First
of all, I have to say that my country still is in party for the
fifth-championship. I’m sorry for the Germans and for the English, but the cup
is ours. Okay, economy crisis breaks, our currency is undervalued, Brazil’s
country-risk is only behind Argentina’s, a journalist has been killed by drug
dealers, election is imminent and our rotten press is covering it as dirtily as
it has always done, but people still are happy as hyenas, who eat crap and
laughs. Pane et circences…
Now
it is time for apologises for all the time I have not written you all. I reckon
it’s been about 5 months I have cut contacts even with my closest friends.
That’s what university make us – incommunicable book-eaters. Just to have a
fair idea, since I had got into Uni, I went back home about four times. My
mother just gets crazy. It’s easier her to come to São Paulo than me to go to
São José dos Campos. Anyway, it’s holidays now. No more classes for one
month – but, to be honest, I already miss the Uni. I must say, despite all the
stress of living in São Paulo, of studying Journalism at USP (and I say, it’s
REALLY stressful), it’s been the best time in my life. I don’t mean to be
cliché, but it really is. The course itself is very exciting – even the
theoretical subjects – and I simply adore 95% of my colleagues (it means, I
just cannot stand one unbearable girl called Kariny who thinks to be the most
intelligent person in the world and doesn’t get fed up of telling people how
wonderful she and the things she does are. Anyway, there is not much to expect
from someone called Kariny…).
As the admittance to USP is rather difficult, especially in Journalism, all the students have a very high cultural background. Most of them used to be the best students at their school. About 20% of my class have already lived abroad, most of people are engaged in some kind of art, and so goes on. Besides, the majority of them are good drinkers. They have definitely much to talk about – much more than Britney Spears and Big Brothel, I mean, Big Brother (by the way, the Brazilian version has become a show of sex and treason, but nothing compared to the competitor channel’s “Casa dos Artistas” – the house of celebrities, a kind of trashy Big Brother for minor and major “artists”).
The
first week at Uni was just for parties. I think I have already told you how it
was. Anyway, summing up, loads of drinking. Then the classes started. I must
confess it was rather difficult at the beginning. My first shock was in Theory
of Communication and Language Sciences with authors such as Peirce,
Wittgenstein, Saussure, Chomsky and Searl. At the beginning I strove to
understand what they meant in their texts. Then I realised not even they knew
what they wrote, so I decided to read them and accept my own conclusions. Anyway,
communication is not to be understood.
The
most exhausting subject of all is Journalism Laboratory. There is a favela
called São Remo behind University of São Paulo. The majority of the lower
qualified workers at USP, such as cleaners and guards, are from São Remo. As it
is a public University, we have an extension compromise whereby we have to
convert to society the knowledge we acquire, and this Laboratory is part of the
extension programme. The Journalism first semester students make (and distribute
personally) a fortnightly standard newspaper for São Remo favela’s community.
We
face major difficulties. It’s a very poor area, with bare bricks, low standard
concrete and scrap slums built without infrastructure. Some houses have got no
door nor windows, being closed with sheets and planks. There is no intimacy in
such a place, where the interior of the neighbour’s house can be seen through
a slit between bricks. Even mourns can be heard from the houses around.
São
Remo, as other favelas, is a labyrinth of narrow alleys and cul-de-sacs in a
hill. It’s a hard place to be reached by postmen, trash collectors and other
public services. Many houses get electrical energy and water illegally, and
rubbish (from rests of constructions to dead animals) mounts in abandoned plots
of land or even on the pavement of the few proper streets, causing from a
nauseating stench to the proliferation of animals such as rats and scorpions.
The last ones are a major problem. Children play with them, make scorpion races
and hang them with threads, despite of the risk of the scorpion’s deadly prick.
Most
inhabitants are builders, cleaners, maids, guards or street peddlers. The
majority work without register, which means they have absolutely no rights as
employees, being therefore exposed to exploitation and job instability.
It’s
extremely difficult for us, middle-class and upper-middle class students, to put
ourselves in their shoes, to know what’s the right register to write for a
poorly educated community, to know what is relevant for them, what is their
demand for information. How not to underestimate them, how not to overestimate
them? How not to expose people when writing about polemical questions in the
community? How not to impregnate the news with our own values? Many times we
find us writing for ourselves; we forget that some themes that we consider
newsworth are actually insignificant for them.
As
many favelas and poor districts in a lower or higher degree, São Remo is
dominated by drug dealers, who ironically assume an assistance role in the
community as means to manipulate the population and keep the police out of the
area, creating a parallel State. Therefore the theme “drugs” is not allowed
in our newspaper. In the first edition we launched there was a reportage about
public security, with São Paulo State Public Security Secretary’s interview.
