A clearing in the sky, fireworks a-fizzing.
A clamour in the brushwood, an Indian lamenting.
The Whiteman commemorates what he thinks he discovered
The Indian laments what the Whiteman destroyed.
Champagne corks a-popping, the rich at table getting fat,
In the forest the Indian is weeping at the loss of nature.
Five hundred years of plunder, abandon and persecution,
Before the first inhabitants of this rich and famous nation.
Five hundred years of farce, of massacre and violence.
Five hundred years of struggle for survival.
Five hundred years of faith, of hope and resistance.
That's the Brazilian Indian, proving his existence.
1
Editor's note: A reference to the 500 years of the Discovery of Brazil by the Portuguese in 1500.
The commemorative year brought a great amount of questioning, especially by the dispossessed,
not only of the Portuguese 'invasion' and colonization, which represented for them exclusion and
dispossession, but also a great number of protests against the commemoration itself.
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