The election of Jair Bolsonaro to Brazil’s presidency surprised many observers and continued the global and regional resurgence of right-wing ascendancy. Since taking power, Bolsonaro’s government has allegedly threatened ideological purges of national scholarship recipients, promised to reverse the country’s now-consolidated quota policies, and downplay-if not eliminate entirely-land  and cultural rights for descendants of Brazil’s fugitive slave and indigenous populations. Duke’s 2019 Global Brazil Conference reflects on how Brazil arrived at this point and what Brazil’s educational community-within Brazil and abroad-can move forward.

Readers can find a detailed schedule below or at Duke’s Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies (CLACS) website:

Wednesday, February 27

6:30-8:00 P.M.            Keynote Address: Black Women Fight Back

Dr. Djamila Ribeiro

 

Thursday, February 28

9:30-10:00 A.M.         Coffee and Pastries

10:00-11:15 A.M.       Screening of I, A Black Woman, Resist

Introduction by Dr. Sharrelle Barber (Drexel University, Dornsife School of Public Policy, Department of Epidemiology and Statistics)

11:15-11:30 A.M.       Coffee Break

11:30 A.M.-Noon       Threats to Health Services

Dr. João Ricardo N. Vissoci (Duke Medical School)

Dr. Marta Rovery de Souza (Federal Univeristy of Goiás)

12:00-1:15 P.M.          Keynote Address: Crisis or Destiny?

Dr. Sílvio Luiz de Almeida (Universidade Mackenzie and Getúlio Vargas Foundation)

1:15-2:00 P.M.            Lunch Break

2:00-2:45 P.M.            Threats to Higher Education

                                    Dr. Stephanie Reist (Postdoctoral Associate, Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro)

Chloe Ricks (Duke Liberal Studies)

2:45-3:00 P.M.            Coffee Break

3:00-3:45 P.M.            From Hope to Hate: The Rise of Conservative Subjectivity in Brazil

Dr. Rosana Pinheiro Machado (Federal University of Santa Maria)

3:45-4:15 P.M.            Threats to the Environment

                                    Dr. Stuart Pimm (Doris Duke Professor of Conservation, Nicholas School of the                                   Environment)

4:15-5:00 P.M.            Reading Brazil: Current Research from Duke

Ian Erickson-Kery, “Phantoms of Racial Democracy: Whiteness and Whitening  in Cruz e Souza and Cadernos Negros” (Duke Romance Studies)
Gray F. Kidd, “An Arcades Project in the Tropics, Or Collecting the Margins of a Periphery: Recife, 1971-1986” (Duke History)
Marcelo Noah, “Sonic Dynamics of a Concrete Poem: Listening to Augusto de Campos” (Duke Romance Studies)

5:00-6:30 P.M.            Keynote Address: Bolsonaro and Brazil’s Nostalgia for Death

Dr. John D. French (Duke History)

6:30-8:00 P.M.            Dinner and Music by Caique Vidal

Sponsored by Office of Global Affairs and the Hanscom Endowment, Duke Brazil Initiative, and Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

Update: The IM/UFRRJ’s Ricardo Portugal  reported on this article under the title “Convênio Duke-UFRRJ produz estudos sobre luta popular na Baixada.” Read em português.

Duke’s Bass Connections highlighted the work of two scholarship recipients, Ingrid Nogueira and Carolina Mendonça at the Rural University’s (UFRRJ) Documentation and Image Center (CEDIM). The two UFRRJ history undergraduates under the supervision of Brazilian PhD candidate Maria Lucia Bezerra da Silva Alexandre and Duke history PhD candidate Travis Knoll seek to both preserve important regional activist histories and determine their own academic trajectory. Readers can find the full post here. Bass Connections’ student follow-on research grants made the scholarships possible.

By: Adaír Citlalli Necalli

Note: The blog has updated this post to include Adair’s  TEDx Duke  Talk on the colonizing biases of European history and  importance of listening to and valuing Nahua native speakers, and First Nations more generally, in our historical, literary, and ethnographic research about them. The issues raised in her talk go to the heart of educational initiatives like   Brazil’s Lei 10.639/03 mandating teaching of Afro-Brazilian history in Brazil’s public schools.

