GEOGRAPHY 101
The Brazilian Military Dictatorship (1964-1985) would never call itself a Dictatorship
The Military preferred the neutral term Military Regime
They also refused to admit they threw a Coup, with the help of the Americans
(there’s a whole movie about it), insisting on calling it a Revolution instead. There’s a better ring to it,
the proletariat’s sweat, a certain support of the masses, which did not
configure the fact. A Coup is top-down, a Revolution is down-top
Now, Revolute! Say the Coup-throwers, resolute to find an excuse,
and some people take to the streets shouting about the same old boogeymen
Now, look, they are in fact asking for it! They are afraid of a Communist Coup!
Because a Coup is sneaky and undemocratic, a Revolution is a society roaring
for a change in regime…
A Revolt is a failed revolution; that’s the difference. Many peasant and slave revolts through the centuries: a rebellion in a larger scale, a rebellion to the power of momentum. Either and both shall be drowned out, suffocated, drained of the air filling its lungs, passing through the cracks in its barricades.
A Coup these days is always disguised as the coming of spring. Wearing the mask
of Revolution, of course, Revolution has got hay fever, it is its own mask,
out in the open, for everyone to support. But it isn’t spring this bird is singing,
we are South of the Equator, the spring that signals our liberation is autumn,
your fall over there in the Empire is our spring. But at your spring we’re
preparing for winter, winter begins in June. There’s a whole movie about it.
Beatriz Seelaender is a Brazilian author from São Paulo. Her fiction has appeared in Cagibi, AZURE, Psychopomp, among many others, and essays can be found at websites such as The Collapsar and Guesthouse. Her novellas have earned her both the Sandy Run and the Bottom Drawer Prizes. Seelaender’s poetry has been published by Inflections Magazine, VERSON [9], etc. “Canon Familiaris”, a chapbook in which she turns canonical poems into poems about her shih tzu, Uli, will be released by Really Serious Literature in 2023.