Brazilian Mothers and Structural Violence

Mlondi, Owen, and Simon

Reading:

Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. “Death without Weeping; Has Poverty Ravaged Mother Love in the Shantytowns of Brazil?” Natural History. 1989.

What is the purpose and main arguments of the article?

The article, Death Without Weeping, focuses on the complex and often misrepresented cause for the high infant mortality rate in the impoverished area of Alto do Cruzeiro, Brazil. It explores the complex relationship between poverty, cultural practices, and societal failures that greatly contribute to this. It challenges societal standards for maternal love and highlights the cultural and social factors that shape maternal care and responses. It also emphasizes the overwhelming impact of poverty, forcing every day to become a battle for survival. Overall, the article frames the problem of infant death as a consequence of structuralized and institutionalized social inequality, rather than a personal problem or tragedy. It criticizes the Church, State’s, and middle-classes indifference and failure to act in this situation, highlighting the systemic nature of this problem, shifting the blame from the individual to broader societal issues.  

Another important focus of this article was on maternal thinking and emotional detachment. It shows how one’s environment and severe social conditions can challenge traditional notions of love and care. As they are forced to survive, mothers may emotionally distance themselves, being afraid to love a child that has such a high chance to die, so rather than crying for every child, they don’t suffer from repeated loss by not loving the child until the baby has exhibited “the will to live.” I thought the article did an excellent job of focusing on the individual in terms of struggle and loss while straying away from placing blame on them for it.

How does the article highlight or explore the course theme for the week (gender inequality, purity and pollution, or identity and resistance)?

The major themes include structures that enforce values with purpose, sometimes these values are harmful to society. Nancy Scheper-Hughes highlights the themes in a collective sense and also highlights the individual experiences of mothers. The way the catholic church of Alto de Cruzeiro and churches in that region treat the high infant mortality rates shows themes of inequality by making women the focal point and referring to men here and there. The extreme conditions bring about concerns about what the church considers to be holy practices. Death is treated with repressive support systems which negatively shape the identity of infants. Resistance is complex in this case because the mothers are paid so little for intense labor that is a contributing factor to infant mortality because they cannot afford caregivers. To make matters worse instead of businesses helping they capitalize on the poverty of women in the area to get cheap labor. As Scheper-Hughes put it,” history of feudalism, exploitation, and institutionalized dependency”. The ‘new church’ refuses to baptize the dead babies which affects the psyche of the mothers dealing with grief. It was interesting to realize that the babies can be saved with sugar, salt, and water (soro) or Coca-Cola, but the stigma makes it difficult for mothers to resist the idea that their babies are bound to death.

How would you describe the “vibe” of the text?

The “vibe” of the text, Death Without Weeping, is incredibly dark, melancholy, and overall, incredibly heavy to read and process. Nancy Scheper-Hughes delves into numerous themes, including, death, grief, acceptance, but the text can all be related to poverty and how people learn to survive at the lowest level of income. The text was incredibly difficult to read; babies dying and convulsing in the corner while their mother does nothing but “put [them] aside” (Scheper-Hughes 326), the statistics of infant mortality and Alto women pregnancy experiences, and the complete apathy to the death of hundreds of thousands of infants is deeply disturbing. It feels wrong to say that from an anthropological perspective, but no matter how one frames it, the idea of not shedding a single tear about the death of your own baby will never seem quite right.

We also found a “vibe” of acceptance and determination throughout the text. After decades, maybe even centuries of their conditions remaining stagnant with no signs of remission, there is nothing else to do other than find a purpose or a reason for it, and they have found it in religion. Each dead baby is claimed by a saint upon their birth because they preemptively expect the death of the infant, and they use a saint because “Jesus doesn’t want any more dead babies” (Scheper-Hughes 328). However, there is a sort of bastardization of Catholicism– not all the babies are baptized before their death, and the comfort of Catholicism seems to be denied to Alto women. The bottom line is, though, that these mothers unfortunately do not have the facilities to properly care for these children, so they simply have to try and try again until they have a surviving child, and only then will they grow attached to them. 

Strangely enough, we each noticed a “vibe” of unity, comradery, and family during some sections of the text, namely in how women comfort each other during the death of their child and how Zenzinho forgives his mother for simply letting him die in the corner. Even though these people have found themselves exploited and suffering at the very bottom end of the economic chain and have thoroughly suffered the consequences, they still have a sense of comradery and family and don’t let each other suffer alone.