I took my first Portuguese class during my first year of college just for fun. I wanted to learn a new language, and I already spoke Spanish, so I could take the accelerated learning track. I also wanted to see Brazil someday. That had always been a dream of mine, and now that I was the first in my family to go to college, I wanted to take advantage of the opportunities available to me at a place like Duke University.

I also wanted to do academic research someday. I was interested in linguistics, language education and education policy in general, and I was interested in this on a global scale. How do people around the world teach their children? How do different governments around the world value or devalue education for different groups of people in their country? And why does it matter?

So, when I came across the Bass Connections research team, “The Cost of Opportunity? Higher Education in the Baixada Fluminense,” it was perfect. I applied immediately, hoping they would consider taking a first-year student into the team. I didn’t expect to be the longest-standing member of the team two years later.

I am now entering my last year at Duke University, and this team, which has been such a large part of my time at Duke, is coming to a close. All I can do is be grateful for the experiences and opportunities for growth it has given me, both personal and academic.

It is easy for me to just explain that the research methodologies used on this team are the reason why I am able to do my own independent research as a third- and fourth-year now at Duke. Learning how to take field notes, take interviews, modify interview questions on the fly based on what my interviewee needs or wants, analyze and present on these interviews, do census research, statistical analysis, understand survey data, and get along with your research team throughout all of this – people spend entire careers trying to pick up all of these skills! This research team taught it all to me in two years. It’s the reason why I was able to win the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship as well as the Mellon Award for summer research in Latinx Studies. On top of it all, I also got to learn how to put together a whole conference including international guests and how to present at others’ conferences as well, which will serve me immensely going forward in my academic career.

But it would be too easy to just stop there. Of course I learned these research skills. That is one of the main goals of Bass Connections for undergraduates, and I am incredibly grateful that I got to have that experience. However, I would argue that the majority of what I learned has been non-academic.

I can still remember each and every favela we saw, and I remember thinking, that’s not too different from my mom’s pueblo back home. I remember meeting the students at UFRRJ who were low-income, and bonding with them over how hard getting a university education is when you need to put food on the table. I remember my gratitude to my scholarship when the students we collaborated with explained how much of a difference it makes to not have to worry about getting lunch at school because UFRRJ has a cafeteria. I remember understanding all too well when these students described a government that didn’t care about the poor or the indigenous or the black and brown; I would describe both Mexico and the U.S. in the same way.

But I also remember the first time we stepped into an AirBnB apartment in an apartment tower, looking over the streets of Rio de Janeiro, and realizing that if you lived up here – so high up in the sky – and never had to worry a day in your life about your ability to succeed in this country, you would never think that there was anything wrong with Brazil. This country looked perfect from a bird’s eye view.

I also remember the first day I realized just how much privilege I held in Brazil when I traveled there as a researcher with this team. Personally, I had never been high-income. I had always been a Mexican immigrant; a person of indigenous descent; a person of color. I had always been the subject of another institution’s decisions. But here, in Brazil, with a student ID that said Duke University, professors with a grant that covered our trip, and my light-brown skin that was basically considered white in the Baixada, I had privilege. So much of it. It truly took me a long time to process it.

 

I am grateful for encountering the need to understand that, though. Today, I research Nahuatl revitalization programs in Mexico to try to understand how we can improve their success rates. Nahuatl is an indigenous language in Mexico; the indigenous people who speak the language are called Nahua people. I am of Nahua descent myself, and that is why this work is so incredibly important to me. However, when I went on my first trip to Puebla during the summer after my second year, I don’t think I would have understood my place in these communities as well as I did if I had not been to Brazil the summer prior.

In the indigenous communities of Puebla, I am a university student with a grant that covers my trip. My skin is much lighter than many of the people who live there because I am mixed-race. That creates a dynamic that I need to address when I interview people. Once I do, though, and I explain that I have Nahua ancestry myself, and that that is why I work on this topic, my interviews always go successfully. I have created deep bonds with many people in the communities I care about in Puebla, and I am grateful to this team because without it, I would not have been able to do this.

