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1. 1 2024-01-12T08:09:52-08:00 Eliseo Jacob f7b70f08c944fb80b73895df0d1f52d7156b4401 Espaço Clariô: IV FELIZS Festival Eliseo Jacob 2 Important theater space in the periphery and the location of the first performance of Auto do Negrinho during the IV FELIZS Festival September 2018. structured_gallery 2024-07-06T07:33:20-07:00 September 2018 -23.6052808,-46.7543657 Eliseo Jacob f7b70f08c944fb80b73895df0d1f52d7156b4401

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• 1 2024-01-12T08:09:59-08:00 Staging Genocide: the Legacy of State Violence for Afro-Brazilians 1 plain 8598 2024-01-12T08:09:59-08:00

  Teatro Terreiro Encantado use of theater that incorporates Afro-diasporic popular traditions provides a unique framework for addressing the pressing issue of genocide of Black male youth in Brazil.  Their play Auto de Negrinho centers the experiences of young Black man in Brazil today, and how state violence has come to define their everyday lived experiences. 

  The director of the theater group, Cleydson Catarina, has repeatedly stated to audiences of the theatrical production Auto do Negrinho that it specifically addresses the genocide taking place in Brazil's Black communities. His stance can be seen as part of a larger political tradition by Black intellectuals and activists throughout the Americas who have repeatedly sought to bring attention to the violence enacted on Black communities. More specifically, William Patterson's 1951 petition¹ provides a clear argument how what Black populations are experiencing is a form of genocide.  Patterson draws upon the 1948 U.N. General Assembly Resolution that defines genocide as 

  Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole, or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious groups as such:
  
  a) Killing members of the group;
  b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
  c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
  d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within a group;
  e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. 

  In the context of Brazil, Afro-Brazilian anthropologist João Vargas specifically outlines the ways in which the state and larger society in Brazil today enact genocide on the Black population:

  Black genocide in Brazil is multifaceted and is part of a continuum. The various dimensions of Black genocide can be schematized into two sets of events—all of which are perpetrated and (at least tacitly supported) by the wider society: material and ideological. ²

  Auto do Negrinho's narrative arch addresses specifically the material conditions related to genocide as it pertains to Black youth in Brazil's major cities. The theater group does so by calling upon the legacy of slavery in Brazil and how that violent past to control, surveil, and inflict harm on Black bodies continues to this day in new iterations.  One particular form of contemporary state violence brought to the forefront in the play is the pervasiveness of police brutality in peripheral communities. 
  
  While the play is framed by violence enacted upon Black youth, it is important to acknowledge how the actors' characters survive and even find ways to resist state mechanisms that are designed to destroy them.  References tied to Black Power become important symbols of cultural and political resistance within the play and for the audience members who residents of these very communities disproportionately impacted by state violence.  

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  Footnotes

  1. Patterson, William. We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief from a Crime of the United States Government Against the Negro People. New York: Civil Rights Congress, 1951.↵
  2. Vargas, João H. Costa. “Genocide in the African Diaspora: United States, Brazil, and the Need for a Holistic Research and Political Method.” Cultural Dynamics 17, no. 3 (2005): 267-68.↵