Latest news with #Afro-Brazilians
Scoop
3 days ago
- Politics
- Scoop
UN Child Rights Committee Publishes Findings On Brazil, Indonesia, Iraq, Norway, Qatar And Romania
GENEVA (5 June 2025) - The UN Child Rights Committee (CRC) today issued its findings on Brazil, Indonesia, Iraq, Norway, Qatar and Romania, after reviewing the six States parties during its latest session. The findings contain the Committee's main concerns and recommendations on implementing the Child Rights Convention, as well as positive aspects. Key highlights include: Brazil The Committee was deeply concerned about the systematic violence against children driven by structural racial discrimination and resulting in extremely high child mortality. It highlighted the widespread violence against Afro-Brazilians, especially the high homicide rate among Afro-Brazilian boys; the frequent killings and disappearances of children during military and police operations in favelas and poor urban areas; and the large number of child deaths caused by police violence amid criminalization, excessive force, and impunity. The Committee urged Brazil to take urgent and large-scale action to prevent such deaths and disappearances, particularly among Afro-Brazilian children, and to ensure independent investigations and prosecutions, with public disclosure of outcomes and accountability for those responsible. The Committee highlighted issues related to children's right to privacy in the digital environment, particularly the use of their personal data by private companies in developing artificial intelligence systems. While welcoming the preliminary ban on such practices, the Committee noted the need for stronger protections. It recommended that Brazil strengthen its legal framework to safeguard children's personal data, as well as effectively implement the existing Resolution on children's rights and the digital environment. It also urged a clear prohibition on using children's data in AI systems, the establishment of accountability and remedy mechanisms, and the swift adoption of the draft Law addressing AI-generated pornographic content. The Committee also reviewed Brazil's obligations under the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography and expressed its concern over reports of a rise in child trafficking for illegal adoption and the exploitation of vulnerable groups, especially mothers living in poverty, by trafficking networks. It requested that the State party establish strict adoption criteria, require all efforts to prevent family separation to be exhausted before the adoption is considered, and ensure that there is no renumeration involved in the adoption process. Indonesia The Committee remained seriously concerned that, despite a national decline in child marriage, provinces such as West Nusa Tenggara, South Sumatera, West Kalimantan and West Sulawesi, continued to report rates above the national average. It also noted the rise in marriage dispensation requests, unregistered marriages, and permissive cultural norms that hinder efforts to end child marriage. In addition, it was alarmed by the fact that female genital mutilation (FGM) remained widespread, often performed on newborn girls by midwives or traditional birth attendants. The Committee recommended urgent, coordinated action to adopt the National Strategy for Preventing Child Marriage as a binding policy, ensure its implementation nationwide, and address harmful norms through education, awareness-raising, and community engagement. It also urged the adoption of the draft Multisectoral Roadmap on FGM as a Presidential Regulation, with clear penalties, enforcement, and community-based interventions involving religious leaders, families, and healthcare providers. The Committee stated its grave concern over Indonesia's high rate of early pregnancy, one of the highest in Southeast Asia, the criminalisation of abortion in most cases, limited access to contraception for unmarried adolescents, and cultural norms that stigmatised discussions on sexuality. These factors severely restricted adolescents' access to vital sexual and reproductive health services. The Committee urged the State party to expand access to free, age-appropriate reproductive health services for all adolescents, including those out of school and in rural areas; to decriminalise abortion and to ensure safe abortion and post-abortion care; as well as to adopt a national policy on adolescent reproductive health. Iraq The Committee remained seriously concerned that the minimum age of marriage for girls was set at 15 nationally and 16 in the Kurdistan Region, and that unregistered marriages officiated by religious leaders were used to bypass legal restrictions on child and forced marriage under the Personal Status Law. It urged the State party to enforce a uniform minimum marriage age of 18 for both girls and boys without exception, including in the Kurdistan Region, to prohibit temporary and forced marriages, and to establish protection mechanisms for victims of these harmful practices. Regarding the administration of child justice, the Committee expressed concern over the low minimum age of criminal responsibility, which