We Can Improve Our Constitution

From Written Rights to a Living Body-Territory

We begin this block by recognizing the Brazilian Constitution of 1988 as a historic achievement. It opened a path for citizenship, dignity, social rights, freedom, participation, and democracy. Now we can take the next step: bringing these rights into the living Body-Territory of the Brazilian population.

We write this text as people walking together through the real Brazil. With each sentence, we ask: where does this right touch the body? Where does it touch the home? Where does it touch the street? Where does it touch the school? Where does it touch the biome? Where does it touch the municipality? Where does it touch the concrete life of those who wake up every day trying to sustain their family, their work, their health, their territory, and their belonging?

The Constitution wrote important rights. Now we can feel these rights with greater materiality. The right to health gains strength when care arrives early. The right to housing gains body when a family lives in a safe home. The right to education creates future when a child feels belonging, food, affection, evidence-based science, and a horizon of life. The right to work gains dignity when the body works with health, rest, fair income, and time to breathe.

This text is also an exercise in Jiwasa.

Jiwasa means “we,” “us,” “a gente.” Yet here, “we” carries density: body, territory, history, and future. Jiwasa is when each reader perceives: I am also part of this writing. I am also Body-Territory. I also feel where the State arrives, where it can arrive better, and where life asks for care.

We improve the Constitution when we transform written rights into lived rights.

Body-Territory is the person situated in real life. It is more than a tax ID, voter, consumer, or worker. It is a body that wakes up in a home, drinks water, needs electricity, eats, moves through a street, breathes air, depends on a city, a biome, a family, a school, a health center, an income, a care network, and a minimum feeling of belonging.

When this body receives material ground, citizenship gains presence.

The World Health Organization works with the idea of social determinants of health: the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age deeply shape their health. This helps us perceive that health begins in housing, water, food, work, school, safety, environment, and social relationships.

Neuroscience also helps us understand this passage. The body participates in politics because it feels the territory. Chronic stress, insecurity, debt, fear, humiliation, and lack of belonging leave marks in the organism. The literature on allostatic load shows that the body pays a price when it continuously adapts to social and environmental pressures. Social suffering passes through sleep, breathing, hormones, the cardiovascular system, immunity, attention, memory, and the capacity to decide.

Improving the Constitution, then, involves improving the way the State perceives life.

We can recognize the citizen as Body-Territory. The constitutional question leaves the legal text alone and begins to touch life: has this right reached the body, the home, the neighborhood, the biome, and the municipality?

This is where Jiwasa gains strength.

Jiwasa is “we.” But this “we” has density of body, territory, history, and future. Jiwasa is the deep Brazilianness felt in the body: the perception that I am a Brazilian Body-Territory and, at the same time, I am part of a larger body, which is Brazil.

When I am alone, Jiwasa appears as the minimum sovereignty of my Body-Territory. I act, decide, create rules of care, perceive consequences, and organize my life within a larger Secular, Democratic State under the Rule of Law. I participate in a shared materiality: body, land, water, food, light, air, city, biome, and other living beings.

When I meet other Brazilians, Jiwasa expands. We feel that there is a real collective force made of bodies, histories, DNAs, territories, and concrete needs. This force emerges when common life asks for organization, care, and courage.

We know this force in many moments. When a family gathers to care for someone who is ill. When a community organizes after a flood. When neighbors protect children in the street. When workers sustain an entire city through invisible services. When Indigenous peoples care for territory as life. When a population attacked by crises finds collective energy to rebuild what seemed lost.

This feeling is deeper than campaign, slogan, digital bubble, or fixed leadership. Jiwasa appears when we perceive that living together requires real care for bodies and territory.

Many political projects are born from interests, clientelism, party disputes, contracts, amendments, and networks of corporate entities. Jiwasa changes the question. Before the photo, the funding, the propaganda, and the dispute, we ask: what real need of the Body-Territory does this project solve?

Does it solve water?

Does it solve housing?