Without this team, I would not be entering my final year of university so sure that I am ready for graduate school. I have recently been accepted as an Associate Fellow with the Institute of Recruitment for Teachers, which will help me apply to 10-12 Ph.D. programs in Anthropology, and through them, I get extra help with GRE preparation as well. I have built wonderful relationships with professors and other students through this team, which have helped me both enjoy the good times at Duke and get through the bad times. Even through my struggles with a reading disability and ADHD, this team has been there for me, and it is definitely a bittersweet goodbye.

 

Thank you all for a wonderful two years!

Duke University, T’19

 

 

 

By Riley Allen

Students from Duke University and the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ) continue to reflect on the UFRRJ’s “Open University” conference held on March 1, 2018 in the city of  Nova Iguaçu. The event brought together 160 elementary, high school, and university students, professors, government officials, and community members.

In the opening panel, UFRRJ’s dean of research and graduate studies, Alexandre Fortes discussed the need for this event in terms of education’s benefit to Nova Iguacu’s community and the threats to higher education at the local, state, and national level. Duke professor John D. French called teachers the “heroes of democracy” and noted that the educational challenges facing Brazil’s educators make up part of a larger worldwide trend and struggle.Alexsandro Costa Castellar, Nova Iguacu’s secretary of  education, planning, and strategic affairs discussed his own trajectory and the need for students to continue to fight for their seat at the table. Juarez Barroso Ferreira,  Nova Iguacu’s secretary of culture, discussed the drop-off in student participation between high school and university, saying students often cannot make the sacrifices necessary to attend university and  grow tired of academic pressures and lacking resources after nine years in public schools.

During the second panel, Jocelene Ignacio and Dudu de Morro discussed culture and identity in Nova Iguacu. Ignacio talked about the college entrance exam prep course and her involvement and affiliation with the Catholic Church in the 1990s. Dudu discussed the importance of remaining rooted in one’s community. He revealed that his chosen name “do Morro Agudo” constantly reminded him of his often-overlooked and stigmatized neighborhood. Dudu asked the students “if everyone distances themselves, how will people give back to the community?”

In the afternoon, the conference shifted to individual workshops outside of the glare of the auditorium stage and  recording cameras. They involved workshops introducing the university, talking about the state of Brazilian education, and creative writing. Luana Lima da Silva wrote about the conference’s overarching goal of “raising the consciousness” of students, especially at the elementary school level, regarding the threats facing higher education, symbolized by the temporary and permanent closure in recent times of even prestigious universities such as the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). They discussed how these threats could close off future avenues of social advancement for these future students. She argued that inviting these students to the one-day conference and workshop “brought these worlds closer” and allowed students to develop “a sense of belonging” to the university space. She spoke specifically about the round-table discussion “Right to Higher Education: A Matter of Struggle and Resistance”. The workshop, conducted by university students from the Baixada itself, and divided equally between male and female students, addressed the experiences and difficulties of these students in accessing higher education. These difficulties can include practical matters such as access to food, transport, technology, and adequate financing. More abstract challenges can also include adjustment to a different curriculum, set of assumptions, and cultural focuses which may differ from said student’s expectations or background.  The workshop opened by each instructor introducing themselves, detailing their academic trajectory, where they lived, and their profession. After an initial awkward silence, the group discussed “myths” about higher education, making friends at the university, and the college entrance test, ENEM. They also discussed educational resources at the Multi-Disciplinary Institute (IM/UFRRJ) such as the library and the IM’s college prep course, Pré-Enem Éthos.

As Lima pointed out, through the workshop, the public school students discussed the challenges that they shared with  aspiring and current university students, such as the competitive atmosphere created by the small number of university slots and parents’ unenthusiastic support for pursuing a university degree. Learning about mutual struggles  expanded these students’ horizons of possibility. Some students expressed interests in military service and a Medicine degree. The day ended with poetry, musical performances, and a vocational test for the aspiring students to give them an idea  of potential careers to pursue. Yago Valle, an organizer of the workshop said the workshop participants “used our time to the maximum.” He felt “surprised” by the students’ engagement and “filled with hope” for their potential to carry on the necessary change in Brazilian society.

