Culture Wars in Brazil. The First Vargas Regime, 1930-1945 (review)

302 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies After exploring a multiplicity of social, political and textual options from which to explore women's writing in her introduction, Schlau divides the book into seven chapters. The first two chapters analyze the lives and works of four colonial religious women. They include interpretations of autobiographical narratives by nun aurhors Gerónima Nava y Saavedra and Ursula Suárez and the Inquisitional cases against the ilusas (heterodox) Teresa de Jesús and Bárbara de Echegaray. These women share a common bond because they subtly manipulated and subverted the patriarchal system through written expression. Chaptei three reinterprets Clorinda Matto de Turner's Aves sin nido and Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda's GuatimozÃ-n and "El cacique de Turmequé." Schlau writes that the majority of the criticism focusing on these works has emphasized their Indianist themes. Underneath the surface, however, she finds women's issues affected by sexual politics. Chapter four examines two twentieth-century biographies written on the Petuvian social activist, Flora Tristan (1803-1844).The Argentinean authors, Silvina Bullrich (1915-1990) and Magda Portal (1903-1989) write from rwo very different perspectives, but their works affirm Spanish American female critics' interest in analyzing the lives of other women. In the next chapter Schlau interprets the use of the revolutionary narrative to discuss the development of a female literary subjectivity. Nellie Campobello, Magdalena Mondragón and Dora Alonso all use the backdrop of the Mexican or the Cuban revolution to depict the lives of Spanish American women living in a rural setting. In chapter six the author explores the genre oÃ- testimonio as a new space in literature for Spanish American women. She probes the testimonios of the Puerto Rican Dominga de la Cruz and the Bolivian Domitilia Barrios Chungara and finds rhat both view the family as the sociopolitical unit for change. According to Schlau, the majority of critics have interpreted their writings from a Marxist agenda and she believes that they are much more complex. Two Southern Cone novelists are rhe focus of the last chapter. Although La ultima conquista de ElAngeVoY Elvira Orphée and Conversación al sur by Marta Traba appear very different in style and point of view, Schlau concludes that they both narrare from a female perspective the truth of repression and torture in the Southern Cone during the military regimes of the seventies and eighties. This reviewer highly recommends Stacey Schlau's new book. With a critical eye, the author not only reinterprets key works by Spanish American women, bur she also ably sifts through much of the previous criticism written on the women. Spanish American Women's Use of the Word proves that women writers represenr an important part of the Spanish American literary canon. Sarah E. Owens The College of Charleston Culture Wars in Brazil. The First Vargas Regime, 1930-1945 Duke University Press, 2001 By Daryle Williams The value of Culture Wars in Brazil may ultimately reside less in its chronicling of the political struggles over rhe definition of culture and its preservation, fascinating though those struggles may be, than in thgjîimple fact of its illumination, in detail, of the institutional dimensiorLof the issues involved and the measures taken. That focus on institutionality falls on the developing Vargas state apparatus and its relationships with the Brazilian states, private individuals and institutions, and other nations. It also involves treatment of the several "culrural" agencies wirhin that state apparatus , their various initiatives, and their infighting . Williams tackles such issues as the contested development of culture management during the Vargas years (chs. 2 and 3), die identification and development of national historical "monuments" (ch. A), the creation of policy regarding museums and management of "national memory" (ch. 5), Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 303 and the problems associated with the cteation of national expositions as well as Brazilian participation in international expositions (ch. 6). The narrative and analysis are accompanied by well-chosen tables and illustrations. There are period photographs , tables detailing such matters as government expenditure in the area of "culture" and statistics on museum visitation, and plates of some of the most important—often the most hotly-contested —cultural objects...