Reminiscences of Professor Fausto Arruda – A Nova Democracia

We publish below an unofficial translation of a text first published here on A Nova Democracia, the Brazilian revolutionary newspaper.

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Written by a former coworker of Professor Fausto.

I

“Our work is like that circus show where the aerialist spins plates… he spins a plate balanced on a stick, does the same with the second, the third, and keeps spinning the sticks and balancing more plates… when he gets to the fifth, sixth plate… the first one starts to lose balance. And he goes back to the first one and gives it another push, and so on until he has several plates spinning. We’re a bit like that. We visit a region, an area in the countryside, we plant a seed from the newspaper’s support committee there, and we spin a plate. We do our collective reading, our study, the newspaper brigades, and we start work that is carried out by the comrades. And we travel, we go to other regions, universities, schools… When we’ve completed a tour of the country… we have to go back to that first location and there we do another tour, we support the committee, we help the comrades with the tasks of selling the newspaper and winning new brigadiers and members for the Support Committee, we carry out activities, discussions. And so we continue to spin plates and expand our work.”

Many times, before the AND support committees were set up and consolidated, Professor Fausto would open our meetings with this speech. Our initiator, enthusiast and tireless trainer would spread among us the need for activists from the combatant youth, the Revolutionary Front for the Defense of People’s Rights, the Combative Peasant Movement, the class-conscious workers’ movement, the class-conscious women’s movement, to embrace the newspaper, to take it into their own hands, to establish quotas for supporters to spread and sell AND.

From this momentum, the first support committees were formed. At first they were small, with one or two members. Others had just one member who, sometimes alone, would spend the early hours of the morning at bus stations waiting for a package of newspapers that a sympathetic traveler had agreed to carry and deliver to a stranger, distribute shares among readers and friends, and sell and distribute copies at newsstands.

AND’s brigades of propagandists and agitators began with activists going up university staircases and subway station benches, to bus stops and student and worker demonstrations.

From the support committees emerged excellent agitators of the popular struggle, young journalists who became occasional contributors or, for long periods, local or regional correspondents for the newspaper.

Old militants, hardened by decades of struggle, coming from revolutionary organizations that for years and years had been looking for a thread of the revolutionary path in our country, thirsty for a just line, when they saw the buzz of our combative brigadiers and the tireless work spearheaded by Professor Fausto Arruda, they approached and enthusiastically engaged with AND, absorbing its editorial line and contributing their experience and forge of old fighters.

Thus, with persistence, revolutionary patience, perspicacity and simplicity, Professor Fausto helped train dozens, hundreds of “plate spinners.” In schools, universities, in the midst of the fierce struggle taking place in the country’s vast rural areas, in the workers’ battles in the main industrial centers, in the multitudinous protests by the combatant youth of 2013 and 2014, in the internationalist protests where the Palestinian flag flutters triumphantly. Wherever there is a spark in the class struggle in the country, there is a young activist, a student with a backpack, a proletarian activist, a working woman with AND in her hands, making political denunciations of the system of exploitation and oppression of the masses and the imperialist subjugation of the nation, calling on the masses to read and support the democratic and popular press, and to join the struggle of our people and organize themselves in it.

II

In the intervals between the newspaper’s activities, at peasant meetings, workers’ congresses or student assemblies, or even in the routine of the newspaper’s editorial office, even in the tense and tiring moments of closing the edition, wherever Professor Fausto Arruda was, there would be a group of people laughing with his anecdotes and stories of militant life full of funny events and perilous and tight situations.

Often, when we were tired, after revising texts once, twice, three times on the eve of an issue and the printer threatened to say that if we didn’t send the files they wouldn’t meet the deadlines, Professor Fausto would give his characteristic chuckle and recall a story from when he was a student, or tell an anecdote that always involved his beloved state of Ceará. It was impossible to not calm down and laugh along with him.

It was Professor Fausto’s way of showing us that life wasn’t just about editing and the newspaper’s tight deadlines, that the struggle is long and we should know how to deal with adversity.

After breaking the ice, we got on with our work.

How many times, when I saw him reading Página 3 [Página 3 was a video series featuring Professor Fausto Arruda briefly covering current events. Watch it here—Trans.] or an editorial at the editorial review meetings, with his serious countenance and his concern that everyone there should understand and be able to defend the newspaper’s editorial line. I remembered the times when we were editing and revising those same texts and how he valued this work, maintaining humor and our unity.

III

Professor Fausto didn’t change the way he spoke or acted among the masses. Whether he was speaking to university professors or at a peasant assembly in the far reaches of the Amazon, whether he was in the midst of high school students or at a workers’ congress, at factory gates or at a meeting of the Popular Women’s Movement, there he was with his simple way of dressing, his measured gestures, his glasses and beret, backpack on his back and notebook in his pocket.

He wasn’t fond of difficult words, and preferred a simple way of talking so that everyone could understand him. He traveled a lot and planted supporters of the newspaper wherever he went.

In moments of disagreement and two-line struggle in the AND editorial office, he was firm, always seeking to rely on the newspaper’s editorial line to guide our work.

He was very concerned about his own health and that of his colleagues. He encouraged everyone to eat as well as possible and to exercise. He felt at ease among young people.

Even in the midst of so many trips around Brazil, he was attentive to his family and always showed his daughters and partner that his family was part of our people, suffered from their pain and it was not something apart from his life and struggle.

IV

He once said that AND should release according to the needs of the class struggle and its material conditions. It was Professor Fausto’s witty way of pointing out a serious problem: the newspaper couldn’t be published without regularity, except “from time to time,” with intervals of sometimes a month, sometimes two months or more between issues.

It was the middle of the first decade of the 2000s. We had a small editorial board and few resources (the internet was still in its infancy). The support committees were still in their infancy and we were struggling hard to make AND a monthly publication, to consolidate it and move on to fortnightly release.

Through persistent work, we formulated a plan to give the newspaper a new format, reduce the number of pages and establish a monthly periodicity. It was an intense few months of tense meetings, searching for new collaborators and working nights out, first at the Copacabana headquarters and then in São Cristovão, at the Barreira do Vasco [São Cristovão is a neighborhood in the Barreira do Vasco favela—Trans.].

One, two, three, four issues a month. We regularized and expanded the print run. Victory! No steps back!

After that came the struggle for the fortnightly print run, the development of the website, and the more recent battles, with the evolution of digital media, which have been met with great success.

Professor Fausto was the great driving force behind these struggles and, whenever any major challenge arose, wherever he was, he would travel to Rio de Janeiro and gather his comrades together to find a solution.

He faced problems with an open heart and celebrated victories collectively.

V

We met in person a week after the celebration of AND’s 20th anniversary in June 2020, which he was unable to attend. Due to his illness, he already had difficulties communicating and getting around. Even so, he tried to carry out these activities with the support of his partner, always with her frank look and smile.

We gathered around a table with friends and companions, told the stories he liked to hear, cracked a few jokes and saw him laugh once again.

It was another pleasant afternoon with companion Fausto Arruda.

At one point, he whispered my name and I was able to tell him that the celebration of AND’s 20th anniversary had been a vibrant activity. I told him that the young comrades were successfully carrying out the tasks he had set for the development of the newspaper and that their work of “spinning plates” was bearing good and promising fruit.

Tears welled up in his eyes and he smiled with satisfaction.

We never saw each other again.

Professor Fausto Arruda leaves us an enormous legacy. Let’s all strive to be worthy followers of his legacy.

Image: Professor Fausto Arruda. Reproduction.

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