Carla Castanha, an organizer of the conference, undergraduate in  Letters and Literature, wrote that despite the “marathon” of work and the unforeseen logistical issues that inevitably arise with the conference, she felt “gratified” when reflecting upon the experience. “We offered these young people an opportunity that I did not have in my town [as an applicant].” She said the conference proved successful in showing the “how transforming and empowering university life can be” adding that she “felt in many of them the satisfaction and joy of being there.” She also credited the institutional partnership between Duke and the UFRRJ for the success of the conference and the Cost of Opportunity project in general, saying she learned academically, professionally, and personally “from the very first day” of the project. As a Duke undergraduate, I noted that the young students took an interest in the Rural’s informational pamphlets and the university’s computer access. They also wondered why, as foreigner, I “came to the Baixada!?” This last question highlighted the continuing internalized regional sigma and, therefore, the importance of the event in highlighting educational resources within the Baixada.

Travis Knoll,  Luana Lima da Silva, Carla Castanha, Yago Valle, and  Tavires Fonseca also contributed reporting to this story

 

 

Por Eduardo Ângelo da Silva

Deixo aqui o registro de um momento muito significativo em minha trajetória, a participação na Conferência Internacional “O Custo da Oportunidade: Educar para Libertar”.

Como todo estudante de origem popular, nos anos 90 sentíamos que os vestibulares públicos estavam lá para nos massacrar. Tentei muitos vestibulares até conseguir ingressar em uma graduação pública. Por não ter condições de pagar os cursos especializados, fui tentando e acumulando experiência sobre os exames. Em casa, eu sempre  tive uma grande referência de um estudante pobre que ascendeu através da educação. Meu pai, filho de um ajudante de pedreiro que um dia se tornou pedreiro, conseguiu realizar “o milagre” de ser aprovado no vestibular da Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (UFJF), em 1971, durante a ditadura militar, período de grande desigualdade social. No início de seu ano letivo, em 1972, ele já estava certo de que não poderia iniciar o curso, pois trabalhava o dia inteiro. Seu patrão, Sr. Vicente Ângelo Rosa, decidiu reduzir seu horário de trabalho e aumentar sua remuneração para que ele avançasse nos estudos. Em homenagem ao Sr. Vicente, eu e meus irmãos temos o “Ângelo” em nossos nomes. Meu pai, que cresceu na periferia miserável de Juiz de Fora, tornou-se um excelente e querido professor de Língua Portuguesa. Penso que essa história foi uma das coisas que meu deu forças para não desistir.

Editor’s Note: This letter addresses the death of Rio de Janeiro City Councilwoman Marielle Franco. A rising bi-sexual, Black politician from one of Rio’s favela communities before her death, Franco became a symbol for the political potential of Rio’s marginalized communities. Her sudden death coincided with an unusual federal military intervention in Rio de Janeiro, and her role on an oversight committee related to that intervention, and evidence that weapons from the federal police were used in her killing raised further suspicions about the motivations surrounding her death. Her political and intellectual trajectory, including her participation in a community college prep course run by Center for Studies and Solidarity Actions,speaks to the difficulties and opportunities that come with seeking to combat marginalized communities’ stigmatization, violence, economic precariousness, and social indifference. Frei David, the director of EDUCAFRO, was a key figure in negotiating the first  PUC-Rio scholarships specifically for pre-vestibular students. The full letter is translated below  and can be accessed em português here.

São Paulo, March 28, 2018

From: The EDUCAFRO Family

To: Raquel Doge, General Prosecutor of the Republic (PGR),

Fourteen days after the killing of our sister Marielle Franco, scholarship recipient in the PUC-RIO walking through doors opened by EDUCAFRO, Brazilian warrior that also received her Masters from the Federal Fluminense University, social leader, and an exemplary City Councilman, we are going to drastically lower our expectations for getting to the bottom of yet another crime against Black bodies.

The Rio City Police have consistently failed in the process of collecting evidence for solving crimes when they involve Black bodies. It is a national, not just local problem. For each 100 persons assassinated in Brazil, only 6.7 percent are even investigated by the state Public Ministries according to FENAPEF. No one carries out quality forensics to find the criminals and discover the motivation of the crimes, because they involve, in large part, the poor and Black bodies. Whose interest is it to invizilibize the extermination of Black youth?

