The first time I read the Sheet it was in the early 1990s. My mother, Celina, worked as a maid and, at least once a week, I stayed with her at work outside of school hours. My place in my mother’s “service” was demarcated “from the kitchen to there”, as the character of the boss, Bárbara (Karine Teles), in the film “Que Horas ela Volta”, for the maid Val (Regina Casé) points out. Next to the sink, where my mother cut food, there was a storage room under the main stairs of the house. There were the old newspapers and there, in that small space, I transported myself to another world reading the children’s sections of publications such as Folha de S.Paulo, Jornal do Brasil and Veja.
This journey in letters was the necessary escape from that cubicle, where I could neither play nor be noticed. The smell of that kitchen is still part of my memory. The years passed and I continued to frequent this space and have access to these old newspapers. It was the passport to the world of a boy growing up on the outskirts of Campo Grande (MS). When it came time for the entrance exam, I had no doubts that I wanted to do journalism. THE Sheet followed me as a reading and now also as a place where I wanted to work.
I worked in the press from Mato Grosso do Sul and in 2007 I made the selection for the trainee at Sheet. My first visit to São Paulo was to cover the Salão de Turismo and it coincided with the period of the competition that gave access to the newspaper. I was in the newsroom at Alameda Barão de Limeira, and I found myself working there, amid tables full of old newspapers, as they were presented at the time. I didn’t go to the next stage, but the dream was encrusted.
Little did I know that that one Sheet in that I wanted to join would not value the professional I am. Not very diverse, the newsroom had (and still has) mostly white journalists, from the Southeast, middle class and with exchange programs in their curriculum. In addition to this loneliness, of becoming one of the few blacks and peripherals in that space, the social and humanized guidelines that I liked to write did not have the same prestige as the scoops and political issues that used to sell more newspapers. The racial issue, then, was not even considered an agenda.
In 2009 I decided to move to São Paulo to specialize in Literary Journalism. The first reporter vacancy that emerged was in economics. I worked at Agência Estado, at Valor Econômico, but never at Sheet, whose neighbor I had become. I got to do freelance work at the now extinct newspaper Agora.
In 2016 I left formal jobs and went on a one-year backpacking trip. I was tired of just dedicating myself to work and study. I realized that there were a lot of (white) people doing the same and few black people in my way. In addition, I went through situations that I didn’t see travel content producers talking about, because they were white and had never been searched in the middle of the street in Venice, for example.
Upon returning from this sabbatical, I started to write about cases of racism in tourism, but also about the importance of getting to know more places of black culture and history. All to encourage more blacks to travel, and not only work and resist, as well as generate interest so that everyone can learn more about black culture, African diaspora cuisine, black places and characters undervalued by Eurocentric narratives that tourism is accustomed.
My work gained space here at Sheet when the police followed the São Paulo Negra Walk, which I conceived and lead alongside other partners, such as Heitor Salatiel and Debora Pinheiro. Zeca Camargo wrote a column that moved me and I even framed it. Dani Avelar recorded on a full page this new possibility of getting to know the cities, called Afrotourism. Even though they were important, these stories were still about white people telling the stories of black people, like me.
I wanted to write about it myself in this newspaper. when the Sheet created the Diversity section, I thought it would be my chance to contribute to my work. I tried to be a columnist. But in 2019 the response I received was that another column would already debut, the Blackboard. It was as if blackness could be summed up in a single vision. Resigned, I tried the same space in other vehicles and even got it with some reservations.
As time went by, I sent a couple more emails in this desire to be a columnist for the newspaper. Until, in 2021, I read an article that said that tourism in Salvador was reborn anchored in new luxury hotels that were installed in the surroundings of Pelourinho. Nothing could be more elitist and Eurocentric, as the city has several new black developments that are changing its cultural and tourist scene. I wrote a text-response that I imagined was the shovel in my dream of writing here, and I continued my work without thinking about it any further.
Until, about two months ago, I received a call from Flavia Lima, current editor of Diversity, inviting me to be a columnist. I didn’t believe it. I told her about my old will, mixed with happiness and how good it was to see that the world had changed in the last ten years. Flavia countered by saying that this change is more recent, from the last three years. And we remind you that we are advancing, but there is still a lot to evolve. Also because anti-racism is not a one-off action, but a series of continuous strategies that also involve adequately remunerating those who contribute with their writing and knowledge (which still does not happen).
And, remembering, this story is not about meritocracy or overcoming (which white people love), but about how the journey of black people is usually longer and more complex to occupy places that are almost natural for whites, like traveling and blogging in a large newspaper.
On my long way here, many people have participated in this walk. That’s why I don’t arrive alone and we’re going to talk about travel under the most different aspects, in the most diverse way possible. We have not yet won structural racism, but today, we are advancing in this battle. THE Sheet, finally earns his Dark Guide. And having a black, peripheral, talking about diversity in tourism in the largest newspaper in the country, is the realization of a dream. And that’s not little!
