Little Sea Houses and Seascapes
One day, fifteen years ago, looking for beautiful subjects to paint, I found myself in a boat in Araripe's River in Trancoso, Bahia, Brazil, and I must say that literally I almost drowned. Some mis-step, I don't know because it happened so fast, and I found myself without my glasses in fairly deep, narrow and spidery water! But, miraculously, in a split section, I was able to rescue my glasses and with them could still manage to reach the paddles and reverse the boat.
Not long thereafter, I went to the Quadrado (a square that looks more like a field than a square) and, while visiting the Saint John Church, I saw someone stealing the little image of the Jesus Child, unguarded and not well attached to the hand of the Saint Anthony image. Immediately, I called out to a man, short in stature, shirtless, of Afro-Baiano origins, a serious guy who appeared to me to live beside the Baptista Church, a church so beautiful set in a background of such a human sea; the most human of all the seas of Brazil.
Well, the man reacted quickly and stopped the robbery.
Stories...Ah! The Quadrado of Trancoso. I have seen many squares around, even Chinese squares. Of them all, this is the most beautiful and magnificent: the small houses of incomparable beauty and color in the large Taba (Indian Village settlement); the houses that the people had and still have... houses that survived the Modernism. There in that loneliness, in that plain, people had the majesty of Kings, with simplicity and royalty. All this because the Modernism came upon Bahia without strength, because Bahia knew how to defend herself with the power of the Candomblé (an african cult), at that point revived by a more human Christianity, the more popular Christianity of Our Lady of Help...and a lot of poetry.
Long life to Quadrado de Trancoso!
Oscar Araripe / June 2001
Trancoso
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