Every Brazilian peasant, whether white or Indian, had a homeland, a place to return to when things went wrong on farms rich in goods and very poor in wages.
All except the blacks, the descendants of slaves, who did not know the way back.
This is the approach of
Arado torcido,
by Itamar Vieira Junior (published in Spanish by Pepitas de Calabaza), a book that is overwhelming due to the fierceness of its people, its problems, its realities and the search for roots where they do not let you take root.
Destined to make mud huts in other people's fields and to rebuild them when the floods devoured them, this was the greatest right they dared to claim: that of rebuilding their adobe walls washed away by the rains, but never of brick, masonry, ceramics. nor any other material that could be considered fixed.
Because it was forbidden to stay.
And because when slavery was prohibited they began to be called “workers” or “residents”, but they remained slaves.
Their uprooting, therefore, was double, eternal: from their origin and from the place of their dwellings.
“This story is inspired by reality,” responds Vieira Junior (Salvador, 1979) by email from Brazil.
“Slavery left deep marks on our society and these marks are felt and divide us to this day.”
More information
'Depois do silêncio', slavery in the rock era
And this book tells a story from the day before yesterday or, more specifically, from the 20th century.
From the advertisement that launches its own title,
Crooked Plow
immerses us in the tortuous story of a family descended from slaves through the eyes of two sisters as united as they are opposed by an accident that occurred from a common prank: one of them lost the tongue, the other was saved.
One is silent, the other speaks.
Through them, Vieira explores the harshness of almost contemporary slave labor and the dedication of the entire family to the estate of some millionaires who, as soon as the business does not suit them, will want to sell.
Ask.
She has chosen two women who combine luck and misfortune, speech and silence.
The one who has been left mute has learned to fight alone and tells us a good part of the story.
Why did she choose these two narrators?
Answer.
Because colonialism relegated women to silence and inequality.
I believe that literature should shed light on women, on those who remain invisible.
Q.
It tells of enormous precariousness in the lives of these farmers: drought, child labor, illiteracy.
Is that still valid?
Don't we know the reality of Brazil?
A.
Brazil is a country of profound inequalities.
It is common to find people working in situations of slavery and experiencing the harmful effects of climate change.
“Fear had crossed time and had always been part of our history,” says the novel.
“It was the fear of one who was torn from his land.
Fear of not being able to endure the journey by land and sea.
Fear of punishments, of work, of the scorching sun, of the spirits of those people.
Fear of moving, fear of disliking, fear of existing.
Fear that they wouldn't like you, or what you did, that they wouldn't like your smell, your hair, your color.
Don't let your children like it, the songs, our brotherhood."
This is the tone of a book that has been brought to the theater by Christiane Jatahy in a play performed a few months ago in Madrid and that also focuses on the strong weight of ancestors and healers, a figure that Vieira Junior, geographer and doctor of Studies Ethnic and African from the University of Bahia, he models here with the respect of someone who knows his role well: these healers, he says, are “spiritual leaders who transmit comfort to their community, but also political leaders because they organize and keep people united in “a context of great adversity.”
Q.
Are we listening enough to African American communities?
What should we still repair in the history of slavery?
A.
Centuries of slavery created a classification of life and its value (the lives that are worth more and those that are worth less) that has never been deconstructed.
I believe that today black people have more voice and space to demand equality.
But the principle of equality says that we must treat unequals unequally.
Reparation policies and time are needed to reverse the immense social gap that has emerged between blacks and whites.
Its protagonists, the whites and the blacks, will fight battles that the healers will not be able to face.
Because murder, crime and exploitation will accompany the empty hands of those who cannot even hope to establish roots.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Keep reading
I am already a subscriber
_