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Curious, visionary, passionate.
Izabel dos Santos, born in Pirapora, Minas Gerais in 1 927...
went down to the Brazilian Public Health history...
as the woman who founded and developed important inclusion policies...
in the Human Resources field and in the Brazilian Public Health sector...
in the late 20th century.
Izabel...
is one of those unforgettable kind of people.
No one who has ever met her came out unscathed...
without feeling her power.
Because she is a strong woman.
You know you can count on her all the time.
One of those people who has Ieft a deep impression...
in the Brazilian Public Health history in the Iast 50 years.
Izabel has broken with the concept of acceptance...
of the Iack of professional qualification...
among the technical workers in the Public Health field.
She makes, I believe, a big political, ideological decision...
this is not something pointless, she was not just being professional...
on the contrary, she thought about it, defined it...
was willing to do it.
Izabel dos Santos' groundbreaking contribution...
has imagined a technical school of the Health Care System...
that would be multiprofessional...
was the most important idea in the technical schools field.
She founded a school...
clearly inspired by Paulo Freire, inspired by...
all the Iibertarian education in Brazil...
which made it become today...
the world's biggest success in establishing a massive program...
of qualification of the Nursing professionals...
that before that, were not even recognized...
as a citizen in his field.
I think that when you are born, you have a mission.
Why are you born if not for that?
You have to build something, you have to commit yourself to something...
this is innate. Isn't everyone Iike this? I am.
I can't stand to see anybody in pain.
I feel... any kind of pain:
physical, social... I feel sympathy for them.
If someone is trying hard, to get better, to get out of that situation...
they can count on me 'cause I'II be there. I Iove it.
My energy comes from that.
My process is being inside the social movement.
That's why my work took a Iong time...
I've worked alone during 20 years...
because I was really patient.
I started doing some work, then came some political change...
and some idiot destroyed everything!
But it was not down to the ground.
Then, when that calmed down, I came back, took that...
and rebuilt it again from the remains.
Despite the educational advances...
the lack of education is still too big.
Besides...
there are other people who are functional illiterate, you know?
They can read, but they can't think.
Success, for me...
in the professional process is when you get to think...
by yourself.
And not following other people's ideas.
Her adulthood and her lzabel dos Santos schools...
are connected to the political movement...
to the historic movement.
To an earlier struggle that materialized...
at the moment of the Sanitary Reform, the presuppositions...
and the struggle to make the SUS work...
right after the 8th Conference in 1 986...
and our Constitution, in 1988.
So, the Iast 20 years are years...
of building this experience.
In order to make the Large-Scale Project viable...
she thought of implementing a technical school of SUS...
that would be responsible for some guiding principles...
of this technical training.
A relation with the field...
one that considered the worker in their services as a student...
and considered the trainer in service as a teacher, as an instructor.
It was a Iong, Iong, Iong process.
Twenty years.
Of this horrible Ioneliness, these endless comings and goings.
Firstly, it was the method.
Instead of thinking of how people Iearn...
how to teach, that is the keynote of the pedagogy, I said, "No...
first, Iet's think of how they Iearn."
The strategy we found out was to work...
on the real working process of people.
Besides, how can I teach...
teamwork in theory? I can't.
I have to teach them teamwork having them experience it.
Sometimes we had workers who were advanced in age...
and had not completed their elementary courses, were illiterate...
and had to work Iong hours, most of them being women...
with double workload, plus the medical workload.
So Izabel noticed that for this kind of people the school...
had to be different.
It really Ieft an indelible mark on the Health pedagogy in Brazil...
as well as Paulo Freire Ieft his mark...
on the general pedagogy...
in this country.
She is...
our Paulo Freire in a skirt in the sense that...
she is in tune with Paulo Freire's pedagogy...
but she's never...
put into practice the same way...
she's never followed anyone, not even Paulo Freire.
She was Ied by her intuition all her Iife.
Her Large-Scale Project is doctrinaire.
It is a project of dignity's construction...
of a professional category...
that were the people who held very important functions in the service...
where the base of the technical pyramid of the Health Service...
but who Iacked qualifications, therefore...
had not rights as a worker, as a wage earner...
as a person.
It is the respect to the technical and scientific ability of a worker.
Once, Paranaguá said...
"If I say half of the things you say...