is set at 9 years of age nationally and 11 in the Kurdistan Region, along with the absence of a framework for diversion and the lack of specialised services and alternative measures for children. It urged Iraq to raise the minimum age to at least 14, expand early intervention and child welfare services, and pilot law reforms on diversion and restorative justice. The Committee also recommended legislative and procedural changes to prioritise non-judicial measures, such as mediation and diversion, promote alternatives to detention like probation and community service, and ensure access to health and psycho-social support for children in conflict with the law. Norway Regarding asylum-seeking, refugee, and migrant children, the Committee acknowledged recent efforts to improve conditions in asylum centres and health services. However, it remained concerned about unequal care for unaccompanied children aged 15 to 18, the detention of children in immigration cases, and the large number of unaccompanied children who disappeared from reception centres. The Committee recommended that Norway adopt legislation ensuring adequate care for all children seeking protection, allocate more resources to reception centres, and transfer responsibility for unaccompanied children to child welfare services. It also called for a prohibition on child detention in immigration contexts and immediate measures to prevent and investigate the disappearance of unaccompanied children. While noting the 2023 reforms aimed to reduce punitive sanctions for juveniles, the Committee remained concerned that children aged 15 to 18 were still treated as adults in some cases, with limited alternatives to detention. It also raised concerns about the growing use of police custody, solitary confinement, and excessive use of force, along with the lack of child-specific expertise among forensic experts. The Committee urged the State party to continue to align the child justice system with international standards by ensuring specialised proceedings, strengthening diversion and prevention measures, and separating children from adults in detention. It also called for strict limits on isolation and coercive practices, and for forensic assessments to be carried out by child rights professionals. Qatar The Committee was concerned that the Nationality Act does not allow children to acquire nationality through both maternal and paternal lines. It also noted that children born to unmarried parents often could not obtain birth certificates due to the requirement of a marriage certificate, and that those born to non-Qatari mothers risked deportation or separation from their mothers. The Committee urged Qatar to amend the Nationality Act and the Law on Permanent Residency to allow Qatari women to confer nationality to their children without discrimination, ensure universal birth registration regardless of parents' marital status, and prevent the separation or deportation of children born to non-Qatari mothers. The Committee was alarmed that the age of criminal responsibility was set at just 7 years and that children over 16 could be sentenced to life imprisonment, hard labour, or flogging for certain offences. It urged the State party to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility to at least 14, ensure that no child under 18 is prosecuted as an adult in the justice system, and repeal Penal Code provisions allowing the death penalty, life imprisonment, hard labour, or flogging for offences committed by children. Romania The Committee was concerned about the reportedly high incidence of violence against children, particularly sexual abuse of girls in rural areas, schools, in the judicial system, and online, exacerbated by the absence of a dedicated policy and limited professional capacity to respond effectively. It also raised concern about the recent introduction of the concept of 'parental alienation' in legislation, which lacks a clear definition and may, therefore, be misused in custody disputes, potentially harming children's well-being. The Committee recommended that the State party adopt a comprehensive strategy to prevent and address violence against children, strengthen professional capacity for early identification and response to child abuse and violence cases, and repeal the provisions related to 'parental alienation' to ensure custody decisions prioritise the best interests of the child. The Committee stated its concern over the number of adolescent mothers, which is highest in the European Union, alongside significant barriers to accessing contraception, abortion services, and reproductive health education. It called upon Romania to adopt a comprehensive sexual and reproductive health strategy for adolescents; to ensure that education and services are age-appropriate, mandatory, and accessible without parental consent, including for those left behind by parents working abroad; and to guarantee confidential access to contraception and counselling for all adolescents, including those who are out of school and living in rural areas. The above findings, officially named Concluding Observations, are now available on the session page.
