By LAYMERT GARCIA DOS SANTOS*
Free Palestine is there, shining, bringing the promise of a future to the most violated people of the 21st century
On sunny Sunday, August 18, 2024, on the corner of Avenida Paulista and Rua da Consolação, in the central region of São Paulo, a mural measuring almost 400 m was inaugurated with a protest party.2 which breaks, in the heart of the metropolis, with the invisibility of the martyrdom of the Palestinian people.
Topped by the words Free Palestine, two young Palestinians, a man and a woman, wrapped in flags, advance, under the sunrise, to meet those who go up from the city center to Avenida Paulista and Jardins. Their faces, throats and hands are mirrored and radiate according to the incidence of the sun's rays. Below them, the greatest statement of all, in these dark times: Genocides never again.
That's right, in the plural. Because it is necessary to break this infamous line that links the massacre of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Africa, the “social and ethnic cleansing” carried out by Europeans in the Colonies, the Holocaust that Adolf Hitler imported to improve the killing and implement it on an industrial scale in the heart of Europe, and now, the “final solution” that the Israeli State reserves for the people of Gaza, before extending it to the West Bank.
São Paulo residents are accustomed to graffiti and pixação covering and/or coloring the streets, avenues and buildings of the city, with their bizarre and enigmatic spellings and their ghostly and sarcastic, if not lysergic, beings. They have also become accustomed to decorative gables, exalting symbolic figures of minorities in Brazilian society and culture, often in a naive representation.
But obviously, that's not what this is about. Here, we are under the impact of a gigantic mural, which advances like a visual cry and updates the aesthetic and political expression of the time of revolutions, mainly the Soviet one of 1917 and the Mexican one of the second decade of the XNUMXth century. Here, we see the Palestinian people marching and fighting against their planned extermination.
The initiative to plant the mural agit-prop in full view of everyone in a critical part of the city, it came from the MST, mainly from the cultural sector that works with the training of young people. The fight for land reverberates deeply and mobilizes. Because the land is much bigger than its property: the land is ground, it is home, it is food, it is the environment, it is space, it is a way of life, it is the very life of a collective.
Along with the people, the land is the pillar of what is understood as a nation. Therefore, the fierce, irredeemable love that Palestinians have for the land can resonate with the young people of the MST, who embraced the idea of creating the Paulista mural. Which, by the way, is not the only one – in the East Zone of São Paulo there are twenty other murals, celebrating the Palestinian struggle. All of them on walls or gables of occupations.
It is important to note that the project is part of the National Mural Day in defense of Palestine in several cities across the country. But to achieve it, there was a convergence of efforts by collectives and social movements. In the case of Paulista, in addition to the MST, the Palestinian resistance and solidarity collectives that exist in São Paulo and the Ocupação Penha Pietras, which houses 61 families in vulnerable situations, mainly women and children, are involved in the building.
To create this mural, artist-activist Kleber Pagu was invited, who has already distinguished himself in creating large-scale urban art works, such as Urban Aquarium, Black Lives Matter, Silence is Erasure, Vote Without Fear, between others. They discuss questions about different forms of violence against minorities and the environment.
And it is clear that Kleber Pagu accepted the proposal with enthusiasm, recognizing that “Free Palestine” is “one of the most urgent social and humanitarian issues of our time”.
However, however legitimate the Palestinian struggle may be, it is violently contested by Zionists – wherever it is expressed. Thus, even before the mural was ready, during its execution, there was an attack to prevent it from existing. In fact, on August 04th, Kleber Pagu and his team were hanging on the gable of the building, painting the mural, when Josué Calixto Verba, a 47-year-old agricultural engineer from Rio Grande do Sul, approached the work, kicked the paint cans , attacked the ground team and shook the ropes that kept one of the painters high on the wall, putting his life at risk.
“What happened was an act of intolerance to expression, a Zionist aggression and to the artist, but the most serious thing is that there was a person hanging from the ropes and the attacker forced those ropes. In other words, there is an attack on life”, points out the coordinator of the MST National Journey, Luciano Carvalho.
The case was forwarded to the 78th Police District, in the Jardins neighborhood, where a police report was registered. Once the aggression had been overcome, and the safety of the participants was reinforced, the mural was completed. The mainstream media in São Paulo continues to hide and sugarcoat Israeli violence, and boycott Palestinian resistance in every way. But Free Palestine is there, shining, bringing the promise of a future to the most violated people of the XNUMXst century.
*Laymert Garcia dos Santos He is a retired professor from the Department of Sociology at Unicamp. Author, among other books, of Politicize new technologies (Publisher 34). [https://amzn.to/4fWZgHh]
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