::
Blak Dead
End
It is the 23rd century in America.
For the first time in history, Blacks are
going to elect one of their own to the presidency of the United States.
The
new President decides to divide the country in two: the South for
the Blacks
and the North for the Whites. The White majority, however, is not
ready to
give up its power and concocts a diabolical plan. This futuristic
scenario,
which includes plans of mass expatriation of American Blacks to the
Amazon, was written in 1926 by Brazilian author Monteiro Lobato.
We're
in the year 2228. In the United States, an elite government is alarmed:
statistics show a population of 108 million Blacks vs. 206 million
Whites. As the black birth rate continues to rise, the white preservation
instinct rises up in legitimate defense. There is talk about a "white
solution" and a "black solution". The white solution
is, obviously, to expatriate the Blacks. This vision is proposed by
Miss Jane, character of the Brazilian writer Monteiro Lobato (1882-1948)
in O Presidente Negro ou o Choque
das Raças (The Black President or the Racial
Shock).
At the same time, the old Brazil is separated into two countries,
one that centralizes all the South American grandeur, child of the
immense industrial focus that emerged along the banks of the Paraná
River and the other, a tropical republic, still having fits in political
and philosophical debates, discussing voting methods and pronoun placement
in the semi-dead Portuguese language. The sociologists of the time
"saw in this the reflex of the bloody unbalance as a consequence
of the fusion of four distinct races, white, black, red and yellow,
the last one predominantly in the Amazon River valley".
We're in the year 2228. In the United States, an elite government
is alarmed: statistics show a population of 108 million Blacks vs.
206 million Whites. As the black birth rate continues to rise, the
white preservation instinct rises up in legitimate defense. There
is talk about a "white solution" and a "black solution".
The white solution is, obviously, to expatriate the Blacks. This vision
is proposed by Miss Jane, character of the Brazilian writer Monteiro
Lobato (1882-1948) in O Presidente Negro ou o Choque das Raças
(The Black President or the Racial Shock).
At the same time, the old Brazil is separated into two countries,
one that centralizes all the South American grandeur, child of the
immense industrial focus that emerged along the banks of the Paraná
River and the other, a tropical republic, still having fits in political
and philosophical debates, discussing voting methods and pronoun placement
in the semi-dead Portuguese language. The sociologists of the time
"saw in this the reflex of the bloody unbalance as a consequence
of the fusion of four distinct races, white, black, red and yellow,
the last one predominantly in the Amazon River valley".
This
idea of a territorial fragmentation of Brazil isn't new in Lobato's
time. In Cartas Inéditas de Fradique Mendes
(Fradique Mendes' Unpublished Letters), written at the very end of
the last century, the Portuguese novelist, Eça de Queiroz was
already anticipating this possibility, in a text called "A Revolution
in Brazil":
"With
the empire, according to all probability, Brazil also comes to an
end.
"This name of Brazil, that in the beginning had grandeur, and
for us Portuguese represented a glorious endeavor, becomes an antiquated
name of old political geography. A little while from now, the Empire
will be breaking up into different independent republics, of greater
or lesser importance. This is the result of the historic division
of the provinces, the rivalries that exist among them, the diversity
of the climate, of character and of the interests and the force of
local ambitions. Already, more than one time the provinces have made
energetic separation attempts: and separatism becomes in these times,
one of the most powerful factors of politics. (...)
"The states, once separated, will not be able to keep peace among
themselves, being abundant the reasons for conflict —the border
disputes, hydrographic questions and Customs since all will naturally
want to create income. Each state, left to itself, will develop its
own history, under its own flag, according to its climate, the specialty
of its agricultural area, its interests, its men, its education and
its immigration. Some will prosper, others will falter. Maybe there
will be rich Chiles and certainly they will be grotesque Nicaraguas.
South America will be covered with the broken pieces of a great Empire!"
If Brazil still didn't divide—in spite of suggestions every
year of "indigenous nations" with pretensions of autonomy
—there already are the rich Chiles and the grotesque Nicaraguas,
confirming Eça's intuition. But returning to O
Presidente Negro. Senhor Ayrton doesn't understand the
reasoning of Miss Jane. Why divide Brazil? Just populate the north
the same way as the south....
—A
country isn't inhabited as you like, Senhor Ayrton, nor as idealists
would like. A country is settled as it can. In our case, it was the
climate that established the separation. From the Europeans, the Portuguese
got accustomed to the hot part, where, thanks to affinities with the
black man, they continued the old process of crossbreeding, ending
up creating a people mentally incompatible with the people in the
south.
