Child of the Dark

In her entry from July 19, 1955, Carolina’s frustrations with meddling favela women and trying to earn enough money to feed her children find an outlet in this new resolution. In Carolina’s hand-to-mouth existence, her biggest challenges are the daily ones: finding food and protecting her children. Necessity dictates that she must learn how to cope with innumerable challenges, and patience proves more important than courage. Possessing a laudable virtue like courage may seem luxurious to someone in Carolina’s position. Patience is more practical, and it allows her to break down a problem and deal with it constructively. When so many crises threaten to overwhelm Carolina, patience helps her negotiate them with dignity and grace. Over the course of the diary, writing becomes part of Carolina’s strategy to “store up the patience.” It gives her life meaning and allows her to record the wrong actions of people who might be held accountable later. In this way, Carolina avoids being dragged into the senseless fights she sees all around her, and can escape the larger and subtler sense of despair that afflicts the entire favela.

Carolina writes this amusing metaphor in her entry of May 22, 1958. Her message is clear: São Paulo’s glory is all surface, and the hidden spaces of the favela, her rotten underside, shine through. The gently chiding tone fits in with her stance during the rest of the narrative: though no one else may see what’s really going on, she herself is keeping score. The image of the beautiful woman is similar to the metaphor of São Paulo being like a house where the favela is a backyard garbage dump. In both cases, Carolina recognizes that the fates of the rich and the poor are intertwined, and one cannot exist without the other. At the same time, she chides the city’s rich for not being willing to see its garbage dump or cheap stockings. Underneath the prized accomplishments, the “crown of gold,” a seedy underside roils with unrest.

On June 12, 1958, Carolina chooses an apt symbol for the function writing serves in her life. This castle is both beautiful and protective, a place where she finds the hope she needs to carry on, and a refuge from the daily struggles and humiliations of daily life. Carolina is the queen of this castle, and in writing, she potentially summons the only source of power she has in a life where things often seem out of control. Though this image seems magical and imaginary, Carolina actually builds something concrete through her words: a remembrance, evidence that she was there. Rather than being purely dreamy or ephemeral, her writing charts concrete progress toward a permanent place in the world. She may not have a home or a job, but through writing, she can establish a sense of self that outlasts the whims of fate.

In her entry from July 8, 1958, Carolina chides the Brother of the local Catholic church for being inattentive to the needs of the poor. When factory owners have spoiling food to dispose of, they often dump it near the favela, which incenses Carolina. The local church does help the favelados through visits and food donations, but when Carolina looks at the larger picture, she doubts whether the Church’s intervention makes much difference. This thread points to her larger mistrust of the Church and even seems to imply that the Church may be lulling the favelados into a state of denial. In this quote, Carolina also signals her growing political consciousness, though she stops short of advocating a specific plan. Still, the question looms: when will the favelados be ready to rebel? Carolina is aware of talk on the streets, and in taking the Brother to task in this passage, she bemoans the lack of real leadership in the favela. She suggests that the favelados need figures who are in touch with their real struggles and who are willing to move past the easy platitudes and effect change.

In her entry from December 29, 1958, Carolina writes of a cat that has killed a rat she’s been trying to catch for days. In the cat, Carolina sees the value she prizes most in herself: independence. By ascribing a lack of “deep loves” to the animal, Carolina reveals one of her own survival strategies: she refuses to get married or put her love interests before the interests of her children. As she describes it, marriage resembles slavery. Having watched the women around her get beaten by their husbands, she decides that violence and subservience are givens within marriage. In a larger sense, Carolina is deeply ambivalent about putting her trust in anyone but herself. In the desperate world of the favela, every man or woman must fend for him- or herself. The cat represents the characteristic that allows Carolina to survive in the favela: self-reliance.