One has to grow hard but without ever losing tenderness! Perhaps Che’s most famous phrase is what best defines Zanetti’s personality and expresses how he faced life and the struggle! Our friend and Human Rights fighter, our revolutionary colleague, has become ‘enchanted’ and left us behind.
Playful and irreverent, he played his last trick this Ash Wednesday. Like the good partygoer he was, he never missed his beloved “Mudança do Garcia” carnival parade, to do what he did best: Protest. Our dear Zanetti has gone, and carnival is over.
In the corridors of CESE we will hear his huge laugh, his joy in welcoming people, always finding time for some good prose that mixed aspects of daily life with an analysis of the political situation. He fought passionately for the defence of human rights and of nature with infectious joy.
CESE, with so many others in the country who learnt to respect, admire and love him, is profoundly shocked by the departure of one of its longest-serving colleagues. Although he claimed to be agnostic, he would turn to the bible prophets to express his indignation: “Woe to those who make unjust laws, who write oppressive decrees to deprive the poor of their rights and the justice demanded by my oppressed people.”
His impassioned, and at the same time affectionate, activism in defence of Human Rights inspired us. We will learn from his keen and refined sensitivity to look at history in the hope of better days, we will be faithful to his joy and we will be eternal students of the way he resolved the most difficult issues with lightness and good humour, but with the firmness to defend what he thought was fair.
In this particularly difficult moment for Brazil, with the increasing fragmentation of all rights, with permanent threats to social movements and to democracy itself, we hope his example will continue to inspire generations, that his trajectory will encourage us to continue to believe that the fight is worth fighting, because tomorrow is another day!
The CESE Team