Does it solve electricity?

Does it solve health?

Does it solve food?

Does it solve education?

Does it solve safety?

Does it solve belonging?

Does it protect the biome?

Does it reduce social stress?

Does it increase autonomy?

Does it strengthen national sovereignty through the sovereignty of each citizen?

We can imagine a Constitution capable of listening to these questions.

The 1988 Constitution brought powerful foundations: sovereignty, citizenship, human dignity, the social value of labor, political pluralism, and goals such as building a free, just, and solidary society. The twenty-first century invites us to metabolically update these principles.

Sovereignty can begin in the body of the Brazilian person. A country strengthens its sovereignty when its people have housing, water, electricity, food, health, school, safety, income, rest, care, and future. National sovereignty grows through the sovereignty of each Body-Territory.

Dignity also gains infrastructure: home, water, energy, minimum income, health, school, safety, connection, territory, and time for life.

Citizenship gains continuity when a person participates in the destiny of the territory. The citizen can know what is being done with public money, which projects are arriving in the municipality, and how these projects improve life.

This is why DREX Citizen appears as one of the future possibilities of this block: as a metaphor and technology of public metabolism. Public money can arrive with traceability, transparency, and a life-oriented function. When the State creates economic energy, this energy can nourish the Body-Territory, circulate in the municipality, sustain autonomy, and strengthen belonging.

The same logic applies to housing, water, and electricity. With material ground, freedom becomes experience. The person gains ground, energy, stability, and time to participate in democracy.

The Body-Territory proposal offers a lens for any political party that wants to improve Brazil. The question is simple: does this policy increase the concrete life of the population, or does it merely expand the machinery of interests?

When it increases concrete life, it approaches Jiwasa.

When it increases care, it approaches Jiwasa.

When it strengthens territory, it approaches Jiwasa.

When it protects the biome, it approaches Jiwasa.

When it expands well-being, it approaches Jiwasa.

We write this text with the body, with the territory, and with the responsibility of those who also live Brazil. Each paragraph tries to open a clearing for the reader to feel: I am inside this living Constitution.

Improving the Constitution means transforming written rights into lived rights.

It means making health arrive before severe illness.

It means making education generate belonging, science, and a horizon of future.

It means making safety protect before tragedy.

It means making the economy serve the body and the territory.

It means treating the biome as life.

It means making public money strengthen the citizen, the municipality, and the territory.

It means making every Brazilian feel: the State begins in my Body-Territory and expands when we recognize ourselves as Brazil.

We can improve our Constitution.

The Citizen Constitution opened the path of rights.

The Body-Territory Constitution can open the path of living belonging.

This can be the next step of Brazilian democracy: making rights descend from paper, move through the State, reach the municipality, enter the home, protect the body, care for the biome, and be felt as real sovereignty in our lives.

When we feel this, the Constitution becomes more than a legal document. It becomes an experience of Brazilianness.

Jiwasa is this living Brazilianness.

It is us perceiving that Brazil begins in each person’s body and expands into the home, the street, the neighborhood, the municipality, the biome, Latin America, and the planet.

It is national sovereignty being born from the living sovereignty of each Body-Territory.

References and Bases for Further Development

The Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil of 1988 — foundations of the Republic, social rights, fundamental objectives, and popular participation.

World Health Organization — social determinants of health and the relationship between living conditions, work, environment, and health.

Bruce McEwen — allostatic load, chronic stress, and accumulated physiological wear.

Antonio Damasio — body, feeling, homeostasis, consciousness, and construction of the self.

Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum — the capability approach: freedom as the real possibility to be and to do.

Research on social connection and health — bonds, belonging, mental health, mortality, cooperation, and well-being.

David Graeber and David Wengrow — The Dawn of Everything, social freedom, plural forms of collective organization, and critique of single models of the State.

Body-Territory thought from Indigenous peoples and Latin American decolonial authors — territory as life, memory, care, material spirituality, and belonging.