I’m in favor of reparations, and I’m just exposing the difficulties that exist. Many people contesting this idea that countries need to be repaired say: ‘Slavery has accompanied the history of humanity’. And truth. But the Greek slave in the Roman Empire was not the black slave in Brazil. It was something else. There were Greek slaves who were preceptors, including those from wealthy Roman families. This slavery is different from the subjection due to the war and the conquest of slavery that existed in Brazil as an economic model. A way of managing the economy, of developing, of accumulating capital, of promoting science and culture was created in Brazil, and therefore in Portugal. And the source of that wealth was slavery. It is clear that these nations are debtors to these poor countries, even today. The question there, always complicated, is knowing who receives the compensation and how. Because we had countries that were plundered, cultures that were plundered, human groups that were plundered, individuals that were enslaved. Who receives this reparation? Reinaldo Azevedo, columnist at UOL
We have in Brazil, for example, an internal policy and attempt to correct inequalities, which is the quota policy. Therefore, it is recognized, independently of Portugal, in the quota policy regarding skin color, that black people bear the burden of inequalities, impositions and violence that continue to this day. And therefore, the quota policy is a response, albeit timid, to this. Now, how do we repair European countries to African countries, to countries that went through the colonization process, in the case of Portugal and Brazil, for example, Spain and all of Spanish America, which had a brutally more brutal colonization? violent than the one here in Brazil? How do you do it? It needs? It needs. How it’s done is a mystery. The Portuguese president says: ‘We cannot stop with simple rhetoric’. You have to go further. It is in going beyond that no one knows where they are going, no one knows exactly what to do. Reinaldo Azevedo, columnist at UOL
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