Klaus Hart Brasilientexte

I know what Jacob experienced in his duel with the angel. I confronted him when I felt lost and on the horizon the sun darkened before me. Darkness invaded me, it first swallowed my legs them my arms then my whole being. Then, like an insatiable dragon, it swallowed my identity.

Surrounded by the night, broken and lost I was immersed in doubt. At first I felt sucked into the abyss. Everything around me evaporated. I remained perplexed, tossed freely in a bottomless pit. All my certainties disappeared, converting my way into a hermetical labyrinth; my beliefs became the denial of all faith. Blindly I travelled on a hallucinating spiral, chained to the non-reason of foolishness. I felt suffocated by the torrent of a purposeless life. I was a castaway in an ocean empty of water and boundaries; I replaced Jonah in the belly of the whale.There is no suffering greater than the loss of oneself, tortured by the splendour of lucidity. On that dark night I wished I had the healthy madness of irreversible afflictions of the mind. I wished I could be as one demented, outside myself, without the experience of ontological banishment, leaning on any of the references which until then had been a framework on my journey through life: a dream, a delight, a compulsive idea, an uncontrollable desire, a belief in the shape of a tabernacle. At least a sound, like the whistle of the train which travelled across my town and even now runs through the nostalgia in my heart or the warm smell of cheese bread taken fresh from the oven to the table, the smooth elasticity of the dough, the sweet aroma of hot coffee.None of this would console me. There simply was emptiness, emptiness, emptiness. The primordial chaos which went before Yahweh awoke from His eternal rest and absentmindedly got the idea to create the world.     Then my learning began. First came the awareness that it was necessary to make the long journey. Blindly. Throwing myself into the river without the faintest notion of how far the opposite side was. Walking towards the solar plexus. Untying the knots. Plunging into that endless abyss, swinging from the trapeze with my eyes blindfolded, starting on the daring journey towards death sustained only by a thread of hope: not death but the fullness of life awaited me on the other side.I walked on the dark path amidst scorpions and beetles, spiders and lizards, my mind filled with ghosts who caused it to have the most fearful fantasies to unchecked hedonism. Separated from the soul, imagination becomes proud and rides on the winged carrousel of lust. Reason is disarrayed, ideas scatter and intentions become mired in the weariness of the dying spirit.It is necessary to bend one™s knee and reverently listen to the silence. Like Elijah, one must not await the thunder, the howling of the wind, the flaming voracity of fire. One must simply wait for the soft breeze like the navigator when the storm is over and gladly welcome the calm. But this is costly. It is unexpected, indescribable, mystery of mysteries. In order to achieve this one must tame lions, face dragons, live peacefully and unafraid in the serpent™s lair and know how to lose. Illusions and masks vanish and so does the other who insists on pretending to be me. In the timid blaze of damp wood all false truths are slowly burned. Then nakedness is installed. It is the moment of vertigo

In the duel with the angel it was only at the moment of vertigo that I realized that the impetus I needed to reach the third margin of the river did not come from my own strength. Someone was blowing the wind which filled the sails of my boat. Someone moved the waters. The awareness that an unknown energy impelled me without my being able to identify it became progressively more intense. Yes, my will had taken the first step, my reason insistently denounced the foolishness of the crossing and my atavism resisted abandoning the margin where I was standing.

There was, however, another factor which I only noticed when I lost sight of the margin I had left but could not yet see the opposite one. The fall became ascension, the abyss became a mountain and vertigo became enstasis. (Editor please note: the theological term is precisely that, enstasis, and not ecstasy).

 The angel laid down his arms, moved away from Eden™s door and allowed Him to possess me. I fell viscerally in love. Everything around me glowed with love. Nothing attracted me more strongly than to spend time in the alcove. I neither wanted nor desired anything other than to feel on fire with love. My entrails burned, my chest burned with fever. My mind quietly observed reason swallowed by intelligence. I found myself in someone other than myself who, however, hid in the innermost reaches of my being and, from there, projected his light without being seen or touched.

