Portugal’s culture minister, Pedro Adão e Silva, said this Friday that Portugal must face its history with Brazil, which is also “the result of a history of violence”, and “know how to live”.
Pedro Adão e Silva spoke at the first official public meeting with the Minister of Culture of Brazil, Margareth Menezes, in the “Luso-Brazilian Cultural Dialogues” initiative, at Casa da América Latina, in Lisbon.
Margareth Menezes is in Portugal as part of the five-day state visit of Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, which begins this Friday.
Margareth Menezes, a Brazilian artist with more than thirty years of career, who took over the Brazilian Culture portfolio, recognized “the emotion” for her first intervention outside Brazil in Portugal, emphasizing that her focus is on representing the country’s cultural diversity .
There is a “cultural and ethnic melting pot”. “We give the opportunity to interact with this culture in a new way. We want this diversity to be represented. We live this moment in Brazil, with this thought and resume what was interrupted [com a administração do ex-presidente Jair Bolsonaro]”, he said.
In a busy session, Pedro Adão e Silva said this is “a moment of mutual discovery” and “a huge joy to have Brazil back”, after an “interregnum too long for everyone”, in reference to the four years of governance of Lula da Silva’s predecessor.
“There is a responsibility in the way we project ourselves, because there is a lot of mutual ignorance, in the way we look at Brazilians and how Brazilians look at us, the Portuguese. It is a time to thaw these mutual images. ” identity that probably never matched an existing identity and is not the one we have today”said the Portuguese culture minister.
On the eve of the celebration of the 49th anniversary of the revolution of April 25, 1974, Pedro Adão e Silva said that it is necessary to look at the history of the country.
“We need to know how to live up to this pride in shared history [com o Brasil] not to mention that if we have a shared history, it is because it is the result of a history of violence, of how Europeans arrived in South America. I think that these historical, far-reaching, complex processes, full of contradictions, must be confronted by facing this complexity.”he underlined.
During the session, both recalled that the Portuguese language unites the two countries, but it was the music that served as a bridge, with Minister Margareth Menezes taking the microphone and shouting “O que é, O que é?” sang, by the Brazilian Gonzaguinha , accompanied by a large part of the audience, moved at times.
Source: DN
