Transnational Solidarities: Recognizing our common struggle and dignity
- Ana Paula Barreto
- Nov 24, 2023
- 3 min read
By Ana Paula Barreto
On a hot afternoon in 2016, I was sitting in a small living room listening to a mother explaining how she lost her son. “One night, while the whole family was sleeping, a group of officers invaded my house. They broke the door and used gas, waking everyone; they entered the room where my son was sleeping. They shot him and then took my other son." While she cries, telling the story, a car full of police parks in front of the house. “They come here often; they try to scare us so we don’t tell people what happened. They don’t know we are not afraid anymore. We already lost everything… including fear."
A strange feeling hits me. Wait, I know this story! It’s almost like I don’t need the Arabic interpretation anymore. I look around, I see pictures of her sons. I look through the window, children are playing, young people are talking. I see the houses, the neighborhood… I know this story! I close my eyes, and I am back to Jardim Angela, Sao Paulo, where I grew up. I see similar faces, children, people, houses, and the same violence.
In 2016, I joined a human rights delegation visiting Palestine, where, on that hot afternoon, I met a family that was suffering the brutality that my community has known too well. There, I made friends, laughed so hard, and cried too many nights. That trip changed me forever, and I am grateful. It was the closest experience I have ever seen to the struggles of the Brazilian favelas.
As in Palestine, the Brazilian favelas are “territories of exception”. Highly policed spaces where there is a thin-line relationship between the inside and the outside. In both territories, human rights violations are legitimized by the power of the “outside” society. In the favelas, as in Palestine, the state of exception is normalized, and the people living inside its borders are seen as culpable of their own reality, criminals, "matáveis" – less-than-humans.
Since then, I have been working to strengthen transnational solidarity among people living in similar situations around the world. The work involves making connections to understand local contexts, languages, cultural practices, values, and, most importantly, power relations to achieve justice and human rights. In my experience, solidarity that goes beyond national borders and priorities is the key to addressing the strategies of anti-rights movements and the increasing global authoritarianism that violates fundamental human rights, separating people as “matáveis” and “não-mataveis”, disposable and non-disposable, human and non-humans, in other words, creating “the other”.
Maybe one of the most successful transnational solidarity movements is the Free Nelson Mandela Campaign and the anti-Apartheid movement, which coordinated global marches, concerts, and complex political advocacy actions to free Nelson Mandela and end the racist Apartheid system that denied Black South Africans their human rights and dignity. A current opportunity for the same type of global solidarity would be the “Statistical Genocide” denounced by the Colombian Black movements. Between 2005 and 2018, 30.8% of Afrocolombians “disappeared” from official statistics, a number that went from 4.311.757 million in 2005 to 2.982.224 million in 2018. This was due to a series of mistakes made by the National Administrative Department of Statistics, including limited variables related to self-identification, not asking questions related to ethnic/racial backgrounds in historical Black communities in the country, and designing the questions in a way that the communities did not understand.
In the words of Andreiza Anaya Espinoza, an Afro-Colombian Professor of Political Science, “Statistics create realities, imaginaries and daily practices; in this case, an imaginary is created that perpetuates the ‘being less Afro’ argument that delegitimizes the historical struggles of Afro-Colombian leaders and deepens practices of racism and exclusion.” In both contexts, Colombia and Palestine, Brazilian Black movements could play a critical role as we have extensive expertise in using the designing of the census, national data and statistics to promote racial justice and impact public policies as well as globally advocating and bringing awareness about the state of exception in the favelas as the Brazilian police is the deadest police in the world.
Creating trust-based spaces of transitional solidarity, where people and movements can learn, share political strategies and resources, and, most importantly, build collective power is urgent for our shared freedom and dignity. Transnational solidarity spaces can be an avenue for structural changes based on our ancestral collective knowledge, perspectives, beings, values, and histories. I dream of the day I will walk on the streets of Jardim Angela and Ramallah and see many similarities again – the joy, peace, and dignity in the faces of our people.
* The editor, Michael França, requests that each participant in Folha's "Politics and Justice" section In this article, the song chosen by Ana Paula Barreto was "Amanecé", performed by Herencia de Timbiqui.
This article was first published on Folha de São Paulo on November 24, 2023.
Comments