*Frei Betto is a writer, author of ”Mística e Espiritualidade (Mysticism and Spirituality) (Garamond) written with Leonardo Boff.
ABOUT THE AUTOR
He is a Brazilian Dominican with an international reputation as a liberation theologian.
Within Brazil he is equally famous as a writer, with over 52 books to his name.  In 1985 he won Brazil™s most important literary prize, the Jabuti, and was elected Intellectual of the Year by the members of the Brazilian Writers™ Union.Frei Betto has always been active in Brazilian social movements, and has been an adviser to the Church™s ministry to workers in Sáo Paulo™s industrial belt, to the Church base communities, and to the Landless Rural Workers™ Movement (MST).In 2003-2004, he was Special Adviser to President Lula and Coordinator of Social Mobilisation for the Brazilian Government™s Zero Hunger programme.

 FIDEL™S RESIGNATION
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Frei Betto*
Fidel Castro, 81, has resigned from his responsibilities as President of the Cuban Council of State and Commander in Chief of the Revolution. Due to ill health, he prefers to stay out of government activity and to participate in political debate “ which has always enchanted him “ through his friends in the media. He remains, however, a member of the Political Bureau of the Cuban Communist Party.On Sunday 24th February Raul Castro, 77 will be elected by the new members of the National Assembly to take over the job as Cuba™s head of state.This is the second time Fidel has resigned from power.  The first time was in July 1959 seven months after the victory of the Revolution. As the elected prime minister he clashed with President Manual Urrutia, who considered radical the revolutionary laws such as agrarian reform promulgated by the council of ministers. In order to avoid a coup, the Cuban leader opted to resign. The people gathered in the streets in his support. Pressured by the demonstrations, Urrutia had no alternative but to resign. The presidency was then occupied by Osvaldo Dorticós and Fidel returned to being prime minister.I was in Cuba in January this year participating in the International Meeting on World Equilibrium in light of the 155th anniversary of the birth of Jose Marti, a paradigmatic figure in the country. I returned there in mid February for another international event, the University Congress 2008, where several rectors of Brazilian universities participated.

I met Raul Castro and other Cuban ministers on both these occasions. I also met with the directors of FEU (University Students Federation), students from the University of Computer Science, primary and high school teachers and grassroots educators.

It would be an illusion to think that Fidel™s resignation means the beginning of the end of socialism in Cuba. Nothing points towards significant sectors of Cuban society aspiring to a return to capitalism. Not even the bishops of the Catholic Church. With the exception of a few who, in the name of human rights, would not mind if the future of Cuba were similar to what Honduras, Guatemala or Nicaragua are today. In fact, none of the people who left the country continued in defense of human rights once they became immersed in the enchanted world of consumerism.

Cuba is not opposed to change. Raul Castro himself unleashed an internal process of criticism of the Revolution through mass organizations and the professional sectors. There are more than a million suggestions being analysed by the government. The Cubans know that the difficulties are great, for they live in a geographically quadruple island, the only socialist nation in the West having lost its partnership with the Soviet Union and being blockaded for more than 40 years by the US government.

In spite of all this, the country merited praise from Pope John Paul II when he visited in 1998. In the 2007 United Nations Human Development Index,  Brazil celebrated the fact that it was in 70th place. The first 70 countries are considered to be the best in quality of life. Cuba, where nobody pays for the universal right to health and education of quality, was in 51st place.

The country has a 99.8% literacy rate, it has 70,594 doctors for a population of 11.2 million (one doctor for 160 inhabitants), an infant mortality rate of 5.3 per 1000 live births (in the USA it is seven and in Brazil 27), 800,000 students in 67 universities, with 606,000 students entering each year.

Cuba today maintains doctors and teachers working in more than 100 countries including Brazil and promotes, in the whole of Latin America, Operacion Milagros (Operation Miracles), to cure eye diseases free of charge and a literacy campaign Yo Si Puedo (Yes I Can) with results which convinced President Lula to adopt this method in Brazil.

Yes, there will be changes in Cuba when the USA blockade ends, when the five Cubans being held unjustly in Florida for struggling against terrorism are freed and if the naval base at Guantanamo now used as a clandestine prison “ world symbol of disrespect for human and civil rights “ for supposed terrorists were to be given back.

However, we cannot expect Cuba to remove two billboards from the gates into Havana which cause shame to us Latin Americans who live in islands of opulence surrounded by poverty on all sides: ”Every year, 80,000 children die from avoidable diseases. Not one of them is Cuban and ”Tonight 200 million children will sleep on the world™s streets. Not one of them is Cuban.“

CUBA, SOCIALISM™S HOPE

Frei Betto*

The end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin wall marked the unipolarity of the hegemony of neo liberalism on the planet and the increase in social inequality. Today we are 6.6 million inhabitants in the world of whom, according to the United Nations, 2/3 live below the poverty line and approximately 1.4 thousand million live in dire poverty earning less than US$1 per day, or US$30 monthly. 854 million of these suffer from chronic hunger.

