By FLORESTAN FERNANDES*
Open and persistent struggle represents the only way to break the resistance of those above and their governmental machines of social oppression.
To the People's Court of Zumbi dos Palmares.
I salute the comrades who prepared and organized this debate on Zumbi and had the idea of extending it to all the excluded and exploited. Despite being separated in historical time, these two forms of struggle cannot be separated: that of the slaves of yesterday and that of the exploited of today.
All the oppressed, who suffer prejudice, discrimination and exclusion, as if they were outcasts or non-class, share the need to transform society, through violence or counter-violence.
Zumbi dos Palmares placed himself above the victims of oppression. He chose guerrilla warfare as the difficult path to conquer and maintain freedom. He became a symbol of the slave who emancipated himself under a colonial slave society and faced all the hatred and perversions of privileged and intolerant elites.
Zumbi and his followers created a new society, denying the pseudo-legal basis built on a principle of Roman Law — “servus non habet personam” (a servant has no persona).[I]
They thus demonstrated that the person of the slave was embedded in the condition of a thing and that, united among themselves, the slaves possessed both social strength and intelligence and political capacity. Therefore, their solidarity and common will defeated the power of the masters and the colonial order.
This was the reason that led many other oppressed people to resort to courageous and indomitable uprisings. And it made the example of Palmares still loom as a threat to the tyranny and autocracy sustained by those in power.
Do not give in, do not give in! Do not serve as a docile victim to the wrath of the executioners! Therein lies the secret of a victory — then inconceivable — and of the attraction it exerts to this day among those at the bottom.
Open and persistent struggle represents the only way to break the resistance of those at the top and their governmental machines of social oppression. Overcoming the challenges of inevitable risks to eradicate the fears that prevent the humble from becoming agents of their own history and architects of a society founded on freedom and equality.[ii]
*Florestan Fernandes (1920-1995) was a professor of sociology at USP and a federal deputy for the PT. Author of, among other books, The bourgeois revolution in Brazil (countercurrent).
Notes
[I] Florestan corroborates the thesis of the jurist and historian Perdigão Malheiro, according to which, only through manumission does the black person “appear in society and before the law as a person (person) properly speaking” (MALHEIRO, Perdigão (1976). Slavery in Brazil: historical, legal, social essay, vol. 1, Petrópolis: Vozes; Brasília: INL, p. 141). For Marcel Mauss, the principle “servant of no habet personam” maintains that the slave has no right to personality, as well as: “does not possess his body, has no ancestors, name, surname, own property” (MAUSS, Marcel (2003). A category of the human spirit: the notion of person, that of “I”. In. Sociology and anthropology, São Paulo: Cosac & Naify, p. 389). Florestan recognizes this type of discrimination against blacks even after abolition: “Despite the enormous tolerance associated with the use of names and surnames of traditional families by former slaves, notorious distinctions were still established. A certain matron, from a well-known family, had the habit of calling the errand boys (usually 'blacks') Clemente. On one occasion, one of these boys went to her house to do her a service. She asked: 'What is your name? Clayton?... That is not a black name! Your name is Clemente!' And she always called him by that name” (FERNANDES, Florestan (2008). The integration of black people into class societies, vol. 1. São Paulo: Globo, p. 350). As Haroldo Sereza rightly noted, Florestan himself had a similar experience in his humble childhood, when he began to be called Vicente by the employers of his mother, Maria Fernandes, who had been a domestic worker (SEREZA, Haroldo (2014). In. PERICÁS, Bernardo; SECCO, Lincoln (orgs.). interpreters from Brazil: classics, rebels and renegades. São Paulo: Boitempo).
