Opinion – Zeca Camargo: The Brazil that votes right

I know this Brazil so well that it’s impossible to look at this Sunday’s election (2) and not remember every incredible person I’ve met in my travels around this country. More: I feel so strongly each Brazilian and each Brazilian that I met in these wanderings that it is as if at this moment they all live inside me.

That’s why it’s more than fair that I join all the voices of those who want to live in Brazil who have always dreamed of my own. And use that voice then to remind us that, if this dream was stupidly interrupted in the last four years, it is now that we resume the project of a greater country. At the polls, with Lula.

Which voter is this? Who am I talking about?

Of myself, the dancing mermaid, the fearless Iara, just to start singing Caetano (who, I predict, will also help me sum it all up in the end). But I am also the oyster fisherman in Galinhos (RN), the surfer from Praia Rosa (SC), the quindinzeira from Palmas (TO), the girl who built a swimming pool in the shape of a grand piano to honor her bricklayer father in Queimadas ( BP).

I am the boy who heats pine nuts on the wood stove in Urupema (SC), on the coldest day of the year. And the couple who are dating in the heat of the pier of the Encontro dos Rios Environmental Park, in Teresina (PI). I am the sculptor of baroque spoons from Tiradentes (MG), the artisan who puts poetry on wooden benches in Ilha do Ferro (AL), the guide to the crystal clear water caves of Bonito (MS).

I am the waiter at the semi-precious stones restaurant in Ametista do Sul (RS), the driver who took me to the Cafundó reservoir (PB), the man who brought me a grilled arapaima in Manaus, the students I crossed on the campus of my city Natal, Uberaba (MG).

The Ezequiel who wakes me up with a coffee in an agate cup in Chapada dos Guimarães (MT), the Candida who sells cocada on her bike in Feira de Santana (BA), the sisters from Manaus who deliver feijoada by bucket to the capital of Amazonas, the friendly chef who prepares the jerked beef in Picuí de Maceió? Yes it’s me.

It’s me crossing the roads from Flecheiras to Jeri, on the coast of Ceará; taking the boat to Soure, in Marajó; along the sidewalks of the Rio de Janeiro neighborhood of Botafogo; swaying sweetly, as if in love, on the ferry that arrives in Porto Seguro (BA); walking alone at dawn along the Esplanada dos Ministérios in Brasília.

See me there at the gang rehearsal in Caruaru (PE)? Next to the giant bonfire in Campina Grande (PB)? Admiring the view of Baía Formosa (RN)? Signing autographs at a school in Rio Branco (AC)? Admiring the guarás meeting on an islet in the Parnaíba Delta (PI)? You can look again, I’m there.

I am also at the graduation of elementary school teachers in Camela (PE); at the opening of MAR, the Art Museum of Rio de Janeiro; backstage at Virada Cultural in São Paulo; under a cocoa tree in Barreiras (BA); in a vineyard in Bento Gonçalves (RS).

And let no one forget that I’m at the rehearsal for the presentation of musicians from Pará at the Municipal do Rio; at the debut of Grupo Corpo from Minas Gerais in Beagá; at Elza Soares’ show in João Pessoa (PB); on the third day of Kuarup, in Xingu (MT); on the float of the Mocidade Independente de Padre Miguel in Sapucaí; in the block Eu Acho É Little, in Olinda (PE); on the red carpet in Gramado (RS); at the luau of Luisa and the Alchemists in Pipa (RN).

I am in front of Pedra Azul (ES), under a waterfall in Chapada dos Veadeiros (GO), on top of a canyon in Capitólio (MG), lying on a dune in Lençóis Maranhenses, stepping on the sand of Caraíva (BA), with the head out of the right arm of Christ the Redeemer admiring Guanabara Bay.

I see the faithful who arrives on their knees in Belém (PA) for the Círio de Nazaré, the girl who lights a candle in the Church of São Francisco in Salvador (BA), the hopefuls on Chico Xavier’s lap, the boys finishing the colorful rug in Corpus Christi in Ouro Preto (MG), the pombagiras from the Umbanda terreiros.

It’s all me. And I’m a lot of “I”. We are the ones who add up to one self. Your eye looks at me, doesn’t it, Caetano? But it cannot reach me. Because I see, walk, sing, dance, enjoy, mute, vibrate, jump, tumble, climb, taste, benzo, speak, think, tremble, drink, give birth, arrive, pray, laugh, zeal, feel, vote.

My sound blinds you, grimace, who are you?