ILR World Social Forum 2009

    After a certain point of being wet there's no turning back. Umbrellas become useless accessories, ponchos become just another layer of clothing stuck to you. Shoes can absorb and retain an astonishing amount of water turning them into canvas fish bowls, making your toes into shriveled up little goldfish. Ducking for cover under the nearest awning seems like the natural  reaction. But, when caught in the middle of a torrential Amazonian downpour, surrounded by 100,000 others chanting, jumping, drumming, and dancing, who needs to run for shelter? The rain became just another reason to celebrate the day. 

      Four days after arriving in Belém, the festivities began. The first half of the day was spent in our usual manner, near the pool enjoying the sun, sipping rich coffee or a cool drink pouring over the catalogue of activities for the Forum. Thousands of self-organized events sponsored by hundreds of groups and we could only pick a handful. Or, as Stuart said "It's like the day when they post the new class descriptions for the semester before they all get filled up". Each of us made our own schedule of events to attend, then revised it, shared it with the others and then revised it again. 

       But enough planning, it was time to march. Lunch of fried fish at the market stalls and people watching led us downtown to the convergence area. Trots, greens, coms, punks, fems, petistas, sindicalistas, indígenas, mulheres que amam mulheres, o povo contra as barragens and lots of flags. A group threw straw hats from the back of a two-story high truck to the rest of us baking in the sun. A Brazilian TV crew interviewed Tami and myself about Obama's election, the first of many such questions we received during the march (no doubt helped by Lowell's sporting a bright blue Obama/Biden t-shirt). We inched up Avenida Presidente Vargas wedged in between the CUT (the Brazilian left-wing trade union federation) and a huge Greenpeace globe (in reversed orientation, of course). And then the rain...

"Em chover, em molher, estamos en pé pela luta!"

       The rain became our reason for being there. A celebration of our Amazonian locale and a celebration of the thousands of reasons (individual and collective) that brought us all this way to fill the streets (How many of us? We couldn't see the front of the march, nor the end so who knows? Who's counting anyway). We marched on through more rain, with soggy clothes and buoyant voices. Groups of indigenous peoples, tattooed and armed with spears snaked their way through the crowd. Apparitions of the Mistica appeared and  disappeared (though Lowell was lucky enough to get his photo taken with Her). Batterias pounded out a cadence (no Brazilian march is complete without drums).  Pula, pula se voce votou p'ra Lula! 

    Well, anyway I'm no good with details, hopefully the pictures will give everyone reading a better sense of the scene. It's late and tomorrow the events begin so I'm off to bed. Tchau gente!