Scene 1
VII - mãe preta
/ Maria Eunice Oliveira Santos, I'm 77 years old, I wasn't born in Bixiga, I'm from Minas Gerais, I came here when I was 3 years old, my parents came from Piranguinho, Minas Gerais, and here my parents had 3 more children, so we are 6 siblings. Of course, with my parents I moved around various neighborhoods until I arrived here, in Bixiga.
Then I went to live with my godmother to study, I came to live on Avenida Paulista, at 648, Nações Unidas, and I studied there at Imaculada, then I got married at Imaculada, I've been married for 44 years, but, in fact, I've been with my husband for 56 years because we dated for 11 years. We have a couple of children, a granddaughter and a son-in-law.
My two children, one is a physiotherapist and the other, my son, is a pharmacist. And we live... We got married and live in the same place to this day. I went to work in accountancy, in construction. Then I took an exam and went to work for the federal railroad network. And there I retired at the age of 55, having worked for 36 years. So I've been retired for more than 25 years.
As I told you, I arrived in Paulista. Then I went to school in Liberdade at the Bernardo Leite Silva School, where Professor Zerbini studied. And then I had this greater relationship with Bixiga. That's 56 years of Bixiga. In this photo, my friend Ricardo Tupi, from Rio, carioca. He's a photographer. He liked Bixiga a lot, right? He always came here to the Arte Pau-Brasil bookstore. So he decided to take a picture of us. Then he gave it to us as a present.