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Yahoo
‘Morally repugnant': Brazilian workers sue coffee supplier to Starbucks over ‘slavery-like conditions'
'John' was just days from turning 16 when he was allegedly recruited to work on a Brazilian coffee farm that supplies the global coffeehouse chain Starbucks. Soon after his birthday, he embarked on a 16-hour bus journey to the farm in the state of Minas Gerais – only to discover that none of what he had been promised would be fulfilled. Unpaid and without protective equipment such as boots and gloves, he worked under a scorching sun from 5.30am to 6pm with only a 20-minute lunch break, until he was rescued in a raid by Brazilian authorities in June 2024. The official report from that operation concluded that John had been subjected to 'child labour in hazardous conditions', and that he and other workers had been 'trafficked and subjected to slavery-like conditions'. This week, John and seven other Brazilian workers – all identified simply as John Doe 1-8 for fear of retaliation – filed a civil lawsuit in the US against Starbucks, with the support of International Rights Advocates (IRA), seeking financial compensation for the harm they allege to have suffered. On Thursday, IRA and the NGO Coffee Watch also filed a complaint with US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seeking to 'exclude coffee and coffee products produced 'wholly or in part' with forced labour in Brazil' from being imported by Starbucks and other major companies such as Nestlé, Jacobs Douwe Egberts, Dunkin', Illy and McDonald's. The complaint cites examples of various operations by Brazilian authorities that rescued workers in recent years and states that the cases 'are only the tip of the iceberg – examples of widespread exploitative working conditions on coffee plantations in Brazil that are far too common'. 'If we're able to convince CBP that our case is watertight … that would be a gamechanger because thousands of people have been found in those conditions by Brazilian authorities, and clearly what has been done till now is not solving the problem,' said Etelle Higonnet, founder and director of Coffee Watch. In Brazil, coffee farming is the economic sector with the highest number of workers rescued from conditions analogous to slavery – a legal category that includes a combination of factors such as debt bondage, excessively long working hours, degrading accommodation and food, and lack of payment. The country has been the world's leading coffee producer since the 19th century, when production surged due to the forced labour of hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans and Afro-Brazilians. Today, Afro-Brazilians make up the majority (66%) of workers rescued from slave-like conditions. 'The logic behind coffee production here is one of precarious labour that has always been imposed on Black people throughout our history,' said Jorge Ferreira dos Santos Filho, coordinator of Adere, a workers' organisation that assists authorities in identifying victims in such conditions. 'In rural areas especially, we as Black people end up falling into these situations because we have no other choice and need to put food on the table,' said Santos Filho, who is Black and says he was subjected to forced labour on at least four occasions. All eight workers who filed the lawsuit against Starbucks live in quilombos — a Bantu-origin word that referred to settlements founded by escaped enslaved people and is now also used for Black communities in both rural and urban Brazil. Approximately 1.3 million people live in 8,400 quilombos across Brazil, in conditions worse than the national average in key areas such as sanitation and illiteracy. 'The fact that Starbucks charges like $6 for a cup of coffee, where most of that has been harvested by forced labourers and child labourers, is really beyond a criminal act. It's morally repugnant,' said IRA's executive director, Terrence Collingsworth. Related: 'He'd only calm down if he killed one of us': victims of slavery on farms in Brazil Both the lawsuit and the complaint allege that, despite rescue operations, after which farm owners are fined and may be added to a government-maintained 'dirty list' of employers linked to forced labour, Starbucks and other companies continue to import coffee from these farms. A Starbucks spokesperson said: 'The cornerstone of our approach to buying coffee is Coffee and Farmer Equity (Cafe) Practices, one of the coffee industry's first set of ethical sourcing standards when it launched in 2004 and is continuously improved. 'Developed in collaboration with Conservation International, Cafe Practices is a verification program that measures farms against economic, social, and environmental criteria, all designed to promote transparent, profitable, and sustainable coffee growing practices while also protecting the well-being of coffee farmers and workers, their families, and their communities.' In Brazil, subjecting workers to forced labour is a crime punishable by up to eight years in prison, but farm owners are rarely jailed. 'To put an end to this, we need consumers to be aware that every cup of coffee they drink, without questioning its true origin, is financing slave labour in coffee production,' said Santos Filho. 'It's no use feeling sympathy for the workers or claiming zero tolerance for such practices if you continue drinking coffee without questioning its source.'
