2005/10/25

the NO face


originally uploaded by Tatiana Cardeal.

In my country, in my heart.

That's a late reflexion. I made this portrait from Jason at the Children's day celebration, with CARF (Children at Risk Foundation). But this image became a symbol of my personal thoughts and feelings about the last gun's referendum we had in Brazil. I see a kind of mortuary mask.
I was remembering the emotions I felt while photographing those brave Mothers protesting at the II Urban Outcries Project, the communication program about firearms from CARF, at Diadema.

But with a two-thirds majority vote against banning the trade of firearms to the public.

And who pay the price of the right to have a gun?
Well, in the brazilian's lands: the poors, the street kids, the indigenous people, the black people, the landless workers... they pay it with life and tragedy. Will be only them who will really enlarge the numbers of gun's shot deaths. That's a very sad truth for us.

The news today, were telling that the NO Campaign (against the prohibition from the
weapons free commerce) was totaly paid from only two industries of weapons, the Taururs and the CBC, who made an oficial donation of $2,4 millions to cover all the campaign after the vitory. There is no irregularity on that, just the moral and ethic questions. Did the brazilians vote for their own rights and certainties or for the results of this industries profit?
The YES Campaign hadn't received not even a half of this amount to their publicity; and in a country with a so large deficiency of
schooling, the critic sense to evaluate all this is rare and a loss.

I understand that many were disappointed with the social politics of the governament, and that many voted as a protest against this. But the real consequences are that brazilians voted to stay exactly at the same place we are.
We didn't change anything.

We voted for the fear.

"I believe it to be a choice that goes far beyond a decision to whether or not we prohibit the trade of firearms in Brazil.
We are choosing what kind of society we want to be: turned towards individualism, an “every man for himself” attitude, or an organized society with social justice and citizenship"
Words from Carlos Eduardo Zuma, from Instituto Noos