I wouldn't be able to do anything else. And you remain the same.
Those folks argue with you, you with them and all is well at the end."
That's because I fight for my ideas. I don't fight people.
I think lzabel has a virtue...
she is not a person who works alone.
She is a team player, she works in the process.
She shapes her ideas, she forms them...
and develops a project, while working with the team.
In doing that, she transfers that know-how.
Her project has never been in the Health field...
her own personal project. She's always had a collective project.
A project of collective construction...
of a fairer health care system.
That provided access, quality, and that's a Iegacy.
Not everybody can do that.
One of the first things we did in which I really took part...
was establishing a cost of...
after the Large-Scale, which you already mentioned...
after the qualification of the nurses in the Basic Service...
that began in Minas Gerais and Izabel criticized us heavily...
because we were the University then and wrote so Iittle about her.
But it precedes the Organic Law in Health...
and it was a qualification for nurses from the Basic Services...
from Health Basic Units, including the pedagogic qualification...
aiming the expansion...
of establishing nursing schools and expanding the technical training.
I don't know if it tells about the greatness, the dimension of her work...
the challenge...
and the role that Izabel has in this expansion.
And she fought a Iot, so that each state had one...
so each city, capital expand it and have schools Iinked to the services...
while structures of...
structures of...
the state, of the city, structures of State.
I think that was lzabel's struggle...
and she was the voice, with which she conquered a Iot of people...
me, humbly included...
and I believe this is one of my true passions in Iife.
The Large-Scale is...
is a nickname of this big movement.
It's an expression. It wasn't even a project, we had no money!
It was many years, a Iong time.
I needed to build a bridge...
with the hegemony.
Besides, people were really ashamed...
of being teachers of this process.
They thought it was worthy being teacher of the other process.
That's what I think: to be a social inclusion school...
it has to have a purpose...
a political-pedagogical purpose, a purpose. It has to understand...
the faculty, all the people who work with them...
it has to make very clear...
what they think education...
society...
democracy...
and SUS is, and all this stuff, it has to have a benchmark...
and what Iiberation, and what education for Iiberation is.
AII the schools I've established...
first thing I've done was to build this benchmark.
From that benchmark...
so how can I have a Iiberating pedagogical purpose?
I can't.
I can only have a Iiberating pedagogical purpose...
if you have a different concept of man and society.
So we built it, and from that...
benchmark on, you could organize...
the statute of this school, coherent with this benchmark...
and the evaluation could not be employed as punishment...
but to help them overcome...
it should be used to help them overcome and not to punish them.
Because evaluations, in general, are meant to punish.
And in our school, evaluations are meant not to punish but to help them overcome.
So that the person is able to advance.
My family was...
they were from the countryside, I mean...
they had a big heart but didn't value education.
They thought they had not enough money for that...
they did, but thought it wasn't worth it. I don't know. They didn't value it.
When a school was opened here, a secondary school...
an aunt of mine said: "Very intelligent, bring her here to study. "
Then she came. My mother and my father didn't want that.
To be apart from your kids back then was something...
But my aunt insisted so much she ended up coming here.
Now, there was a priest who told me...
"Do you want to study?"
I said: "I want to."
He then said he could pay for my studies if after that I promised...
to work, organize the health care system for the poor.
I agreed and was sent to a Nursing School in Belo Horizonte...
owned by religious people.
We used to Iive in a farm...
we didn't have...
we couldn't come and study here.
And she brought all of us. AII of us. She was the oldest, and had seven more siblings.
I took Nursing...
and when I was almost finishing my degree...
SESP would start working there.
They had nobody, it was very difficult to get a nurse to go there...
and as they knew I was from the place, they interviewed me for the function.
I told them I could not, because of my commitment with the priest.
I had promised him I would take care of the parish.
So they went there to negotiate with this priest. And he said, If she works here...
that is, to organize the hospital for the city...
it's done, agreed. So I started at SESP Foundation.
SESP, Special Services for the Public Health Care...
originated in 1942...
takes part in the implementation in the '60s...
of the Salte Plan, and hires the nurse lzabel dos Santos...
to organize a hospital unit in Pirapora, Minas Gerais.
I've always asked myself a lot of questions.
By the way, I've always asked myself first, What's that?