The Guardian
24-04-2025
- The Guardian
‘Morally repugnant': Brazilian workers sue coffee supplier to Starbucks over ‘slavery-like conditions'
'John' was just days from turning 16 when he was allegedly recruited to work on a Brazilian coffee farm that supplies the global coffeehouse chain Starbucks. Soon after his birthday, he embarked on a 16-hour bus journey to the farm in the state of Minas Gerais – only to discover that none of what he had been promised would be fulfilled. Unpaid and without protective equipment such as boots and gloves, he worked under a scorching sun from 5.30am to 6pm with only a 20-minute lunch break, until he was rescued in a raid by Brazilian authorities in June 2024. The official report from that operation concluded that John had been subjected to 'child labour in hazardous conditions', and that he and other workers had been 'trafficked and subjected to slavery-like conditions'. This week, John and seven other Brazilian workers – all identified simply as John Doe 1-8 for fear of retaliation – filed a civil lawsuit in the US against Starbucks, with the support of International Rights Advocates (IRA), seeking financial compensation for the harm they allege to have suffered. On Thursday, IRA and the NGO Coffee Watch also filed a complaint with US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seeking to 'exclude coffee and coffee products produced 'wholly or in part' with forced labour in Brazil' from being imported by Starbucks and other major companies such as Nestlé, Jacobs Douwe Egberts, Dunkin', Illy and McDonald's. The complaint cites examples of various operations by Brazilian authorities that rescued workers in recent years and states that the cases 'are only the tip of the iceberg – examples of widespread exploitative working conditions on coffee plantations in Brazil that are far too common'. 'If we're able to convince CBP that our case is watertight … that would be a gamechanger because thousands of people have been found in those conditions by Brazilian authorities, and clearly what has been done till now is not solving the problem,' said Etelle Higonnet, founder and director of Coffee Watch. In Brazil, coffee farming is the economic sector with the highest number of workers rescued from conditions analogous to slavery – a legal category that includes a combination of factors such as debt bondage, excessively long working hours, degrading accommodation and food, and lack of payment. The country has been the world's leading coffee producer since the 19th century, when production surged due to the forced labour of hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans and Afro-Brazilians. Today, Afro-Brazilians make up the majority (66%) of workers rescued from slave-like conditions. 'The logic behind coffee production here is one of precarious labour that has always been imposed on Black people throughout our history,' said Jorge Ferreira dos Santos Filho, coordinator of Adere, a workers' organisation that assists authorities in identifying victims in such conditions. 'In rural areas especially, we as Black people end up falling into these situations because we have no other choice and need to put food on the table,' said Santos Filho, who is Black and says he was subjected to forced labour on at least four occasions. All eight workers who filed the lawsuit against Starbucks live in quilombos — a Bantu-origin word that referred to settlements founded by escaped enslaved people and is now also used for Black communities in both rural and urban Brazil. Approximately 1.3 million people live in 8,400 quilombos across Brazil, in conditions worse than the national average in key areas such as sanitation and illiteracy. 'The fact that Starbucks charges like $6 for a cup of coffee, where most of that has been harvested by forced labourers and child labourers, is really beyond a criminal act. It's morally repugnant,' said IRA's executive director, Terrence Collingsworth. Both the lawsuit and the complaint allege that, despite rescue operations, after which farm owners are fined and may be added to a government-maintained 'dirty list' of employers linked to forced labour, Starbucks and other companies continue to import coffee from these farms. A Starbucks spokesperson said: 'The cornerstone of our approach to buying coffee is Coffee and Farmer Equity (Cafe) Practices, one of the coffee industry's first set of ethical sourcing standards when it launched in 2004 and is continuously improved. 'Developed in collaboration with Conservation International, Cafe Practices is a verification program that measures farms against economic, social, and environmental criteria, all designed to promote transparent, profitable, and sustainable coffee growing practices while also protecting the well-being of coffee farmers and workers, their families, and their communities.' In Brazil, subjecting workers to forced labour is a crime punishable by up to eight years in prison, but farm owners are rarely jailed. 'To put an end to this, we need consumers to be aware that every cup of coffee they drink, without questioning its true origin, is financing slave labour in coffee production,' said Santos Filho. 'It's no use feeling sympathy for the workers or claiming zero tolerance for such practices if you continue drinking coffee without questioning its source.'