Only US$500 thousand million would be required to drastically reduce the number of people suffering from hunger in the world.  However double this amount is spent on armaments. Invest in death, not in life. This is the logic of the capitalist system.

At an important moment such as this I cannot refrain from asking: Why did socialism fail in Europe and Asia when in theory it is a humanitarian alternative to capitalism? There are many suppositions and explanations. When privatizing material goods I think that capitalism had the sagacity to try socializing symbolic goods. In a shack in a favela (shantytown) in Rio de Janeiro a poor family, deprived of basic rights such as nourishment, health and education, can dream of the soap operas™ oneiric universe and believe that, thanks to the lottery, or to luck, or to the church which promises prosperity, and even to delinquency, they can acquire superfluous goods.

Socialism mistakenly privatized symbolic goods when they socialized material goods  and took constructive criticism to mean counter revolution; restricted the autonomy of civil society by subjecting the unions and the social movements to the party; inhibited artistic creativity by means of socialist reality; allowed those in power to become a privileged caste far from the longings of the population; fell into the paradox of making great advances in the space race but were incapable of   adequately supplying the retail market with basic goods.

Cuba nowadays has become the example of a socialist country. As the half century of their existence approaches, we all know the challenges and problems which this Revolution faces. We are aware of the disastrous effects of the criminal blockade imposed on Cuba by the government of the United States and of how the White House favours renowned terrorists like Posada Carriles while unjustly holding prisoner five Cuban heroes committed to the antiterrorist struggle.

In spite of all difficulties, for 49 years of Revolution Cuba has managed to assure its population of the three basic rights of every human being: nutrition, health and education. And more importantly: it has considerably raised the self esteem of Cuban citizens which is so apparent in victories in the fields of art, sports and international solidarity and through the thousands of Cuban health and education professionals who are present in more than a hundred countries in the world, very often in hostile regions marked by poverty and destitution.

Cuba has a historic responsibility towards the memory of Marti, of Che Guevara and of all those who gave their life for its independence and sovereignty: Cuban socialism cannot fail! If this were to happen it would not only be Cuba who would, as a symbol, disappear from the map like the Soviet Union did. It would confirm Fukuyama™s sinister forecast that ”history has ended, that hope “ a theological virtue for us Christians “ has ended, that utopia is dead, and that capitalism has won out for 20% of the world population which profits from its advances on a mountain of corpses and victims.

We friends of the Cuban Revolution do not expect great technological and scientific advances from Cuba such as first class tourist services or gold medals for sporting competitions¦  We expect much more than that, things like the acts of solidarity of which Marti spoke, the joy of a people built on the basis of ethical and spiritual values, the evangelical principle of sharing one™s goods, the creation of the new man and the new woman as dreamt of by Che which are centred on the possession, not of finite goods, but of eternal goods such as generosity, detachment, friendship and the capacity to share personal joy with communal successes

In short, our hope is that socialism in Cuba will be synonymous with love which means giving of oneself, commitment, trust, altruism, dedication, fidelity, joy and happiness.  For the political term for love is none other than socialism.

*Frei Betto is a writer, author of ”Fidel and Religion (Ocean Press).

I STILL AM THAT CHILD

Frei Betto*

On Children™s Day[1] <#_ftn1>  this year I encounter the child who still dwells in me. He does not belong to this era of atrocities. Not that the world was better then. It wasn™t, not even for the children. Many worked tirelessly in the fields, or spent their childhood searching through garbage bins; they appeared, even in the middle of the 20th century, from the memorable works of Charles Dickens. Â

The difference is that the world was very far from my village which was sheltered in the mountains. I had no idea that such suffering did not affect only adults¦

I was neither a rich nor a poor child, I was happy. I owned two pairs of shoes, one for school and the other for Sunday mass and birthdays. What was fun, however, was to walk barefoot in the mud produced by the rain, to soak my legs in the water which rushed down the hillsides, to feel the roughness under my feet of the cobblestones which covered the streets of Belo Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais.

