We’re many Severinos
and our future’s the identical:
to melt up these stones
by sweating over them,
attempting to carry to life
a lifeless and deader land,
to attempt to wrest a farm
out of burnt-over land.
However, in order that Your Excellencies
can recognise me higher
and be capable to comply with higher
the story of my life,
I’ll be the Severino
you’ll now see to migrate.
The Demise and Lifetime of a Severino, João Cabral de Melo Neto, 1955 (Translation by Elizabeth Bishop)
It was a Sunday in March and winter was starting its sluggish farewell. The day dawned blue and turned gray. An entire six months residing in Lisbon has taught me to not be shocked by this phenomenon. It had been six straight days of arduous graft and, as with most catering staff, I began my at some point off by placing my soiled garments within the wash and taking the chance to tidy up my room. The sunshine thrilled me as a result of it might each save me the expense of going to the launderette and save time.
I left the home, walked for slightly below 10 minutes and arrived on the Fonte Luminosa (luminous fountain). It’s neither properly lit nor properly maintained, however it nonetheless trumps Rome’s Trevi Fountain. By now the day was gray and heralded the rain that may come that night; I ought to have gone to the launderette, I believed. I walked alongside Alameda Dom Afonso Henrique, named after the primary king of Portugal.
I quickly noticed the modernist constructing that has caught my eye since I first set foot there. A logo of Estado Novo structure in Portugal, it opened in 1955 because the Império cinema-theatre, the identical yr that the e-book Morte e Vida Severina (The Demise and Lifetime of a Severino) was written in Brazil. Through the Eighties it was vacated and remained so till it was purchased by the Common Church of the Kingdom of God within the yr of my start, 1992. With the ‘Now Exhibiting’ billboards lengthy gone, each day on the high of the constructing there’s a easy reminder to passers-by: Jesus Christ is Lord.
On the stage of this identical theatre, on 6 June 1966, a fervent Lisbon cheered the top of the tour that introduced the variation of the northeastern Brazilian Christmas play Morte e Vida Severina by the Brazilian poet João Cabral de Melo Neto to town. Introduced by TUCA (the theatre firm of the Pontifical Catholic College of São Paulo), João got here alongside and was so pleased with the keenness of the viewers on the premiere that he adopted the group to additional performances in Coimbra and Porto. This and extra was shared with me by Rafaela Cardeal, a researcher from Rio de Janeiro who devoted herself to a analysis undertaking that culminated in her doctoral thesis on the Portuguese reception of the poet’s work.
In line with Rafaela, the play’s success is because of many elements. However amongst them is the way in which through which its characters, wearing white and with out surroundings, represented a social critique of the truth of the Brazilian sertão that echoed Portuguese life beneath the dictatorship. Younger audiences, who have been combating towards fascist repression, recognized with the message of the play, which was set to music by Chico Buarque in the beginning of his profession. On the time, the denunciation of social inequality and oppression turned an emblem of resistance towards Portuguese repression.
We have been sitting at a desk in Pão de Açúcar – a Nineteen Fifties café reverse the Império, or fairly the Common Church, as it’s now identified. Behind the café there’s a tiled panel displaying the irreverent panorama of a Rio postcard, which for a good portion of my life was a part of my every day commute to school. The selection of location was not intentional. However Pão de Açúcar and a cinema-turned-Common Church couldn’t have made me really feel extra at house.
My transfer to Lisbon calcified inside me an id that, though it had by no means gone unnoticed in my life, turned extraordinarily visceral; Brazilianness. Evidently once I crossed the Atlantic, I symbolically discovered myself going through a strategy of loss of life and life. I consider that each immigrant experiences a rebirth. And this complete course of is painful in some ways. Life right here has taught me to understand violence otherwise from what I used to be used to. Violence right here will not be express, it’s delicate and institutional. On many events, violence is dressed up as forms.
At first I believed I knew why I had come right here, however just a few months later I’m now not certain. I do know I fled Rio’s violence and I do know I got here seeking a greater high quality of life, however I’m now not very clear about what meaning. Simply as Severino realized, maybe the invention lies within the journey and never within the vacation spot. My encounters alongside the way in which have helped me to know the that means of being Brazilian and of my path.
