1000 years from now

Brazil’s crisis culminated in 2016 with the highly televised and documented impeachment of president Dilma and now we are left to deal with the result of that event. This project is an investigation about what it feels to be in Brazil amidst one of the biggest crises in our history.

“I came here for a better job so I could make more money to help my family and eventually come back home”, he told me as we were having lunch near his workplace. “But the money is short, the Real is not as valuable as the Dollar. That wasn’t the case when I first came here”. Moussa is senegalese, he lives with five others in a three-bedroom apartment and works at an IT firm. His previous jobs in Brazil were pool-boy and selling trinkets on the street.

In another area of the city, a group gathers every Sunday to call for a military intervention in order to remove corrupt politicians, stabilize the country and hold new elections. “It’s not a dictatorship, it’s democracy. We just want to make our democracy better.” One of the members tells me that he was alive during the military dictatorship, he can attest the fact that it wasn’t that bad. “The history books are lying to you. I know it, I lived it.” Some of the members are former military, most are over 40.

This is the result of the previous years of unrest in Brazil. After international media payed its last amount of attention on us and decided that our story was one not worth reporting on anymore. We were left adrift with an uncertain future. The economic boom of the early 2000’s did not fulfill the dream of turning us into a developed nation. Instead, unsustainable policies and corruption made our economic crash inevitable. Brazil is a broken promise of a country and this has taken a toll on our spirit. We are a numb and fatigued people with no faith in our institutions to solve anything.

Protests, impeachment, new government, and all I can ask myself is "What is the point?". Because when all the rabble-rousing is done, after all rallying cries were shouted, the best we can hope for is that this period will end. We are living the in-between chapters of History, left to wonder: how will History describe these years? We won’t know for a long time, but, meanwhile, I might try to portray them and leave it to historians to define if I’m correct. I feel it’s the morning right after carnival: the beach is dirty, the skies are grey and the hangover is the only thing we'll remember.