INDICAÇÃO DE ABDIAS NASCIMENTO AO PRÊMIO NOBEL DA PAZ

Caro Clovis Brigagão. Saudações. Ao tempo em que repercutimos sua indicação de Abdias Nascimento, novamente, para o Premio Nobel da Paz, aguardamos maiores detalhes de como poder participar massivamente desta nova campanha. Nas campanhas anteriores, que se encontram no link http://www.adami.adv.br/abdias.asp , pode ser verificado que conseguimos que várias autoridades brasileiras, inclusive o Ministro da Justiça, remetesse, também, correspondência com a indicação, em inglês e para a academia em Oslo, além da indicação já feita pelo IARA Instituto de Advocacia Racial e Ambiental. O próprio Gabinete do Presidente da República aderiu a campanha e tomou providencias de encaminhamento, como se pode atestar por correspondência recebida.. Tudo em conformidade com as orientações constantes no site http://nobelprize.org/ Prentendemos fazer uma medida de participação coletiva e virtual, para muitos brasileiros e não-brasileiros possam participar pelo mundo inteiro, de forma que ao final, tal documento possa ser impresso e remetido fisicamente para a Academia em Oslo, ou impresso aí mesmo, por alguém de sua confiança. Tal possibilidade pode ser adicionada por um modelo de carta de apoio, que seria remetido, como das vezes anteriores, por autoridades públicas, ou personagens de sociedade civil que aderissem à campanha. Acaso tal estratégia mereça retificações, ou outras mais eficientes se façam necessárias, solicitamos tais informações, uma vez que as formas de suporte prescritas no site são pouco claras. Receba meu cordial abraço, dando cópia de sua missiva eventuais interessados em dar suporte a essa nova iniciativa, e aproveitando sua honrosa presença no local dos fatos.

HUMBERTO ADAMI www.adami.adv.br www.iara.org.br

Oslo, 2nd. June, 2009.

Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize

According to recent official statistics, African descendants comprise more than half of Brazil’s population of 180 million. Thus, the country hosts the second largest black population in the world, second only to Nigeria. Yet in Brazil blacks have no substantive role, quite the contrary, in the country’s real life. Official statistics demonstrate that blacks occupy the lowest rungs in education and occupation and very limited access to or opportunity for advancement. They also experience severe inequalities in housing, health care, environment, remuneration, and cultural recognition. These inequalities persist alongside Brazilian society’s steadfast refusal to recognize that they are caused in large part by race discrimination. The Brazilian elite claim that such inequalities are exclusively “social” and not as well as racial. They take pride in promoting the notion that Brazil has achieved a unique “racial democracy” that is a lesson to the world and an example of nondiscrimination. They consider the color hierarchy that values and assigns privilege to whiteness to be merely an aesthetic preference with no racial overtones. It has been described this ideological distortion of social reality is a sort of The Sorcery of Color.

Blacks have contested this version and demonstrated that Brazilian race policies have led to the exclusion of blacks from the benefits of Brazilian society and the denial, in practice, of their civil and human rights. Abdias Nascimento is one of the earliest leaders in the movement that was against this exclusion and fought for the rights of African descendants in Brazil. He participated in the Brazilian Black Front in the 1930s and in 1944, he created the Black Experimental Theater, which organized seminal civil rights events like the National Black Convention (1945-46) and the National Congress of Brazilian Blacks (1950). He was a major supporter of the Négritude and Pan-African movements, and it was mainly through his efforts that the African world, and the world in general, began to critically consider the contours of racial discrimination in Brazil.

As a member of Congress, Nascimento introduced the first bills of law defining racial discrimination as a crime and creating affirmative action mechanisms to counter its legacy in Brazil. He worked to develop a foreign relations policy based on opposing the Apartheid regime, promoting the decolonization of African countries, and developing positive Brazilian relations with African nations. His contribution to the development of a school curriculum that includes African history and cultural heritage has been consistent and innovative since the 1940s, when he organized literacy and general education courses for the Black Experimental Theater, many of whose members initially were unable to read and write. They explored the African tradition in Brazilian culture and innovated in its development, bringing the black person and personality to the fore as protagonist.

Abdias Nascimento was an early pioneer in resisting against intolerance. He has fought consistently to promote the right to practice religions of African origin in the face of police repression, and the reduction of their spiritual dimension to derision at best as folklore.

Nascimento’s rich opus of poetry, artworks, dramatic productions, publications, and research works constitutes a legacy of enormous import to Black population in Brazil. Young people find in his writings a source of inspiration and information that nourishes their development as individuals as well as their collective sense of identity. His example of civic action and fight for human dignity inspire Brazilians in genera. There is every reason why the Nobel Peace Prize Committee might consider awarding him the Prize, thereby honoring the Brazilian, African, and African descendant people and communities and their ancestries.

Sincerely yours,

Clóvis Brigagão

Director, Center of the Americas Studies (CEAs),

Institute of Humanities, Candido Mendes University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Researcher Fellow at the Nobel Instittutet, Oslo, NO, (April-June 2009)