September 18, 2023

11:09

Márcia Guimarães – From Cenarium Amazônia Magazine

MANAUS (AM) – I met the journalist, publicist, sculptor and multimedia artist Darlan Rosa, 77, when he was in Manaus in February this year for the United Earth Amazonia Award, which focuses on environmental preservation and for which he created the trophy sculpture. I wanted to do this interview when I learned that he was the creator of Zé Gotinha, a character born out of Brazil’s campaign to eradicate polio. I was enchanted by his story and career. Zé Gotinha was like a childhood friend to me.

This month, Darlan and Zé Gotinha gained a lot of space in the news and in federal government advertisements. On September 18, the 50th anniversary of the National Immunization Program (PNI) was celebrated and, also this month, the character turned 37. The visibility is recognition for those who helped consolidate the success of vaccination in Brazil, a world reference for its efficiency.

The last case of polio, for example, was recorded in 1989. It’s also a sign of the current moment when vaccines are being revived, which were neglected in previous years, leading the country to fall back in immunization rates and the return of diseases such as measles. Zé Gotinha even paraded in an open car at the September 7th civic event in Brasilia, to much applause from the public.

As part of this revival, via the Ministry of Health, Darlan produced and launched the children’s book “Zé Gotinha – Herói Nacional” (Zé Gotinha – National Hero) at the Rio de Janeiro Book Biennial on September 1, which talks about vaccines and tells a little about the character’s career. The publication is available in print and digital format on the ministry’s website.

Darlan not only created Zé Gotinha in 1986, but also fought for two years to get the Ministry of Health to accept him as the symbol of the polio vaccination campaign. Traveling to all the states in the country to win the hearts of the vaccinators and proposing a competition for children to choose the name of the doll made of drops, the artist convinced the authorities and, thus, Zé Gotinha was born as a love affair of Brazil, loved by Darlan, embraced by the vaccinators and adored by the children. Fun fact: his first name was Vax.

Working for the Ministry of Health also led Darlan to explore the deep Amazon on boat trips, taking an art education project to the communities that used theater to educate about malaria, dengue, AIDS and other diseases. There were six trips in one year and he even made the journey between the cities of Afuá, in Pará, and Coari, in Amazonas. “It’s a long way, I had a hard time in the pororoca,” he recalls.

In our conversation, I asked Darlan if he would say that he has something of Zé Gotinha and Zé Gotinha has something of his. “According to copyright law, the creature is an extraction of the creator’s character. To answer your question, people say he has a lot to do with me. And I think so too,” he replied.

In the next few lines, read the interview that emerged from our chat.

CENARIUM AMAZÔNIA – How did you come up with the idea for Zé Gotinha?

DARLAN ROSA – Brazil made a commitment to the United Nations to eradicate polio by 1990. In 1986, I was asked to design a logo for this commitment, which had nothing to do with the campaign. I was the one who came up with the idea for the campaign, because until 1971, I had a television program where I told stories to children and ran various campaigns aimed at children. I came up with the idea that, using this logo, I could create a character for a polio campaign. I was very excited about this and went to see a vaccination day at a health center. I saw that it was very tense, the children were very scared of the vaccine. So I came up with the idea of making vaccination day a day of joy and making the child the protagonist of the event, so that the child would be sensitized to remind their parents of vaccination day. To do this, I needed a character who could communicate with children.

CA – So the initial idea was to create a logo that would be used on Ministry of Health documents, something like that?

DR – That was the idea at first. Then, when I presented the doll as the symbol of the campaign, the ministry didn’t like it very much. They told me: “no, I want a logo that people can look at and know that it’s about the commitment to eradicate polio”. So I put the little figure walking over the years from 1986 to 1990, and that was the logo. As with polio, the child can’t get around, or walks with difficulty, it makes sense. But I kept insisting on using the doll for advertising campaigns. The ministry was very afraid that if the doll failed in its communication, as Brazil needed to vaccinate 25 million children in the campaign, it would be a huge loss. What’s more, some people in the ministry didn’t think it made sense to associate a fantasy with a vaccine, which is science, they thought it would be ridiculous. So it took me two years to convince the ministry to use the doll in the campaigns.

CA – Was the competition the only strategy to convince the ministry?

DR – There was another very important thing. During the two years in which the ministry didn’t accept the character in the campaigns, through an agreement with UNICEF, I traveled to all the states taking a workshop to teach vaccinators, health professionals, how to make posters using the character. I gave a talk, explained what the character was, what its advantages were, and there was a lot of enthusiasm from these professionals, because there was a complaint from them that the campaigns were carried out in the South and, in 1986, TV didn’t cover the Amazon or all the cities in the countryside. Sometimes commercials were made here and the images weren’t decoded by the local culture. Radio was one of the main tools for publicizing the campaigns, and the announcers mobilized in their own language. Then the states started putting pressure on the ministry to include Zé Gotinha in the campaigns, because they had already been using the character on posters since ’86. In 1988, he was included for good.

