Today, August 23, is the International Day of Remembrance of the Slave Traffic and its Abolition, declared by UNESCO, the United Nations Organization for Science and Culture.
On this same day, but 226 years ago, in the night of 22 to 23 August 1791, men and women, taken from Africa and sold into slavery, revolted against the slave system to obtain freedom and independence for Haiti, which was conquered in 1804.
“The uprising was a turning point in human history, with a major impact on establishing universal human rights, for which we are all responsible,” wrote UNESCO director general Irina Bokova last year.
The association Partilha Alternativa produced and has been presenting throughout the Algarve, especially in secondary schools in the region, the play «Filhos do Fogo de Deus», which precisely addresses the issue of slavery, from the perspective of several Portuguese writers , Brazilians and beyond.
It is theater in the form of a short story session, with actors Mário Spencer and Thomas Bakk, incidental music by Victor Gama, script and direction by Tela Leão.
This performance joins the demonstrations within the scope of the decade dedicated by the United Nations to Afro-descendants: People of African Descent: recognition, justice and development.
It is built with musical themes related to the subject, and with historical texts selected from monographs, dissertations, surveys, reports and other documents from the historical research of Robert Edgard Conrad “Children of God's Fire . A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil”. The title refers to a concept developed in a sermon by Father António Vieira.
The proposal is to remove the story from the purely academic realm and to bring it to the realm of emotion, so that it is not forgotten, so that the acknowledgment of the facts generates justice, and in the hope that this way, perhaps, it may one day stop repeating itself… because, unfortunately, modern slavery is a reality.
The piece is also in tune with the campaign 50forfreedom of the International Labor Organization for which it will be proposed to collect signatures from the public.
One of the schools in the Algarve where the show has already been presented is the Escola Secundária Secundária Dr. Jorge Augusto Correia, in Tavira.
In a partnership between Alternative Sharing and the Sul Informação, the students who watched the play were then asked to write a critical appraisal, to be published in our journal.
The students Brígida Fernandes, Cláudia Sequeira, Diogo Ribeiro, Joana Gromicho and João Infante, all then students of 11ºB and of teacher Ana Cristina Matias, who teaches Portuguese at that school, responded to the challenge.
Here, then, we share the critical assessments of the play «Filhos do Fogo de Deus», written by these students. To read them, just click and open, in PDF:
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«Men who traded for the first time with blacks!
That you first sold slaves from new lands!
That you gave the first European spasm to the astonished black women
...
To you all bloody, violent, hated, feared, holy,
I salute you, I salute you, I salute you!”
In Ode Maritime by Álvaro de Campos
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Click here to read the article «Play «The Sons of the Fire of God» talks about slavery, without taboos, in Tavira». Sul Informação
Click here to see the video report «“The Sons of God's Fire” are there to break prejudices and reach new flights», also by the Sul Informação
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