Brazil, Lyric, and the Americas

5. Banda Hispânica: Spanish American–Brazilian Links in Lyric and Landings

5 BandaHispânica Spanish American–Brazilian Links in Lyric and Landings Soy loco por ti América Soy loco por ti de amores Soy loco por ti América Soy loco por ti de amores Since the 1990s the major development in all areas of human endeavor involving communication has most certainly been the diversification and unbridled spread of the Internet. On the World Wide Web, dissemination and exchange of information, in the widest sense of the word, have exploded in heretofore unimaginable ways at the macro level of global digital networks , the micro level of local online communities, and the intermediate level of virtual connections within large geographical divisions or between neighboring lands. Transamerican relations in the arts, as seen throughout the present writing, can unfold multidirectionally to concern all the countries of the far Western Hemisphere, be limited to a bilateral configuration in the two titans in size and population, Brazil and the USA, or focus on Latin America as Ibero-America, the lone Lusophone land vis-à-vis twenty Spanish-speaking nations. Banda Hispânica is an Internet location that embodies cultural embraces via technological means. Brazil occupies a rather prominent place in cyberspace, and postings on poetry—national and international—are legion .1 The most extensive and well-connected Brazilian Web site dedicated to lyric sponsors a “Hispanic band” that is subdivided into ever-in-progress sections on the various Hispanophone nations. With both recognized and emerging names, its bandwidth contains poems, interviews, studies, images , and links in both Spanish and Portuguese with the express intent of 10. Promotional poster for music publisher, circa 1986, concept by José Carlos Capinan and Virgínia Andrade, art by Washington Falcão. Used by permission of José Carlos Capinan. Brazil, Lyric, and the Americas 138 improving mutual knowledge and international lyrical relations. Thus, this place is literally and symbolically a gateway to the study of poetic fraternization between Brazil and Spanish America toward the end of the twentieth century and in the beginning of the next. The platform of this electronic journal and live archive cites a politic idea advanced by José Martí, the theorist of Cuban independence, the poet residing in the USA and advocating Latin American consciousness: “knowing diverse literatures is the best way to free oneself from the tyranny of some of them.”2 A primary aim of Banda Hispânica is to help overcome the half-millennium divide between the Spanish and Portuguese Americas. The project seeks integration with Hispanics of the New World, “so close yet so inexplicably distant,” and “systematic diffusion of cultural fora that do not habitually maintain dialogue.”3 Since the 1990s, in conjunction with new bids to forge political and economic ties in Latin America, there have been admirable missions to build bridges in cultural realms, including literature—even poetry, admittedly more difficult because of linguistic factors. Such outreach comes against a historical backdrop of disengagement and some discord. Since the turn of the twentieth century, many statements have been made concerning an unfortunate lack of cultural connection between Brazil and her neighbors, but in counterbalance there have also been a series of meritorious activities related to networking and comparative deliberation, the sum of which invites consideration of reasons for historical separation and for more recent togetherness. A dialectic of separation and attraction in international affairs has memorable and provocative reflections in the domain of poetry. Curiously, numerous mediated statements quite symptomatic of capital aspects of Spanish American–Brazilian relations have been made in the United States, the New World metropolis in effect, the Colossus of the North. The 1994 World Cup of soccer was held in the USA. The instant that Brazil’s penalty-kicks victory over Italy in the final in Pasadena’s Rose Bowl was realized, the Argentine broadcaster for Spanish-language USA television, Andrés Cantor, shouted: “¡Bra-si-i-i-l! ¡La copa se queda en América!”—the cup will stay in the Americas. This moment of excitement and joy involved a shared pride: a win by Latin America’s largest state over an Old World foe was a triumph for all sister nations in the hemisphere above and beyond any intraregional rivalry. On a different stage, in 1995 Brazil’s internationally renowned singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso reached out with the recording of Fina Estampa, a collection of high-im- 139 Banda Hispânica pact Spanish American songs, especially bolero, a quintessential genre...