The environment for me is very stimulating.
Nature, social environment, everything, everything...
poverty, misery, wealth, everything has an impact on me.
I went to school very late in life.
I didn't know how to explain things, why they happened...
that was really important for me, why it rains, why this, why that...
I had no answers, only questions.
I remember I used to look at a fall, there is a fall up there, you know.
And all that water flowing continuously...
it never stops! Where does is it come back to? Where is all that water?
After many years working for SESP in the northern part of Minas Gerais...
Izabel dos Santos is transferred to Mato Grosso State.
I used to work in Várzea Grande...
which is a district of Cuiabá.
But in the afternoon, I went to Cuiabá to study with the folks there.
And there was a car that took me there.
When I got there, I saw...
some Iady sitting comfortably in the front and I, in the back...
behind all the equipment...
and I said, "What? No way!
I am the one who is working, the car is for the service. Out!"
It cost me my job.
I was fired, and sent to Rio de Janeiro as an unbearable person.
Nobody should expect from Izabel...
knack...
and idle talk.
It was really hard.
She was... sometimes we joked about it and said she personified coherence.
Now, she knew how...
to handle people.
I arrived in Rio de Janeiro...
and was called at the office. I said: "Do not Iecture me...
because if you don't want me, then fire me.
I did that, thought it was the right thing to do and would do it again."
Then they said, "Wait a minute. In the name of everything she's done...
then everybody joined the chorus.
And I was sent to Recife, to the Nursing School there.
I was always punished.
AIways punished in the SESP Foundation. The SESP was too...
conservative, authoritarian.
It was a punishment, leaving Mato Grosso for Recife.
A punishment. It was a real punishment.
There I started to innovate, for instance...
this question of the working process...
I started there.
I taught at a graduate course...
each year I taught at a different health unit and Ieft it organized.
The course itself was an organization tool...
and so I proceeded.
I mean, I helped organizing these services through these things.
Everywhere I go, I end up making a mess.
If you're not okay with that, go and fix it.
So, I am really restless about it.
We cannot diminish a very important issue that was the contribution...
that Izabel gave and has been giving...
concerning the Health technical schools establishment.
Undoubtedly these schools...
which are the big centers for the development...
of technical high school professionals...
these schools were propelled... AII of Izabel's work...
aimed at establishing schools...
those schools, which in turn would be responsible...
for providing permanent education for these professionals.
The technical schools...
appeared...
when we started to develop the training process...
to be Iegitimized... that's what I told you...
to be Iegitimized...
and that the Health System had no experience...
and only held occasional training courses.
Although it was a school on the service...
you had all the responsibilities, you had to produce educational material...
textbooks, visual aid...
plenty of space, Iabs...
so you could try first in the Iab before attempting on a patient.
You need to create some space. Then we started.
Then when the Profae was implemented...
in this sustainability process we had a very big component...
in strengthening the technical schools.
Within the context of this movement...
in producing workers for the SUS...
schools are established...
training centers are established...
universities are articulated...
the university is articulated with the creation of GERUS...
with the creation of the CAD'DRU too...
of the human resources management...
providing for political, economic and social viability...
so that this workers' qualification could occur.
Then this movement expands.
Izabel's big fundament...
was the historical dialectic materialism.
That gave her a perspective that when we thought nothing else would happen...
she had the contradiction insight, she had the insight...
of the historical fight, she knew what quantity and quality were...
she knew how to fight, the interpenetration of the opposites...
but she did not turn this into a political proselytism.
This could take place in other spaces...
but with us she made the essence.
She showed through her acts, and through her argumentative ability...
with her feeling...
She could go into any state, each one within its context, my dear.
With parties, governments and managers...
of every kind.
I thought technical schools were a tool...
that managers would have...
in order to implement public policies in the state...
to give these Iay professionals some education.
It must have an organized process.
As the agricultural, the stockbreeding fields have...
the federal technical schools...
we have these schools in the industry and stockbreeding...
and Health did not have a technical school.
And I thought it should have one...
because Health was too important.
Not so much from the economic point of view...
it can also be relevant...
but it has a big division of labor...
with a great number of secondary school professionals in all its fields.
Nutrition, Nursing, Laboratory...
Statistics, Sanitation...
it's a Iot of people, there are many professionals.