Many people put themselves seriously against the newspaper because of this
interview. In favelas, the role of State is inverted. Police is seen as bandits
by a population tired of their misconduct – they invade houses, arrest without
evidences, torture suspects to take false confessions from their mouths, and
kill. How to know how to write about police and security policies then?
Another
problem is how to cope with both the newspaper and the classes. Every other
Wednesday we have to finish the newspaper. Some days we send it to the graphic
about two or four at night. The last edition’s closing started at 8:00 am and
finished at 6:00 the day after. 22 hours of work. Anyway, I think I still like
it – but I don’t plan to work in proper newspapers yet. Maybe I’ll work
for a magazine or maybe I won’t be a journalist.
University
has been a never-ending party. Every Thursday there is “Quinta e Breja”, a
thematic beer happy hour at Arts and Communication School’s Academic Centre;
after every edition closing we go to bars in Pinheiros district; there are also
several parties (the “Festecas”) and trips. I believe the friends I made and
I’ll make at University will be the ones I’ll take for the rest of my life.
In
April my class went to Tremembé, in an area occupied by members of the Movement
of the Landless (Movimento dos Sem-Terra, MST). It’s a very strong social
movement in Brazil, maybe the most important one. Each group of five students
slept in the house of a family of peasants. Some families managed to get a
reasonably good output, but others had no success and live in improper
conditions. Besides getting to know the situation of those people, the poor
action of Government in helping them to grow their plantation, their integration
to the local community, we must write a profile of a member of the family in
whose house we stayed. I wrote about Durval Gomes. A 60 years old illiterate man,
he came from the a very poor state in Northeast of Brazil. He was the eldest son
of a family with 18 children. His mother was mentally ill, and his father, after,
as he says, having taken a X-ray, became completely insane, having to be kept
away from the family to safeguard his children. Durval came southwards in the
seventies as millions of people from the Northeast did in a time of draught and
poverty. São Paulo was an Eldorado in those people’s imagination. However, as
Durval arrived, he found out a very much different São Paulo. Then he moved
around south and southeast Brazil, working with the most different things
possible. Before coming to Tremembé he was living in a favela in Campinas,
working as guard in Unicamp, an important university. His dream was to go back
to the countryside, to work on the land. The city was swallowing him, his aims,
his family. The Moviment of the Landless was a hope for him to have a new life.
After years of occupation of an unproductive estate, he was appointed a spot of
land. Nowadays, he is happy. His plantation is really poor. The soil is
infertile. There is no surplus; his crop – beans, rice and some vegetables –
is destined just for his family. However, he says that was what he wanted –
just a spot o land. He said that he would rob and kill if he still was in the
city. According to him, Brazil should follow this way, deflating the cities,
which shelters circa 90% of Brazilian population, and investing in small
properties in the country. He could not study. He could hardly express himself
verbally – his vocabulary was extremely limited; most of communication was
gestures. However, what he said was much more sensible than the neo-liberal
verborrhea of our Excellence, the President.
This
was an unforgettable experience. Much can be read in the newspapers about the
Movement of the Landless, but everything we read is based in political interests,
it doesn’t matter if leftwing or rightwing ones. The only way to know what it
is all about is living it. I still don’t have a concrete opinion about it, but
I don’t consider important to have any opinion. Opinion doesn’t mean
anything, it’s just a prejudice. What I can say is that now I know how things
are, what are the good and the bad points of it. That’s what is important.
Oh,
now I see! I have really went out by the tangent. Back to my university life!
1st
of May there were the Arts and Communication University Games in the small town
of Guaratinguetá. Nine schools from São Paulo City went there – ECA-USP, Cásper
Líbero, FAAP, Mackenzie, PUC-SP, FAAM, FIAM, Metodista and Belas Artes. It took
four days of much fun – and not so much game. Whatever. Not many people were
really bothered with games. The most important were free beer and the parties.
There were two raves, but I could not afford it. It is interesting how people of
different colleges hate each other! People from mine shouted to the others
sentences such as “the exams fucked you, and now we are going to get your job”,
“study harder, you’ll to be my apprentice”, “only cretins pay”, and
the others replied not so much friendlier words. Anyway, loads of good time.
The
last weekend before holidays I went with my class and a professor to a mountain
resort called Monte Verde (Green Mount). It was just wonderful. We watched
Brazil versus Germany, drunk loads of beer and discussed about journalism and
the professional perspectives in a context of media crisis. My professor was the
drunkest one. As you can see, things can get very much informal here, under the
Equator line…
There is so much more to say about my new life, but I reckon you wouldn’t
have time or patience to read. I know my English got a bit odd within this year,
and that reading an abnormal text is not the most agreeable thing in the world.
Unfortunately it’s not been possible to me to play piano. Actually, it’s
been about one year I do not study music and around five months I do not play.
That’s a shame, but I cannot take my piano wherever I go.
That’s
all for now. I hope I hear from you all!
Bye,
Maurício
Horta Miyauchi