Being against the More Doctors program shows a lack of understanding of the country, says photographer.
Award-winning photographer and traveler Araquém Alcântara shares his enthusiasm for the health program he documented in a book.
By Isaías Dalle, from CUT
"The changes I see in the country are changes in consciousness, through people acting locally. And the Mais Médicos program is undoubtedly part of that," says Araquem, a photographer who went to the most remote parts of Brazil to document the revolution that Mais Médicos is promoting in the country.
After starting his career in newspapers and magazines, photographer Araquém Alcântara heard a calling, which he describes as a "natural shamanism." He heard it and obeyed. For 46 years he has been in the midst of the forests, the Cerrado, the Caatinga, the Pantanal, the Pampas, and all types of Brazilian ecosystems, documenting animals, plants, and especially people.
"Brazil doesn't know Brazil, right? Brazil doesn't even know its own people. And what do I do? I go there and show them," says the photographer, as he welcomes us into his office, a tiny house in Vila Olímpia, São Paulo.
Araquém had returned from nearly a month-long expedition in the Pantanal, where he was hunting for images to produce a book about the jaguar. When finished, it will be his 50th book, not counting his participation in collective editions.
The book was shelved for a year due to another of those calls the photographer says he hears. "My bliss is in creating beauty, but above all, in sharing it. My photography is meant to provoke, to give pleasure, to unsettle. In this context, I intuitively realized I was facing a beautiful work, above any partisan position." [Book cover - Press release]
"I'm going to tell this story"
It was like that, in a flash, over a late afternoon beer with his friend Fausto Figueira Júnior, a doctor and at the time an advisor to the then Minister of Health, Artur Chioro, that Araquém decided to return to the so-called backwaters of Brazil to produce a lengthy report on the Mais Médicos program, created during Dilma's government.
"I perceived a humanistic vein in this project. Damn, I'm going to tell this story," he recalls. The artist states that the only support received from the Ministry of Health was transportation and help from staff in each location he visited to document the doctors participating in the program and their patients. This resulted in the book "Mais Médicos" (More Doctors), published at the end of 2015 by his own publishing house, Terra Brasilis.
"First I thought: 700 municipalities without healthcare. There will be an old man who will see a doctor for the first time. And a journalist will be there. And Araquém went there," he summarizes. "This thing about the Brazilian essence, I think I understood the character of these people by being very close to them. Whoever doesn't do that doesn't perceive the character of a people. You will understand the values of a people if you are among them," he explains.
At this point in the conversation, CUT photographer Roberto Parizotti, nicknamed Sapão, adds: "Capa (Robert Capa, the famous Hungarian-born war photographer) used to say that. If your photo isn't good, it's because you're not close enough to the subject."
Sense of Brazilianness
And, according to Araquém, this happens not only with photographers, but with society as a whole. "There's a certain distancing from the sense of Brazilianness," he says. In his opinion, this is one of the factors that provoked so much hostility towards the Mais Médicos program from the opposition, the media, and medical corporations. "The biggest problem is the lack of national consciousness, really. And it transforms into this sad thing: the guy doesn't want to make any effort, he wants all the perks in the world because he's... a doctor. He's a PhD," he provokes.
Among his colleagues, Araquém felt the same resistance to the Mais Médicos (More Doctors) initiative. "I saw the media ignoring this book, and it's a hell of a book, my brother, made with blood and sweat," he says, using the vocabulary and accent of his hometown, Santos (SP). "They came to patrol me: 'Hey, are you working for this government?' I would have answers on the tip of my tongue, but it's better not to. They are so mediocre that it's impossible to respond."
Stories
Trained as a journalist and also talented in writing, Araquém is a great and prolific storyteller. From the fixed gaze of a jaguar upon him to the experience of surviving a plane crash in the Amazon, the photographer recounts a Brazil of poverty, destruction of nature, absence of the State, but also of hope, reinforced by what he saw and experienced while making the book "Mais Médicos" (More Doctors).
"I met a doctor who discovered there was a high incidence of schistosomiasis. She realized that children were bathing in contaminated rice paddies. She started doing social work and reduced the schistosomiasis cases. That's where we have a chance. It's the presence of the State that matters."
Among the stories recounted in the book is an encounter with João Goulart Neto, a doctor who enrolled in the program to treat people in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.
A reunion of cultures
In Poço Redondo, Sergipe, he witnessed the merging of cultures saving lives and preparing for the future. "A doctor who practiced Cuban Santeria met a quilombola midwife, Dona Josefa, from Umbanda, who had delivered countless babies. They connected, and they began changing the history of the community. How? The man saw leadership in her, joined her, and they started giving sexuality talks to the children," he recounts.
"The More Doctors program goes beyond its functions. It requires doctors to know and work in the community, because if they stay out of it, they die in solitude," says the photographer. Another scene that moved him was the encounter with an elderly woman who, upon crossing paths with the doctor on a dusty village street, hugged him to thank him for the medicine that had cured her. And she gave him a chicken as a gift.
"The changes I see in the country are changes in awareness, through people acting locally. And the More Doctors program is undoubtedly part of that," he assesses.
Asked what he thought when the interim Minister of Health expressed his intention to eliminate foreigners from the Mais Médicos program, Araquém retorted: "I didn't expect anything else from this abomination of a government." He says he hopes for Dilma's return. If that happens, he guarantees he will produce a second edition of the book "Mais Médicos".
Check it out here some photos from the book.