And they needed an organized space...
Iegitimized by the educational system...
to carry out public policies of the State and City managers.
Technical schools are...
something I have to tell you.
Our biggest failure was that one. We failed to reach the managers.
The CONAES and the CONASEMS.
We failed.
They still haven't been able to evolve as managers...
and value people's education.
I think we still haven't been able...
to identify, detect and extend...
to the municipalities...
the issue of the political...
responsibility with the principles of Brazil's Unified Health System...
It seems it is still something...
"I can go without, who knows, maybe I can manage?
Maybe I can make a Health System...
by hiring someone that will take a crash course?"
Right? So for a doctor's training...
specially of a doctor's, of university Ievel professionals...
if you say 3 years, that's so Iittle.
Now, when you're talking about a technician's training...
a hundred hours, give or take, something quick.
It's a policy that can only be changed with the cooperation, the sharing...
with the association, the adherence of the managers.
And the challenge was that we had to think.
So she brought us a proposal, a school...
therefore a structure...
didactic material, a pedagogical proposal supported by that...
which she was making, along with curriculum teams...
and the insolence of making a survey of this network and this potential...
and form classes in the service.
A passionate person. She dedicated herself...
and demanded the same dedication...
from others. Right?
I think it's is really moving...
to remember this, because...
because of the impression I got...
from this commitment she perspired.
It was really intense.
I had to train all these people without interrupting their work.
It's Iike fixing a moving train.
I could not have them Ieave their process of work.
Because their Iearning was their production.
We virtually have that in every state.
There are some 30 schools, and with no money...
they were created through a Iot of talking.
Now, they are still far...
from fulfilling their role.
Because of the managers' delay.
My father was a farmer. As a child I saw...
the people from the slaughterhouses came to negotiate with him.
My mother never Ieft the kitchen.
She never Ieft, but she used to tell him...
"The cattle weighs this much, not one cent Iess."
My father never said a word, he was a simpleton.
He went to negotiate.
The guy remained for one week eating, sleeping, and talking...
nothing about what he would do. When he was to travel...
he got up on his horse and...
the deal was closed.
That was impressive, I was fascinated by that.
That "mineiro way" of doing things...
So I became kind of "malandra" too.
A good mineiro does not lasso an ox with a bast fiber...
doesn't make the wind stumble...
doesn't step in the darkness, doesn't walk on wet grounds...
doesn 't talk too long to strangers.
He only believes in the smoke after seeing the fire.
To be a mineiro is to see the sunrise and the moonlight...
It is to listen to the birds singing and the cattle mooing...
It is to feel the time awakening...
and the dawn of life.
My father was a guy that only did good deeds.
And my mother was more pragmatic, very practical...
very hard-working, intelligent.
But my mother was firm, you know?
So, in that sense, she was marveled at them both.
My father, and his generosity...
and my mother, a very practical, firm, strong woman.
Izabel's always been a very good person.
She is so big-hearted, her heart doesn't fit in her chest.
She's always cared about all her family...
and wanted to help everybody out. In fact, she has done exactly that.
Izabel's always been a communist, an intuitive one though.
What she did, it wasn't because it was a party mission...
or because she was told to do that.
She decided it was something important and so she dedicated herself to it.
And that was special. It was remarkable.
She's someone who's always worried about the social exclusion...
worried about people having access to public policies...
social policies, undoubtedly.
That is her commitment, regardless of her political affiliation.
I was a militant.
And there, in Recife, things got really ugly.
They got ugly, especially during the Médici administration.
They were always after me, but never caught me, thank God.
Once I was going to help a teacher that I cared a lot...
he had invited me to take a midwife course for lay professionals...
in the Zona da Mata.
And it was Gregório's territory, whom they wanted to kill.
I saw what they did to him, they treated like an animal.
He was arrested, dragged around the streets of Recife... horrible thing.
Then they invited me to train as a midwife. And I accepted.
But Patricia got sick, and she saved my life for that.
She was very Iittle, got sick. I said I wouldn't go, because she was sick...
and I would join them Iater. And everybody who went there was killed.
I could've died too at that moment. But I escaped.
They did horrible things to Dom Helder.
That was a dark era, it was the "plumber years". Terrible.
I don't Iike to remember those things.
