The duo Jair & Marcelo, also known as Botina & Capacho, sang again this week the chant “It’s better to lose life than freedom”. It is incredible how there are still those who listen to this noise that has made (and takes) the lives of Brazilians since the beginning of the pandemic.
What is the freedom that these people defend, after all? Because freedom is not just one thing, there are freedoms and freedoms. You can’t have them all, nor can I, or the world would be complete barbarism.
In the documentary “Echoes of a World” (“Echoes of a World”, 2018), English musician Ray Davies revisits compositions he wrote for his band, The Kinks. And he laughs at his own youthful naivete when he stumbles across a line from “Big Sky” (1968) that reads: “One day we’ll be free” (“One day we’ll be free”).
“Free from what?” asks Davis in the film. Yes, free from what? Because freedom without prison is a concept that doesn’t do much good.
We had freed ourselves from some nefarious chains lately. We were freed from the dictatorship, freed from inflation, freed from the map of hunger, we were on our way to free ourselves from the medieval mentality that curses this country.
The group that was raised to power robbed us of all these freedoms, but they come to talk about freedom with their mouths full. Oh yes, they refer to the freedom to do things. And how selective they are!
They certainly don’t talk about the freedom to take care of one’s own life, married to whomever you want, inhaling the smoke that suits you, professing the faith or lack of faith that you think is correct, without disturbance, censorship or injury.
Freedom is for the majority, they say, and the minorities who submit or disappear. Really?
Because what Bolsonaro preaches, and he has never denied it, is the freedom to kill and die. A minority gains the freedom to kill; the majority remains free to die.
For those who enlist in his column, the president wants the freedom to buy rifles by the hand. The freedom to preach the annihilation of gays, communists, macumbeiros, indigenous peoples, trees and democracy.
Bolsonaro clings to the freedom to shoot infected spits at those who fight for the collective effort to end the pandemic.
The bulk of the population is left with freedom of choice. From choosing between cleaning alcohol and rubble firewood to cook little food. Between the chicken leg, the first bone and the second bone. Between the trash from the market or the line for the lunchbox donation. Between the rotten, the vanquished, the contaminated and the filthy.
In parts of the Potiguar sertão, people in poverty were free to hunt lizards or birds for dinner. But these animals fled the land desolated by drought – lizards, nightjars and even the white wing are freed from the shackles that society imposes on us.
Men were left with the freedom to die, little by little, day by day, for lack of food or dignity. Just choose the option you want.
(Follow and enjoy the Raw Cuisine on the hammocks social. Follow Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.)
.
