A day with...
MARCOS and CLEUZA

Surrendered to a
Friendship
You’ve listened to their story, and met them at the Rimini Meeting, and think you know them. But when you go to see how they live, you believe again, and not (just) because of the impressiveness of their work.
Here’s the story of 24 hours with the ZERBINIS, the Brazilian couple who lead the Sem Terra and Sem Faculdade movements of São Paulo, where a friendship has transformed their sadness, and their lives.

by Alessandra Stoppa

You expect a leader and you find him squatting in a damp courtyard, fully concentrated on a silent duel with a camp stove, which is so rusty that it would daunt anybody who tried to fix it. He studies it. He tries one tube, then another, tightens the nuts, inverts the plates. No good. Then he does it all over again, several times. Finally, he puts a match to the burner, and it works! He smiles and does not move his gaze: “One can do better.” But it seems like the best to you, not so much because of the flame coming from that old iron stove, but because of the fact that Marcos is working on it, with everything else that could be worrying him, in this former-evangelical church in the Lapa de Baixo neighborhood of São Paulo, the headquarters of the Association of Trabalhadores Sem Terra (the Landless Workers’ Movement).
Small and bare, it is the focal point for the life of 18,000 families and 70,000 university students. “It’s three times as big as before, but it’s much lighter,” he says, speaking of the Association. It is an immense people that has continued to grow, but “it has stopped weighing on our shoulders: Christ present in our lives relieves the burden.” Marcos Zerbini has battled for 20 years, guiding this people, and still today dedicates his life to it, together with his wife Cleuza. But now, for him this camp stove is everything. It’s needed to prepare food for the pilgrimages to Aparecida with the friends of the Movement. Last time, there were 200 of them. Cleuza is upstairs, doing prep work. She’s cutting 60 pounds of meat, singing Romaria together with some coordinators of the Association.

Before dawn. You arrived here believing you already knew who they were, the Brazilian couple struggling to free the heart of the people from the mud of the favelas. You heard them tell their story at the Meeting of Rimini. You saw them before thousands under the pouring rain one February morning, while, soaking wet, they entrusted all their efforts into the hands of Fr. Julián Carrón. But today you sit at breakfast in the small kitchen of the Association and it doesn’t pulse with struggle, or with good intentions, just the expectation of this day. A light expectation, the way you feel when you’re waiting for a friend to arrive. Gathered around the thermos of coffee, there are already many things to recount. It’s only 9 am, but most of them have been working for hours.
This morning, it was still dark when rua Félix Guilhem filled with people. Today at the Association is the day of the monthly meeting of the Sem Faculdade, the group helping those without means but wishing to attend university, and the few cars circulating at this hour slow down to allow the river of swiftly walking young people to pass by. Those who arrive late stay outside. They come from the bus stops, and those who live further come by train. They stream into the huge warehouse in the same bairro as the headquarters, two blocks away. They show their entry card and then go straight to their places, passing quickly under the banner: No tear will be lost before God. Marcos and Cleuza are already there waiting for them.

“My eyes do not shine.” The first meeting is at 7 am, and they continue nonstop until the evening. Under the neon lights of this big hangar, with run-down ventilators on the walls, they sing a love song, Quando te vi. Then Marco’s voice resounds from the stage: “Life is desire after desire. But what do we truly need?” These are the first words these students hear, people who need everything, 3,000 young or not-so-young people who can attend university only thanks to the accord stipulated by the Association. They work days, and attend lessons in the evenings. “Sometimes they faint from hunger here,” says Cleuza. They have painful stories, different religions, but all together say the Our Father and each has a little paper in hand, a text by Fr. Giussani. Today’s theme is freedom. “Our friend Carrón says that a person is free when she feels embraced. When do you feel free?” This is the question that closed the previous meeting. Here and there, people get up among the lines of chairs and take the microphone in hand.
“My eyes don’t shine, not even when they cry,” Lela wrote when she was a girl, and today she reads it before everyone. “I was desperate. I reached the point of having to decide whether to continue my life or not. But I did not feel I had the right to take this life, and today I have the opportunity to study and get married. I am happy.” Raphael says that “coming here, I understand that my journey is good.” Even in the midst of his parents’ separation, he felt free–“…because I was forced to mature, to build my life.” Marcos adds nothing, just thanks each one, and then talks about Leopardi and Franco, an Italian friend who “discovered he was free in prison.” From one part of the hall to the other, the students take turns speaking. They speak face to face about life. Then Alexandre comes up, to explain the text on today’s sheet of paper.
He is the “doctor,” as they call him here. Through his work as a physician, he bumped into Cleuza and Marcos, and through him they met the story of friendship born with Fr. Giussani. This was in 2001. “It was the encounter that changed our lives. What we have always done ended up suffocating us, and that encounter enabled us to breathe,” says Cleuza, before going on the stage to give the announcements. Her eyes penetrate you, but looking at them well, they seem those of a child, in the body of a mother.