The Large-Scale worked for their workers...
and for their professional qualification to the detriment...
of the existence of the Lei do Exercício, that has never been very democratic.
In the '80's context...
a Iaw was enacted...
that demanded the nursing technicians...
to be completely trained...
and therefore...
they would be subject to a training program.
This Iaw gave ten years...
to all the people who fell under this case...
who were people who had been...
trained...
virtually while at work in their daily functions...
that they should seek Iegal qualification...
a professional qualification for their nursing practice.
But there was indeed a historical fact...
a relevant historical fact that was 1 995.
When I while delivering a speech during the Nursing Conference...
in Porto AIegre that same year, I said: "Facing 1995".
It was about the struggle in which the Large-Scale had been...
against the Iegislation that said that in that year...
the attendant's working rights would cease...
because from that date on...
those who were not qualified would not be registered...
in the Regional Nursing Council, so they'd Iose their right of working Iegally...
they would be alongside the market...
and would Iose their right of being an attendant.
Without any... measures that could take them out of that situation.
When that happens...
all the experience that had been gathered...
of organizing the training, of thinking strategically...
in Iarge scale, of thinking about the in-service training...
everything that was a consolidated experience...
this experience gains political strength...
Then the Regional Nursing Council, COFEN...
through their system, COFEN/CORENs...
was spreading this... truly...
this crime against their workers, the nursing attendants.
They were scared. And the Associação Brasileira de Enfermagem...
that is an association, but it's called scientific-cultural...
because it can't inspect the practice. That's another dimension...
of the Brazilian Nursing organization...
it was responsible for teacher-training, for planning the training...
for supporting the category concerning educational advances...
it went crazy. "Let's go seek it, we have the Large-Scale, alternatives.
We can't simply accept that those people Iose their jobs."
Everyone being arrested, because there wasn't a Lei do Exercício...
and nobody could have them suddenly take a Nursing Attendant course.
Suddenly, they came to me. I went: "Gosh!"
I'm going to go full-power with the Large-Scale.
I'm the one who's always been a fan of that in the Department of Health.
I got up on the 3rd floor and immediately said I would help.
The PROFAE only came to Iife because of the Large-Scale.
It was...
virtually the "coronation" of all this effort.
The PROFAE was put together this way: "A vision looking back...
which was the great number of lay people working...
"and the other was looking forward...
which was to establish the sustainability mechanisms.
Or in a while there would be the same number of Iay professionals in the network.
It took us two years to program the PROFAE.
There was an important contributor...
Izabel, as a mentor of the process...
rather than being a direct participant...
as occurred in the Large-Scale process.
She wasn 't the teacher anymore...
but the one who set the guidelines...
and was present in the decisions...
on the pedagogy, and the PROFAE execution.
AII high school graduate workers of the Brazilian Unified Health System...
who don't have professional qualifications acknowledged...
by the Educational System can apply...
and will be able to take a degree...
in a Iegal, secure way.
Izabel was very committed to that. Her perspective on that matter...
was not only to think about the social inclusion...
of these people, who did not have access, who were excluded...
but also to professionalize them...
and more than that, to make sure the service offered was excellent.
The PROFAE was only made possible...
in five years, with that Ievel of quality it had...
with the scope, the magnitude, a huge goal...
only the teachers with technical training...
from the specialization course emerged 13. 161...
nurses, teachers in technical training...
from Oiapoque to Chuí, it's not just an expression.
We had students from Oiapoque and students from Chuí...
in partnership with the University of Rio Grande do Sul.
We know their names, IDs and social security numbers. So, it's not just an expression.
241 thousand nurse assistants, more than 70 thousand technicians...
To do that in only five years, strengthening the schools...
building projects, physical plans...
all this at the same time, on board of a plane, flying.
The PROFAE goes back to 1 999...
and it's ten years.
It will close in December, 2009.
But thinking about a continuity...
of the PROFAE in 2008...
we have an education policy...
in the technical field that includes...
besides Nursing, other fields.
Oral Health, Radiology...
Cytotechnology...
Hemotherapy...
Equipment Maintenance...
Health Surveillance...
which are fields that make up...
the professional, educational policy...
for the period 2008-201 1.
At this moment we are working with the PROFAPS...
which Nursing is part of, but it expands...
to other technical fields.
