Brasil Em Chamas

How do we stop this fire
These guns, this cruel game
Who’s behind this data burning
That kills the natives but never faces blame?
Who brews this hate that burns and
Still insists it’s orders from above?
And the museums and our
Animals, and our wetlands go up in flames

Species dead for cash alive
Will they just be stickers on a piece of paper?
What’s the worth of a jaguar and a lone wolf
If locked in a pocket, they’re a big trophy?
And the common folks, tired and poisoned
Crawl in fear like a rattlesnake
And that scream is your rattle
A remnant of faith, seasoned with bile
And the sweat of labor is a drop of dew forgotten in the wild

Burn the witches again, oh
Burn the witches again, oh
Everything that doesn’t make us money
Throw it straight into the fire
Burn the books again, oh
Burn the hope of a people
We rise from the ashes
Flowers that bloom from the mud

Brazil... Our name came from a tree
Or have you forgotten your roots?
Between the Ten Commandments and the
Deforestation, we invented a notion of a country
We killed Tupis, Guaranis, enslaved and burned
The skin of Africans, and then we made sure to burn
Documents that proved the atrocity of these inhumane acts
But, brothers, Favela is also the name of a tree
And the misery? It’s the fruit of these 500 years
Of these disillusionments
Brazil, we still try to hide the graves and burn the evidence
Of this dark past, this hostile legacy
Our country has the name of a tree
But justice, around here, never bloomed
Bullet in the rifle, fire on the fuse
In the Amazon and the Pantanal
The plan of a state
Criminal that sows evil

That’s why we sing, now
Fire to the racists and in the central highlands
No one will erase our history
Our struggle and cultural memory
And look at this total irony
Indians called it Pindorama
The land of palm trees
Today this land burns in flames
And the Brazil that flourished
Was from this warrior people
Represented in the Mangueira parade
But to our sadness
All this beauty always
Turns to ashes on a Wednesday

Burn the witches again, oh
Burn the witches again, oh
Everything that doesn’t make us money
Throw it straight into the fire
Burn the books again, oh
Burn the hope of a people
We rise from the ashes
Flowers that bloom from the mud

Flowers that bloom from the mud
We rise again