Cuti (Luiz Silva)
- Cuti (Luiz Silva)
In São Paulo, for a few years, black writers organized themselves and published their work in a newspaper. Will you talk about Quilombhoje, its history and purpose? What part did you play in its formation?
In 1978, there existed in Bexiga—a traditional black neighborhood—one of the most important samba schools in São Paulo, the VAI VAI Samba School, where there also existed, in the past, the so-called Quilombo da Saracura. It was there that the Center for Negro Culture and Art (CECAN) was located. In 1978, this organization, this cultural center, was very active, and an institution was born there that aimed to bring together other institutions; it was called the Federation of Afro-Brazilian Institutes of the State of São Paulo (FEABESP). During that time, at CECAN, we started publishing a newspaper called Jornegro. At CECAN, people who were connected to the literary world came together, and from this was born the idea to establish an anthology that would publish poems and short stories by other black writers.
Initially, Hugo Ferreira and I came up with the idea and, in 1978, we published a small book and knew immediately that the series would continue. Hugo Ferreira left—he was a lawyer and had other interests to attend to—and I remained, working alone. And from then on I did the anthology with the eventual help of the other writers, and always with the financial participation of each one; they all paid. I would collect the texts and the money, go to the print shop, do the editing, organize the book launching, and we continued like that until the fifth Cadernos Negros, which was done in 1982.
But, alongside the Cadernos Negros, Oswaldo de Camargo, Abelardo Rodrigues, Paulo Colina, an Argentine writer named Mario Jorge Lescano, and I were meeting and discussing literature, and somewhere around 1980, we resolved to come up with a name for ourselves, with the aim of forming a group that could be recognized and would organize debates and other functions. We used to meet in a bar called “Mutamba” in the center of the city of São Paulo, and we started to select various names and I suggested the name Quilombo, plus the word hoje [today] which makes Quilombhoje. One of the things I thought was interesting about this name, and people agreed, is that the word Quilombhoje has the word bojo [bulge, swelling or salience] imbedded within it. Quilombhoje is a neologism that encompasses the present state of the Quilombo, the notion of our historic retaking of it. Quilombhoje also includes the word bojo, which is to say that our literature is in the swell of a larger movement, the National Negro Movement. It happened that after Quilombhoje became instituted, we experienced the arrival of new people that became close to the group.
Besides the discussion meetings, the group began to organize poetry readings. These readings had a very creative format which sprang from a meeting at my house, [End Page 729] when Paulo Colina—I think also Abelardo Rodrigues—and I were there debating literature. There we hit on the ideal format for reading our poems and we called it the Circle of Poems. The Circle of Poems included a theme song that we composed. The lyrics of the song had to do with some historic personage, or more precisely an outstanding person in the area of Afro-Brazilian culture, and we would attach that person’s name to the Circle of Poems or even some other event. The first Circle of Poems that we did was called the Luís Gama Circle of Poems, in honor of the great abolitionist, perhaps the greatest, who lived in the city of São Paulo, and in whose name we later organized other projects.
Quilombhoje split up with the arrival of other people: the older members left and the younger ones became part of Quilombhoje. When Oswaldo de Camargo, Abelardo Rodrigues, Paulo Colina and Mario Jorge Lescano left, the younger members that had arrived—Míriam Alves, Oubí Jnaê Kibuko, Esmeralda Ribeiro, Sônia F...