The Guardian
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
A Brazilian samba star says goodbye: ‘I've fought a lot, but I also think we need to live'
On Monday night, as 100,000 people gather in the stands and VIP boxes of the Marquês de Sapucaí Sambadrome to watch the second night of parades at Rio de Janeiro's world-famous carnival, a voice that has resonated for half a century will be heard there for the last time. It will be the final performance by Neguinho da Beija-Flor, 75, one of the country's most famous samba singers, who is retiring after leading 50 consecutive parades for the Beija-Flor – or Hummingbird – school. At an event that brings together thousands of members from 12 samba schools, he is the most recognisable voice in Rio's elite carnival league, which operates like a championship, with a winner crowned each year. 'I can't wait to retire. After this Monday's parade, c'est fini,' said Neguinho, with his constant smile and impeccably groomed afro – not a single grey strand in sight – just before heading into the studio for his final rehearsal. He announced his retirement in November, a decision that surprised Rio's samba world, which follows the carnival parade with the same passion that other Brazilians have for football. The reason for his retirement? Exhaustion. 'Being a samba-school singer requires the stamina of a marathon runner,' he said. During the 70–80 minutes of a school's parade, it is the singer's job to maintain the energy of the massive audience – which can be almost twice the size of the crowd at Maracanã soccer stadium – repeatedly chanting the year's samba-enredo theme song in an endless loop. 'It's a massive effort that has only become harder with age,' Neguinho said. Born Luiz Antônio Feliciano in Nova Iguaçu, a poverty-stricken city in the greater Rio area, he started singing for a local samba bloco at age 22 when he was a member of the air force. As a diminutive of negro (black), 'Neguinho' is often used in Brazil in a derogatory manner to refer to a Black boy or man generically. But among Afro-Brazilians, it can also carry an affectionate meaning, which is what he had in mind when he adopted the nickname. 'I've suffered a lot of racism in my life and career, and I've fought a lot, but I also think we need to live. If I had spent my entire life fighting, I wouldn't have had time to dedicate myself to my music and family,' said Neguinho. His big break came in 1976 when he had to step in to replace a lead singer who died suddenly before carnival. The school won the championship – its first – and he became Neguinho from Beija-Flor. Since then, the school has won 14 titles, all under Neguinho's raspy voice and his trademark battle cry: 'Olha a Beija-Flor aí, gente!' ('Here comes Beija-Flor, folks!') Along with the artistry of the singers, musicians, dancers and designers, a key factor in the school's success was the financial support of a local gambling boss. Jogo do bicho – or animal lottery – is an illegal gambling game ubiquitous across Brazil, and long been tied to various criminal activities, including police corruption and murders. In the 1970s, gambling bosses saw samba schools as a means to clean their images and increase control over territories. At least half of the elite samba schools are still linked to bicheiros, as the bosses are known, but Neguinho does not see this as a problem: 'If it weren't for the jogo do bicho, maybe today Rio's carnival wouldn't be the spectacle it is.' Throughout his half-century career, Neguinho has only ever sung for one school, a consistency nearly unthinkable in today's increasingly professionalised carnival, where artists switch groups as quickly as football players change clubs. 'Neguinho is the biggest star of Rio's carnival today, and his farewell marks the end of a romantic era,' said Leonardo Bruno, the author of several books on samba and carnival. 'Beija-Flor has had the face and, more importantly, the voice of Neguinho for the last 50 years, and that's why there was such an outpouring of emotion when he announced his retirement.' Neguinho says that he has never received a salary from the school, explaining that his livelihood comes from his work as a 'mid-year' sambista, as artists with work outside carnival are called. He has also written a string of non-carnival hit sambas and plans to continue his career through a new album and upcoming shows. Despite his calm attitude toward his retirement decision, the singer choked up with tears as he spoke about it three weeks ago during the final rehearsal at Sapucaí. For this Monday, however, he has a plan. 'I've been talking to my therapist, and she suggested that I bring a banner that says: 'Thank you very much.' She told me to just open the banner and say nothing. Otherwise, I won't be able to sing,' he said. 'So that's what I'll do. I'll show the banner and sing. After the parade, a car will be waiting for me – and I'll leave.'