[ii] Florestan died on August 10, 1995. On November 19 of this year, the Sunday before the 300th anniversary of Zumbi's death, Benedita da Silva published a beautiful article in which she took the opportunity to recall some of Florestan's ideas (SILVA, Benedita (1995). O resgate dos ideias de Zumbi dos Palmares, Folha de S. Paul, November 19, 1995, available at: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/fsp/1995/11/19/opiniao/8.html). In 1996, at a seminar in honor of the sociologist at UNICAMP, Clóvis Moura made a long quote from the text that Florestan sent to the Zumbi dos Palmares People's Court (MOURA, Clóvis (1998). Florestan Fernandes and the black: a political interpretation, Basic, n. 50, available at: https://siac.fpabramo.org.br/uploads/acervo/PTDN_APS_SNCR_1998_ART_00001_NT.pdf. In this conference, Moura comments on his last meeting with Florestan, in May 1994, at a seminar at UFBA on the thought and political action of Carlos Marighella. On that occasion, Florestan analyzed the guerrilla strategies developed by Marighella (FERNANDES, Florestan (2019). O pensamento político de Marighella, Translating, November 20, 2019, available at: https://traduagindo.com/2019/11/20/o-pensamento-politico-de-marighella-por-florestan-fernandes/). According to Moura, the texts about Zumbi and Marighella reflect Florestan's positions as a revolutionary militant: “no longer preached in the chair, but in the hand-to-hand combat of proletarian, black and socialist politics” (1998, p. 83).
The urban guerrilla strategies developed by Marighella influenced the political action of Black Panther militants (SANTIAGO, Andrey (2021). The influence of Carlos Marighella on the Black Panther Party, Translating, November 4, 2021, Available at: https://traduagindo.com/2021/11/04/carlos-marighella-panteras-negras/). In 1974, an FBI agent wrote about Marighella's legacy in the US (DEAKIN, Thomas (1974). The legacy of Carlos Marighella, FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, v. 43, n. 10, p. 19-25, available at: https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/legacy-carlos-marighella). In November 1969, a few days after Marighella's assassination, the Black Panther newspaper published a text by the Brazilian revolutionary (MARIGHELLA, Carlos (1969). A message to Brazilians, The Black Panther, v. 3, n. 29, November 8, 1969, p. 14-15, available at: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/black-panther/03n29-nov%208%201969.pdf). During this period, a clandestine translation of the Mini-manual of urban guerrilla warfare, which would be published in 1971 (MARIGHELLA, Carlos (1971). Minimanual of the urban guerilla. In. MALLIN, Jay (org.). Terror and urban guerrillas: a study of tactics and documents, Florida: Coral Gables; University of Miami Press, p. 67-115, available at: https://www.latinamericanstudies.org/book/Marighella.pdf).
[iii] Research, editing and notes by Diogo Valença de Azevedo Costa (UFRB) and Paulo Fernandes Silveira (FEUSP and GPDH-IEA/USP). This document is located in the Florestan Fernandes Fund Special Collection, at the UFSCar Community Library; reference for location: UFSCar/SiBi/COLESP/Fundo Florestan Fernandes/document title.
[iv] This document consists of two pages: one of them contains the typed text with the corrections made by hand by Florestan; the other contains the same corrected text, forwarded by Vladimir Sacchetta, a friend of the sociologist and his family, to Benedito Mariano, director of the Santo Dias Center for Human Rights. The newsletter of the National Coordination of Black Entities (CONEN), from March 1995, announces the holding of the Zumbi dos Palmares People's Tribunal, in the city of São Paulo, as part of the tributes to the 300th anniversary of the death of this great black leader, available at: https://www.enfpt.org.br/acervo/jornadas/jnfc-racismo/timeline/media/documentosacervo/300%20anos%20de%20zumbi%20dos%20Palmares.pdf. This mock trial took place at the USP Law School, in Largo de São Francisco, on May 12, 1995. It was presided over by Senator Benedita da Silva (PT-RJ) and had Congressman Hélio Bicudo (PT-SP) as prosecutor. One of the jurors was Senator Marina Silva (PT-AC). As Florestan highlights in his text, the event promoted a broad debate on the various forms of state violence. Father Júlio Lancellotti, for example, was invited to speak about violence against minors; this information is contained in a report by Folha de S. Paul, available in: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/fsp/1995/5/12/cotidiano/26.html. With his health weakened, Florestan did not participate in the event, but sent this text to the organizers.
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