Brazil's Living Museum: Race, Reform, and Tradition in Bahia

2 Contests of Culture

chapter 2 ContestsofCulture Brazil’s revolution of 1930 ushered Getúlio Vargas into the presidency and shifted power away from the nation’s traditional oligarchies. Bahia’s elite faced the future uncertainly as federally appointed governors, or interventors , replaced them in office. They referred scornfully to Interventor Juracy Magalhães (a native of Ceará) as a forasteiro, or foreigner, and used him as a foil to what they deemed an “authentic” Bahian identity. Such rhetoric about the outside disruption of true Bahian ideals concealed real fears about the future: the revolution’s vague agenda of centralization and national regeneration offered unclear benefit for Bahia. Furthermore, the populist appeals made by Vargas surely unsettled an elite that had most often aimed to conceal , rather than to mobilize, the black Bahian majority. Ultimately populism had its limits in Brazil, however, and especially in Bahia;whiletraditionaloligarchsmayhavesufferedfromtheirpoliticalmarginalization , the transformations of the era only minimally broadened state electoral politics. Women won suffrage in 1932, but the barring of illiterates from the vote still meant that many Bahians were excluded from the elecBahia is the Black Rome. —eugênia ana santos (Aninha), 1937 Today Bahia is perhaps the only Brazilian province or state in which the study of African blacks can still be undertaken with some reward. —raimundo nina rodrigues, Os africanos no Brasil, 1900 48 contests of culture tions of the Vargas era (1930–45). And as Vargas grew increasingly sympathetic to fascism, he suspended elections altogether: his inauguration of the Estado Novo, or New State, in 1937 created an effective dictatorship until the return of democracy in 1945.1 While the realm of politics remained restricted, the cultural policies of the Vargas era did offer new opportunities for mass participation, at least symbolically. Vargas and his cultural ministers aimed to fuse a heightened sense of brasilidade, or Brazilianness, inspired by folk, popular, and even Afro-Brazilian cultural traditions. Europhile elite cultural practices began to lose status, while the Afro-Brazilian melodies of samba rose to national prominence; the African-inspired martial art of capoeira became elevated to “national gymnastics”; and folk tunes became fodder for new nationalist compositions. Although the Vargas cultural program inevitably suffered from cooptation and control, it nonetheless granted new value to native, rather than foreign, cultural movements. Such nationalistic leanings had their intellectual roots in the 1920s, with events such as São Paulo’s Modern Art Week and Gilberto Freyre’s Regionalist Movement, but the Vargas era brought new state interest in Brazilian identity and culture.2 Bahian promoters used this national moment to argue for a new role for their state as the birthplace of Brazil and the cradle of authentic Brazilian traditions. By the time Vargas made his first visit in 1933, he was able to draw on nativist pride by evoking Bahia as “the birthplace of our nationality” in his speeches and appeals.3 Such imagery of Bahia as central to Brazil had in fact been encouraged not only by elite intellectuals but also by popular samba and its utopic Bahian refrains. Indeed, samba itself was rumored to have been created by Bahian migrants relocated in Rio de Janeiro’s slums.4 But if Rio de Janeiro was samba’s birthplace and the center of the nation’s budding recording industry, Bahia was its muse and a central motif for sambistas. Those lyricists unlucky enough to have been born outside Bahia made up for such deficiencies by praising Bahia all the more. The composer Ary Barroso, for example, wrote lyrical rhapsodies about Bahia with only the most marginal knowledge of the state; he visited only after his themes were already well developed.5 Most relevant to Bahia’s importance in this popular music scene was Dorival Caymmi, an Afro-Bahian musician who skyrocketed to national prominence during the 1930s. Caymmi composed sambas that portrayed Bahia in idyllic terms and made praising the region his principal lyrical theme. As Bryan McCann argues, his efforts imparted an “apparent folkloric authenticity” to samba as the Northeast—and es- contests of culture 49 pecially Bahia—came to be seen as a pristine repository for Brazil’s truest traditions.6 For the majority of blacks living this in this land of tradition, such valorization was undoubtedly influential, but it had its limits. Indeed, there was still much left to be gained. Blacks in Bahia were a distinct underclass in the 1930s, economically, socially, and politically...