The Human Tradition in Modern Brazil (review)

A new addition to the well-known "Human Tradition" series, this collection of fifteen biographical essays is dedicated to Post-Independence Brazil. Grouped in four chronological sections, the essays are weighted toward the twentieth century—over half cover the post-1930 period and fully one third are devoted to the post-1960 era. The book explores political and religious movements, race and gender stereotypes, social taboos, and national myths through the intimacy and everyday experiences of individuals, including a womanizing folk healer, a German-immigrant Prophetess, a samba composer, an upwardly-mobile soccer player, a sailor-novelist, a Catholic leftist, and a Xavante Indian congressman. Undoubtedly constrained by length limits, the contributors provide adequate context, while still telling detailed, engaging stories with enough love making and rabble rousing to hold the interest of undergraduates and professors alike.

In the Introduction, Peter Beattie provides an excellent overview of the historiography, highlighting recent trends. Shorter contextualizing essays head up the beginning of each of the four sections, while connections among the essays are suggested by notes that precede each piece. The suggested readings that follow each essay are useful and generally thorough, although despite the numerous references to Social Darwinism and Positivism there do not seem to be any recommended readings on these subjects.

While the focus is on non-elites, or the "less than privileged," the subjects of these biographies were by no means average individuals. Most were successful—many were leaders, a number were mavericks. Three of the four stories from the Populist-Era Generation (1930-1959) are about people of African descent who thrived despite the racism of their time. Acutely sensitive to constructions of race and national identity, some authors miss opportunities for gender analysis, despite Beattie's claim that "gender is a central concern to most chapters. . ." (p. xx). Fortunately, the strong essay on Carolina Maria de Jesus by Robert Levine helps to restore the balance. As Beattie notes in the Introduction, only three essays focus on women, but even more surprising is the overwhelming preponderance of male contributors—of the fifteen, Gabriela dos Reis Sampaio stands out as the only woman.

The volume's many strengths make it worthy of course adoption. By linking individuals to organizations, social sectors, and national and international trends, the essays encourage the reader to appreciate the dense human landscapes and everyday challenges faced by Brazilians over the past two centuries. Daryle Williams' piece on Vicente Racioppi describes a man with an obsession—a 1930s preservationist who wanted to save the gold-mining era architectural jewel of Ouro Preto. Ironically, he was marginalized when his work was co-opted by national interests. Todd Diacon's essay on Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, the early twentieth-century Positivist and founder of the Indian Protection Service, is light on personal details, but in contrast to the other essays, connects to the current status of indigenous policy and contemporary realities. The piece on Jôfre Corrêa Netto, organizer of tenant farmers in rural São Paulo in the 1950s and early 1960s, by Cliff Welch, is particularly successful at demonstrating how the times make the man, the man makes the times, and individuals remake themselves through selective personal memory. James Green shows how Madame Satã constructed a transvestite-tough guy identity in the 1930s bohemian underground of Rio de Janeiro, only to be refashioned late in life as a "hero" by 1970s counter-cultural intellectuals. This essay makes the reader aware that the process of reading and writing history can become a fascinating hall of mirrors. The contributors to this volume rediscover and recreate human lives, making them meaningful today. As students absorb these skillfully recounted life stories, they will surely recognize their own reflections, warped by time and through a different national lens, and come to appreciate the importance of historical context.