New York Times
22-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Carlos Diegues, Filmmaker Who Celebrated Brazil's Diversity, Dies at 84
Carlos Diegues, a film director who celebrated Brazil's ethnic richness and its social turbulence, helping to forge a new path for cinema in his country, died on Feb. 14 in Rio de Janeiro. He was 84. His death, in a hospital, was announced by the Brazilian Academy of Letters, of which he was a member. The academy said the cause was complications of surgery. The Rio newspaper O Globo, for which Mr. Diegues wrote a column, reported that he had suffered 'cardiocirculatory complications' before the surgery. Mr. Diegues, who was known as Cacá, was a founder of Cinema Novo, the modern school of Brazilian cinema that combined Italian Neo-Realism, documentary style and uniquely Latin American fantasy. He focused on hitherto marginal groups — Afro-Brazilians, the poor, disoriented provincials in an urbanizing Brazil — and was the first Brazilian director to employ Black actors as protagonists, in 'Ganga Zumba,' (1963), a narrative of enslavement and revolt that was an early cinematic foray into Brazil's history of racial violence. The often lyrical results, expressed over the course of 60 years in dozens of features and documentaries, charmed audiences in his own country and abroad, though critics sometimes reproached him for loose screenplays and rough-edged camera work. Mr. Diegues's international breakthrough film, 'Bye Bye Brazil' (1979), nominated for a Palme d'Or at Cannes, is considered the apotheosis of his dramatic visual style and of his preoccupation with those on the margins of Brazilian society. It follows a feckless group of rascally street performers through the outback, documenting a vanishing Brazil where citizens in remote towns are beguiled by fake falling snowflakes — actually shredded coconut — and hypnotized, literally, by a rare communal television set. The performers, frustrated that the people are entranced by the TV set and ignoring them, blow it up in one of the film's many nonchalant gags. They go on to blithely couple and uncouple as the film progresses. Vincent Canby, writing in The New York Times, called 'Bye Bye Brazil' a 'curious, quiet, introspective sort of film, which pays attention to the changing nature of a Brazil that is paying increasingly less attention to these nearly extinct players.' The film's characteristic mix — the camera documents the landscape's spareness while spinning a distinctive magic realist web around it, and the performers themselves are fantastical, extravagant and grittily impoverished — was intrinsic to Cinema Novo, and to Mr. Diegues's style. 'The film bids farewell to what it sees as outmoded visions of Brazil,' Randal Johnson and Robert Stam wrote in their book 'Brazilian Cinema' (1995), 'not only to rightist dreams of capitalist development but also to leftist dreams of popular resistance.' 'It is hard to imagine Brazilian cinema without him,' the Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz wrote in an email. Mr. Diegues's work, he said, was 'infused with immense joy.' The Brazilian director Walter Salles wrote, also in an email, that 'Diegues inspired, influenced and mentored several generations of filmmakers with extraordinary films.' In a tribute after his death, Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said that Mr. Diegues brought 'Brazil and Brazilian culture to the cinema screens, and captured the attention of the entire world.' Mr. Diegues reached into Brazil's racial and social conflicts through history and sociology, in films including 'Quilombo' (1984), about people who escaped slavery in the 17th century; 'Xica da Silva' (1976), about an enslaved 18th-century enchantress; and his 'Orpheus' ('Orfeu') a 1999 retelling of the Orpheus and Euridice myth set in the modern-day favelas, or slums, of Rio. (Marcel Camus had told the same story in the same way in his acclaimed 1959 film, 'Black Orpheus.') While the film won the Cinema Brazil Grand Prize as best picture, the reviews were mixed. ''Orfeu' tries to do too much at once: to be both mythic and realistic, to celebrate Rio's rich culture while exposing the brutality and cynicism that dominate daily life in its slums,' A.O. Scott of The New York Times wrote in 2000. The extravagance of Mr. Diegues's décor and characters sometimes left critics outside Brazil unmoved. But movies like 'Quilombo,' released the year Brazil's 20-year military dictatorship came to an end, marked the transition with the celebration of a multiracial country. 