Cleansing Honor with Blood: Masculinity, Violence, and Power in the Backlands of Northeast Brazil, 1845–1889 by Martha S. Santos (review)

The Latin Americanist, December 2013 disappointments. The old Colorado party and the new organized forces (once repressed social movements) struggled to find their relevance in a democratic system. After 35 years of Stroessnerism, implementing democracy in Paraguay was no easy task. The Sixth Section shows the complex intersection between an authoritarian history, international influence, and the people’s desire for change. The last Section is probably the most ambitious but also, perhaps the most problematic. Here, in “What Does It Mean to Be Paraguayan?” the editors themselves, among other writers, attempt to characterize the infinite complexity of the Paraguayan people. Even with the absence of Augusto Roa Bastos from this collection—one of the greatest authors from Latin America—this work is of paramount importance for preliminary studies on Paraguayan history, culture and politics. Marcelino Viera-Ramos University of Michigan CLEANSING HONOR WITH BLOOD: MASCULINITY, VIOLENCE, AND POWER IN THE BACKLANDS OF NORTHEAST BRAZIL, 1845–1889 by Martha S. Santos. Stanford , CA: Stanford University Press, 2012, p. 320, $58.50. In her book Cleansing Honor with Blood, Martha S. Santos examines how masculinity was created and adapted by Brazil’s northeastern inhabitants, sertanejos, from 1845 to 1889. Her study focuses on the backlands, or sertão, of the state of Ceará, a region where seasonal droughts, ties of patronage , and political destitution were common. In her monograph, Santos confronts the sertanejos’ stereotype as naturally violent men. Instead, she argues that the free poor sertanejos reproduced preexisting notions of hegemonic masculinity in their quest for greater social, economic, and political power and rights. In an impressive effort to understand how identities emerged from the day-to-day interactions of men and women, Santos examined more than four hundred court records, as well as poems, novels, and other forms of popular literature that shed light on family and gender dynamics within that society. From this analysis, she realized that the preoccupation with honor went beyond social and symbolic manifestations of masculinity . Honor was an important element of self-recognition and placement in society, and men practiced their machismo in diverse circumstances and against different actors such as women, neighbors, slaves, and even large plantation owners. In this sense, Santos argues that masculinity was manifested, even violently, in diverse settings of social interaction which included family dynamics, and disputes over land. One of the book’s interesting contributions is the examination of how land proprietorship shifted in the mid-1800s to include midsize and small landholdings. Santos explains that this occurred due to several reasons, 148 Book Reviews including new inheritance laws, which offered some free poor sertanejos the opportunity of owning land and prospering, if only temporarily. This created new gender dynamics, especially within the domestic sphere. Since these new landowners proudly exerted their masculine role of providers, and even as slave owners, they reinforced the hegemonic masculinity based on wealth and power. However, things changed with the Great Drought of 1877, which altered the system of rural patronage and, through forced migration, created new gender roles and dynamics. In Santos’ discussions of masculinity, the link between traditional representations of manhood in Brazil’s nordeste, and the perpetuation of gendered and unequal relations is evident. The popular interpretation of sertanejos as inherently violent complicates an accurate examination of the complexities behind their masculinity. For Santos, masculine identity and violence were shaped by daily experiences and hardships. In other words, through their struggles for economic subsistence and power, men reinforced hegemonic masculinities based on honor. But, as Santos clearly shows, masculinity was not a fixed identity, and men and women renegotiated roles according to socio-economic and political contexts. Santos also addresses the experiences of the sertanejas, as the poor free women living in that region were known. She examines how women used legal resources to defend their honor, especially when men were absent from family life due to forced seasonal migration. In a thoughtprovoking discussion of femininity and power, Santos illustrates how the sertanejo society reinforced patriarchy by implementing violent practices against strong, autonomous women who were left behind as heads-ofhouseholds , while their husbands migrated in search of employment. This created both a contradiction and a challenge: while women turned to...