The Settima Diminuita Association is working on an important artistic collaboration project between Italy and Mozambique to be implemented in 2024.

“If you saw me die/the millions of times that I was born/if you saw me cry/the millions of times that you laughed…/if you saw me shout/the millions of times that I was silent…/if you saw me sing/the millions of times that I died and I bled…/ I tell you European brother/ you should cry/ you should sing/ you should scream/ and you should die/ And bleed…/ millions of times like me!!!”

Hino da Minha Terra is a project that unites Italy and Mozambique through their artistic expressions, in a series of initiatives aimed at young generations and aimed at recovering culture and memory. The project involves the involvement of Mozambican and Italian artists who will work in synergy to create a multidisciplinary show that will have at its center the figure and work of the Mozambican poet José Craveirinha.

Josè Craveirinha, born in 1922 to a Portuguese father and a Ronga mother belonging to a Bantu ethnic group from southern Mozambique, was the most important Mozambican poet, the first African author to receive the Camões Prize in 1991, the most famous literary prize in portoguese language.

Poetry, in a nation with a very high percentage of illiteracy, was an immediate means of communication to reach the people and Craveirinha’s poetry was learned by heart and recited even in villages and slums.

His poetry spoke to the soul of his people, a voice that not even torture and imprisonment could extinguish when, during the period of independence from Portugal, he was arrested for a long period because his verses were considered an indictment against a system of oppression. Despite the torture, however, Craveirinha always continued to think that poetry, culture and empathy for the suffering of brothers of every nation could contribute to quelling the atrocities of conflicts.