Brazil, love it or leave it. Herbert Daniel disembarked in France
with his friend Cláudio Mesquita on September 8, 1974. The exile in fact .
Here he reached the end of clandestinity. Of the flights, of the
encirclements. He again meets Ângelo, a graduate in psychoanalysis. They
foresaw a return before long; they said that, of exiles, one in their own
country would be better. It was difficult to convince them, but they stayed
abroad because of a strong argument: if they returned to militancy within
Brazil, and they fell into the hands of the repression, all the comrades
who had been imprisoned would again be tortured. Suddenly they took account
of the risk of being imprisoned, tortured, killed, of involving other
people. They found France very dull, they installed themselves in Portugal,
which was in the midst of a revolution.
In Portugal, with life begun again, not before, he had sex with
Cláudio for the first time: yes, he loved Cláudio and loved many others.
Coincidences: where he lived in Portugal there was a steep street, Rua da
Saudade (Street of Longings, or Homesickness). On this inclined "longings",
he knew that he no longer could remain in Portugal. No more could he carry
on as he had during those calm fourteen months, saying only "I am myself"
and trusting in the confidence that he had in himself and in his tropical
way of speaking. He did not have documents that legalized his situation in
the country. He should find a corner to exile himself where he could prove,
with an official document, who he was and that he was an exile.
They moved to Paris in January of 1976, where he became officially a
political refugee: a UN travel document guaranteed his freedom to come and
go throughout the world, with one prohibition. Noted on the passport: valid
for all countries, except Brazil.
In Paris, "he refused to decide no longer to attend the meetings of
the exiled ex-militants, nostalgia, claims of glories loaded with the slight
cynicism of an encounter of old fighters, veterans. Life abroad did not
modify the principal problems of the groups of the left. On the contrary, it
accentuated the dogmatism, cristalized the sectarianism and the character of
closed society in where old questions were not resolved and the new ones
were incomprehensible, because not formulated."
I did not interest him to make politics in this way. It was "decided
to find solutions for certain problems that consistency prevented him from
calling personal, but that prudence counselled him not to call political.
Their being, however, political, personal and not transferable", he resolved
that he needed to resolve other exiles: homosexuality.
His sexual exile. He lived his language, his rules, of another exiles.
From then on, he always was on the lookout for a trap. He escaped from one
"sect", the remaining left, and was not going to fall into a ghetto.
Herbert Daniel, through his analyses within the homosexual world, elaborated
and introduced into the Brazilian left an anachronistic, unprecedented and
lucid discourse concerning the homosexual question.
On August 29, 1979, the Amnesty Law is approved, which gave amnesty
to opponents of the military regime for "political crimes", as well as to
military officers for innumerable violations of human rights. With the
issuance of the law, then President João Baptista Figueiredo initiated the
legal process of redemocratization, as a result of the pressure of entities
of the student and union movement, popular organizations, the Organization
of Brazilian Lawyers, and the Catholic Church. Herbert Daniel, as always,
would escape. This time, from the government amnesty. He would remain
outside. He was one of the last exiles to return to Brazil. Outcast. "I wait
in front of the doors I have closed, in this remainder of exile that extends
still more a certain solitude that always seemed to me an inevitable and
dreaded destination. One of the last in exile, already he does not speak of
himself as amnestied- and he does not hear it, I am here what does not
permit me to lie. Conditional liberty as for everyone, where there are no
conditions for liberty..."
Herbert Daniel returned to Brazil on October 9, 1981. Cláudio
returned two months before. Two months heavy with absolute solitude.
Longings, according to his own evidence, for Cláudio, heartrending longings
of expectations and reminiscenses. Caressed by everyone. Fear, not the
physical, buried in an amnestied past. Fear, of not finding interlocutors.
To deliver a monologue in a foreign and incomprehensible language.
Stretch of music "O bêbado e a equilibrista" ("The Drunk and the Tightrope Walker"):
Stretch of music "O bêbado e a equilibrista" ("The Drunk and the Tightrope
Walker")
(by João Bosco and Aldir Blanc) - sung by Elis Regina
BIOGRAPHY