30 phrases by Darcy Ribeiro for those who love anthropology

Brazil, the last country to end slavery, has an intrinsic perversity in its heritage, which makes our ruling class sick with inequality, with neglect.

Present past and future? nonsense. Do not exist. Life is an endless bridge. It is built and destroyed. What is left behind with the past is death. What is alive goes forward.

It is urgent to warn them of the much that could be done, based on scientific knowledge, and of the debacle and smallness of what is being done.

I end this life of mine already exhausted from living, but wanting more life, more love, more knowledge, more mischief.

The most terrible of our legacies is that of always carrying with us the torturer’s scar imprinted on our soul and ready to explode in racist and classist brutality.

The most important thing for Brazilians is to invent the Brazil we want.

Courage! It’s better to make a mistake, breaking up, than to save yourself for nothing.

It is sometimes said that our essential characteristic is cordiality, which would make us a gentle and peaceful people par excellence. Will it be so? The ugly truth is that conflicts of all kinds have torn apart Brazilian history, ethnic, social, economic, religious, racial, etc. The most remarkable thing is that they are never pure conflicts. Each paints himself in the colors of the others.

I admit, with all audacity, that I like myself too much and that I think I’m admirable.

In fact when you do seemingly altruistic and generous attitudes you also do selfish attitudes.

The education crisis in Brazil is not a crisis; it’s a project.

There are only two options in this life: resign yourself or be indignant. And I will never give up.

If our governments don’t build schools, in 20 years there will be no money to build prisons.

I am a man of causes. I have always lived preaching, fighting, like a crusader, for causes that move. They are too many: the salvation of the Indians, the schooling of children, agrarian reform, socialism in freedom, the necessary university. In fact, I added more failures than victories in my fights, but that doesn’t matter. It would be horrible to have taken the side of those who beat us in those battles

I bring mines in my chest. Minas hurts me, too much, to be as it is. It hurts so much that I die of rage. The devil is, the more I hate it, the more I’m moved. That must be what makes me solemn when I think of Minas. Even more so when I write.

We are a new people.

Master’s degree is just to show that the subject is literate, because half of those in the university cannot read.

Around me, in these Minas, gentle madness flourishes. Rarely manifests himself with courage, by the way. It also never hides at all: it does.

I believe that no book is complete. The author can always continue, for an indefinite time, as I continued with this one, within reach, without taking it up again. What happens is that people get tired of the book, that’s all, and at that moment they take it for granted. I’m not really sure, but I suspect it’s the same for me.

Lately, things have become more complex because traditional institutions are losing all their control and doctrinal power. The school doesn’t teach, the church doesn’t catechize, the parties don’t politicize. What operates is a monstrous system of mass communication, imposing unattainable consumption patterns and unattainable desires, further deepening the marginality of these populations.

Gilberto Freyre wrote, in fact, the most important work of Brazilian culture.

This uniqueness of ours has been threatened a thousand times, but luckily it managed to consolidate itself. Even when Europe poured out multitudes of immigrants that we welcomed and even the large number of Orientals who settled here. All, or almost all, were assimilated or Brazilianized.

It was humanity itself that entered another instance of its existence, in which thousands of peoples would be extinguished, with their own and unique languages and cultures, to give birth to the largest and most comprehensive macro-ethnicities ever seen.

In the decades of the discovery, discovery or invasion of Brazil, increasingly detailed descriptions of the new lands emerged. Thus, they were being appropriated by the invader also for the knowledge of their rivers and forests, peoples, animals and elves.

I have failed in everything I have tried in life. I tried to teach Brazilian children to read, but I couldn’t. I tried to save the Indians, I couldn’t. I tried to make a serious university and failed. I tried to make Brazil develop autonomously and I failed. But the failures are my victories. I would hate to be in the shoes of the one who beat me.

Live lit, looking and getting to know the world around you, learning like an Indian… Be an Indian in wisdom.

One is the superb and proud tolerance of those who know they are different and want to remain that way. Another is the oppressive tolerance, of those who want to live together reigning over the bodies and souls of the captives, Indians and blacks, who can only conceive as those who will have to be, tomorrow, their equivalents, because all difference is intolerable to them.

Here, no land is wasted with the people that were being generated. The ruling class appropriates all of it, less for use, because it is too much, but in order to force the subjugated Gentiles to work on someone else’s land. No freedom is allowed, either, because it deals with heretics to catechize, freeing them from eternal damnation.