'It's neither a masterpiece nor an accomplishment of supreme beauty,' the critic Louis Marcorelles wrote of 'Quilombo' in Le Monde. 'Vulgar, crude, generous, it's above all an act of faith in the future of a Brazil that has returned to democracy.' In 'Quilombo,' Mr. Johnson and Mr. Stam wrote, Mr. Diegues 'aims at poetic synthesis rather than naturalistic reproduction.' It was several years before the dictatorship's onset in 1964 that Cinema Novo, the movement with which Mr. Diegues is most closely associated, came into being. In a kind of manifesto published in the journal of Brazil's National Students Union in 1962, a young Mr. Diegues wrote that the new movement sought to shed the influence of Hollywood sentimentality in favor of an authentic national focus. 'Brazil and its people became the central preoccupation of the new group of Brazilian filmmakers,' he wrote. 'Their goal was to study in depth the social relations of each city and region as a way of critically exposing, as if in miniature, the sociocultural structure of the country as a whole.' An early hit, 'The Big City' ('A Grande Cidade,' 1966), about the travails of a young provincial migrant in Rio, exemplifies these preoccupations. Its hard black-and-white documentary style is infused with lyrical fantasy: The actor Antônio Pitanga, playing a street person, cavorts through indifferent city streets like a character from a fairy tale. By the mid-1970s, Cinema Novo was over, although Mr. Diegues continued to employ the style in later films. Filmmaking under the dictatorship demanded a softening of the edges and a more allegorical style. 'Summer of Showers' ('Chuvas de Verão,' 1978) was described by the New York Times critic Janet Maslin as a 'gentle Brazilian film with a knowing air and not so very much to reveal.' After the success of 'Bye Bye Brazil,' Mr. Diegues would go on to make nearly a dozen films, including the 2003 hit 'God Is Brazilian,' which drew 1.6 million people to the box office, his second-biggest success after 'Xica da Silva.' Carlos José Fontes Diegues was born on May 19, 1940, in Maceió, in the state of Alagoas in northeast Brazil. He was the son of Manuel Diegues Jr. and Zaira Fontes Diegues. His father, a sociologist and folklorist, was working for the National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage at the time and was later a professor at Pontifical Catholic University in Rio. The family moved to Rio de Janeiro when Carlos was 6, and he attended St. Ignatius School, a Jesuit institution, before studying law at the Pontifical Catholic University. At the university, he joined student groups that were to play a founding role in the birth of Cinema Novo, including the Centro Popular de Cultura. He began his career as a feature-film director in 1962, while still a student, with one of five segments in 'Cinco Vezes Favela,' set in the slums of Rio. Mr. Diegues left Brazil briefly during the dictatorship, in 1969, to live in France and Italy with his first wife, the singer Nara Leão. But he soon returned to Brazil, the wellspring of his imagination. He is survived by two children, Isabel and Francisco Diegues, from his marriage with Ms. Leão, from whom he was separated in 1977; and by his second wife, Renata Almeida Magalhães, a producer. His daughter with Ms. Magalhães, Flora, died of cancer in 2019. Ms. Leão died in 1989. In his last column for the newspaper O Globo, a tribute to Mr. Salles's current hit film 'I'm Still Here,' published on Jan. 21, Mr. Diegues wrote: 'Making life worthwhile does not mean accumulating wealth or status, but rather living with purpose, in balance. The message is that life should be a stage for personal expression. May each of us find our own way to make life an honor.'