The
inflation of pigment
In
order that Senhor Ayrton understand the United States of the 23rd
Century, Miss Jane explains the ethnic composition of the country.
America would be the privileged region that would attract the most
eugenic elements of the best European races. Who were the people on
the Mayflower?
—Men of such temperament, characters so Shakespearean, that
between renouncing their convictions and emigrating to a wild and
empty land, where everything was inhospitable and difficult, they
didn't waiver. Emigrating, even today, requires much daring, a heightened
tonus vital. To leave your country, your home, your friends, your
language, to cut all the roots you have had since infancy that tie
us to our one homeland, is there a greater heroism? Who does this
is someone strong, and just this fact, is a great indicator of courage.
But emigrate to an uninhabited land, leave your homeland for the unknown,
this is amazing!
Immigration laws became selective and the masses that yearned for
America, already good in themselves, are sifted through. Europe is
drained of its best elements and in the New World, the cream of the
immigrants is left over. Then what Miss Jane calls the "initial
error" takes place: the black man is plucked out of Africa. Senhor
Ayrton notes that the same mistake took place in Brazil, but our solution
was admirable:
—Within one hundred or two hundred years, our black man will
have completely disappeared in virtue of successive cross-breeding
with the white man. Don't you think we were happy in our solution?
Miss Jane doesn't think so. She regards such a solution as mediocre,
since it destroys the two races while fusing them. She prefers that
both evolve parallel within the same territory, separated by a barrier
of hate, the deepest prophylaxis. Hate stops a race from denaturing,
decrystalizing the other, conserving both in a relatively pure state.
Ayrton doesn't understand how such an angel of goodness can defend
such evil. With the coldness of a scientist, Jane decrees:
—There isn't good or bad in the game of cosmic force. Hate loosens
as many marvels as love. In Brazil, love killed the possibility of
a supreme biological expression. In America, hate created the glory
of the human eugenics... The most beautiful examples, strong and intelligent,
were discovered where they would have been found and attracted by
the American Canaan. Being that the country is fairly populated, it
closes its doors to the European flux and the nation begins to grow
vegetatively. This is when "pigment inflation" appears.
The elite thinkers had convinced themselves that the restriction of
the birth rate it is a must, since quality is worth more than quantity.
The balance was then broken: "The Whites had quality while the
Blacks continued with quantity. Later, when the eugenics completely
took over and the Department of Artificial Selection was created,
the black boom was tremendous." There is the urge to get rid
of the Blacks. The white solution is simple:
—All white Americans only want one thing: to export, to oust
the one hundred million Black Americans to the Amazon. This, meanwhile,
would constitute a formidable task, or rather, impracticable, not
only in virtue of tremendous material difficulties, but by wronging
the American Constitution.
Monteiro Lobato wrote his novel,—or analysis—in 1926.
By transporting the action of his work to three centuries later, the
author was creating fiction. But, an expert in the history of the
United States, he relied on non-fictional projects already fed by
the Americans.
A
country for Black Americans
Between
1840 and 1860, an obscure lieutenant in the United States Navy, a
mixture of "scientist, visionary and businessman", Matthew
Fontaine Maury, employee of the Letters and Instruments Department
of the navy in Washington, thought seriously about the subject. The
project of the American officer was simple and pragmatic: once the
black slaves of his country were released from slavery, they would
be sent to colonize the Brazilian Amazon. The Republic of Liberia,
in Africa, was a result of one of these projects.
And why not colonize the area with Whites? Maury grasped at arguments
about geographic order:
"The Amazon valley is a region for slaves. The European and the
Indian were fighting its jungle for 300 years and didn't make the
slightest mark. If one day, its vegetation has to be tamed and made
use of, if one day the soil would have to be recaptured from the jungle,
as well as the reptiles and wild animals, and subjected to the plow
and spade, it will be done by the African. It is the land of parrots
and monkeys and only the African is capable of the work that man has
to accomplish there".
In truth, Maury's project only originality had to do with the insistence
on colonizing the Amazon with freed Blacks. From the end of the 1830s,
the United States had aimed to open navigation of the Amazon River
to all nations. Before the military dreamer, a certain Joshua Dodge
proposed establishing 20,000 American immigrants along the Amazon.
All promising to recognize Brazilian sovereignty, at least during
the first years of colonization.
