I am a country girl.
The first time I was confronted with cultural difference,
do not belong to a culture, suffer from harassment,
was the day I left the farm, to study in the city,
and where I used a very rural expression with a friend.
(Laughter)
That’s being country.
Since then, and even before that – it was just a metaphor –
I study the question of difference.
Since 15 years, I receive foreigners who come to work in Brazil
and I send Brazilians to work abroad.
My job is to help these people adapt to another culture.
The work is not easy.
Look at the numbers: when talking about frames
who already have a job, make a good living,
and have to adapt to another culture, work abroad,
only one in four
gets the results expected by his company.
In general, globalization, the world of the international,
is considered chic, glamorous, like an opportunity.
It’s an opportunity, but also a big challenge.
And not just for executives,
but also for migrants for example.
The training I offer to business executives,
I also offer it to migrants and refugees recently arrived in Brazil.
And I can guarantee it: both suffer from cultural shock.
Parallel to my work, I study International Relations.
I have a master’s degree in this field.
The great question of International Relations has always been:
“Why do men go to war? “
And I had the feeling that this answer
would be in the realm of difference.
I went to study some specialists,
including the renowned Todorov, who explains the following:
“Mariana, the question of difference and identity
has always been present in humans. “
Imagine the Portuguese meeting the native,
and the native meeting the Portuguese.
Looks like at first,
the Portuguese look at the native and say:
“Wow, what a wonder! What a thing so different from me!
I did not even know that existed. “
And conversely when the native looks at the Portuguese,
according to many theories, the native did not even manage
to recognize the Portuguese as a human being,
so much the ships coming from the sea were different.
He had never seen that.
Another comparison?
Think of extraterrestrials landing on Earth,
how would you react?
You would certainly say, “Wow. But, what now?
What am I doing with this extraterrestrial?
He may be mean,
he may want to take my place, want to be stronger than me. “
So, historically, when the human is confronted with the difference,
he begins to marvel, then his identity is questioned.
He feels insecurity, uncertainty.
Then, he feels two impulses:
colonize the other or ignore his existence.
Because, when we are in contact with the unknown,
we want to control this unknown.
I studied this in International Relations,
to understand that this is happening in all couples.
First, we fall in love, we marvel at our differences,
and after about six months,
we try to change the other so that he is like us.
We want to control this part of the other we do not know
and that we will never manage to control.
In fact, I’m here today to tell you
that the relationship between humans, because of their differences,
is historically very difficult.
There is a caricature that helps a lot to think about this.
You see the Occidental?
What does the West think of the Muslim?
“All under cover, except the eyes. What a cruel macho society! “
But what does the Muslim think of the West?
“Nothing covered, except the eyes. What a cruel macho society! “
I propose, here,
to look at what is different in another way.
Because if you look at this caricature,
you will see that human beings spend centuries fighting,
to judge the construction of the difference of others,
while there is something much more intrinsic that unites us,
which is, in the case of caricature, the cruel macho society.
In this respect, interculturalism, which is the area in which I work,
would tell us the following:
if these two women had the opportunity, instead of judging themselves,
to sit down, talk to each other and know each other’s stories,
these women would have had the opportunity
to manage their difference differently.
Because suffering unites us, and we all suffer.
In my field, we say the following sentence:
“An enemy is someone you have not listened to yet. “
Me, Mariana, today,
in front of you all,
I am rustic, interculturalist,
white and homosexual.
I could, according to my theories,
or rather, I should, be dead of fear
to the idea of establishing a relationship with you.
And I’m sure that from your side,
you are also afraid to get in touch with me.
And yet, here I am today.
Listen to my story, I’d like to listen to yours.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
”
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