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“Perhaps this is the greatest and most profound testimony about my life at Moinho Cultural (Cultural Mill), as well as the exposure of my most intimate connection with the institution. A journey through the innermost depths of the project and of my upbringing.”

Perhaps there was a lack of future for those born on the margins of society, perhaps there was a lack of hope for those who grow up on the margins of misery, perhaps there was a lack of dreams for those who grow up on the banks of a river.

I could not lack inspiration, nor the authority to speak about Moinho Cultural. There were ten years within the Institute, from its birth, or my growth. In a family relationship, or what we might classify as family.

When, quite early, at ten years of age, I entered the Projeto Moinho Cultural, which would later be consolidated as Instituto Moinho Cultural, I was not very certain about what was to come; in fact, the only certainty I had was of who I was and where I came from.

Son of a fisherman and a nursing technician, I lived in an outlying area of the city of Corumbá, on the banks of the Paraguay River, once one of the most violent neighborhoods in the city.

In the first days of class, everything at first seemed strange, because it was. The contact of a child from the outskirts with classical instruments, as well as dance and classical ballet, was unusual — not only for me, but for my parents, my family, my community. As was having access to language classes: English, Spanish, and even more so French. Everything felt like the lower class’s dream of aspiring to everything that was desired in being upper class — putting your children in ballet class, learning other languages, playing an instrument. My mother, like the other mothers, spoke with pride of the classes their children took, and that, of course, motivated me even more. The opportunity, which of course could never have been imagined, was like something almost “miraculous,” if only because it is not every day, nor in every place, that one finds an institution willing to give language, music, and dance classes to those who cannot afford to pay. For the first time, the Instituto Moinho Cultural broke the economic and social paradigms of a community, directly and indirectly affecting hundreds if not thousands of people. Making more than possible the dreams that had historically been the privilege of a certain social class and that were now accessible to everyone.

But what did this really change in my conceptions? The existence of the possibility of a better future created a driving force that, by itself, made me imagine the possibility of a better future beyond what I had, up to that point, learned to be a better future. I will explain it better as follows. As a young child, before Moinho, the conception of “better” and “future” was tied to the basic needs of every human being. To grow up, to have a job so that you don’t lack food, to have a car that works so you can get around more and not be punished by the hot sun, so you have the bare minimum to live on; as for furniture, we’re talking about a small stove, so you have somewhere to cook; as for property, having a small house with the bare minimum of comfort, which amounts to having water, electricity, and no leaks when it rains. The best was intimately tied to the least.

Dancing ballet, for the first time, exposed me to social and sexual prejudice. Prejudice in itself is uncomfortable, and it was no different for me. What was in question was not just whether dancing ballet would make you homosexual or not, but rather the prejudice about gender and sexual orientation that was blatant in society. At that time, I preferred to try to hide that discipline from my curriculum, to try to avoid the social mockery of being called homosexual or any other sexual orientation that diverged from heterosexuality.

In turn, ballet itself, deep down, also ran into the problem of sexual-orientation prejudice, when many times I heard, as a counter-argument, that ballet was a “men’s” activity, since in many dances the male partner danced with the female partner, unlike wrestling, where “men grabbed each other.” That argument ended up being used as a form of escapism for many students, which at first gave them ammunition against the mockery, but which soon after put everyone in the same boat. What I mean is that prejudice is not fought with more prejudice, but I also learned that at Moinho.

Regarding languages, I believe we should first establish that, informally, the language of Moinho was Portunhol (a Portuguese-Spanish blend). Our almost daily coexistence was established, first and foremost, through verbal communication, where on one side the Brazilians spoke Portuguese, venturing to say some words in Spanish, and on the other the Bolivians spoke Spanish, venturing to say some words in Portuguese; this union of two languages materialized into a third, which would be Portunhol. On a second level, communication took place through art, music, and dance, but we will see that further ahead.

Moinho served for all of this that I described above, in the formation of my intellect, of my psychosocial construction, of my critical formation. Moinho took me out of Plato’s Cave, allowing me to see society with a broader, more cosmopolitan vision.

The social impacts, which in turn were made upon families, promoted the socioeconomic transformation of these family units. Being or not being part of what we call family is not a matter of blood constitution, but rather a mutual affinity of growth and development. The question, What would your life be like without Moinho? is simply impossible to answer once a certain degree of institution-individual relationship is reached, since life’s transformation reaches a stage where a second possibility ceases to be considered. That being so, I could only compare my life before joining Moinho. Starting from a general assessment of all those who were born and raised in my community, who shared time and space with me. Let me draw from a few examples: some, quite early on, fell into marginality; others disappeared; others, in turn, gave up dreaming and settled for whatever work the almighty market had to offer; others, by an even unhappier path, already find themselves in the afterlife. I deduce that the aforementioned options could have been among my possibilities in life, or not! I prefer to believe that Moinho was a chance occurrence, luck, fate, something irrational. I do not like to think it was something higher; it would be cruel to imagine that I was chosen to have a different future from my peers, many of whom fell into the sufferings of social marginalization.

Moinho functions as a catalyzing instrument of dreams, a symbolic windmill, where dreams, in turn, are like strong winds that run at a gallop along the paths of uncertainty, and so they live until they meet a barrier, and that barrier is Moinho. Which uses its strength to move the utopian machine that turns dreams into reality, that metaphorical wind force which, in a messianic wait, believes in children for a better future. It sends forth its strength to wherever hospitality is reciprocal, beyond the borders where the language changes, past the bends of the river where the water is murky, in the slums where violence is mute, in the offices where politics feigns deafness, on the hills where shacks lean, on the restless feet where the ballet slipper is a frame, in the hungry mouths where song is sustenance, on the fingers calloused from work, where the balm is a musical score.