Sidnei Granja
It was the primary week of summer season when Sidnei arrived in Lisbon final yr. Alongside a suitcase and a small rucksack, he carried with him the promise of a greater life. His life on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, far faraway from the fabulous imagery eternalised within the bossa nova of Tom Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes, introduced trauma. The successive muggings and gratuitous violence that accompanied the straightforward actuality of present made him determine to construct the remainder of his life in Portugal.
With completely no ensures, he crossed immigration management with a three-month vacationer visa. It’s been 9 months now and not at all is he contemplating returning to Brazil. And that doesn’t essentially imply that he has discovered paradise. Quite the opposite, right here in Portugal he has found new challenges in his existence as a working–class particular person. He clearly has a greater high quality of life however with a brand new sense of vulnerability. Unable to settle his immigrant standing, he feels in a form of limbo. Not sure of when he’ll be capable to cross Portuguese borders and discover Europe as he goals of, he lives day-to-day, working in a restaurant in Porto, near the fashionable Bolhão Market.
‘Slavery’ – that is the phrase he makes use of to explain his day-to-day life. This turned clear when he tried to search for a coaching course that enabled him to seek out new job alternatives and couldn’t discover one which fitted in with the truth of an individual who begins work at 12 midday and has no time to depart. All of it is dependent upon the purchasers. It might be that the restaurant you’re employed in finishes at 11pm, or possibly midnight. You by no means know when a gaggle of hungry vacationers will arrive.
Behind the counter, at off-peak instances, you watch life taking place exterior. He appears like he’s in an aquarium, watching individuals cross by means of the glass that separates him from the life he longs for. On the few sunny days in Porto’s winter, the sensation of suffocation consumes him essentially the most. That’s when he most needs to really feel the heat of freedom.
Laís Del Castillo
Throughout my first month in Lisbon, I lived in a hostel in Chiado. One night in October, I discovered Laís within the kitchen chatting to her girlfriend on a video name. She was excitedly sharing the movies she had recorded on the live performance of Brazilian singer Jorge Vercillo. I might have gone too if I’d identified; I had learnt to love his songs on account of my mom’s affect. Firstly of the 2000s, it was what I listened to each day.
I recognized with Laís as a result of she was solely there for one night time, returning the next day to Setúbal the place she lives due to her job as a chef in a restaurant. Pondering again to that second, I realise the irony of us assembly in a kitchen. Since then, our friendship has gone from power to power and with every assembly I be taught extra about her story.
Our conferences are uncommon. Like me, Laís works full–time shifts break up into two with an prolonged break within the day. Three–hour breaks don’t typically allow get-togethers with associates who reside 50 kilometres away. However one Sunday firstly of February, she managed to get half a day without work and got here to see Virginia on the theatre, a play written and starring Brazilian actress Cláudia Abreu. At that screening, I noticed Brazilian singer Fafá de Belém within the viewers honouring her pal. Belém is from Pará within the north of Brazil, the land of my grandmother.
Laís was born in the identical area. To be extra exact, she was born within the municipality of Macapá in Amapá. However when she was very younger, she moved to Natal, the capital of Rio Grande do Norte, which was the place she grew up. Throughout her childhood she took half in chess championships, and he or she was good, as she is eager to level out. She gained state, municipal and even regional championships. She by no means gained a nationwide championship, however she did end within the high 10.
This expertise of travelling for championships at a really younger age boosted the free spirit she has at present. So it wasn’t too troublesome to take the choice to maneuver to Punta Cana for work, the place she led a kitchen regardless of not talking Spanish at first. Being an immigrant, subsequently, is nothing new, however she is aware of that every transfer throws up new challenges. The convenience with which she will transfer round has led her to yet one more vacation spot, this time to Albufeira in southern Portugal. In addition to on the lookout for a job that respects her as a human being, proximity to the seaside is a necessity in her life, as it’s for a lot of of those that grew up on Brazil’s coast.
Once we left the theatre and went to dinner, I observed, as she took off her coat, an enormous burn on her left forearm. These are recurring marks left on the our bodies of the kitchen staff. When she advised me in regards to the accident, she conveyed a way of normality and a method of wanting on the recurrence of this as a part of the job. Nevertheless, I understand a robust symbolism within the marks that this work leaves on the our bodies of a major majority of immigrants.
