At the worst times of repression during the military regime, in the 70s, "tudo bem" (all right) was greeting, salutation, slogan, comma, ellipsis. A one-size-fits-all expression, spontaneous answer of a cordial society to the moment's ordeal.

Now, in the other side of the Atlantic we finally discover the source of such benevolence - or resignation - when President Lula in his visit to  Ghana was received by the "Tabom". 

They are not a tribe, but our fellow citizens, descendant of the slaves who were enfranchised or liberated by the Abolition, who at the end of the 19th century returned to the fatherland.

As they only spoke Portuguese and were intrinsically happy despite having left a merciless prison, they used the 'tá-bom? (are you OK?) as "how do you do?" or "tá-bom" to express their conformity with life and the world.

One "tabom" here, another "tabom" there and the name caught: it turned into a group identification, a Brazilian contribution to the African civilization.

Our "cordial society"  was not invented by Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, but by a friend, melancholic poet generally angry, Ribeiro Couto. The historian-philosopher ended up resigned not without before yelling to death the explanation that such cordiality was not personal behavior, but characteristic of a social relation that occurs afar from laws, codes, institutions.

From his brief contact with the Tabom, President Lula brought, besides the valuable and colorful manta, an undisguisable baggage of happiness. He felt like a king, he declared that politics is done in the "tête-à-tête," he hugged and was hugged, he considered himself a legitimate member of the Tabom nation and the highest exponent of the Tudo Bem community.

The so-called self-esteem produced in the laboratories of conceitedness is extraordinary, contagious. Thanks to it we are immune to defeatism, we disguise anguishes and hide indignations.

We distract ourselves with the blah-blah-blah of nepotism and forget  that employing relatives without submitting them to a test is not only a functional aberration but also injustice, immorality and truculence.

Nepotism thwarts the principle of isonomy that should govern the rule of law, it represents embezzlement of public resources and can be seen as gang formation.

A few more speeches in an empty Congress and a few more headlines and  we will be all persuaded that we definitively extirpated this kind of corruption from public life.

Built-in Offense

In another sleight-of-hand trick our equalitarian and libertarian sense of dignity was instantly satisfied by the arrest of Argentinean back Leandro Desábato, who offended the Brazilian striker Grafite (Graffito). And we do not realize that we abandon ourselves consciously to  a xenophobe impulse as serious as the impulsive racist offense.

The Argentinean insulted and committed unbailable crime, contemplated in the Constitution, an inquiry was initiated. A fine or alternative punishment should be handed out, the athlete might be suspended for a few games and we even might get offended and offender together in a world campaign against racism in sports.

This arrest personally ordered by São Paulo state's Public Security Secretary and endorsed by a media thirsty for a lynching is a mockery in a country where people responsible for vile crimes walk free in the streets and judges are imprisoned as thieves and murderers.

President Lula acted correctly apologizing to the African peoples who were here enslaved and humiliated for four centuries. But in this great circus mounted ironically because of the Libertadores (Liberators) Cup, nobody thought about something so simple: as criminal as the Argentinean player was the person who rebaptized the player Edinaldo Batista Libânio, of the São Paulo team, as Grafite.

It is not an affectionate nickname, it is an offense embedded in the name, something perennial, indelible, a pejorative tattoo: synonymous with graffito, black mark, dirty stigma.

All right, Tabom, we are a society so sweet and so cordial that Stefan Zweig, the Austrian writer who wrote a book-hymn called Brazil, Country of the Future killed himself here six months after the book's release.

This article was originally published in Último Segundo.

Alberto Dines, the author, is a journalist, founder and researcher at LABJOR - Laboratório de Estudos Avançados em Jornalismo (Laboratory for Advanced Studies in Journalism) at UNICAMP (University of Campinas) and editor of the Observatório da Imprensa. You can reach him by email at obsimp@ig.com-br.

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