Another Awakening: The Realities of Brazil's Lost Children

As the cachaça swirls in the palette in between sips of caipirinha cocktails amidst pounding sounds from the waves along Copacabana, I realise I have slipped into a very different world. The beach atmosphere and the fitness culture demonstrated by hordes of bikini-clad men and women surfing, sun-tanning, playing volleyball, rollerblading and jogging just across rows of hotels is testimony of an eclectic rural-urban feel in Rio de Janeiro. The bucolic, rustic charm of the countryside interweaves with the city skyscrapers. The mountains and knolls in which favelas are tucked away contrast with the fine, white sands on which more economically-sufficient classes of people, including tourists, rendezvous.

Sandwiched between buildings on street corners – especially within the same block of Copacabana Rio Hotel where I was staying – squats a boy of probably eight years of age. His oversized T-shirt is pulled to the ankles. He drops his head through the neckline. What remains seems like a stump of fabric stuck on the ground, a scene not uncommon to the streets of Brazil. Not far from this immobile, passive beggar-boy sleeps another one, in front of Senzo Peli, a well-decorated business office. One man walks up to this boy, and jerks him up by his T-shirt. Instinctively, the boy, now violently awakened, retaliates and tries to fight off his aggressor, but resists after seeing a much taller person. Man leaves. Boy stands aimlessly, helplessly. He loiters for a few more seconds before a pair of hands reaches out from the glass doors he was standing in front of, with a cup of water. Boy drinks.

Then disappears.

The only remembrance I had of him is the crushed plastic cup on the pavement, turned upside down. Such is the sorrowful, but realistic, splice of life of poverty-stricken Brazil.

Lapa is no different. On the steps near Arcos da Lapa – the aqueduct – teenage boys sit around, talking and gesticulating loudly. If one aims a camera at the murals near where they congregate, they come charging after you. Street life is antagonistic – to us as outsiders, to them insiders. The have’s and the have-not’s. The rich and the poor. When poverty hits them to the core, they could rob and turn violent. But on usual days, their daily sustenance is glue, not food. It has been reported (http://www.re-solv.org/international.asp) that sniffing a tube of glue can last two to three days, a better replacement than rice and beans.

Tourists and local Brazilians fall prey to muggings and killings everyday. As such, I have been warned to avoid and ignore these dangerous people. Even within the Harlem neighbourhood in New York where I live, these encounters are also not unfamiliar. But is it moral to turn a blind eye to the needy? Is it ethical to deny and dismiss one’s human existence based on social conditions that had put the boys at an economic disadvantage?

Paulo Freire, in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, writes that ‘human existence cannot be silent’ (Freire 1970/2006, p. 88). Have I, in the pursuit of protecting my own welfare and safety, silenced another human being? In doing so, am I propagating the oppressive structures that we, as Boalian practitioners, proudly claim to overthrow? Freire adds:

[N]or can it [i.e., human existence] be nourished by false words, but only by true words, with which men and women transform the world. To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. (ibid.)

He maintains that saying the word is not a privilege of some persons, but the right of everyone. How can I, then, as educator believing in emancipatory practices, validate their existence and simultaneously allow this real community an access to their rights? Is education their only hope for the future?

This cultural awakening stirs in me mixed emotions. Helplessness. Sadness. Anger. Fear. What is my role as an educator in Singapore? How will this translate to the work I do with disenfranchised communities? Why do I continue to do this work, or should I not? I may have my doubts, but I cannot lose my hope. Experiencing and confronting this other ‘culture’ of Brazil has now cemented Augusto Boal’s command even more for me:

We cannot float above the World we live in, in seeking to understand everyone’s reasons cosmically and trying to justify all, both those who exploit and those who are exploited, masters and slaves. Our taking of a theoretical position and our concrete actions should not arise from the fact that we are artists, but because we are human beings. We may be vets, dentists, masons, philosophers, dancers, teachers, football players, judo fighters – but, whatever our profession, we have the citizen’s obligation to place ourselves on the side of the downcast and the injured. (Boal 2006, pp. 106-7)