Podcast
Mother and daughter, Maria and Mariana Gil are the guests of this episode of ‘O Tal Podcast’, to listen to in two parts. In this first half of the conversation, Georgina Angélica and Paula Cardoso explore family affections, which are inseparable from a collective heritage of disaffections
“There is a secular project of anti-gypsyism, well imprinted in history in Portugal. So much so that our children, when they are at school, have to edit themselves. They have to enter leaving their identity behind, because there is nothing in the school books that says: you exist”.
The diagnosis, points out Maria, worsens in a tangle of prejudices that force destinies of struggle and resilience.
“It is very tiring to educate our children for permanent militancy. Educating them in a constant state of surveillance is enormously violent.”
Before Mariana’s birth, 20 years ago, Maria was already educating António, Salvador and Vicente, an experience that forced her to calibrate perspectives, and to recognize school as a place of confrontation.
The experience is shared by the only daughter, peremptory in her self-description: “Currently, my simple presentation becomes an act of resistance: I am Mariana, gypsy, Afro-descendant and higher education student in Portugal”.
From an early age, faced with the weight of the characteristics that mark her identity, the youngest Gil remembers how “perverse” the education system can be.
“In the ninth year, before Covid-19, I had a racist colleague, who made extremely dangerous statements. I had the misfortune of, in the heat of an argument, in which he was addressing me with extreme violence, calling him a Nazi”, he says, without losing sight of the outcome. “At the end of the period, I had a value removed from my grade and the racist student didn’t receive any reprimand. They didn’t even try to understand the motivation behind my words.”
Before this clash, the current Communication Sciences student remembers her first confrontation with curricular biases.
“I was the first person to learn to read in my class, and the first time I opened a dictionary, one of the first words I looked for was gypsy. What I found there was not good at all.”
Awareness of discrimination and exclusion did not take long to forge a strong activist commitment, extending to the world of fashion, which it navigates critically.
“Why is it that on a white girl a very smooth bun and some gold hoops is clean and chic, but on a gypsy, black, Indian girl it is already a marginal style? I started to question myself”, says Mariana, creator of “Statement Magazine”, an academic project that she defines as “disruptive”.
Creative ingenuity and political signature, recognized by peers, have been evident at home since childhood.
“Mariana has an immense ability to force me to reorganize my thoughts. She manages to do this reorganization not for me, not for me, but with me. This has been incredible, because it has brought me other points of consciousness.”
To maternal recognition, the university student responds with filial recognition. “My mother and I were connected for nine months by an umbilical cord, and then the connection remained via Bluetooth. We are two devices that don’t work without each other.”
The firm family ties are also expressed in a fraternal campaign that is at least original: “My brothers have a sticker on their cell phone saying: Marianinha for President [Marianinha para Presidente]”.
Listen to the first part of this episode here, which continues next week.
Tal Podcast is a weekly podcast dedicated to interpersonal relationships and human affection. Through in-depth conversations with notable guests, the podcast reveals an original narrative and opens the doors to an international community of reflection and interest.
A pioneer in black and Afro-descendant culture in Portugal, it is a space where all lives fit, emotionally linked by experiences of trial and stories of humanization.
In long unscripted conversations, Georgina Angélica and Paula Cardoso present special guests, in new episodes, every Thursday on the Expresso, SIC and SIC Notícias websites or any podcast platform.
is a specialist in Education and Social Intervention. She works as an educator, trainer and speaker, with more than 20 years of experience in Portugal, England and Angola.
is the founder of the network and author of the series of children’s books ‘Força Africana’. She is also the presenter of the TV program “Rumos”, broadcast on RTP África.
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