Valter Hugo Mother describes Brazil as a “school of the future” for Portugal

ANDall these walks, Valter Hugo. Mother confesses to the Lusa agency that she travels with the intellectual predisposition to “steal everything” that she finds fascinating with regard to language and regional expressions that enrich her vocabulary.

He argues that by bringing a specific term to his own literary territory, the word becomes valued in a cultural space much broader than his original context of birth and everyday use.

A remarkable example occurred in São Luís do Maranhão, where the writer discovered the typical expression “marocar”, used to describe the act of ‘focusing’, and decided to incorporate it into the final pages of his latest book.

The author describes this practice of using regional terms as “travel adhesives” that permanently identify the place where that specific part of the narrative was written, thus honoring the exuberance of the Portuguese language spoken in Brazil.

His new novel, entitled “The Century of the Imbeciles”, marks the beginning of the tetralogy “Crimes and Vindouros”, functioning as a profound and satirical allegory about the dilemmas and crises that mark contemporary society.

At the center of the narrative is the character Agilulfo, a name that went to look for the “Inexistent Horseman” of Italo Calvino and that, according to the writer to Lusa, serves as a metaphor of the mobile phone, placing the dilemma of using the object to climb the mountain of erudition or descend to a imbecile, childish and irresponsible dimension that marks our time.

“ We have progressed to our own erudition, or we are progressing to a more playful, childish and imbecile dimension that turns out to be more irresponsible and useless”, he says.

Regarding the current state of humanity, the author points out that ignorance has lost its shame and acquired self-esteem, warning that, in many contemporary political situations, it is no longer just a lack of knowledge, but a “practice of pure wickedness”.

Hugo Mother now investigates the concept of racism, defining it as something subtle practiced even by those who think they are exempt, generating what she calls “ingenuous racism of good faith” by those who have never effectively clarified the meaning of being racist.

Asked why to visit topics such as racism and denialism at this time, the writer replied:

“ I have always been advancing this way by things that seem to me to be a bit fractured, but perhaps in a very veiled way ", highlighted.

“ And this tetralogy that I start with ‘The Century of the Imbeciles’, which I called ‘Crimes and Vindouros’, is a tetralogy that I intend to be quite direct, although metaphorical, allegorical”, completed.

Faced with collective manipulation and phobias invented to dehumanize the other, the writer recalls the phrase of a friend who tried to change the world, but who now “just tries to keep the world from changing it” to him.

This phrase reflects the resistance of the author, who feels convinced, in his own words, that his main mission is to remain lucid in the face of a citizenship he considers weak and easily seduced by hate discourses and phobias.

“It is increasingly convinced that it is up to me to be lucid about what happens, and therefore be convinced of what I believe”, he points.

“ Therefore, I am very concerned about weak citizenship, a citizenship that is easily convinced to do the opposite of what I believed in ", complete.

Valter Hugo Mother describes Brazil as a “school of the future” for Portugal, because contemporary crises and setbacks usually reach the Brazilian territory with much greater violence and speed due to its scale.

According to his vision, Brazil “frontwards all the crap” contemporary as if it were an inevitable iceberg, “while Portugal, being slower”, ends up arriving later in these same scenarios.

“ I have the impression that, by the difference between Portugal and Brazil, Brazil, in relation to Portugal, lives a little longer in the future, that is, what is terrible happens first to Brazil. Brazil first discovers the terrible of contemporary times and Portugal gets a little delayed, it is slower to reach what seems inevitable to happen ", evaluates.

The author uses the metaphor of a violent accident against a wall to describe the recent periods of far-right governance in Brazil, which resulted in a rapid destruction of structures built slowly.

For the writer, in many current political situations there is no longer only a lack of knowledge or ignorance, but the “practice of pure evil” as a deliberate strategy of power and dehumanization.

Valter Hugo Mother remains in Brazilian territory until August 17 to walk, in his words, from one side to the other among the Brazilian states.