How did each of you go about finding songs to include in the playlist?

 Owen: My first thought was to ask my Brazilian host family for some songs related to poverty, critique of the dictatorship Brazil was under during the mid 20th century, and death. My “other mother” sent me about 10 songs with her favorite translations of the lyrics and I sifted through them to find the ones I liked best. Some of them were a little tricky to find because she sent them to me via YouTube and they didn’t end up on Spotify, so there was a small setback there.

For the other songs, I listen to a lot of music, so It was pretty easy to find some USA/UK based songs that fit my general criterion for a selection, and I sifted through approximately 20 songs that I selected by going through my liked songs on Spotify.

Mlondi: I researched about the time and what genres of music are popular in hopes to find themes captured by different artists. This was not as successful because I was looking up information about just Alto de Cruzeiro and most of the information was in Portuguese and translation seemed inaccurate. I decided that at least the voices that tell the story should be in a shared language at a relatively relatable period. The themes that popular artists captured included grief, resistance and issues around Brazilian capitalism.

Simon: For some of my songs, I remembered my mother showing me an artist by the name of Fela Kuti, a musician from Nigeria famous for his resistance-style music and concerts. I did some more research and found that themes from his music and culture overlapped with those from the reading. I also happen to have a friend who has both had a Brazilian exchange student and lived in Brazil for half a year. I spoke to him and asked for any songs about resistance, grieving, and loss. While he didn’t have a ton of recommendations, he was able to offer me some important musicians and groups. From there I listened to their music and looked at some translations to determine which songs best suited the text. 

Which song(s) reflect your critiques of the text?

The article did a good job of showing the voices of women who are failed by institutions; however, it did not include the voices of those who benefit from the institutions. It would have been valuable to include more direct quotes from leaders of Catholic Church and sugarcane farmers. It also does not include voices of men who are victims of capitalist institutions. The song “Construção” by Chico Buarque represents the experiences of some men who work under these profit-driven institutions and societies that fail to hold them accountable.  MC Livinho’s “Para de Chorar mãe” represents the stories of social inequality and access to education which indirectly shows the consequences of decisions made by institutions that do not look out for their people. The song describes the experiences of mothers who lose their children to crime which is a direct result of structural inequalities.

How did you decide on the order and transitions between each song, including how to begin and how to end? 

We thought the playlist would start best with a song about religious trauma, specifically because of the section of the text that brings up that preachers and priests refused to baptize dying infants and shunned the mothers for crying about the loss. It provides a very slow and somber introduction. After that, we sort of divided into 3 sections: death, commentary, and resistance. Our other songs after the Ethel Cain track are US-based songs about death. We are assuming that the primary audience of the playlist is US-based so it would be best to start with our English songs to ease the audience into it. All of the US-based songs are very somber and melancholy, dealing with heavy themes of death and trauma, similar to the reading.

After that, we have some Brazilian songs that provide commentary about media misrepresentation of middle-class and political corruption. As said in question 6, this represents the cause and speaks against the systemic disadvantage that these women are at. It also represents the voice of men who are suffering in Alto who are out of the scope of Scheper-Hughes’ article.

Finally, there are some songs by Fela Kuti and Chico Buarque that sing of resistance against a corrupt dictatorship. A dictatorship brought about horrific poverty in Northern Brazil, just like the region of Alto, and political corruption continuously reinforcing it. We have the transition from protest through music to resistance because it feels chronologically correct to put it as such and that is likely how it would and has gone previously in history.

Having the story of the playlist go in the order of trauma and grief, to protest and political discourse, and ending with resistance to a corrupt government tells a story that we believe accurately fits the story extrapolated from the article.

Were there ethical concerns or debates that came up while creating this playlist?

 We found it hard to critique because we are relying on hearsay of the women’s experiences and translations of the music, and it truly is an experience we are alien to. We also were concerned some songs might have their meaning lost in translation and there were variations in each translation as well. Considering that many of these experiences occurred in Shantytowns and the main language is Portuguese, most of the songs we have on our playlist were ones that could reach platforms like YouTube and Spotify; what about the ones that never reach media (i.e. silenced voices by politics and institutions like the Catholic Church)? There was a fear of misrepresentation that fits the context as well. Who are we to argue what their experience is? Additionally, we wanted to emphasize the need to immerse oneself in a culture rather than just researching online.