(this text is an excerpt from a video which was cut at the beginning and at the end)

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... [Once Guiomar dos Santos] -- talking about his government, his work -- noticed that the area around the governor's palace still needed many improvements in order to be worthy of the title: “government headquarters”. But he said, particularly, that the portion of the city with a larger transit of people was exactly the portion of the river between one main staircase and another; the commerce street and the palace -- the commerce street, that was the first district’s market, and the palace street. The traffic of people was very intense in this city sector, but the river margins were very dirty, with grown grass, garbage, dump, together with insects and all kinds of venomous animals, offering health risks to the people who transited there.

Then he observed the situation and said: “I need to do a clean up in this whole river section over here, from the market until over there; to care for this whole section that needs a clean up, from both margins”. Colonel Fontenele de Castro, one of the main auxiliaries of Guiomar dos Santos, and who was one of the Acre builders, said thus to him: “Governor, I have the right person for the task”. And then he sent a message to Mr. Raimundo Irineu Serra, Mestre Irineu, who led a community in a distant point -- next to the place that would later be called Custódio Freire Colony, halfway between the city and there –- where he was settling, in those high lands, together with his community, of which he was the spiritual leader.

Fontenele, who knew Mestre Irineu for many years, asked to call him. Mestre came with some forty men. They started at 5:30am, the sun still casting its first sun rays, and they worked, without rest, for the whole day. When it was in the evening, at the end of the afternoon, around this hour, they considered done the work, with everything clean, the bushes trimmed, the garbage collected and the river margins, from side to side, totally clean and offering easy transit and a prettier landscape for the people.

Then they came to present themselves: “Governor, the work is done”. Guiomar walked down the palace staircase and met with that troop of men led by a senior, a man of almost 6.6 feet tall, very strong, and all tired of working but showing the happiness of a well accomplished duty. Guiomar then thanked and said: “How much do I owe for it?” Mestre Irineu then answered: “You don’t have to pay anything for me; I did it to collaborate, but if some of the men want to receive something, please step forward”. Then they all said, “We don’t want anything”. Then Mestre talked again and said, “But governor, if you allow me, I would like to make a request. We are already tired and the place that we live is far away. If you give us a transport from here to Vila Ivonete, so that we can cross the São Francisco and head towards our land, we are going to appreciate it”. Guiomar then provided a truck that transported the men until Vila Ivonete and from there they followed by foot to the Alto da Santa Cruz (Summit of the Holy Cross), a place that later on would be known as Alto Santo, Mestre Raimundo Irineu Serra’s home and also the home of that community, made of his disciples, who were settling around his house.

Since then it was established a partnership, a friendship that would last for life, between Mestre Raimundo Irineu Serra and Guiomar dos Santos, who was a governor, later on a federal deputy -- the author of the project that created the Acre state, elevating Acre to the condition of a state -- and then being a Senator of the Republic. Whenever Guiomar came to Acre, already settled in Brasília [capital of Brazil], he would stay in Mestre’s house, spending there days and nights, having conversations, being great friends and doing many things together.

This story I think it is of an encounter that is very significant for Acre’s history, for the formation of our culture, for the formation of our people, and for the construction of this Acre that we have today; of which we are heirs. And this story also means the following: That the Acre people, the ones who live integrated to the culture, nature, the forest and the history of this people who was formed here, in this far western portion of the Brazilian Amazon, are people who know how to care for. Of destroying and trashing things we are not very good at... but to care for them, to look after them, to make it clean, pleasing and fit to the whole humanity’s health, of this we are good at.

During a long time the Acre state almost forgot its tradition of caring for things. We are the state that has in the Amazon the biggest portion of preserved forest; the biggest percentage of environmentally protected areas, as well as other kinds of preservation areas. We were the Amazonian state that has the indigenous nations in better conditions, regarding quality of live and more preserved. We are the Amazonian state in which the rural population, mostly rubber tappers, are most  organized –- in associations, unions, cooperative systems, with schools, first aid clinics and this is a result of a fight, a tradition that we developed right from the start of the occupation; of taking care for what’s ours, to fight in order to get this land, led by heroes such as Galvez, Plácido de Castro, José de Carvalho and so many others to conquer this piece of land for Brazil and then take care of it; take care of the forest that exists here. Because it is of this forest that we live from, not only materially speaking, but also spiritually, like the community of Mestre Irineu lived, cultivating a teaching since the indigenous nations and back to the Incas, that was the teaching of the use of the Ayahuasca, which he baptized with the name of Daime.

We want to continue taking care of it. We want to seize this moment, in which the public sector of Acre again starts to recover the capacity of the people to care for their state. That the public sector of Acre, through the Forest Government, led by the governor Jorge Viana, is again developing in our people the capacity of conquering, each day, this land for themselves and for Brazil; the capacity of don’t forget our memory, our tradition, now that this govern recovered the palace that Hugo Carneiro and Guiomar dos Santos built and that was abandoned and torn apart during so much time; now that our government starts to recover the historical patrimony of our people, that was practically destroyed during so many years of invasion that we suffered here.

Then now it is the time for us to resume the connection in between Mestre Raimundo Irineu Serra and the public sector of the Acre state, so that community and government, together, can achieve what has to be done so that the Acre state will remains as such. Therefore, to symbolize this reencounter, of the Acre with itself, and this reencounter of Raimundo Irineu Serra with the governor Guiomar Santos, is that we are going to witness the delivery of a modest document, a letter, from Mrs. Peregrina Gomes Serra, Mestre Irineu’s wife, to the Governor Joaquim Miranda, to the mayor Raimundo Angelino, and to the representative of the federal government...

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