at Guarulhos

Dear Rui,

Even though you seem to ignore my letters, I cannot help but let you know of my impressions of this fascinating country. If you can find some spare time, just drop me a word, provided no inconvenience is made to all those beauties around you. Envy is what I feel when I figure them out at Guarulhos International Airport the day you leave, dancing and imploring together: "Ruizinho, minimo, por favô não vá embora, fica coa genti, quêrido". You should feel great, don´t you?

Now, I would like to let you know my thoughts about that very special class of people in this country called jurists. I am quite impressed with them, I must admit. First and foremost, this is the only country I know where they outnumber their moms.

Second, they really like talking and they seem to live just by talking. There appears to be a close resemblance between them and priests and there is for sure a strong rivalry between them. Jurists seem to be by far the most anti-clerical of all people in this country.

Actually, I am told that starting in the mid-eighteenth century at Coimbra, and later on several occasions, they robbed the priests of their social and intellectual influence, as well as of their material wealth. They tried to emulate priests and they really succeeded. Have you noticed their black attire in courts resembling that of churchmen? And what about their big words, their impressive gestures, their magnificent thoughts, their magisterial pose? I am assured, though, that in all occasions they robbed the church, they made appropriate laws so that the robberies always turned out to be perfectly legal. At miracles, I must admit, they are better than priests.

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Jurists in this country are the only kind of people I know in the whole World who can assert convincingly that black is white. I find them cute. That might be so because their loyalties pertain to worldly goods, like power and money whereas those of priests pertain to God. May I humbly say that in such a country of priests and jurists, the latter seem to me the most ingenious of all, and not only at miracles. They have learned with the old missionaries in Brasil and Africa how to make a living by the word. The only difference is that, contrary to priests who did it by bringing people together under the umbrella of the Church, jurists thrive on setting them apart, each against the other, and all against the Church.

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I enjoy reading a blog here called Blasphemies where there are a number of jurists, both as bloggers and commentators. They talk ceaselessly about everything. Some female participants in this blog put together the two most talkative species of the human race - women and jurists. What a bunch, I tell you. They are constantly fighting on the meaning of words and they never seem to agree on anything, even that the earth is round. They delight on the use of difficult words. They call coima what everybody knows is a fine. Where priests used to talk in Latin, jurists have a language of their own. Their discussions always end up using such jargon as arguido, providência cautelar and other difficult terms.

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They seem to feel great about big words while the common people feel a little down when they hear such expressions they do not understand. It so happens with the term arguido. Being arguido in this country is a sign of social distinction. Actually, ministers, secretaries of state, presidents of political parties and soccer teams, CEO´s of important corporations, mayors of large cities, all of them have been arguidos. Even the prime-minister has been arguido. As the Portuguese love to be in company of powerful people, it is no big surprise that everybody here secretly dreams of being an arguido.

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And they are going for it. My own estimation is that half of the population in this nice, peaceful and decent country is made up of arguidos, and the numbers are rising. If you want to feel important in this country, you must be an arguido. So, before you come back, make sure to become an arguido, if you are not already one. You can do it by smoking in the airport or speeding in the highway on your way home from the airport. Besides social status, there is an important benefit of being an arguido. You can lie freely before judicial authorities and, obviously, before other people as well. Have you imagined the feeling of lying to a judge, saying categorically and lawfully to him or her that you were not smoking in the airport or speeding in the highway, after you were just caught doing so?

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I find jurists in this country to have a tendency to take themselves too seriously. This is the class of people who, in modern Portuguese history, was able to legalize mass robbery and institutional lying. For sure, they cannot take themselves lightly. A few years ago, not understanding the intrincacies and subtleties of their culture, I told my two beautiful daughters in no uncertain terms: "I shall never accept that either of you get married to a jurist". I am not so strong on it anymore, even though I still pray that the girls will not some day bring one of them home.