The day following her martyrdom, around 8:45 AM, we sent a message to the Madame Prosecutor:

Dr. Raquel Doge, by way of the Vice Prosecutor Dr. Luciano, requesting the immediate federalization of the criminal investigation (before it is to late). This request is made considering that this very own Federal Ministry of Justice warned the nation that almost the entire Rio City Police was infected with organized crime. We were very happy when the Prosecutor, around 1PM made the decision to federalize the investigation. We were once again apprehensive when, around 6PM, after her meeting with the intervening military force [in Rio], she backtracked on that judgement.

The intervention in Rio and those planned for Ceará and the rest of the sates could be so much more efficient and with far less expense. It’s enough to first intervene in the barracks, keeping and rewarding the police that do not let themselves become corrupt and getting rid of those that align with crime. Community problems are merely consequences of the lack of control within the barracks. The Police and Public Security External Review Committee of the CNMP is structured to not work. It needs to be given teeth.

Even though we asked for it, ObservaRio-a mechanism created by the current Ministry of Justice- did not permit the participation of Black Movement entities in issues related to the extermination of Black youth.

Fourteen days have passed…Marielle Franco cannot be one more of “today’s death squad killings”, falling under “unsolved crimes” carried out by “invisible” power whose victims are in large part Black and poor. We do not yet see any effort on the part of those responsible for solving this crime. Where is the intelligence work of the Rio State Public Ministry now?

Given what has been stated above, we once again tell the National Prosecutor General to:

1. Federalize all of the investigative work related to the solving of this crime.
2. There is a severe problem in all 27 states of the nation, not just in Rio de Janeiro.
3. Request of the National Council of the Public Ministry, CNMP- that it expand its taskforce working with the Police and Public Security External Review Committee, that operates under its auspices. In all of the meetings that our team has had with representatives of this commission, the response has always been the same: Lack of human resources and tools for external oversight along with the insubordination of the state police regarding the rules promulgated by the CNMP.
4. The 2017 Violence Atlas, launched by the Applies Economics Research Institute (IPEA) tells us that white deaths have decreased by 12.2 percent and has risen 18.2 percent among Black youth at the national level. The PGR and the CNMP must demand an official report, written by the police in each state, suggesting the causes that generate impunity for crimes committed against the Black population throughout the nation.

It is our expectation that, with federalization, this crime will be solved and that the culture of public security agencies throughout the country will change.

 

Friar David Santos, OFM

Executive Director

 

Editor’s note: This article, produced by Ivan Lima at “Novo Japeri Online” originally appeared in Portuguese here.

The Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ) in Nova Iguaçú hosted the event “Open Univesity for the Right to Higher Education” this past Thursday, March 1. The event included discussion panels, workshops, and cultural activities involving university life, a life that each day is more distance from the neediest populations.

Twenty-one-year-old Luana Lima, a History student at the Rural, told Novo Japeri Online what motivated the event:

“This event was driven by the fact that public universities are deteriorating. As such], through this event we are looking to bring public school students [to the university] so that they can see that this space is theirs by right and that this space is being threatened through the government’s own doing. Therefore, we see that these threats are real, we already see various cuts in education. We have had various cuts to higher education. Because of this, we try to bring these students here so that that they can see that this space is for them, so that they can enter university and become the first in their families to study at a university,” explained Luana.

The UFRRJ has a partnership with Duke University in North Carolina, a university which currently conducts research in the Baixada. The event included the participation of 21-year old Riley Allen who talked with public high school students in Nova Iguaçú about her experience here in Brazil.

The U.S. student came away impressed by the friendly spirit that she saw between the students and she was impressed to see high school students interacting with the university.

In the afternoon, the event simultaneously carried out some workshops geared toward high school youth in which they answer in doubts about university academic life.

Laysa, a 15-year old student of CIEP 2016 in the Corumbá neighborhood in Nova Iguaçú said she liked the experience a lot and that she now sees public universities in a different light.

“I had a different idea about what a university was and I even dug a little bit deeper into what I want to do” the future college student said. The Rural’s Multi-Disciplinary Institute’s initiative brought much knowledge, and more importantly, arguments in defense of a quality university in Brazil.

Listen to the full report in the podcast!