Deep down, there was a similarity with what was done with Texas, aspiring
to annex the region to the United States. The strategy was simple.
Just "buy" some Brazilians in Manaus that would become "legitimate
representatives" of an "Amazon Republic", which would
declare itself independent from Brazil, including disagreeing with
the way the country was governed, by monarchy."
In case the Brazilian government would have sent ships and troops
to reestablish
its sovereignty, the citizens of the new independent Amazon state
would appeal for American protection. And a force of armed men would
go to the Amazon to "protect the life and threatened possessions
of the American citizens".
Who tells us this almost unknown American expansion project is Professor
Nícia Vilela Luz, in A Amazônia para os Negros Americanos
(Amazon for Black Americans). In this work, the author shows that
many Americans, well before the Civil
War, thought it would be more attractive to free all the slaves and
send them out of
America. The greatest interpreter of this desire is Lieutenant Maury:
"He was worried about the problem of the black man in the United
States, since the
abolition of slavery was close at hand. Convinced of the white man's
superiority, he could only accept the Black in a condition of servitude
and never in an equal position with the white man. What to do then
with this black population once liberated and whose multiplication
could still overwhelm the white race?"
—The
institution of slavery such as it exists in this country — mused
Maury—fills the thoughts of its statesmen with anxious concern.
What will be its destiny? If abolished, how would so many people be
discharged? If maintained, what to do to control it?
But, "God himself, his all knowing providence, will dictate the
destiny to be fulfilled by the black and white races, whatever it
may be".
"And God had preserved the Amazon solitary and uninhabited in
order that the problems of the South could be resolved—continues
Vilela Luz. Cornered in the North where they would not find more "Mississippis
to cultivate" nor more "cotton fields to pick", the
Southerners, to free themselves of their excess Black population,
saving at the same time their economy and their "strange"
institution would find a "safety valve" to the south, in
the Amazon valley. It was the "only ray of hope" to shine
on them in that dramatic moment in which the American regime of slavery
was
debated".
Let's return to the fiction of Lobato. For Miss Jane, the Blacks talked
of a more viable solution: they wanted the country divided in two,
the South for the Blacks and the North for the Whites, since America
emerged from the efforts of both races. If it
wasn't possible to enjoy together the work done together, it would
be reasonable to
divide the land into two pieces. We have then, at the beginning of
the century, a
Brazilian writer anticipating the proposals of contemporary leaders
like Farrakhan. It's
important to remember that at this time Lobato still had not traveled
to the United States.
The Whites didn't want to give up their status-quo and the problem
became
threatening. This is when a candidate capable of uniting the black
electorate came
forth: Jim Roy, with a slightly copper complexion, appearing to be
a mixture of
Senegalese and redskin. The color of his skin was nothing like the
color of today's
Blacks (this is 1926, the year in which the author situates his story).
—No—Miss Jane responds. This wasn't influence from the
middle, nor something
particular of Jim Roy's. Almost all the black population of America
had the same skin
as he had. Science had resolved the case of color by destroying the
pigment. So if Jim
Roy should appear in front of us today, it would be a more disconcerting
surprise,
since this pure black man, without a drop of white blood in his veins,
was, in spite of
having frizzy hair, horribly whitish.
The visionary spirit of Lobato anticipates, en passant, the Black
American tendency
that spawned Michael Jackson. Sr. Ayrton says astonished:
—Peeling cockroach, I know...
—But not even eliminating with the means of science the essential
characteristic of
race, did Blacks stop being black in America—Miss Jane continued.
Instead they
aggravated their social situation, because the Whites, proud of their
ethnic purity and
the privilege of the white color, wouldn't forgive that camouflage
of depigmentation.
Jim Roy, leader of the Black Association party, wasn't even a threat
to power. He
represented 100 million Blacks, against 200 million Whites. It just
happened that
among the Whites, a serious dissension was taking place, a party of
women. The old
Democratic and Republic parties had fused into a strong block called
the Masculine
party, led by Kerlog, the incumbent President who was running for
reelection. This
block wasn't certain of victory, since the opposition party, the Feminine,
possessed a
larger number of voices, led by Miss Evelyn Astor. Statistics gave
the Masculine Party
51 million votes, the Feminine 51.5 and the Black Association, 54
million. The election
depended, therefore, on the posture of Jim Roy.
The election was getting close. In 2228, elections occurred within
a few minutes, due to technological advances predicted by Lobato.
