—”Brazilian democracy goes to the edge of a knife several times, to the point of completely collapsing, and suddenly surprises us, teaches us how to deal with authoritarianism and threats of coups”, said the essayist and composer at the launch of doem Lisboa this Wednesday (26).
Wisnik drew attention to the synchronicity between the launch of the publication and the news arriving from the country. “Brazil did not fit into the abyss that was the attempted coup and is being punished.”
Partnership of and from the Record editorial group, the book brings together 41 texts published in the newspaper over 40 years of democracy, contextualized and commented on by journalists and relevant personalities in the Brazilian public debate.
The launch took place at , a symbolic landmark of Portuguese redemocratization. It was there that, in 1975, the headquarters for the counting of the country’s first elections after the end of the .
The launch table brought together Brazilians Wisnik and , two of the three curators of ; the Portuguese Capicua and, she is a rapper and writer, he is the creator and one of the organizers of the book (alongside journalists from Sheet and ); and the journalist, mediator of the conversation.
The executive editor of Sheet, was responsible for the opening speech.
Milena Britto, professor at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), spoke about politics and culture, bridging the gap between the book “A Palavra e o Poder” and the exhibition of which she is one of the curators. “We celebrate the bright side of democracy, but there is also a dark side. There are those who use democratic principles for purposes that are not necessarily democratic,” he said.
“At this moment we are often saved by art and culture, by the words that come from the streets and transform into struggle and resistance.”
Capicua stated that Brazil is a source of cultural production and civil society manifestations. “I feel privileged to speak the same language and have access to all of this,” she said.
According to her, “in Brazilian democracy, it is exciting to follow the growth of manifestations such as feminism, especially black Brazilian feminism.”
Rodrigo Tavares, professor at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, compared the redemocratization processes in Brazil and . “Both countries came from very long dictatorships and tried from the beginning to create social rights in their constitutions — we didn’t have SUS in Brazil nor its similar, the SNS, in Portugal.”
According to him, “Brazil and Portugal also have similar imaginaries, the two oscillate between backwardness and the desire to be a power, Portugal looking to the past, Brazil to the future”.
In his intervention, Vinicius Mota recalled that the text published in Sheet about , in April 1974, was written by the Portuguese journalist , an influence in the formation of , responsible, in the 1980s, for the modernization and professionalization of the newspaper.
“Journalism moves away from sectarianism and gets closer to the public when it subjects all powerful people, despite their ideological inclinations, to the same sieve of criticism”, said Mota, recalling a common belief of Frias Filho and Cunha Rêgo.
In his final speech, Tavares highlighted the strength of Brazilian civil society as one of the drivers of the country’s redemocratization. In the 1970s, during the dictatorship and in a pioneering way, the Sheet opened its pages to civil society protagonists, who criticized the regime in the role of columnists and collaborators.
This was followed naturally by the newspaper’s leading role in the Diretas Já campaign, with the slogan “use yellow for Diretas”. Tavares pointed to the text produced in the heat of this campaign, on January 25, 1984, as one of the highlights of the book.