The lack of industrialized toys which were expensive and rare encouraged us to be creative. With our minds full of the stories of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, we made a horse out of a broomstick, a cart out of a piece of board and four wheels, a castle out of a wooden crate, the soldiers of Napoleon™s invincible army out of a piece of molten lead¦

Monteiro Lobato™s[2] <#_ftn2> narratives encouraged us to re-create, under the trees in the garden, the Sitio do Picapau Amarelo (The Yellow Woodpecker™s farm). Yes, they were houses with sunny backyards, jabuticabeiras[3] <#_ftn3> and guava trees to protect us, bridges and trapezes for our adventures as indigenous Tarzans. Boys armed with bows and arrows, separated  from the girls who looked after their dolls and prepared delicious, imaginary dishes¦

Childhood spread itself generously during those immensely long days. There was time for everything “ school, homework, sports, games “ and time to spare as well. Paternal discipline imposed limits and protection on us: baths before breakfast and dinner, the whole family sitting around the table at meals, enough money for Sunday matinees and our desires were free from anxiety and immune to consumerism.

The word cholesterol did not exist, thus we could eat anything and especially thanks to the generous offer of the market vendors who saw us with our mothers: a piece of pineapple or papaya, a ripe persimmon, some doce de leite[4] <#_ftn4> in an ice cream cup, a slice of creamy Minas cheese¦

”Brand name was not in the dictionary then. We paid no attention to the brand name of the tennis shoes or the clothes we wore, which, just like school equipment, were handed down from the  older children because they were made to last, just like our everlasting bicycles.

Our pranks annoyed the grown ups but caused neither offence nor damage: shooting pellets at post boxes, making anonymous phone calls, sticking chewing gum on the teacher™s chair, taping down the neighbour™s doorbell with plaster¦

There was a comfortable feeling of belonging within the clan and being faithful to its code of conduct: everyone helping our mothers and aunts to ice the tea cakes for birthday parties, the Christmas tree heavy with novelties and promises, the Sunday dinners at our grandparents™ house, the enchanting magic of the circus, the picnics on the shore of the Pampulha Lake.

The world has changed, Christmas has changed and so has childhood. The enchantment has been broken, patient grandparents are rare, the TV sucks children™s imagination dry; brand names dictate the fancy dresses worn. The road is closed, the backyard has moved to the shopping centre, aspirations are calculated, joy is masked and toys are disposable.

The respectful distance between children and adults has shrunk, making space for irreverence, disrespect and rudeness. It is true we must not generalize. What shocks me is to see children dictating orders to their parents and others who are indifferent to the elderly standing on the bus.

Has childhood lost its innocence? Or does innocence not know childhood? How many parents pray with their children? How many shed their embarrassment and hug them? In the old days a simple ice cream warmed the indelible corners of the memory.

Our heroes bore the messianic mark of altruism in spite of being tied to the Manichaeism which divided the world between the forces of good and evil. Obedience was a condition, not an imposition. To keep discipline in the classroom was a rule, not an exception. Religion was an open door to the encounter between the immanent and the transcendent, between the natural and the supernatural, between the human and the divine. What consolation our guardian angels gave us!

A child still dwells within me. He continues to be happy, loving and steeped with imagination. A sexagenarian, he dreams of a promising future and believes that only old people die. However he knows today that maturity is not simply an attribute of age.

There are many children who are prematurely old due to early labour, sexual exploitation, the indifference of adults whose hearts of flesh become rigid and incapable of enchantment, curiosity and the soul™s vertigo when faced with the immensity of the future. Paralyzed by the bitterness of lethargy they resist against removing their shoes of circumspection, putting their feet in the mud of rejoicing, allowing the torrent of the unexpected to soak their clothes and skin, resurrecting the sublime moment of their childhood.

*Frei Betto is a writer, author of ”Alfabetto “ autobiografia escolar (Alphabetto “ an   autobiography of school days) (Ática).
[1] <#_ftnref1>  October 12 in Brazil

[2] <#_ftnref2>  Monteiro Lobato “ 1882-1948 “ Brazilian author of some of the greatest children™s books in the Portuguese language. Sitio do Picapau Amarelo is his best known children™s tale.