Lobato
predicts the Internet
Through
Miss Jane, the writer of Taubaté begins to describe the future
society of America:
—By today's system—Lobato refers to 1926—man goes
to work, to the theater to a concert, in a coming and going that constitutes
an enormous loss of energy and is the
creator of millions of vehicles cluttering up space, streetcars, cars,
bicycles, trains,
planes and others. With the fecund discovery of Hertzian waves and
similar findings
and its consequent use in the interests of man, coming and going was
reduced to a
minimum. Work, theater, concerts started to come to peoples' place.
The
transformation of the world was fabulous when the larger part of industrial
and
commercial work began to be done from a distance via radio-transport."
For the less attentive reader, the text could be a production of some
more or less
contemporary utopian, planning for the near future a society where
every citizen would
depend on public transportation either a little or not at all. Utopian,
perhaps.
Contemporary, not so much. Clairvoyant, without a doubt. Let's go!
Let's see his
journalistic vision, in the eyes of Miss Jane:
"With today's system, the journalist writes his topic at home
or he goes to write it in the editorial room; after writing, he gives
it to the typesetter; he typesets it, gives it to the form maker,
who puts it in a form and gives it to the proofer, he make a proof
and
sends it to the proofreader; he proofreads it and sends it to the
corrector, he makes
the corrections and..... it never ends! It's a chain of uncountable
links, this inside the
offices, since the newspaper on the street starts a whole new chain
on the way to the
reader—mail, agents, delivery men, vendors, the devil".
"I
was in a newspaper office and I know what you are talking about. Pure
hell...",
Ayrton responds. According to Miss Jane, "all these complications
disappeared. Every writer of Remember transmitted from his house,
at a certain time, his article, and immediately his written ideas
appeared in shining characters in the house of the subscriber."
"How marvelous!...
"Yes, there wasn't an industry, like that of the newspaper, that
wouldn't undergo a
simplifying influence from radio-transport—and that took from
daily living the old trait
of being trampled and agitated."
At a time in which the computer, fiber optics and satellites belonged
to the mental
universe of visionaries, Lobato speaks of radio-transport. If we would
substitute this
expression for fax/modem, we have the creator of Bentinho and Jeca
Tatu anticipating,
seven decades beforehand, a newspaper business that only exists today.
The
correspondents of any of today's leading newspapers for some time
have sent their
"shining characters" to their editorial offices. The reader
at the end of this century
already receives on a screen practically all the newspapers on the
planet. When the
great quantity of universal literature is digitized, you will be able
to consult, from your
house, all the libraries in the world.
"The streets became friendly, clean and with little traffic"—Lobato
continues. "Vehicles still glided along on them, but rarely,
like in the long ago, old, provincial cities that had little commercial
life. Man delighted in walking and lost his old habits of haste. He
found out that haste is just an index of a defective organization
and anti-natural. Nature doesn't hurry. Everything in it is calm."
This
prediction, better to credit it to the utopian disposition of the
writer, who didn't manage to glimpse this Brazilian provincial side,
who feels naked and humiliated if he doesn't have a four-wheels carriage.
After all, you don't have to pay taxes to dream.
But Lobato goes even further. Miss Jane considers old-fashioned the
revolution of the wheel. According to the girl, "man took the
first giant step in transportation with the invention of the wheel.
But it ended there. Note that our industrial civilization
developed the wheel and now wants to extract all the possibilities
from it. Centuries
from now, when man can see a vast version of his history, all of this
period that comes
from the dawn of history and that is going to continue for many generations
will be
called the Age of the Wheel".
"Radio
will kill the wheel", Miss Jane concludes. "The wheel, which
was the greatest mechanical invention of man, and today reigns supreme,
will have its end and man will walk again. What will happen is the
following: radio-transport will make today's rush useless. Instead
of the employee going to work every day in a street car that glides
over noisy steel wheels, he will do his work at home and transmit
it to the office. In summary: long distance work".
Lobato speaks of radio, the must of the 1920s. If he couldn't have
predicted the
clouds of terabytes transmitted daily from one end of the planet to
the other by the
WEB, he perceived very well its consequences. Long distance "telework"—work
"transmitted" to the office, as Lobato would say—is
already a phenomenon in
expansion. Today, any intellectual worker, as long as he has a telephone
nearby, can
send his product to any corner of the world, fugitive in a chalet
in Itatiaia or in search
of solitude and wilderness in Tamanrasset. Printed newspapers thousands
of
kilometers from their offices aren't a novelty anymore.