“I am with you.”  Now is the moment for awards.  Those who have graduated receive a little statue and stadium-style applause. “If it weren’t for this place, I wouldn’t have gotten to the end; I would have given up. Seeing you gave me the courage to continue. Don’t give in,” says a girl, amidst the applause. This is the reason for the Association. This is why Cleuza, two hours a week, goes to the University exit just to greet them. “So that they feel the truth of one thing: that I am with them. They should never feel alone.” But the sweat is all theirs. Like that of those who, with Sem Terra, build their home in five, seven, ten years. It is not given to them. It is theirs, from the beginning to the end.
By now, there are 27 areas of lots, almost all of them in the northwest periphery of São Paulo. During his lunch break, Marcos rushes to number 24, in Portal do Anhanguera. The car of Cesar, the Association engineer who accompanies the construction of the houses with an old-fashioned kindness, skirts the thick forest of the Mata Atlantica, takes a toll road, then climbs a dusty rise of red earth. The area is still a construction site, and the families are waiting there under a big tent. Those who manage to buy the land begin holding meetings directly in the neighborhood, in order to encourage friendships among neighbors. With Marcos and Antonio Carlos, a retired government functionary, they face various problems such as water hook up, trash collection, the need for a bus stop, and a mailing address. They do this for an hour, discussing things in detail. They don’t resolve everything, but they help each other. Marcos encourages them: “God does not abandon us, so we can continue without fear,” so much so that a celebration is called for. At the end of the meeting, there is cake and music, while at the Association the swarm of the third meeting flows out into the street to leave space for the next shift.
Vera is sitting at the exit and is not afraid of being run over. “Life is a story…,” you hear her singing in the throng. Beautiful with her elegant black straw hat, she sits on a stool between the sidewalk and the street, behind a big styrofoam box, selling pens and drinks. “For 18 years we were alone, me and God.” Then she met the Sem Terra, as did Mario, who used to do drugs in the Bahia favela and now works at the Association and studies. It is now afternoon, and he sits down in the kitchen. “I have to get back to work soon,” he says, proud of having to go quickly. Meanwhile, downstairs, Cleuza’s voice fills the air all the way to the dining room, “Tudo beeeem?” She and Marcos come and go from here all day. There is only one fixed point: Mass before lunch, in the chapel of the Association center. When Cleuza arrives in the kitchen, she stops at each person. They’re together everyday and they might have just seen each other, but they always kiss and hug, while the day takes the course that it wants. They rethink the schedules already decided, change priorities. There are Baptisms and Confirmations to prepare with Fr. Marco, about 30 people, all from the Association.

Elections and miles. Through the door comes Fabio, the “lawyer,” holding the flyers for Marcos’ electoral campaign for the São Paulo Parliament, and everyone is enthusiastic. But nobody has any idea of what the days until the election will be like: a continual meeting, from one part of Brazil to the other, telling people about Christ. Tomorrow, hundreds of miles will be traveled to welcome a group of young people from Paraguay, without knowing that their bus will break down and their plans will all change again. But “que historia!” Cleuza exclaims, bowling you over. This friendship is “such a beautiful” story, that it’s enough to serve it, just as it comes–just like Quitera, who washes the pots and pans and is happy.
Quitera takes care of the kitchen together with some other women. She is 63 years old and doesn’t know how to read, but when they bring her the Spiritual Exercises booklet of the Movement, she dries her hands, presses it to her chest and kisses it. The Association is her home. It is a home also for Santiago and Francisco, who have come from Argentina to stay a month with Cleuza and Marcos, to learn their gratuitousness. “Ours isn’t gratuitousness,” Marcos straightens them out. “We are building our ‘I.’ This journey, within reality, draws us close to Christ. I am called every day to be in relationship with the Mystery.” A close friendship with reality is his method, following others, even though he has the stuff of a leader. “I want to learn to love like Fr. Aldo loves, to give myself without reserve–because if you don’t give your life, you don’t understand it. And I need friends de verdade who help me to give it.”

Ivone’s ring.  Fr. Aldo will call soon, to say that he has decided to take a round trip flight from Asunción for an hour and a half of fraternity at the Zerbini’s house. “You see? They always ask me how I manage to work with 120,000 people,” exclaims Cleuza. “In fact, I can’t manage. I am sure that it is an Other. This tender gaze on me is what makes me strong,” and makes a popular movement light.
At the two counters downstairs, the line is continuous. Moradia and Faculdade. Ivone updates the membership cards one by one, by hand. There are no computer databases. There is no advertising. The organization is simple: everything is “stored” in the memory of those who are there, and advice is given personally by the coordinators. They would be here day and night if necessary, even if they have been doing it for years. But among them, something else is also beginning to make its way–like the new wedding ring on Ivone’s finger. She is a widow, but this is her “new” wedding ring: “with the Association and with CL I encountered something I never would have encountered if it hadn’t been for the Movement. But if this work were to end, I would not end, because all my life has served for my heart.” Every day, she thanks God for having given the money won in the lottery to her employers. “Today I understand why I did it. If I had not, I would not have come to this place .”
At the last meeting of the day, a young man complains about the coordinators, saying that he was treated badly by one of them. The audience warms up, and many applaud.  Marcos listens to him and defends nothing. “I’m sad. All of us here, we’re not an organization of services. If we think this we lose the best. We lose the beauty of being a people.” It’s not his story as a social reformer that makes him say this. There is no pastoral action that can hold up, nor years of claims against the organs of government. There are the faces that have taken his heart, like that of Mrs. Maria José, who prepared food for him when he was a boy and worked in a favela of Vila Prudente. Then there are the years of suffering, his and Cleuza’s, excluded from the party they had founded, considered traitors for refusing ideology. “We waited 11 years before encountering the Movement,” Cleuza tells you before going up again on the stage. “I did everything thinking I was responding to the needs of others, but I couldn’t stand anybody any more, not even myself. God came to take me when my life was falling apart in my hands. Today, everything is different because I am needy. I need the whole world; I need Christ. I have changed because I have been embraced–first of all, by the doctor.”
The doctor remembers one evening in particular: “I was talking with her and I understood her profound sadness,” he says. And his eyes tear up. In seeing Alexandre choke up thinking about an instant ten years ago, you understand how Cleuza felt loved–and why she’s there on the stage looking attentively, with force, at the 3,000 people in front of her.