In parallel, I feel again to that stage on the Maria Matos Theatre, with a efficiency of Virginia Woolf going through the dilemma of changing into an awesome author. On the sting of sensibility and insanity, I noticed the inventive strategy of this lady who, firstly of the 20 th century, confronted homeric difficulties in proving her excellence in a literary milieu of males. For Woolf, ache performed a basic position in her work. However I ponder if it actually wants to harm. From that day on, many reflections encompass my thoughts and a phrase inside the lengthy monologue nonetheless resonates with me: ‘freedom is having time to reside’. And so I realise that I, Laís and Sidnei usually are not really free.
Davi Afonso
Like us, Davi isn’t absolutely free both. I share the huge bulk of my six-day working week with him in the identical restaurant. I’m a waiter and he’s a kitchen assistant. Often I am going into the kitchen to assist him with no matter is required, and there I uncover an added dimension to catering; it doesn’t matter if the restaurant has prospects or not, there’s at all times work within the kitchen.
In the event that they’re not coping with the rapid calls for of the client, they’re getting ready for the subsequent day. Whether or not it’s making pudim, my favorite dessert, which tastes like childhood to me, or getting ready the cozido à portuguesa – Portuguese stew – to be served for lunch the subsequent day, the kitchen is at all times seeking to the longer term.
One Friday, Davi and I made a decision to interrupt the humdrum of our routine and went to the bohemian Bairro Alto. Throughout our stroll from Rua de Santa Marta to our ultimate vacation spot, we spoke about life alongside Avenida da Liberdade. It was on this journey that I realized that when he determined to depart Curitiba, within the south of Brazil, he wished to discover the world. The place he got here from, he had a secure job as an administrative assistant at a big firm, he lived in his personal home and life appeared full. But one thing was lacking.
So he determined to return to Portugal. His household doubted him, however he got here right here anyway. And within the warmth of pleasure, just a few months earlier than his departure, he purchased a ticket for the day of his mum’s birthday. On the morning of 20 Might 2024, he went to her home to have espresso and say goodbye. She didn’t wish to eat, they stated goodbye and he left for the airport with no regrets, he was really completely happy. On the time, mom and son hadn’t realised what that second meant. In the future she rang to say that it had lastly sunk in and he or she realized that he had left.
At Bar da Vera, a spot that brings Brazilians collectively in Lisbon’s nightlife, we found that the one beer that we had agreed to have was two bottles of wine and a few photographs with peculiar names. Davi has an inexplicable vitality for somebody nearly 30 years outdated. Regardless of how arduous he works or how tiring the day has been, he at all times needs to have enjoyable. The DJ was enjoying Brazilian music and it wasn’t lengthy earlier than we gave up on going again early. We had enjoyable, met individuals and lived a unique life. It’s at all times satisfying to fulfill individuals with whom I share one thing, it’s a psychological train to maintain my place in thoughts. That night time, being an immigrant appeared like a mere element.
Seventy years have handed since Severino’s journey hit the bookshops of Brazil. In addition to a social portrait of the nation, this character is the archetype of the trendy particular person who, confronted with the progress of his time, has been swallowed up by the premise of modernization. Poverty and starvation are nonetheless a actuality in Brazil, there’s no denying that. Similar to in so many different locations, a whole lot of immigrants are braving the ocean. Adrift within the immensity of the ocean, extreme deaths are witnessed throughout Europe. In line with a report launched by Caminando Fronteras, greater than 10,000 migrants died attempting to succeed in Spain in 2024. It might be reckless to attempt to evaluate the drama of those journeys to our personal. However we can also’t deny that new instances have introduced different dilemmas and anxieties to the Brazilian dimension.
‘We don’t simply need meals. We would like meals, enjoyable and artwork. We don’t simply need meals, we wish to go wherever.’ In these verses written on the finish of the Eighties, Arnaldo Antunes from the Brazilian band Titãs signalled a brand new set of calls for. In 2025, at a time of late modernity, I exploit Stuart Corridor’s arguments about id to clarify the method of fragmentation, instability and fixed reinvention to which we’re subjected.
Globalization, migration and the collapse of fastened references destroy the thought of a steady and coherent ‘I’ – like Severino. In Lisbon, we expertise a actuality that imposes itself on our Brazilian existence. My id, beforehand anchored in Brazil, is rebuilt in transit between languages, customs and bureaucracies that place me in a nether zone – neither right here nor there.
This textual content is a part of the Come Collectively Fellowship Programme, a coaching programme for younger journalists led by cultural journal Kurziv. This text was initially printed in Portuguese by the cultural media platform Gerador.
