Terror in the Twin Towers: The Events of September 11 in the Brazilian Literatura de Cordel

Brought to the New World by the first Portuguese colonists and, with time, increasingly associated with the Northeast's vast, dry interior, the pamphlet stories in verse known as folhetos or as literatura de cordel have continued to change along with Brazil. Long associated with semi-literate poets who composed for the Northeastern masses, these "stories on a string" have become increasingly popular among middle-class writers and consumers. Today, contemporary compositions by educated authors who rely on the Internet mingle with folheto classics—love and adventure tales with names such as The Mysterious Peacock, Lampião in Hell, and Green Coconut and Watermelon. This article explores one cordel author's vision of the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center and the subsequent U.S. bombing of Afghanistan. Terror in the Twin Towers (Terror nas Torres Gêmeas) by Azulão—the nickname of Rio-based author João José dos Santos—is noteworthy not just for its immediate subject matter but also for its clear mingling of time-honored cordel elements with other features foreign to most earlier stories. These less traditional aspects of the folheto reflect both the particularities of the events about which the poet is writing and a number of larger changes that have taken place since the late 1950s in Brazilian folk and popular culture.