Opinion – Terra Vegana: My feast for Caetano Veloso

If you could cook for anyone in the world, who would you choose? This question took me by surprise. I confess that I was prepared to answer about my favorite dishes, my option for vegetable cuisine, the path I took to get to the kitchen… The answer was spontaneous: Caetano Veloso.

The question was asked in the final of a cooking competition program I participated in last year, “Faz-te Chef”, on the television channel 24 Kitchen, which is present in several countries around the world, including Portugal, where I live today.

I never quite understood why I answered “Caetano Veloso”. I’m a fan? Yes, but I’m also a fan of Mano Brown, Marisa Monte, Billie Joe and Erykah Badu. But it was Caetano’s name that came to my mind, with the right to a sigh.

On March 9, Caetano Veloso led the Ato pela Terra in front of — and inside — the National Congress, with the participation of dozens of artists and civil society organizations. From Bela Gil to Paola Carosella, from Daniela Mercury to Emicida, from indigenous leaders to MST leaders, the posters and speeches demanded an end ——the non-approval of the so-called “destruction package”.

It was moving to see so many people gathered and mobilized in defense of what should be ensured by our representatives at the congress: food without poison, the right to land and a standing forest.

The most obvious relationship of the “destruction package” to our food —vegan or not — is PL 6.299/02. Popularized as the “poison package”, it is a threat to our sovereignty and food security, not only because it repeals the current Pesticides Law (7.802/89), but also because it intends to transfer the approval of new pesticides to the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply – taking the Environment Ministry and Anvisa out of any decision-making power in this matter.

Already approved by the Chamber of Deputies, the project is now in the Senate.

The other four bills encompassed by the “destruction package” concern ——or lack of respect for environmental licensing, land grabbing, mining in indigenous lands and the time frame.

The right to land and life of indigenous peoples, as well as the preservation of the Amazon, erected on posters with the words “Brazil, indigenous land” and “Without the Amazon there is no Brazil” are rights that also pass through our food.

After all, the force that moves electric saws, fires, land invasions, gunfire and the erasure of our history is that of the agro, which has nothing of pop. With months into the Bolsonaro government, the ruralist caucus is trying to make the entire herd pass to the cashier.

If we are astonished by the “destruction package” that is being announced, we can, from now on, abdicate what promotes the destruction we want to fight against, and this fight goes beyond our rulers.

A dish that includes meat, bacon in beans and egg in farofa is a dish of destruction. Cow’s milk in coffee and butter in bread is the breakfast of destruction. It is also necessary to fight against our own eating habits in the process of agroecological transition that we defend — and this fight can be, at least on the plate, delicious.

One of my best friends sent me an audio a while ago to say that, in one of the partnerships he made with Caetano Veloso, he realized that he was effectively in the transition to veganism when he felt uncomfortable with a tray of cheeses and cold cuts that was in the dressing room of our immense artist.

I remember him saying that he no longer recognized those foods as food, to the point of feeling nauseated. This discomfort may come from the realization that, after all, that cheese represents a slice of destruction, whether for the cow, the forest, or our own cells.

The discomfort that is established in the contradiction between pleasure in eating and the destructive effect of food can be unbearable to the point of leading a person to the ultimate consequence of becoming vegan, or it can even make them opt for some meals 100 % vegetable.

In the latter case, the strategies are endless: having three vegan lunches a week, having a completely plant-based diet at home and making exceptions when eating out, replacing cow’s milk with plant-based milk, choosing vegan options whenever you order delivery… they are important to reduce our meat consumption and stop the advance of agribusiness with our fork.

“Caetano Veloso”. I think the answer I gave in the program contains one of my most secret desires: to bring key figures in the country’s political and cultural debate closer to veganism through the key of affection and good food.

In my fantasy, I would prepare a vegan Japanese feast for Caetano, because from the stories I know he loves sushi. And for dessert, a cassava cake — I would follow Dona Canô’s recipe, just replacing the single spoon of butter with a vegetable alternative — with guava ice cream and burnt coconut chips.

After hours sitting at the table, he would leave my house with lunch boxes for the week, convinced, I hope, that reducing the consumption of animal products is not only possible, but necessary.