A Literature Manifesto

for democracy, for empathy, for freedom

If Brazil were not drowning under so much rage, so much hatred, so much yelling, if there were just a single moment of silence, perhaps everybody would be able to hear the alarm bells sounding: something is in danger. The hospitals are working, the courts are working, so are the police stations, offices are opening, and yet there is no normality to our days, no tranquillity is possible. Soon we will be walking unarmed to the ballot boxes, we’ll be freely exercising our rights to vote, and yet the alarm bells will be sounding everywhere: democracy is in danger.

Democracy isn’t only a matter of being able to place a ballot in a box; it must first presume the right of all people, their complete and absolute right, to exist. The candidate Jair Bolsonaro is damaging democracy because he advocates the disappearance of so many: of his opponents, whom he cannot wait to banish from politics; of the activists he wants to eradicate from the country; of the indigenous people and the descendants of slaves, whom he would now deprive of their lands; of the LGBT community, intimidated into curbing their affections in public; of critical journalists, who are under constant threat from him or from his supporters.

Democracy does not survive with only a brief, momentary respect for norms; its preservation depends on a constant commitment to the Rule of Law. Bolsonaro has been damaging democracy for decades, in his praise for the oppressive actions of the dictatorship, in his persistent defence of torture and mass killings. He has threatened democracy in the past, and his candidacy, gesturing as it does towards the measures of authoritarianism, threatens it in future. With every declaration or insinuation, the alarm bells sound louder.

He wants to destroy culture, too, but culture will not be destroyed. He wants to silence literature, but literature will not be silenced. When faced with censorship, with scorn, with contempt, with the imposition of fake truths and mistaken certainties, writers have always known how to stand up. That is literature’s activism, an activism he will not eradicate: literature will always be one of the great antidotes to inhumanity and indifference.

That is why we are standing up now, we writers, critics, publishers, practising our trade in the word, hearing the noise of sirens just as others hear them. That is why we are crying out for all those who value democracy, who appreciate the existence of diversity and dissent, to unite. After all, literature’s ideal, and its aim, is to bring others closer, to understand their afflictions and their trials, to allow those who are different to encounter one another. And even though it is capable of resisting the most adverse of circumstances – just as we do, and we will – freedom must always be its greatest tool.

[Tradução de Daniel Hahn]