A STORY OF FREEDOM IN BRAZIL

“All men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”
George Mason

Brazil is known for its natural resources, as the Amazon, Pantanal, tropical climate, and agricultural lands and its people and so on. Since its discovery (April, 22th of 1500) those resources attract the attention of the people because it constitutes in a profitable enterprise. So, as a citizen of that country I will tell you a little bit about our history and how our nature, as well our people, became hostage due to the greed of our colonizer (Portugal) and how the freedom was taken from our people during many years.

Figure 1. The different colors represent Brazil, a rich country with a great biodiversity, and a variety of people with different colors.

One of the first explorations of Brazil’s natural resource was a tree from our Atlantic Forest called pau-brasil which was used to dye fabric. The irrational exploration led to the exhaustion of this resource. Not just satisfied in exploring our resources, Portugal explores also our people, subverting them to its culture, making them slaves.

Figure 2. The origin of our exploration was based in our valiable natural resources.

Due to the great potential for agricultural as result of the significant amount of land with agricultural potential, climate and topography favorable we became a great producer of sugar. By that time the person responsible for the production - the farmers - enjoyed enormous social prestige. In order to have more people working at the farms, those farmers imported slaves from Africa. The latter were treated like animals and they were feed with the rest of food of the farmer’s family.

Figure 3. Our freedom is in our hand.

In September 7th of 1822 Brazil acquired its political independence from Portugal after 322 years of colonization. The movement of independence was the result of the reaction of the wealthy part of our society. The rupture with Portugal was pacific, distant from de center of power and without any participation of the population.
The independence of Brazil privileges the richest people in the country. Our society kept its political economic and social structure almost intact. Those characteristics had a strong reason: the process of independence was undertaken for those who were in the control.
The lack of action by the poorest sections of the society, in my point of view, is due to the fact that they had to fight first for freedom from their own brother. So the exploration practiced for Portugal didn’t affect them directly.

Figure 4. There is a long or short path in order to build an equally country. But for that it depends our atittude while society.

Later on we had the decay of the sugar cane plantation and the rise of the exploration of gold and diamonds. Those resources were sent to Portugal and from there to England in order to pay Portugal’s debts.
Differently from the colonization of United States our colonization was based in the exploration and not settlement. Portugal did not have any interested in developing our country.

The independence of Brazil was negotiated an emancipation movement, which was attended by the wealthy classes, consisting of the commercial bourgeoisie and the agrarian elite. The working classes have been marginalized in decision making. Independence had political boundaries, social and economic well evident.
For not become a project of radical rupture with the existing relations of domination in Brazilian society. They wanted the Conservatives and the agrarian elite, ensured the maintenance of large property and slave labor exporter and still remained the monarchy.As it can be observed in our history the slavery was the failure to comply with freedom in Brazil for many years. The poverty is proving of inequality since then and is something that we need to banish in our country. Unfortunately the wealthy people are still making the decision in Brazil which stifles of the voice of the maiority. In my conception of freedom I could say that we have a long way to pursuit it or maybe a short depends on which path we are taking, because a country where people die for defending our forest, a country where rich people have no punishment, a country of impunity, a country where people still starving not just for food but for a better life, for that's not freedom.