dear son taue…
dear son peter…
“part-ten” was a little-bit out of context…
( sometimes… I start digressing about other issues…)
but… that’s ok…
life goes on…
I’m going to try to continue the story…
from the point where we had stopped… ( in part-nine…)
in part-nine we were at arpoador beach…
at age 11…
watching…. fascinated… the big novelty…
the surf… recently arrived in brasil…
( and… in a certain way… in the world…)
people… simply… astonished…
by the invention… by the enchantment…
which is to see somebody ride a wave…
standing… on a board… which in those days…
used to be about three meters long…
but… this opportunity to go there at arpoador… and… see the surf…
was a rare one…
my life was too busy with the homework from colegio-militar…
and… it wasn’t only the homework that made me so busy…
in order to displace myself daily from monday through friday…
from ipanema to tijuca…
I had to spend one hour inside a bus…
one hour which was an eternity…
I used to take the bus at visconde-de-piraja avenue…
then we had to cross the entire copacabana…
passing through the tunel-novo…
going out of the tunel-novo… where today is rio-sul…
passing along botafogo-beach…
flamengo…
( without taking the aterro-option…
(which would have made the trip a lot faster ))…
then… lapa…
estacio-de-sa…
getting into those streets of rio-comprido...
one thousand turns…
an endless trip…
a suffocating heat…
and… worst of all…
we were forced to be dressed with a ridiculous uniform…
inside a super-hot jacket…
called “jaqueta”…
with buttons all the way to the neck…
and… above the last button…
there were still two little hook-and-eye clasps
which… theoretically… had to be attached…
but nobody followed such a rule…
because it would be impossible to stand such a heat…
and… to make things worst…
with those little clasps suffocating us even more…
before getting out of the bus…
finally… in tijuca…
after a (endless) trip of one hour…
we never forgot a fundamental detail:
to attach the two hook-and-eye clasps…
because… if a sergeant or an officer…
did catch us with those clasps unattached…
they could be capable of writing our names down…
and… to denounce us…
and… in this case… the punishment would be severe:
at least two days of detention…
that is… we would have to go to school on saturday and sunday…
from 8 am to noon…
and… stay there… doing nothing… inside a classroom…
as if we were prisoners…
this was the environment of the “colegio-militar”…
all this repression...
resultant of a methodology based on an excess of discipline…
was reinforced by the requirements (also exaggerated )…
demanded by the teachers…
who instructed homeworks… often… very hard and strenuous…
not to mention the exams…
the grades…
the constant fear of receiving a low-grade…
or being punished because of a silly reason…
in short…
a generalized stress…
a generalized fearful environment…
so… as I arrived from recife… at age 11…
in july 1965…
my life was immersed into a huge environment of worries…
I was living in ipanema…
but the surf…
was still a concept very far from me…
my life was focused on being able to survive…
to such a huge pressure…
imposed by the colegio-militar…
after a lot of work…
during the august-to-december semester…
I was able to… finally… pass the final-exams…
the battle was over…
finally… time for a well-deserved vacation…
yes…
I could… finally…
breathe…
I could enjoy the peace… the tranquility…
which was to live in ipanema…
at prudente-de-moraes street…
near arpoador-beach…
in a period of time…
which was still pleasant…
to live in ipanema…
--- --- ---
1965…
the beatles at the top of the hit-parade…
long hair…
the acclaimed and immortal “kings” of rock and pop music of the sixties…
the beatles in london…
… touring in the united states…
the girls screaming…
a generalized hysteria...
here in brasil… as in many other parts of the world…
most of the young people…
influenced by the beatles and the rolling stones…
let their hair to grow…
the latest trend was freedom…
sex… drugs and… rock-and-roll…
however… in the previous year…
in march 1964…
something happened that marked the history of brasil…
a group of the brazilian-military…
supported by the united states…
after several secret meetings…
decided to do a coup d’état…
they put the tanks in the street of the main brazilian cities…
and… in a coordinated action…
forced the president (joao goulart)…
to step-down from the presidency…
and… the military decided themselves to appoint a new president…
another military man called Marechal Castelo Branco…
who was granted the presidential-powers
without passing through the normal process of elections…
that is… without being elected by the people…
thereafter… the military… now in power…
began to rule the country…
the way they wanted…
( or rather… the way the united states wanted…
since it was the united states who supported the brazilian-military…
on the military-coup of 64…)
they began to use the barracks as prison-jails…
inside the barracks…
there were some little rooms…
which were the famous “torture-rooms”…
where they tortured common citizens…
whose only “crime” was… for instance… to discord from the government…
or talk against the government…
that was the terrible phase of the “military-dictatorship”…
which lasted 20 years… in brasil…
from 1964 to 1984…
if… on those days… in 1965… or 66… or 67 or 68…
( which were the years where the repression was the most violent one…)
if… in one of those years…
I would be writing a letter like this one… to you…
( criticizing the military of those days…)
and… if this letter was intercepted by the secret agents…
of the post-office of those days…
and… handled to the politic-police of those days…
I would probably be arrested and tortured…
just because I was writing a little letter to my own sons…
explaining what was happening with the brazilian government of those days…
a letter which… clearly…
would show that my ideas were contrary to the government…
this was the environment on those days…
while the beatles… the rolling-stones…
were on the hit-parades…
the military were “beating-with-batons”…
on whoever dared to talk against the government…
a government… conducted by the military themselves…
and… it was a political situation…
entirely supported by the united states…
in short…
here in brasil…
whoever was in favor of the military…
all right… nothing would happen to this person…
but whoever was against the military…
in this case… it would be better to watch-out…
because at any moment he (she) could be caught…
and… tortured…
--- --- ---
this environment…
in a certain way…
divided the country…
there were the ones who were in favor of the military…
another ones who were against them…
and… the great majority who weren’t neither “pro”… nor… “con”…
they were simply neutral…
but… in 1965…
I… at age 11…
hadn’t seen on the news anything about tortures…
or any other similar barbarities committed by certain military people…
my life was focused on my super-worries…
on my homeworks… often super-heavy…
and… on the good moments…
on the blessed months of vacation…
the happiness to be able to enjoy my little-beach at ipanema…
--- --- ---
see you later…
I hope everything is going all-right there…
take good care of your health…
a huge hug to both of you…
with tenderness…
your father…
…luis antonio…