Brasil Doente

My great Brazil, stove
Of homeland and nativism
On the altar of gauchoism
Of the Creole tradition
At the time of the chimarrão
While listening to the kettle
My bay dog with a collar
Like a friendly sentinel
Is thinking with me
About the Brazilian situation.

Companion, permanent
Just like me, a teatino
My partner examines
The picture of sick Brazil
Worried about the patient
Delivered to the foreigner
A tough, treacherous case
Of dolphinist virus
Having so many specialists
Treated by a healer.

Undermined in every structure
From the mind to the bones
The poor patient presents
Fever, hunger, and bitterness
With a hint of madness
And complete exhaustion
Without any medication
The price is prohibitive
In truth,
A living dead due to lack of food.

And the stubborn foolishness
In this hospital country
Causes the poor marginalized
To decline day after day
The reserve that existed
Has long been extinguished
The great homeland sold
Everything delivered, almost given
While the sick, poor thing,
Drags on a survival.

It may seem like an exaggeration
But the comparison is valid
My dog by the stove
Looks sadly at the embers
But the Brazilian man
Who is listening to me agrees
The bucket is full and overflowing
And the poor defenseless people
Are seeing with such weight
The rope is going to break.

It seems like a joke
That a country with such power
Lives in such poverty
Facing so much corruption
Impunity is the flag
And each one is more cunning
The punitive process
Is established and spread
And after it's completed
It goes straight to the archive.

It's the ultimate downfall
Of a system that is fading
For those who sell, who betray
What does it matter if the people groan
What does it matter if the people tremble
Or if the homeland falls apart
The ruling group is immune
To conscience problems
Continues in recklessness
Because it believes itself immune.

In the old captaincy
Of São Pedro, everything the same
The deadly centralism
Crushes us day by day
And the foreman who deceived
Lacks the courage to lead
Wants to show
That he's a tough-jawed gaucho
But he climbed too high on the wall
And now he can't get down.

Maybe I have hope
He's a gaucho after all
Maybe a saintly bagual
Makes him remember the heritage
Of those who pushed with the lance
The lines of this border
And steps foot on the gate
Saying like a brave Indian
That no one makes a doormat
Of this rural province.

Let these fools know
Who reduce us to rags
That in this land of rags,
Chimangos and Maragatos
There's no place for fools
And we don't serve fools
And we don't ask for anything
And we don't beg
For what we've achieved
We simply demand.

It's so simple to say enough
In the land we demarcated
In the situation we've reached
What doesn't fly, crawls
It's time to bring down the caste
That exploits and ruins us
The people have become carcasses
For the vultures
Of the Anas, Marias, Jus,
Who bought us for nothing.

The dollar rises
And rising increases the foreign debt
And the trinity that governs
Continues smiling and smiling
And the poor people groaning
Now live worse than animals
Don't even go to the tavern
Half-naked creatures
Crossing the streets
Picking through trash cans.

And how can Brazil
Live like this before the world
Showing this filthy, deplorable
Profile, so vile
Poor country, your profile
Needs to be restored
Stop being a trading post
For the foreign exploiter
So that the Brazilian people
Can show their face again.

But what is democracy
The term we hear
In this terrible struggle
That worsens day by day
Selling sovereignty
To foreign interests
Or meat for five thousand cruzeiros
That second-rate one
Is worse than a cut in the ass
For all Brazilians.

And on the second day at Gigantinho
The cry of the countryside and the natives
The fight was initiated
No one will fight alone
Everyone knows the way
And they're arriving early
The entire Rio Grande without fear
Coming from all fronts
And there will be present
Maluf and Tancredo.