Happy Mother's Day, Regina Duarte

This Sunday, you're probably in the comfort of your own home.

At the very least, she'll be making video calls with her children and grandchildren, unless she follows her boss's guidelines and celebrates Mother's Day in person. 

However, this same opportunity is not available to the thousands of women who have died in the last 50 days due to Covid-19, often believing in the stupidity of their bosses, urging people to embrace death in the streets in the name of "the economy"—read: the employers' interest in not losing a penny, being able to replace CPF numbers whenever they see fit or need to. And there you are, supporting this barbarity. 

It wasn't the first or second time. Everyone knows about her fascist positions as a rancher, her desire to eliminate the MST (Landless Workers' Movement), and the many suffering mothers whom her blind anger insists on sabotaging, humiliating, and making invisible. 

And what about carrying the dead, Regina Duarte? I myself carry an entire family that was psychologically shattered by the dictatorship, driven to poverty and alcoholism during the darkest years, which you mockingly celebrate with tacky little songs. There's also a suicide victim, my uncle, a result of the horror that the military dictatorship imposed on Brazil, using people like you to create a positive image for a tragedy that has just happened. 

Remember your fear of Lula, Regina Duarte? Well, it has transformed into the terror that you voluntarily spread, sarcastically, promoting a fascist government that does not represent the Brazilian people, humiliated and distressed even more now, with the total contempt of their president for the popular cause, while we have already buried at least one hundred thousand dead from the "little flu".

Well, Regina Duarte, you can lie on TV, but when it comes to the dictatorship, I wouldn't recognize you even as a piece of rat droppings. When I was eight days old, the dictatorship ransacked my entire house searching for my uncle, while my mother ran with me in her arms through the streets of Copacabana. We could have died that night, but we escaped. Eight years later, I couldn't avoid being expelled from school, you know why? Simple: on a field trip to Praia Vermelha with my literacy class, I committed the crime of asking why the beach was red. From below, I saw the silence, the elderly men in uniform looking at me, and the terror on my young teacher's face. Nobody said anything, nobody expressed anything. Two weeks later, the school administration asked me to leave: the dictatorship discovered that the boy who asked about the red was the nephew of a political exile and the son of someone imprisoned by the regime. What were the crimes? My uncle carried pamphlets against the dictatorship. He was a pamphleteer. Since they couldn't find him, they arrested my father as bait to get him to turn himself in, which he eventually did. And because my uncle didn't give up fighting for Brazil's freedom, he was arrested several more times, lost his hearing due to beatings at the DOPS (Department of Political and Social Order), until he was warned that if he didn't leave, he wouldn't have another chance. The impacts of this monstrosity were so great that, sixteen years after his expulsion, they certainly contributed to his suicide.

People with soul and feeling carry their dead, Regina Duarte. And it's not easy. It's never easy for those who cherish their loved ones and their neighbors. A cherishing quality that you despise when, as a representative of this unworthy government, you remain silent in the face of the deaths of notable artists like Aldir Blanc, Moraes Moreira, and so many others. Yesterday, the father of kinetic art, Abraham Palatnik, died. Do you know who he is? Judging by your mediocrity, probably not, but his art is celebrated worldwide, except by fascists, who are naturally ignorant. Sérgio Sant'anna also died recently. Have you ever read any of his books? 

Happy Mother's Day, Regina Duarte. My mother won't be able to celebrate because she died thirteen years ago, a psychological victim of the dictatorship, poverty, and the lack of resources for better healthcare, like millions of people in this country that you insist on despising. I still remember her cheering for you in *Selva de Pedra* and *Roque Santeiro* (which, if you had understood 1% of the plot, you shouldn't have done). For my mother, soap operas were very important and one of her only distractions. Have you never stopped to think that your career was propelled by millions of Brazilians who believed in you, and who were deceived by a sweetheart of torture and hatred, barbarity and Nazism? Have you ever stopped to talk to your government colleagues and the apologies they've made for Goebbels, for example? Do I need to talk about corruption and militias? No, right?

Happy Mother's Day, Regina Duarte. My mother, who admired you so much, is dead. But it is far more dignified to have died poor, anonymous, without betraying her own people, than to have fame and fortune but be an abominable monster like you, who praises torturers and despises victims of a pandemic. Dead, my mother is far more important and dignified than you alive. I am proud to be the son of who I am, but I would be disgusted to have a mother like you. 

It's pointless to stay in this position, Regina Duarte. You've been demolishing your image for decades (even if it was fake) with your mental barbarities that you call a "political stance." But this past week you completely imploded it. You will never again escape the label of fascist, crook, unworthy, militant of the dictatorship and horror. Not even a photo of your beautiful face from the past will be spared. Whenever we talk about Brazilian fascism, you will be a reference to it. Despised by your own peers, humiliated at the very network where you were a star for decades. No amount of money or assets will compensate for this. 

Happy Mother's Day, Regina Duarte. Enjoy this new phase intensely, because the last one was last year. Unfortunately, today you are nothing more than a living dead person, an unburied corpse, a zombie that laughs and spits out resentment, vociferating all your lack of humanity, your colossal ignorance, your emptiness of goodness. You don't need to carry the dead on your back: just look in the mirror, stare intently, and, behind the image, become aware of who you really are. 

Rest without peace.