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Theater of the Sacred: Resistance in the Zona Sul

Uberê Guelé laying on the ground

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Police Brutality & Killing the Black Body 2 Teatro Terreiro Encantado's theatrical work addresses the genocide of Black youth in Brazil. State violence, in particular police brutality, has impacted Black youth from the favelas and peripheries in Brazil during the second half of the 20th century and has continued to the present. plain 2024-07-06T07:31:46-07:00 1968 to 2023
One way in which the legacy of slavery and racial violence has continued in Brazil into the twenty first century has been through the high number of cases tied to police brutality against Black youth in Brazil's urban peripheries. Teatro Terreiro Encantado uses the figure of Negrinho in the play Auto de Negrinho to draw attention to the epidemic of violence that disproportionately affects these marginalized communities, in particular Black males.

Since the myth of the Negrinho do Pastoreiro is the narrative framework for the play, Negrinho's death at the hands of the farmer and his family within the system of slavery becomes an allegory for the Black youth in Brazil who are harassed and killed by the police. The play is commenting on how law enforcement and the criminal justice system are designed to enact violence on these Black bodies as a form of control. They are seen by the state as criminal, suspect, a non-citizen, and ultimately not fully human who must be surveilled and even killed to maintain the existing racial and social class hierarchy.

A particularly powerful image is produced by the actors and the puppet Negrinho when he dies that symbolizes the Black youth death at the hands of law enforcement. Throughout the play the actors at times use a puppet that is the Negrinho character and at other times wear a mask to interpret the character. During one of Negrinho's deaths, the actor lays his own body on the ground wearing the Negrinho mask. Negrinho's death now becomes the death of countless Black youth as the actor's body symbolizes them being killed in the streets. The image of the actor laying on the ground evokes visual art from past generations that have made similar social commentaries on police brutality. The 1968 artwork seja marginal seja herói (be an outlaw be a hero) by the visual artist Hélio Oiticica is a flag or banner with a screen print of Manuel Moreira who was gunned down by police in the favela of Mangueira in Rio de Janeiro in 1964. Both Auto do Negrinho and the artwork have the body prostrated in a way to evoke the image of the crucifix, implying that young Black males from marginalized communities must be continually sacrificed at the hand of the police to maintain social order.

This scene of Negrinho's death ties back to Cleydson Catarina's comment that this is a theater group made up of Black masculine bodies that is bringing a discussion about these very bodies into the theater space. Speaking about his own experiences, Cleydson Catarina reflects in an interview with Rádio Busão on why he does this kind of theater work as a Black man:
O estado todo dia me nega. Todo dia toda instituição. Sou negado todos os dias. É por isso que não vou contar história de longe. Vou contar história nossa, pra gente. ¹
The state denies me everyday. Every day every institution. I am denied everyday. That's why I am will not share distant stories. I will share our stories, for us.
The violence Negrinho experiences is the violence that Cledyson, the actors, and many other Black males in Brazil have experienced or are at risk of experiencing when they travel the cityscape or even walking the streets of their own neighborhood. Negrinho allows them to make sense of this state violence and process it's impact on them and even those who are in the audience, many of whom are residents of these same peripheral communities.
Footnotes
1. Santos, Juliana, host. "Entrevista com Cleydson Catarina." RÁDIOBUSÃO, episode 10, 8 May 2023, https://open.spotify.com/episode/1K3pI3ee8xb2iRANFgO0Pv?si=5f8100ba333a4a13.↵