According to the French historian Roger Chartier, the revolution taking
place today is much bigger than Gutenberg's of 1455, "since it
transforms the very forms of written
transmission. The passing of a book, newspaper or magazine, as we
know them
today, to the computer screen, breaks the structural materials of
written text. The only
possible historical comparison is the beginning of Christianity, in
the second and third
century when the book of Antiquity, in the form of a scroll, gave
way to the book
bequeathed by Gutenberg, the ancient manuscript, with sheets and pages
united in
notebooks.".
Inhabitants of the end of this millennium, we are privileged witnesses
of the revolution predicted by Lobato. A good revolution, without
blood and without return. Without even imagining the existence of
computers, the writer from São Paulo heralded the coming of
the Internet. Remember that in 1996, Brazil was one of the first countries
to institute electronic voting, an institution already functioning
in this work of fiction done seven decades ago.
The
Black victory
It
is this possibility of "radio-transport" of information
that produces an about-face in the elections of 2228 in the United
States. Jim Roy is going to cleverly exploit this new element, speed.
The elections had been scheduled for 11 a.m. and would last just 30
minutes. The candidate of the Black Association advised his district
agents that only at 10 a.m. he would announce the name in which the
Blacks should vote. Upon his announcement, the uncomfortable surprise
came: it wasn't Evelyn Astor, the leader of the Feminine Party. Much
less Kerlog, President and aspiring to be reelected by the Masculine
Party.
—The candidate of the black race is Jim Roy—Jim Roy announced.
To the amazement of everyone, after 87 white presidents, the first
black would come, elected by 54 million blood brothers. The Masculine
and Feminine parties had more or less tied, with somewhere around
50 million and a half votes. "The astonishment of the defeated
Whites wasn't any less than the black winners. They had acted automatically;
they gave their vote to Roy like they would have given it to Kerlog,
or Miss Astor, or they wouldn't have given it to any of the three
if they were told. And now they looked at each other in a bewildering
victory absolutely unprecedented for them".
The
perplexity passing, Blacks and Whites were hit with reality the following
day. "The old racial contempt of the White for the Black transformed
itself into rage, and restrained hate of the Black for the White,
baring its teeth, showed a monstrous smile of revenge. (...) Slowly,
the black mass woke up from its long, lethargic submission and its
nostrils quivered in the wind, like a tiger loose in the jungle. All
the atavistic barbarism, all the appetites in repression, impotent
rancor, long suffered injustices, all the skin lacerated by whips
until the advent of Lincoln, and after Lincoln, all the humiliations
of unequal treatment—this legion of ghosts burst forth from
the black soul like snakes from under a slab that an imprudent hand
raises up".
For Kerlog, 87th president of the United States and a defeated candidate,
there
comes a historic headache: he sees in the black victory America transformed
into a
volcano and threatened by death. Considering that the reins of the
two
monsters—black inebriation and white pride—weren't held
in check, the massacre
would be terrible. Jim explains his project:
—America is as much yours as it is mine—Jim says. I have
it in my hands. I'm going to divide it.
—Justice is with you, Jim. Order justice to divide America.
But Blood is above justice.
Blood has its justice. And for the justice of White Blood, it is a
crime to divide
America.
Summing up the story: Six white leaders meet together and discuss
a solution for the impasse. The solution, kept secret, is unanimously
accepted. At the time, John Dudley, an inventor and one of the members
of the group, had just discovered Omega rays, that had the miraculous
ability to change African hair. With the treatment, the most rebel
curly hair became not only smooth, but also fine and silky, like the
most refined hair of a White. Omega rays flowed in the follicle and
eliminated the kinkiness, the last stigma of the black race, which
had already solved its pigmentation problem.
The
White Solution
For
Senhor Ayrton everything was becoming clear. He hit his hand on his
forehead and said to Miss Jane:
—I can guess the real solution of the black problem in America!
Not sending the
Blacks out of the country, not the division of the country. Just whitening
the Black,
making him equal with the White!
But the strategy wasn't so simple. Like in a game of chess—Miss
Jane explains—a
humble move of the peon has as much importance for a check-mate as
a spectacular
move by the queen. The capillary episode should be seen as a move
of the peon.
Still not recuperated from the emotions of victory, 100 million individuals
thanked the heavens for the new discovery, that would result in the
physical betterment of the race. The pigment was destroyed, but the
whitening of the skin didn't manifest an agreeable color on sight.
