Elis & Tom and the end of the Teresina Forum – 11/04/2023 – Marcelo Leite

Although accidental, in retrospect the choice to watch the film “Elis & Tom – Só De De Ser com Você” on All Souls’ Day proved to be the right one. An appropriate date to pay homage to two dead geniuses, who in 1974 knew how to tame their egos to deliver one of Brazil’s greatest albums to the world.

There is so much talent and so much vital force captured in Roberto de Oliveira’s documentary that reflection becomes imperative: how is it possible for a country and a culture capable of producing such beauty to end up secreting so much baseness on the internet?

Not long ago I happened to revisit another Brazilian paradox, the Serra da Capivara National Park. Far from everything, in the middle of the parched caatinga, there are monuments – natural and human – of a rich prehistory that can be admired today, for free, in a well-structured conservation unit.

The park area covers four municipalities: São Raimundo Nonato, Brejo do Piauí, João Costa and Coronel José Dias. There are few flights to the first city, and more frequent ones to Petrolina (PE), 365 km away.

The previous visit had taken place 23 years ago. The reason was a long report about disputes in the archaeological research community in Brazil.

Serra da Capivara, in addition to fantastic geological formations such as Pedra Furada, is home to thousands of cave paintings, dating back thousands of years, in hundreds of sites dotting trails, shallows and paths. There are also megafauna fossils from 10,000 years ago, funerary urns and other traces of ancient human occupation.

The park also has the Nature Museum, a scientific dissemination warship perched among the rocks and the forest of angicos, mandacarus, mesquite, macambiras and juremas. Installations at the level of what can be seen, for example, at the Museum of Tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro.

Everything became possible because a southeastern archaeologist, Niède Guidon, decided to investigate the copious rock art back in the 1970s. She was the central character in the report “A Falha Arqueológica do Brasil”, published in this Sheet in the year 2000.

A controversial researcher, she is portrayed with finesse by Adriana Abujamra in the book “Niède Guidon: An Archaeologist in the Sertão”. Another recent release, “Brave New World: A History of Human Occupation in the Americas”, by Bernardo Esteves, provides the complete overview of the controversy over the antiquity of humans in the Americas.

It is enough to note here that, without Guidon, Serra da Capivara would probably not be what it is. Tourist infrastructure, schools, museums –yes, there is another one, the American Man Museum, in São Raimundo–, artisanal ceramics factory with cave drawings…

All of this came from Guidon’s imagination and persistence, from the pioneers he knew how to attract to the semi-arid region and from the local inhabitants who saw the chance to overcome poverty in the Northeast.

Poverty is still there, but there is hardly any misery, as it was a quarter of a century ago. Nor does the same amount of plastic waste that the wind spreads across the caatinga, littering the landscape on the car journey from Petrolina, appear in the villages around the park.

The park is a Brazilian miracle materialized in Piauí. Sometimes a certain megalomania is required, under firm control, to release all the creative potential latent in Brazilian culture and people.

By unfortunate coincidence, in the same weeks of revisiting Elis & Tom and Serra da Capivara, uncontrolled egos put an end to the Foro de Teresina podcast. In addition, they took some shine off the intelligence beacon lit 17 years ago by Piauí magazine.

Moment of mourning, but also of celebration for what is best in Brazil.

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