Gabriela, pain and sequel – 07/12/2023 – Juca Kfouri

Gabriela is Sonia Braga.

Gabriela is the novel by Jorge Amado.

Gabriela is Dorival Caymmi’s modinha.

“When I came into this world/I didn’t understand anything/Today I’m Gabriela.”

It is no longer just the best that Brazil has to offer.

Gabriela is now a reminder of the country’s worst.

Gabriela is the pain of the stupid death of a girl who, after going to have fun at the modern Alviverde stadium, did not come home.

Gabriela is the latest sequel to violence in Brazil, and the drama experienced by her family today transcends football.

People kill and die in bars, on the roads, in traffic fights, in political discussions, in schools, on the outskirts of cities, where young people, mainly black people, are daily victims of barbarism.

We live in a permanent state of war amid irresponsible and indiscriminate access to weapons.

As the solution is an enormous challenge, easy exits abound in superficial heads.

Closing organized fan clubs is just one more of them, although all the serious work produced in Brazilian universities reveal that no more than 7% of their violent members are identified, most of them unpunished.

As in drug trafficking, the small offender in the favela is sought, and the bosses are spared on the asphalt by the sea, in the refrigerated offices, in the rooms of top hats at football clubs.

Other countries lived and live similar dramas with the intolerance of fans.

Those who had the political will and competence managed to minimize the problem as far as possible, and the stadiums and surroundings ceased to be belligerent zones.

It is redundant to remember so many previous deaths and then forgetting them, because that is how things go in our society, which piles up scandal on scandal, miseries upon miseries, until others arise, until others appear.

Faced with impotence after more than four decades investigating the subject, exposing measures, asking for answers, participating in discussions, publishing studies and research and revealing reports, the only thing left is the indignation at the ineffectiveness of the authorities.

Empathy makes us feel firsthand what the Anelli Marchiano, Gabriela’s family, are experiencing today.

In 1993, two of my sons, aged 19 and 17, were mistaken for opponents and surrounded by fans of their own team.

The damage was limited to the dented top of the car, but that day I regretted passing on to them the same passion passed on to me by my father. Had something serious happened, I wouldn’t have lived long enough to pay for my guilt.

My children have not stopped visiting the stands, and football will go on.

The death of the first supporter and the commotion caused precisely by being a woman may become a milestone to finally mobilize the three powers in search of the solutions that exist.

Instead of considering changing the Ministry of Sport, it would be better to join the efforts of the ministers who work, like Ana Moser, and Justice, Flávio Dino, to once again make our stadiums stages of civilized and happy coexistence.

In which Gabriela can be remembered as a martyr of the passion that exists to celebrate life.

Burying death worshipers is a mission for yesterday, and preventing Gabriela’s from being in vain is everyone’s obligation.

We are Gabriela!

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