In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

162 Chapter 10 A Century of Nonfiction Solitude A Survey of Brazilian Literary Journalism Edvaldo PeReiRa Lima FRom the veRy late 1800s to the very early 2000s, literary journalism has played out an errant but meaningful history in Brazil. While it has never been mainstream in the Brazilian news media, literary journalism has proved its staying power through the writings of two exceptional individuals, Euclides da Cunha and João do Rio. The unforgettable, albeit brief, golden age of the genre in the 1960s and 1970s—thanks to a daily newspaper, Jornal da Tarde, and to a monthly news magazine, Realidade—has left a legacy that even now sparks the dreams of veteran and young Brazilian writers alike. Today the dream has modestly extended its reach, has multiplied its forms of manifestation, and has been given an additional boost from the academic community. Though the trade is still a solitary business, voices clamoring from the four corners of the nation are increasingly being heard and met with like responses. Euclides da Cunha: Grandfather of Brazilian Literary Journalism In the early hot summer days of August 1897, civil engineer, former military officer, and writer Euclides da Cunha joined an army expedition into the northeastern hinterlands of Brazil against a group of peasants who, back in the capital city of Rio de Janeiro, were seen as rebels opposing the country’s inevitable march toward progress. This enormous country had moved out of a monarchy and into a republican regime just a few years previously. Power had been seized in 1889 by a military coup d’état commanded by army marshal Teodoro da Fonseca. Emperor Dom Pedro II was forced to leave the country, which he did peacefully, heading overseas to his ancestors’ homeland, Portugal . Fonseca was backed by a republican movement heavily influenced by the positivist theories of the French philosopher Auguste Comte. Comte’s ideol- A Survey of Brazilian Literary Journalism 163 ogy was so influential that the flag of the new republic, unfurled four days after Fonseca seized power, bore the new state motto, “Ordem e Progresso” (Order and Progress), inspired by Comte’s saying “L’amour pour principe et l’ordre pour base; le progress pour but” (Love as a principle, order as the foundation , and progress as the goal). The prevailing sense was that Brazil lagged behind other, more modern nations precisely because of its outmoded monarchy. What the country needed was an agile, flexible, future-oriented political regime that would modernize Brazil’s economy, insert the country into the growing internationalization trend of the day, and unify the massive nation into a comprehensive cultural and social body politic. When he was thirty-three years old, Cunha left Brazil’s beautiful coastline to follow the army into the dry hinterlands. The third president of Brazil, Prudente de Morais, represented the rising forces of local capitalism that were associated with international banking interests, mainly British. Morais was supported by the increasingly influential social class of coffee growers who saw an opportunity to improve their country’s fortunes by providing leading European nations with the “green gold” of its coffee plantations. Exports would inject the funds needed to finally modernize the “sleeping giant” of South America. This dogma, however, was unexpectedly challenged by a group of rebels who refused political centralization and seemed to uphold the old monarchic values. Anyway, that was how the story was being told in the corridors of power in Rio de Janeiro. The newborn republic, still gaining strength, threatened the odd messianic movement of leader Antonio Conselheiro, who established a settlement in the extremely poor region of Canudos, in the northeastern state of Bahia, apparently seeking economic autonomy and political independence. Conselheiro seemed to be moved much more by mystical inspiration than by political ideologies. As thousands of peasants and their families joined his settlement, the Rio politicos decided that the movement had to be quashed immediately for fear that it would ignite a nationwide revolt. First the police, then the army, were sent in to neutralize the settlers. An unexpectedly fierce reaction by Conselheiro and his people, however, stirred an even fiercer federal government response, resulting in a civil war that by 1893 would be the largest and bloodiest conflagration in Brazil’s history. Between fifteen thousand and thirty thousand people were killed during the conflict, depending on the source consulted. Cunha marched with the army toward Canudos as a war correspondent for a daily that would grow to become one of the two...

Share