A chance encounter with the union leader Jairo Cabral

Last Sunday in Olinda, I met a gentleman wearing sunglasses who greeted me like this:

Are you Jimeralto Urariano?

- Yes. Jimeralto is a character of mine – I replied.

To which the citizen replied:

- I'm Jairo Cabral, I wrote about your novels. I saw you once at Bar Peneira, but I thought it was intrusive to approach you while you were drinking peacefully. Later, at a Brasil 247 meeting in Olinda, I also didn't want to speak. Now, on this sidewalk, it was unavoidable.

So we recorded the encounter on my partner Francêsca's cell phone.

In the photo, you can see two young people who have dyed their hair white, because in Olinda it's already Carnival.

Upon arriving home, I retrieved Jairo Cabral's article from the Diário de Pernambuco newspaper. Jairo is a former president of the CUT (Central Única dos Trabalhadores, a major Brazilian labor union), holds a master's degree in History, is a former director of the Ceroula de Olinda samba school, and a researcher of the Pernambuco Carnival. The text follows.

Jimeralto and Carnival

Jairo Cabral

Master in history

Published on: 28/02/2023

Jimeralto, the Renegade Son of God, a persona created by the writer Urariano Mota, a mischievous boy from Água Fria and the backstreets of Recife's North Zone, was a fiery little devil leaping about during Carnival. He reveled in the frevo of the Batutas, Espanador, and Missangueiras carnival groups from his neighborhood. He also accompanied, in neighboring districts, the Clube Coqueirinho de Beberibe and the Troça Abanadores do Arruda, with their banners piercing the sky like procession flags, leading the profane cortege of the frenetic masses, in a step full of hinges, scissors, and corkscrews, sketching improbable choreographies according to the laws of physics. The metallic orchestra tore through the streets with the boisterous frevos of John Phillips Johnson—

Jones Johnson, the English clarinetist from Newcastle who became a Pernambuco native in Cabo de Santo Agostinho, wrote a collection of memorable frevos that marked an era and are still incorporated into the soundtrack of Pernambuco's carnival. "Não há Problema" (There's No Problem), "No Fim dá Certo" (It Works Out in the End), "Você Sabe" (You Know), "Cabra da Peste" (Damn Goat), "Dinheiro Resolve Tudo" (Money Solves Everything) are some of the musical gems, in the instrumental category, that Jones Johnson left behind. José Luiz, "Gordo," a friend of Jimeralto and a carnival expert, used to say that frevo enchants and captivates, making people jump in a vibrant and inventive profusion of arms and legs. It's the damn good frevo, pushing the uncontrollable wave.

Jimeralto, the Brazilian banker, lived through the Longest Duration of Youth, witnessing from the attic of the Treze de Maio boarding house the dark times of the military dictatorship, attempting to silence the Futurist Hearts and their dreams of red equality. On a Carnival Friday, in the São Pedro courtyard, amidst beers and caipirinhas, Jimeralto, at a table shared with Luiz do Carmo Albertim and Ingrid, who was allergic to the mud of the Capibaribe River, drank a few to get into the rhythm. On stage, the women's choir of the Bloco Madeira do Rosarinho performed, making the whole courtyard sing "we are hardwood that termites can't eat".

At the next table, Mércia Albuquerque, a law professor who wouldn't bend, sang Capiba's verses at the top of her lungs. Soledad Barret, the Paraguayan guerrilla fighter of love, with a broad smile on her face, approached the group, clapping her hands for wood that termites can't eat, under the telltale gaze of the sailor Anselmo Daniel, who accompanied her. Some time ago, in Olinda, from the doorway of the house that served as a meeting point and smelled of jasmine, they had witnessed the passage of the Midnight Man. The figure in a black top hat, with his green jacket, watch on his lapel, and the charismatic smile of a mannequin with gold teeth, dragging the crowd along Rua do Bonfim, to the pulse of the frevo "Três da Tarde" (Three in the Afternoon), by the self-taught composer Lídio Francisco da Silva, Lídio Macacão.

That Friday night of Carnival in the 1970s, amidst the revelry in São Pedro Square, was an unannounced farewell to those who lived life at risk in pursuit of a better world. At some point, the Bloco das Flores, founded by the stalwart Pedro Salgado in 1920, paraded, singing the premonitory song by Aldemar Paiva, a Recife native from Alagoas: “Saudade is what we feel. Saudade is the absence we feel, someone who left, someone who died, someone the heart hasn't forgotten.” This unsettling and reminiscent saudade prevents forgetting and erasing history, inviting perseverance. This is reflected in Jimeralto's *Dicionário Amoroso do Recife* (Recife's Loving Dictionary), whose entries, through intellectuals, institutions, and rich popular characters, reveal the rebellious nature of the city of rivers, bridges, mangroves, and crabs. The city of vibrant and resilient culture, with frevo, maracatu, and carnival coursing through its veins. The old composition by Nelson Ferreira and Sebastião Lopes, "Carnaval da Vitória" (Carnival of Victory), adapted for the present, is a valuable source of inspiration for the battles of the days to come: "The red bloc is ideal, it has been revived in this carnival. That's why we are vibrating and singing victory, victory, victory."

"Evoé, Urariano Mota."

Hail, comrade Jairo Cabral.