CA – How did you come up with the idea of making the character in the shape of a drop?

DR – Since the idea was to make it possible for anyone to draw the character and since the polio vaccine was two drops, I first taught people to draw two drops on paper, one on top of the other, as if they were falling. On one drop you put your eyes and mouth and on the one below you pulled your arms and legs. A very simple thing to do. I think it was the simplicity of the doll that won people over. So, you see, the name was given by the children, the idea was supported, encouraged and embraced by health professionals.

CA – How important is this public involvement in perpetuating the character?

DR – During these 37 years, there have been many times when the ministry has decided not to use Zé Gotinha in its campaigns, but the states have never stopped using him. Now, we’ve never had a blackout as big as that of the previous government, which didn’t use Zé Gotinha at all, because there was no vaccination campaign.

CA – The last government even created some representations, with more than one character, a Zé Gotinha family, did you see it? What did you think?

DR – Yes, I did. Even now, in this administration, I’ve asked Minister Nísia Trindade to put an end to this issue of Zé Gotinha’s family, because it’s absurd, you know. Zé Gotinha’s family, the vaccine has no family, the vaccine is the vaccine. And then we get into the very serious problem that a family is not just a man and a woman, a couple is not just a man and a woman. So it was agreed that we wouldn’t use family anymore. People invent a lot, you know, each person wants to have a different idea about the character. I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all, because it keeps him alive and gives people a certain sense of belonging to him.

CA – And how do you see these other representations of the character?

DR – I keep collecting them on the internet, there’s the pumped-up Zé Gotinha, there’s Zé Gotinha…

CA – There was one with a gun in his hand…

DR – I rejected that one and it was a good fight, because the problem was the concept. The moment you take a government that advocates guns and put a gun in the character’s hand, I didn’t like it and I fought against it. And it got onto Twitter and went viral worldwide. I went in hard and it ended up backfiring, because I got a story in a Tokyo newspaper, Le Monde, a German newspaper, El País, Times, a radio station called RCB, which is an American public radio station, like the BBC, they did a half-hour program about the project, about the campaigns, I went on Globo News twice, I had a full page on the same week on Saturday and another on Sunday in Folha and I gave an interview to Bial about this syringe event. So, in fact, this brought Zé Gotinha to the fore, in a backwards way. Flávio Bolsonaro shot his foot.

CA – Do you think there’s a new moment for Zé Gotinha now?

DR – Now, I’m very pleased to see that this government is using character as one of the axes of management, that health comes first, having to rescue vaccines. Vaccination levels have dropped a lot, so we need to get back on track. The PNI, which is turning 50, is considered one of the largest vaccination programs in the world. And you can see that, at the September 7th parade, when Zé Gotinha appeared, he was cheered, he stole the show. Although it’s a symbol of health, I have the impression that it’s going to evolve into a symbol of government, you know. Because, if you think about it, what is health? Health is vaccines, medicine, drugs, jobs, well-being, housing. Health goes through the whole hall that the government takes care of and Zé Gotinha’s brooch is already on the lapel of all the ministers.

CA – What role does Zé Gotinha play in the success of immunization campaigns?

DR – Zé Gotinha was created within the PNI, which had a health education sector. I already had this educational approach, because everything I’ve ever done in my life has been aimed at educating children. So Zé Gotinha wasn’t just thought of as a mobilization character for vaccination campaigns. Mobilization was one of his duties, but he was created as an ongoing educational project. We believed that the child who was being vaccinated today, in ten, 15 years’ time, would have the chance to be a father and mother, and would also pass this on to their child. That was our belief and that’s why we made a lot of educational material. I think the great success of this character is that it’s an educational project. You can’t immunize the entire population with a campaign alone. What really needs to be tackled is routine vaccination, ensuring that all children up to the age of 5 have all their childhood vaccinations and that teenagers continue to have their relevant vaccinations and adults too.

CA – So do you think that the Zé Gotinha project as a whole has contributed to the PNI achieving good results over the years?

