BRAZILIAN PARADOX

 FROM THE BRAZILIAN PARADOX

The biggest mystery of understanding something in Brazil is when you say something but the meaning is exactly the opposite, to or not to say anything or to reach the initial conclusion. And in the end expect that the events confirm the contradictory of the expected and understood exactly opposite to the virtual reality that we have seen through the eyes of history.

You can talk about mental confusion. Or a Brazilian paradox that so many excellent writers have tried to unravel. Either with extensive and intense books, or with catchphrases, or with wonderful poetry that has turned into music whose melodies are a poetry and whose lyrics are a melody that overflows through souls and hearts.

It's a beautiful country. The mixture of the beauty of people with natural beauties, a mixture of charm that overcomes all the other ills of everyday life and years and centuries.

The charm that is produced even in the rulers, supplants a reality that political and even geopolitical rationality confuses and produces a cloud of almost fata Morgana. An unreal image that becomes, so repeated, sometimes even accepted as true.

We are convincing ourselves in the first place; only in this way can we convince others that we are a society concerned with the future of the planet and totally dedicated to the fight for climate change. The Amazon is in our hearts and it is ours. If Jeff Bezos thinks he can use this wonderful name without paying us the royalties, take care. In 1992 we organized the most important world conference on the subject, created the Ministry of the Environment, reduced deforestation and sent it to Dubai at the environment conference, COP, the next one will be in Brazil, more than 1500 citizens led by the President of the Republic himself, the largest delegation of the meeting. There are Brazilians everywhere saying that we are a country that takes care of the environment more than any other. And we promise that we will be good boys in this area by secula seculorum.

And then in the middle of the party there is a city called Maceió, which is sinking. Sixty thousand families have been removed and when you look at the photos of the abandoned houses, you have the clear impression that you are looking at Allepo in Syria. And the good news is that the sinking is 1 cm per hour and no longer 2.5 like a few days ago. There is more good news: the national Congress, even at the end of the week, in December, will organize a parliamentary commission of inquiry, CPI, and ask for money from the federal government to help solve the problem.

Brazil is now and has long been governed by the politicians of Alagoas who 18 years ago did not know that the capital of their state was sinking, but they know how to organize Brazilian life.

Behind the sinking of the city of Maceió, and not so far away, there are the tragedies of Mariana and Brumadinho. Serra do Curral in Minas Gerais. Deaths and devastation that are like the wounds open to this day without knowing when this pain will be closed. In the middle of these stories there is still illegal mining, the largest illegal logger arrested, but without knowing when he was tried and the oil stains in the sea that stained the beaches of the Northeast and no one said clearly where they came from. It was probably the rain.

Oil is our future and then exploring it on the Equatorial Margin is more than logical and even more logical is to inform the world in the middle of the Dubai Conference that we will join as observers to OPEC, the oil cartel, to convince them that they are wrong, because oil was already and we will use more alternative sources. By the way, what Brazil, with ethanol for example, actually has.

And in the back and forth, it is the fantastic reading of reports of companies involved in all disasters, there are many more than those mentioned above, about the care they have for the environment. All of them are private, with state investment funds as shareholders. They are on the stock exchange, theoretically subject to unpared transparency. And there is more, no customer of them, in countries that sign international agreements that oblige them to respect the environment, is bothered by the loss of life in Brazil and all the destruction that was and is being caused.

Basically, why will the gringos be bothered, if justice, politicians, businessmen and governments, all Brazilians are not bothered and do not solve?

It seems that the paradox between saying, thinking and doing in this area is a summer dream, which with the rains, by the way one more to add to the list of what awaits us, disappears. But here comes the fires.

Oh, my mirror, is there anyone more beautiful than me?

Stefan Bogdan BARENBOIM ŠALEJ

6.12.2023.