For days now, I’ve been trying to elaborate on the feelings that come over me about what’s happening in Rio Grande do Sul. It’s difficult to write when the only certainty I have is that I can’t understand what people are going through in Porto Alegre, in Canoas, in various of the state’s municipalities.
The description of friends, who for a few days have been torn between leaving Porto Alegre facing the insecurity of unstable roads, and being left with the risk of shortages and fear, is of a scenario that I could only imagine for a dystopia.
I can’t understand it, but I have some experiences that give me some idea. The floods in Petrópolis, the city where I was born and where I visit a lot, as it is where most of my family lives; the dam disasters near Belo Horizonte, where I have lived for many years.
The catastrophe that devastates Porto Alegre and other cities in Rio Grande do Sul is ongoing, something that is only seen in major climate tragedies. And Brazil is not usually the stage for them. Hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons and other disasters with names that we did not fear, because they did not concern us. Now they say.
Now they concern all of us, and there is a collective mourning for all of us; but it doesn’t compare to what our friends in the south of the country are experiencing. Those who haven’t lost everything or almost everything have family and friends who have. Everyone is at risk in some way, because being without water is being at risk, being without electricity is being at risk. In Viamão, shortages affect almost the entire population. Everywhere affected, there will be increased risk of infectious diseases, there will be trauma. I don’t know what you’re feeling right now.
But we know the feeling of disruption, that feeling that life as we knew it is over. We went through this, also collectively, four years ago.
One of the friends has just arrived in the coastal city of Xangri-Lá, a possible adaptation of Shangri-Lá, the fictional country in the work “Lost Horizon”, by James Hilton. A place where people can preserve themselves. Dystopias.
I see photos that compare the escape from Porto Alegre through the only viable exit from the capital to a scene from the series The Walking Dead. Inevitable images show entire cities becoming rivers. Among them, videos that will probably go around the world. A horse alone, a symbol of what it is like to feel lost, without knowing or having what to do.
Four days stranded and alone on a roof, and millions of shares later, a difficult rescue operation is broadcast live on television. The symbol of the state of Rio Grande do Sul is saved. Commentators feel obliged to say that no one stopped helping humans to help the animal: of course there will be those who wonder whether the horse was a priority.
Saving the horse Caramelo represents a lot. If it means a lot to me, as I’m not from Rio Grande do Sul and I’m almost two thousand kilometers from Rio Grande, I imagine it also means a lot to those who are there, taking refuge in a shelter, in the house of a relative, a friend, in another city, even in the middle of the road trying to get somewhere, anywhere. It means that many people mobilize in an arduous joint task for a single life, for all lives. It means a possibility, even after feeling so lost and not knowing what to do. A chance. The chance for reconstruction that we all need to believe in.
This reconstruction will have to observe science and the reality that the world has changed, the climate has changed. It is no longer possible to pretend that the tragedies being announced are a matter of opinion, nor to minimize political responsibilities. The time is to survive. But soon it will be time to get back on its feet and, for this to last, we need to determine the blame and causes that contributed to taking an entire state underwater. May we not only save Caramelo with our chain of solidarity, but also hope for the future.