DR – Absolutely. Almost every municipality has Zé Gotinha at the health center. He’s a symbol of vaccination. So he’s certainly an important character. In fact, in this article on American radio, they interviewed several doctors, educators and specialists in Brazil and they were unanimous in saying that vaccination in Brazil, the success of the PNI, has a lot to do with this character. Two years ago, the PNI published a book on the history of vaccination in Brazil and the Americas and I was surprised by the statement made by the director of the WHO in Washington at the time, who said that he personally took the Zé Gotinha project to all the Latin American countries and they either used the character, or they used the idea of mobilizing children for vaccination.

CA – Did you imagine that Zé Gotinha would have the reach that he did? Because I’d say he’s gone beyond being a symbol of health and has become a symbol of Brazil…

DR – It’s in people’s imagination. To be quite honest, I didn’t imagine it would be so much, not least because I was afraid that in Brazil things don’t usually have continuity. But you see, Zé Gotinha is 37 years old, that’s a record. It really surprised me. Everything I’ve done in my life has been aimed at children and what I’ve done for children works. I was sure that Zé Gotinha would do the job, but what surprises me is that everyone takes him for granted.

CA – Of the Zé Gotinhas you see on the internet, which you said you collect, which one caught your eye the most?

DR – It was a pumped up Zé Gotinha. It was a young man, who must be a bodybuilder, all muscular, so he put on a Zé Gotinha head, a mesh showing off his muscles and published it on the internet, a humorous thing. Every now and then there are a few depressing things, but then I think it all moves.

CA – And what do you think makes Zé Gotinha such a beloved figure and embraced by the Brazilian population?

DR – I ask myself that question and I really can’t imagine it. Maybe it’s because he’s cuddly, round, because he’s a figure… because here’s the thing, children in general, when they get a doll, like to put clothes on it, dress it up, and even imagine that the doll can travel, fly, be a superhero. And Zé Gotinha, being a very simple figure, gives them room to invent things about him. So I guess that’s it.

CA – At this time when vaccination is returning, do you think Zé Gotinha can help improve vaccination rates again?

DR – Absolutely. Because you have a government that is showing this desire to take care of health, to vaccinate. Nowadays, if you just have the image of Zé Gotinha, you’re already talking about vaccinations, you don’t need to have anything written down, you don’t need to be talking about anything. So the more he appears, in the most diverse ways, in the most diverse situations, this is creating favorable communication for the vaccine chain. And now the ministry has launched the National Vaccination Movement, which is precisely to reinforce routine vaccination with the population, so that they realize that it is the only way to protect themselves. The pandemic showed us that it only cooled down when the vaccine arrived, and that in a short period of time. With the pandemic, there was a lot of talk about the vaccine, but unfortunately there was also a lot of fake news. That’s why I think we should have educational material and take it to schools, as a subject for study. To combat fake news, we just need information.

CA – In this sense, does the character play an important role in combating fake news?

DR – Since Zé Gotinha has the sympathy of the population, when he transmits information, he has credibility. I was even disappointed because during the pandemic he could have launched an informative, educational program. He could have been telling people to stay at home, wash their hands, wear masks. I even ran a campaign on my own, on my social networks, with the title “Stay alive while I’m gone”, alive in two senses, stay smart and stay alive. I tried to see if the government would accept it, but unfortunately there was no mood.

CA – What do you expect from Zé Gotinha in the future?

DR – What I hope for him is, first of all, long life for the character, because it’s important that he’s on the air. But I’d like to see an educational program in schools, using the character. This book I’ve just released, which recovers the 1988 project, was already a first step. This book was even produced by the ministry. I published a comic book in 1988, which is more or less the same story as this book. Only I updated it and made it into a children’s book, which I think is more suitable for use. It was launched at the Biennial and has an online version on the ministry’s website. The ministry is also holding an art exhibition with Zé Gotinha.

A passion for education and the arts

Darlan Rosa is 77 years old and was born in Coromandel, Minas Gerais, who has lived in Brasília since 1967. As a child, he learned to draw and handle paint working with his father in his tile factory. He is a journalist and advertising executive by training. In Brasília, at a very young age, he worked in television as a producer, director and presenter of children’s programs. He also worked as a university lecturer.

Besides creating Zé Gotinha, he has worked internationally creating animations for health campaigns in several countries. In Angola, he worked on polio eradication with oral communication, gathering 1 million oral message deliverers, who carried messages about polio eradication during masses, rallies, at fairs, in a ‘word of mouth’ mobilization.

Currently, Darlan has dedicated himself to sculpture and, according to him, his sculptural work is in several countries, with 34 works in nine countries. He has more than 50 works exhibited in Brazil and abroad. Many of them are in Brasilia, where he is the author of a sculpture park at the Banco do Brasil Cultural Center, in which children play inside the sculptures.

Access the book ‘Zé Gotinha – National Hero