A Conversation with Benedita da Silva

by Alexa Smith

It was when Benedita da Silva was at her lowest—a bad marriage, no job, no food, no nothing—that her vision occurred. And it changed her life. Life was so bad she didn’t know what to do. So she opened her Bible and the page fell to the text, “The truth has set you free.”

She says now that the truth of God’s love for her truly did set her free. “I came from a delicate situation,” she says, describing the shantytown where she was born and where, it seemed, she was forever stuck in a house with no doors, no windows and no beds with two children and an alcoholic husband.

Da Silva began working at age seven, selling candy, peanuts or fruit in the rough and tumble marketplace of Rio de Janeiro to supplement the money her mother earned washing clothes and selling food to support da Silva’s 12 siblings. The best jobs she could hope for were custodial or factory work. “I had no self-esteem. I just didn’t believe in myself anymore. I even doubted God in the situation that I was in.” She began thinking of herself as valuable, maybe even pretty. She was, at least, important to God. So much so that someone died for her. And that, she says, made all the difference.

Her message to Gathering participants is simple: There’s much more to do. And women need to stick together to get it done.

“We women are 52 percent of the Brazilian population and, still today, our participation in work that is considered relevant and valued by society is small. [The problem] is not just the question of structural economics. When I think of the challenges of economic justice, what pops up in my mind is the giant prejudice related to women,” she said. “The exclusion of women is present from the Middle Ages in the school system, industries and homes.”

Despite centuries of colonial deprivation, however, da Silva says that it isn’t anger that drives her politically. In fact, she is surprised by the question and vehemently shakes her head no. “No, there’s no anger, no,” she says, through her translator, Anita Sue Wright Torres, the daughter of a career Presbyterian missionary in Brazil. “I have a feeling of indignation . . . but not anger. Jesus says that we will have problems, but to be calm, that He is overcoming the world.”

She says that she doesn’t hesitate to remind politicians less focused on righting Brazil’s legacy of economic injustice for blacks, women and others trapped in the lowest economic sectors, that Christian witness demands taking responsibility for the weak.

Amidst the stress of fighting abject poverty in Brazil, da Silva says that she’s personally a big pray-er. In the morning. At night. At every meal. She’s not one to stuff her feelings either. When she needs to cry, she cries. When she needs to laugh, she does, loudly. And she’s been known to burst into song to relieve stress.

A Pentecostal at the time of her conversion, da Silva is a Presbyterian woman. And she told her sisters at the Gathering, “It is necessary to offer women equality of rights and conditions that enable access to management jobs and social prominence, whether in politics or in financial systems as the heads of big companies. Without a doubt, this is not an easy path. It is true that we have a lot to learn. Without a doubt we have much to teach, as we walk in the direction of social and economic justice for the women in developing countries.”