In his youth, Marcelo Souza dos Santos, known as Goiaba (Guava), used his father's car, a gray Santana. Because of the resemblance, and also because it was a car that served for almost everything, it was nicknamed DeLorean, like the vehicle from the classic “Back to the Future”. 

Marcelo gave all his friends a ride in that Santana. Sometimes, they even chipped in to fill the tank. All the trips, back and forth, of people and materials for the Student Movement of the University of Caxias do Sul (UCS) were made in that car. And Marcelo never minded.

“If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything”, is one of the lines from Back to the Future, which fits, in many ways, with Marcelo's journey — brief, yet “meteoric”, as his friends describe it.

The first in his family to attend higher education, Marcelo always knew how to value knowledge. He understood very well how, through study, it is possible to make the changes you want to see in the world.

He started working early: at 13 he was already making agnolini at a neighbor's house. Later, still very young, he worked at Paiol, where he earned the nickname Batatinha (Little Potato). 

He came from a humble family. His father was a taxi driver and his mother worked at home, as an outsourced worker for a knitwear factory. In a recent Facebook post, he remembered his mother, now deceased, with respect for her effort to help support the three children: “I remember it was a joy when payday came: we would go with her to collect at the Stumpf knitwear factory and then we would go eat a burger at Garfield. That was our redemption; we eagerly waited every 30 days to eat that snack, the best snack of my life, because it was with her.”

Marcelo developed his social conscience young. In high school, he was already part of the Student Movement, and his life was always closely linked to activism and to the Workers' Party. “He breathed politics,” say those who knew him. It was at school that he earned the nickname everyone knew him by, Goiaba. In college, where he studied Law, he took part in the Academic Boards and was president of the Central Student Board (DCE) in 2008/2009, one of the most glorious times of UCS, when the university had tens of thousands of students. He ran for city councilman twice in Caxias and his last political position was as municipal vice-president of the PT (Workers' Party).

He worked as a criminal lawyer and devoted himself intensely to everything he believed in. This included his cases, where he would even become friends with his clients, such was his involvement. Engaged in social struggles and in the pursuit of ideals of justice, Marcelo found in Law a tool to ensure better living conditions for many people. 

As he was emphatic in his positions, “hot-tempered”, some would say, he often picked fights because of his speeches and opinions. “To live is to take sides,” said the philosopher Antonio Gramsci. And Marcelo took sides, without fear, on all the causes that were important to him. 

A fan of MPB (Brazilian popular music), especially Chico Buarque, he treated himself to a concert by the singer late last year. And since his mother's death, he talked more about how important it was to value the small things in life: like riding his motorcycle to Ninho das Águias, taking part in a family lunch, going on an outing with his goddaughter or going to his favorite beach, Pinheira, SC, with friends. He understood that it was the moments, and not material things, that mattered most. 

Intense, he had many loves, but he would tell anyone who would listen that the love of his life was an ex-girlfriend; and he, at the time, did not have enough maturity to understand the importance of the relationship. 

Marcelo was outgoing: his laugh was loud and contagious. For him, there was no such thing as a bad time, not even during the periods when his health was at its weakest. 

In his last post, already hospitalized, he said he “was fighting, to keep on fighting”. And he added: “But we move forward, because if it were easy, it wouldn't be for me.”

Text: Valquíria Vita, Legado Histórias de Vida 

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