ABSTRACT
I begin with a poem by João Cabral de Melo Neto (2005) on the people of Northeastern Brazil, one of the poorest regions in Latin America. João Cabral writes of people who are one with that inhospitable environment, yet with a unique fluidity that creates potential. The poet grew up there, and it is there that I will take you in this chapter:
And from this indigent river, this blood-mud that meanders with its almost static march through sclerosis and cement and from the people who stagnate in the river’s mucus, entire lives rotting one by one to death, you can learn that the human being is always the best measure, and that the measure of the human is not death but life.
