Image by Jéssica Vitória. Translation: Black People Consciouness Day
My great-great-grandfather was a slave, yes, he was one of those who helped build what we now call Brazil. This history of ours, that one day of remembrance alone is not even remotely enough, deserves our reflection, our respect. Our respect for everyone, who died in the mills, on the farms, being considered in this conquest by people whose destiny took them to the land where the thrush sings, by people whose Brazil, in times of insecurity, was the last hope.
All these helped, or were helped by the black people to cement imposing cities, to establish the economy with representation in the foreign market. After hundreds of years, I was born, fruit of the miscegenation between dreaming white people and brave black people.
I am one of the descendants of these slave people, black, a brave dreamer, who reaps the fruits of the incessant energy, of the hope of these people, who even in the face of the most gigantic obstacles to their own survival, smiled, worked, dreamed, and inspired their descendants.
On this ludic day, through this chronicle, I invite you to look at the black people not as victims, nor as incapable, because their resistance proves us the complete opposite of that, but I invite you to look at them as your equal, as people whose ancestors helped enslaved Indians, European exiles to build the sidewalk you pass by every day. A strong, intelligent people that today are mixed in this plural society, adding up, trying to show that their place was conquered with much sweat, today truly Brazilian.
We must value and admire these people so precious to the history not only of Brazil, but of humanity, a people so rich that has so much to teach with its trajectory, that despite the struggles and difficulties faced on its path, showed us the power of perseverance, the power that exists through union with a single goal: to live to prosper.
Our differences make us unique, and regardless of their existence or not, we must always fight evil with good, hate with love, and inequality with citizenship!
Translated by Louise Azambuja
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