Every person who sleeps on the sidewalk is a survivor. I write and look out the window. It’s about 12 degrees with a bone-deep drizzle. Therefore, the ignorance and arrogance of the phrase “I’m sorry, take it home” is shocking, which is repeated almost like a mantra when the subject arrives in Cracolândia (I’m not going to talk about cruelty now).
People who have never been to my house, who don’t know how I live, whether I’m sadistic or filthy, say with all the conviction in the world that it would do a huge amount of good to welcome someone who, up to this moment, has existed with very little. They despise stories that barely fit into a lifetime, let alone a book, to establish, in a second, what is the best thing to do.
I am deeply disturbed by this feeling, everywhere, of being able to offer something like this to these people who, at all times, show so much strength. I’m not pretending there isn’t hate. It’s because I see a hint of this also in many of those who say they care, but maybe they work more for themselves. I never forget Cadu, ironically, asking for an end to the sausages in the donation lunchboxes. He didn’t even have teeth to chew so much falsehood, flesh and heart.
:: We want to tell you something else about Cracolândia ::
After listening to so many reflections that, like this one, cross me over the years without complete conclusion, I’m losing interest in experts in solving problems they don’t know. I disbelieve anyone who doubts the black cunning of building a pagoda with tin and plastic scraps that are nothing more than rubbish. I’ll let those who don’t see this couple dance, close together, cut the flow* and disconcert the bureaucratic faith.
* flux is the term used by people who live and frequent Cracolândia to describe this crowd on the sidewalk and who consumes drugs, who circulate through the streets of downtown São Paulo.
…
It’s very hard and difficult to be vulnerable. This vulnerability, so present for its absence and so absent for its constant presence. Not knowing, not feeling, not suffering vulnerability is brutal in itself. More than that still, it is fatal. And we do this so much in our everyday lives. Be strong, don’t show weakness, don’t be vulnerable, hide, disappear with vulnerabilities. Thus transforming the fatal into the banal. And the brutality, in a comma.
The sweet raw fruit of well-done succulence and violence, but also, always, present. With notes and nunciations – (N) AMAD EI RADAS -, with juice or blood, gratin or burnt, in white sauce, in the flowing and salivating reduction of boiled and watered hate, with pinches of gold, in rare steak, crossed, because Occasionally, it presents itself as a present, a beautiful shiny and laced package, from a future that is as present as those that have passed. Pass, past. Crossed.
:: Police arrest activists, workers and users in Cracolândia for “disturbing peace” ::
Dish served cold, accompanied by mild viola, incipient temperature, well served, as it serves several people, on trays and/or troughs, even if they are not good for anything. Human smallness, for nothing.
….
Occupying the pressure of the street, between stretches, margins, peripheries, displacements, deterritorializations and banishments. The flow, a territory in itself, a language, a grammar in the middle of discord, dispute and war of worlds.
If only they were less pretentious, less drugged, more orderly, more inward, more controllable. If they wanted to fly lower, if they wanted to work… If they didn’t make the denial of everything we are and hate in ourselves so explicit.
Over there, the rooster doesn’t crow or does he never stop crowing? There, messages run by all means – glances, touches, screams, smells, footsteps, sounds… The city, project-territory that dreams of control, that aims for the millimetry of sterile architecture, sees the tear of itself and wonders about solutions: how to put an end to Cracolândia? It only gives pitaco who can’t look at you.
:: In the midst of police repression, art and solidarity resist and change lives in “Cracolândia” ::
There, here, everywhere that denies the totalitarian project of the colony, movement is sought. Bodies and territories, body-territories that pursue and are pursued by trans-formation and throw forward, towards an imagined horizon, from a catastrophic and dystopian present, the contour zone of the possible. This reverses the annihilation of questions that seek closure, posing questions that sow possibilities. It is along the margins that we open paths.
…….
Night, asphalt, São Paulo
Crumpled cigarette butt
Feet, black, come and go
step speed
Is this the street where everyone hangs out?
concentrated crowd
the buzz roars
hanging on the shoulder
The funk passes
The cadence is light
No laughter, na trick, I don’t scream:
“O the heavy one!”
Is this the street where everyone hangs out?
…
I put the ball on the ground to disguise the restlessness
The first strokes relax the muscles and open my chest
I lift my head and it’s two, three, five, we have a counter done
Tire, Renato, Jennifer, Luan … and football happens
A goal is a goal, a goal is a goal, a foul is a foul
From childhood street to Cracolândia
The rules are the same
While the ball is rolling, the metallic doors of Santa Ifigênia remain there.
While the ball rolls, the GCM cars are still there normally
As the ball rolls, the pipes are still being lit.
As the ball rolls, the flow is alive
I live like a reflection in the mirror
That cannot be seen without time, with fear or prejudice
Is this the street where everyone hangs out?
And yes! Where also resides a mirror
Want to look?
…
P.I.T.A.C.O
From the Dictionary:
Guess given by someone who generally does not know the subject, but insists on commenting; comment, opinion.
Expression:
Give a tip. Giving an opinion without being asked.
Resist from Cracow
*Aline Yuri Hasegawa is a mother, researcher and producer. She is part of the União Lapa mixed floodplain soccer team which, together with Coletivo Rosanegra ADF and A Craco Resiste, promotes harm reduction actions with soccer in Fluxo. Militant of A Craco Resiste.
**Daniel Mello is a member of A Craco Resiste and is part of Associação Birico. He is the author of the book Gargalhando Vitória-poemas da cracolândia (Editora Elefante)
***Ricardo Paes Carvalho – street social educator and journalist. Militant of Craco Resiste.
****Verena Carneiro: journalist, postgraduate in literary journalism. Damage reducer for Craco Resiste and member of the mixed floodplain teams of São Paulo União Lapa and Rosanegra ADF -, both with political and social action through football.
*****This is an opinion piece. The author’s view does not necessarily express the editorial line of the newspaper Brasil de Fato.
Editing: Thalita Pires