You need to keep on articulating people...
making up critical groups...
increasing people's qualifications of discussing the training and the school...
beyond the building.
Beyond the building. I'm not Iowering the school...
but, beyond the building. The school's space...
as an articulation, as an integration...
among the social actors, where their work can be performed.
Because there was money available...
it could be done nationally, with money...
so it was a very beautiful process.
Brazilian society today has been transformed...
because it settled its professional education issue.
Believing in human beings is worth it. Persisting is worth it.
Problem is, each person has its deadlines, right?
You have to be patient to endure, to wait...
each deadline is different from the other.
But I think it's worth it. It's always worth it.
Education is always worth it.
In the PROFAE project...
there is a subproject, I'd call it Iike that...
of components, subcomponents...
that took care, handled, discussed this issue...
of the curriculum organization...
with references to the competences.
This occurred due to a change in the Iegislation...
of the Brazilian Curricular Directives for EIementary Education...
that is called LDB.
This Iaw was issued in 1996...
and it brings a very important change...
because it postulates that from that time on, from 1996 on...
every training...
should be based on competences.
And it affects two aspects: the structural and the conceptual one.
At this point, the discussion about curriculum comes closer and closer...
it almost has as a vital condition...
that articulation between the process of work...
two very complex processes: the working, the Health services rendering...
and the training. So, it's...
the curriculum are no Ionger encyclopedic...
with subjects in blocks...
but have a content of subjects that...
interact, seeking to suit...
a qualified insertion...
of the worker in the scene...
of specific services rendering.
This was a great progress. To think of competences...
from the process of work of the worker.
But this was also part of Izabel's Iegacy...
because she was already preparing us to think somehow...
about the competence profile of our Health professionals.
Within the PROFAE, we started to work following that Iine...
of thinking about the competence...
but we made a series of changes in meaning for the Health field.
MEC was thinking more about the industry worker...
the commerce worker, the high school Ievel worker...
and not specifically about the Health worker.
So we developed...
a proposal of virtual evaluation...
that is a CD, recorded with images of a virtual man...
do you know the virtual man?
Its a software...
developed for us by Faculdade de Medicina da USP...
it's tridimensional, with movements...
and it allows you to see the internal environment...
the internal structure of the human body.
This kind of things are not made accessible to high school graduates.
Except via drawings and photos, more schematic drawings...
very schematic.
These studies do not reach these students...
they don't go into the labs. You don't deal with dissections or something.
I think Francisco Campos did one...
it was through him that we got for the 1 st time...
the Department to take over...
the professional training, he gave the money, and opened the space.
Now, he...
he made his share nationally. If the state managers, the CONAES...
and CONASEMs, with municipal managers...
do not take responsibility...
it is difficult to turn this into a State policy.
I could say that Izabel Santos has for the Human Resources field...
the same meaning Sergio Arouca has for the Brazilian Sanitary field.
Izabel Santos is indeed the forerunner...
and she is the one who inspired us all...
that turned from the practice, the action...
and from all the studies she made...
we started seeing the Human Resources issue...
as the central one in the Health System.
To pay tribute to lzabel is to recognize...
the one who founded...
the notion of Human Resources an advanced one, as we have in Brazil...
and that is today the basis for the progress the whole world can see.
We could not imagine the Sanitary Reform...
without thinking about the Health workers...
and we can 't thing about the Brazilian Health workers today without thinking...
about the great accumulation...
in the Northeast Region of Brazil, in the SESP Foundation...
that Izabel dos Santos did.
"l believe that lzabel has always had incommensurable resources of sweetness...
because there is in her soul a huge sea of fresh water...
a São Francisco...
that got used to running early on to different directions...
in order to bathe the back-country of the bitterness of our Iives."
The 1 st time I stayed at Izabel's was because she rescued me from a hotel...
I used to go to Brasilia to work on the GERUS in 1 993...
and I had always stayed at a hotel, then one night I had a renal colic.
The following day I went to work Iooking so miserable...
that she asked me: "What's going on? " because she is very keen...
"What's going on? What happened?" I told her what had happened.
On the same day, without saying a word, after finishing our work...
she used to own a Fusca, she drove her Fusca, we went to the hotel...
and she told me I should pick my stuff cause I would stay at her house.
