"Ende Voce", by Marcelo Carneiro, reveals the cultural vision of a native community of the Brazilian Amazon, which is the mestizo base of the Brazilian people, and which knows no boundaries between "you" and "me", between "them" and "us". An urgent vision to install for the sustainability of the planet. Marcelo Carneiro, its author, tells us details of the birth of his work.
In the summer of 2015, my editor, Annete Baldi (editor Projeto), called me and told me that she had obtained photos of Araquém Alcântara and wanted to submit a book in a competition organized by the Brazilian Ministry of Education. The deadline was very tight, could I think of anything?
I like to work like this. The next day I presented her with a synopsis, she accepted, and three days later I presented her with the book, 55 pages of texts and photos, with the title Ende/Você, or Você/Você, in Tupi and Portuguese.
At that time, we were experiencing a power shortage in São Paulo. In Brazil, most of the energy is hydroelectric, and we were building Belo Monte, with great debates for and against, precisely to make up for that shortage. Energy from the Amazon, to the industrial Southeast, in an interconnected country, the work of Dilma Roussef.
Brazil is very Tupi. The Portuguese arrived here, but used Brazil only as a stopover on their journey to India. For a hundred years, Brazil was one of the mestizos resulting from the marriages of the Portuguese fleeing the ships, with indigenous women. This is the origin of the Brazilian people, and these people spoke Nheengatu, or an adapted form of Tupi, until the 19th century.
In the book, a boy named Miro, lives one day with no energy. During that day when nothing else works, he looks at his father's new photo book, which is still in evidence, and is called Ike/Here. The father defends the idea that there is no there, no here. Them and us. We are one people, we are one destiny, interconnected.
Miro looks at the photos and reads his father's comments. He realizes that the world his father photographs manages to cope very well with the lack of energy that paralyzes that other world. He sees that indigenous children can go and do what he does not even dream of. He realizes that culture has a lot of power, just different. When his father calls him at night, Miro asks him to do what his father always offered him, and he never wanted to: go there.
Miro goes and takes pictures of him. But not only that. He makes a new friend, the son of a cacique friend of his father and makes it clear to us that we all need to make this meeting if we want a Brazil that survives what is to come. This is what Ende/You tells us.
Araquém Alcântara's photos make the book what it is. Worth seeing!
AUTHOR'S BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Marcelo Carneiro da Cunha graduated in Journalism and published his first book Noites do Bonfim in 1987. He has published 18 award-winning books and is also a film scriptwriter.
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