With the Omega rays, there was hope of obtaining, with time, the perfect
similarity in skin.
In all neighborhoods in all cities, the Dudley Uncurling Company established
unkinking posts, posts that multiplied without stopping, as if a hidden
force was pushing the business of the inventor of Omega rays to unkink
Black America in the least amount of time possible.
It was one of the most simple processes. Just three applications,
each one lasting three minutes, at a cost of ten cents a head, made
Blacks run to the posts like hungry dogs. Whites, initially irritated
with what they called the "second camouflage of the Blacks"
ended up enjoying the spectacle of the subtle hair transformation
of 100 million individuals.
"The manufacturing plants of combs, barrettes, lotions, shampoos,
pomades, hair
colorings, etc., worked day and night without managing to meet the
sudden demand of
such products. New barbers and hairdressers appeared on every corner
and no
matter how much they worked, they couldn't keep up. Black women, above
all, lived
perpetually smiling at themselves, as if in paradise. They spent days
in front of the
mirror, enraptured, pleasurably combing and uncombing. Their enchantment
at running
their hands through their soft, "Omega-rayed" hair made
them forget the humiliating
past of curly hair. They were White! Finally free from the horrible
stigma!"
On the eve of his inauguration, Jim Roy, in his private residence,
dreamed the biggest dream dreamed on the continent, when his servant
announced to him the visit of a "natural white man". It
was President Kerlog, the defeated adversary. He approached the black
leader and placed himself against his shoulder in a gesture of compassion:
—Yes,
President Kerlog, the White that comes to assassinate you, Jim...
Jim thinks it is a gag. Mercifully, Kerlog announces a new fact:
—You won't go up the steps of the White House, Jim...
—Why? By any chance are the Whites conspiring against the Constitution?
Do they
want to commit a crime?
—Nothing like that—Kerlog answers softly.— You won't
enter the White House
because there's no room there for a Samson with his hair cut. Your
presidency will be
useless. Everything is useless when the future doesn't exist...
The black man is becoming impatient with Kerlog's mysterious tone.
—Your race was victim of what you will call the white's betrayal
and what I will call the white's good sense.
Kerlog explains to Jim that there aren't morals between races, just
like there aren't
morals between peoples. There is victory or defeat.
—Your race died, Jim...
Kerlog then tells him that the Omega rays of John Dudley have a double
virtue: at the same time that they straighten hair, they sterilize
men.
On the day that the 88th president of the United States would take
office, the first
black president of America, Jim Roy, was found dead in his study.
The Blacks immediately thought about a crime having taken place and
there was almost a rebellion. But ancestral fatalism rose above the
hate and the large body without a head pulled back instinctively and
put itself in its humble place from where Roy's victory had taken
it. New elections took place and Kerlog was reelected by 100 million
votes. American life returned to normal.
"For
the first time in the history of people, a surgical operation took
place on a large scale. The cold scalpel of a human group ablated
the future of another group of 108 million without the patient realizing
anything. The white race, used to war as the last motive of its majesty,
wandered from the old path and imposed a peaceful final ethnic end
to the group that helped to create America, but with which it could
no longer live in common. It had it as an obstacle to the ideal of
an Aryan super-civilization that in that land was beginning to bloom
and it wasn't going to give up to weak feelings, noxious to the splendid
bloom of the white man."
Blood circulation strangulated, the race extinguished itself in a
painless crepuscule.
"Decades later, in the marvelous American garden where only camellias
bloomed with petals slightly coppered by the mysterious force of the
environment, there was at the top of the monument in homage to the
black partner, the bust of the old magician who in 2228 cured the
historic headache of the 87th President..."
Not exportation to Amazônia, nor whitening with the elimination
of pigment and curly hair. But pure and simple extinction of a race
for the full flowering of the Aryan
super-civilization...
In his autobiography, Nikos Kazantzakis tell us of certain sensitive
lips and fingertips that tingle when a storm is coming. "The
lips and fingertips of the author are of this type"—the
mystic Crete writes. "When the author speaks with such certainty,
what he says isn't his imagination, but his lips and fingertips that
have already begun to receive the initial sparks of the storm".
Monteiro Lobato, highly sensitive author, felt close to catastrophe,
the most colossal undertaking of mass extermination dared in history.
Before dying, he saw the German scalpel trying to annihilate an ethnic
group. He was only wrong with respect to the geography.
Translated
by Rosemary Gund