I'm gonna take the opportunity to make a reference...
to this initiative of the Health Department to record this fact.
It can encourage those who...
want to remember and enjoy an experience that was...
remarkable in the Brazilian Health field at the end of the past century.
It's a privilege to me to be a friend of Izabel.
I think Izabel is a friend of mine, besides being my guru, my master...
Inside that Fusca we spent many funny moments...
Izabel used to drive all over Brasilia in that tiny car...
until one day her Fusca simply broke down...
it used to be parked outside her house...
besides she wasn't so eager to drive anymore...
and we used to Iook at her Fusca and talk about the good old times...
when we used to be used to go round Brasilia inside that Iittle car.
This picture is an "embroidered painting"...
by some of lzabel's cousins who are embroidery artists...
and make beautiful works. So I got this picture...
that is something very beautiful, both the picture and the poem.
"O Dora, what kind of travel are we talking about?
If everything is travelling after everything...
and nothing. There is still time to sew, to re-embroider the days...
to recreate the weather vane...
to undo the knots...
to pull the threads of our life lines...
to reach ourselves.
At this point in our journey...
under the protection of Our Lord of Bonfim.
St. Barbara, please protect this wanderer's heart...
who has her feet on the ground and her eyes far off...
A kiss, Brasília, April 1 995.
This is my big gift...
and my Iove declaration...
to Izabel.
Izabel made the less politicized ones politically aware...
shaking up our ingenuities.
For that she was really firm.
When we gave her an apology Iike some "naïve awareness"...
Izabel was an expert, as she is still today...
to go straight...
to our naïve interpretation, and to make us a question...
because she was a woman who mastered questioning...
it wasn't a simple question...
up to today I think she is The person who makes it more problematic...
she really makes it problematic, cause not only she makes questions...
but she goes against what you say with other arguments...
and she waits until you reach them. She is that patient.
The situation in Brazil regarding...
its workers' qualifications...
was very similar...
with the one in a Iot of other Latin American countries...
in the 70s.
Today, in Latin America, the situation in Brazil is totally different...
than that of the other countries.
We have today hundreds of thousands of people who were trained...
in an educational project that has a lot to do...
with this movement that lzabel took part of in a very decisive...
in a dedicated, engaged way...
and that as I Iike to say, she was a great Ieader.
She really enjoys typical food from Minas.
We used to go to a restaurant, that offered "country food"...
and "Tropeiro" food.
Country food is generally moist, with broth, like "rabada"...
the ones with broth. The tropeiro is the one that's dryer...
Iike pork, Tropeiro beans...
I Iike to eat, but it's not that much...
but I enjoy good food.
But it's not that much. I also Iike to work, I enjoy...
watching other people succeed... I don't know, I Iike...
I am passionate about a Iot of things. I'd say about almost anything.
I am a passionate woman.
I am not a visionary, I am an optimistic.
I thought that situation had to change.
And as I know people change...
the social process evolves, it's not static...
I used to believe in that. I believe in that.
Even today with all the difficulties I have with my work...
I still believe in the future.
I don't know how it's gonna be, but I know it's gonna change.
I guess my retirement aimed at being at peace with humanity...
to stop and die, right? Why am I gonna fight all my Iife for?
I have to stop a Iittle, don't I?
So, now, I say I've Ieft...
the stage and am sitting in the audience...
clapping hands for the others that are out there.
As something very special from Rio de Janeiro...
I'd Iike to emphasize the Iove that the Nurse Izabel dos Santos School...
SUS from RJ...
in having the RJ Health Department to recognize...
the Izabel dos Santos medal as an official gesture...
We had the pleasure of welcoming...
Teacher Ena Galvão was here with us...
she came and received her medal...
Bel already has a medal, a school, she already has trophies...
she has...
some awards.
Bel is an award. Actually, she is the award!
Bel, I Iove you.
I Iove you. I Iove you. I Iove you. And I have the deepest respect for you.
When I was born, a slender angel...
one of those who play the trumpet, announced...
She will carry a flag...
a very heavy burden for a woman...
this still very embarrassed species...
I accept subtertuges that fit me, with no need to lie...
I start bloodlines...
I settle kingdoms...
pain is not bitterness.
My sadness has no pedigree.
My will of joy though, its root reaches my thousandth grandfather.