Monuments of Mooca
By Thiago Iaqeb Ahmose
(transcript of the comics)
A crossing through Rua da Mooca!? It’s quite big… I think it goes on for about 5 km or so. But I’m in ok? It’ll be nice to observe every space here in the neighborhood!
Rua da Mooca changes as you walk through the region, you know?! It divides the neighborhood into a higher side to the south and a lower side to the north, which is close to the river and suffers from floodings… obviously huh? If you build a house on the river – water will live inside it.
Have you noticed how the landscape of the city changes too? There’s a more commercial part, and a residential one. In the lower part lives who has less money, while in the higher part, in large luxury buildings, lives who has more … Guess which region suffers from floodings when it rains? Right…
This monument here celebrates the 450 years of Mooca. It’s an old neighborhood, isn’t it? Just not older than this land here! This ground was here sooooo much longer than this neighborhood, and obviously, before Mooca, this territory was occupied by other people right…
The First Peoples of this land. True heroes who had to fight to defend the invasion of some European worms who arrived here thinking they were in charge of everything! They pretend to be the good guys, but they killed people in buckets, not to mention everything that existed before they started laying on tar and putting up houses and buildings… Why are there no monuments to this part of history? They probably want to erase that, right. They don’t want anyone to know…
Unfortunately I do not have enough knowledge to portray the heroes of the Guaianá nation in a dignifying way. In this way I portrait with all my respect and honor a symbolic image of those who will still prevail over the worms that rule this western state.
Check it out, Rua Luiz Gama, bro! I think it was called a different name, wasn’t it?
I’m not sure, but the street was renamed because people fought! Luiz Gama was the reference of a black lawyer! I hope you look his story up – it alone would make a whole comic! It must have been a fight to have the street renamed right? After all, Brazil does not care about its true heroes… they prefer to honor the worms.
I portrait our master Luiz Gama just below, of whom you do find pictures in books and the internet. He is not wearing Western clothes, just like the Guaianá hero above. Free from the white men clothes, just as the ancestors would.
This block in the middle of the street is quite neat right?! The soccer goal posts resisted, but the basketball hoop did not … there is no room for basketball hehehe. Check out those painted walls… graffiti is the art of truth! And not the European lies that fill the museums!
Wow! That one over there is T-Mack! He’s a damn good basketball player, bro! Wow, having him on a graffiti, in this court, is still resistance!
That’s it, people cry out for their true heroes! While the State continues to erase, people resist building their own monuments. On the street there is a lot of lies, but there’s a lot of truth in every detail! You just have to open up your eyes, make the crossing, and see, with attention, what dwells in it.