[3] <#_ftnref3>  Jabuticabeira “ a large tree of the myrtle family which produces cherry-like fruit

[4] <#_ftnref4>  Doce de leite “ caramel made from boiling milk and sugar

THE POSTMODERN GENERATION
*Frei Betto

Postmodernism does not negate modernism, in fact it celebrates its successes, such as the positivism rooted in science, the techoscientific reason  which pontificates about  intuition and intelligence, the triumph of capitalism in its neo liberal and now neo fascist versions, contrasting economic fundamentalism “ capital as a supreme value “ and religious fundamentalism, by means of war.Faced with socioeconomic Darwinism, culture sinks into a profound crisis. The market™s monetary values are imposed above the moral values of ethics, great writings become silent, history as a process slows down, critical ideologies agonize. The future recedes when confronted with the eternal imperative of the present.  Everything freezes in the absurd belief that life is only ˜here and now™. Old age is seen as an illness and death as an abomination. Joy is reduced to the sum of pleasure and finite goods which are more desirable than infinite ones.
We know what we do not want, not what we want. Utopias collapsed with the Berlin Wall. May 1968 did not manage to go beyond the limitations of bodies freed from the weight of guilt. Revolutionary projects remained as the image of Che Guevara stuck on a wall or printed on a shirt. ”For some time the saints aren™t even sure/ of the measure of malice/. For some time it is the young who become ill/.  For some time enchantment no longer exists. / And smiles are rusty/. Only chance holds out its arms/ to those who seek shelter and protection sings Renato Russo[1] <#_ftn1> .
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Hegel taught us to think reality and his disciple Marx taught us to transform it. They forgot the biblical teaching that it is necessary to change a heart of stone into a heart of flesh. Newness in science and know-how does not make new the human heart which today is desolate with feelings of impotence, fatalism and cynicism. Young people today breathe a culture of great emptiness. They move between Prometheus and Narcissus and in between leave the heroism of Sisyphus by the wayside. They do not care about the stone rolling down the hillside, what is important is enjoying life.Surrendering to the demands of building what is new and with Hegel and Marx forgotten, the historical changes dreamt of by my 1968 generation are now reduced to the body, to style, to individual taste and extravagance. Liberating literature is substituted on the shelves by esotericism, astrology and self help. Since society is immutable it must be enjoyed. It is no longer possible to change the world; unless literary therapies which will act as a vaccine against profound sentiments of frustration and defeat are developed.
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The eagerness to make the present eternal causes people to seek ways of prolonging life through body building, diets, vitamins, esthetic surgery etc. It is urgent to keep one-self eternally young. Old age, wrinkles, obesity, white hair, flaccid muscles, loss of youthful vigour and physical beauty are the ghosts which frighten the playful, sensual soul of those who do not know how to live. As the Hedonist Manifesto preaches (E. Guisan 1990) ”pleasure is the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end.
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Existence is privatized and closed in an individualism which boasts indifference towards others™ problems and insensibility predominates towards collective matters. Ethics give way to esthetics. Politics are regarded with disgust and life  is seen as a video clip anabolised by money, fame and beauty. Â

The first generation without guilt, uncommitted politically, full of young people who are bored, skeptical, dissatisfied, disconnected, is appearing. A generation with a reduced capacity to marvel, to be enthusiastic and committed. A disenchanted generation: ”I live at No. 7 Melancholy Road, / for years I have wanted to move / to the happiness neighbourhood. / But every time I try, / the tram has already left / so on the steps I sit / whistling my tune. (J. Sabina).
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Nowadays everyone has his or her own truth and nobody is concerned about another™s truth nor do they allow themselves to be questioned by it. Face to face dialogue is discarded in favour of virtual dialogue on the internet, where each partner can hide what he or she is not as well as his or her low self esteem. In personal relations, my generation™s agenda which moved us from love towards sex is reversed, now sex follows sex in the hope that, suddenly, the miracle of love might happen.
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In this nebulous post-modern world one™s vision is blurred. The dimension of the forest is lost and only the odd tree can be seen. Thus one is angry about urban violence and there is a clamour towards reducing the age of legal responsibility and implementing the death penalty. But who becomes indignant with the structural violence of a nation which condemns millions of young people to early school leaving and joining the ranks of the unemployed?

A (bad) example is given by Bush™s Justice which condemned a soldier to 100 years in prison in Iraq for raping and killing a young 14 year old girl.  Meanwhile, the torrent of bombs made in USA kills 700,000 Iraqis without sparing the innocent, the children and the aged. Who will pay for this huge atrocity?

[1] <#_ftnref1>  Renato Russo “ Brazilian pop singer
*Frei Betto is a writer, author of ”Treze contos diabólicos e um angélico (Thirteen Diabolical stories and one Angelical one) (Planeta).