In the current times of Bolsofascism, the desired freedom is not just that of enslaving, but the freedom to rape and kill Yanomami children and to grant amnesty to Bolsominions condemned by the Federal Supreme Court. After all, for the Unspeakable, there are several ways to close the Supreme Court, not just with a soldier and a corporal, but with his conspiratorial verbiage, ordering the STF ministers to shut their mouths. The courage of the Inominável is supported by the barracks of former fellow captains, inhabitants of the basements of the 1964 dictatorship, now raised to generals, nostalgic for the Institutional Acts (AI-1, AI-2, AI-3, AI-4 and AI- 5), Censorship of the media, secret sessions of torture and murder of Brazilians, closure of the National Congress and the STF, persecution of civil and political freedoms, economic policy concentrating income in the hands of the ruling class.

Brazil needs to react and put an end to this state of exception. The UN decreed very clearly, last April 28th, through the condemnation of Sério Moro, Dalton Dallagnol and Operation Lava Jato, how much the Brazilian State is acting outside the law. It is necessary to turn around, return the military to the barracks and the fascists to ostracism, from where they should never have left, to immediately resume the democratic Brazilian State of law.

*Alexandre Aragão de Albuquerque Master in Public Policy and Society from the State University of Ceará (UECE).

 

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