Autos and Progress: The Brazilian Search for Modernity (review)

In twentieth-century Brazil, Joel Wolfe argues, “automobility” symbolized progress and became an essential part of the quest for modernity. No reason to doubt the first claim: for much of the twentieth century the automobile was a worldwide symbol of progress. The second claim is more difficult to assess because Wolfe never clarifies what he believes to be unique or particular about the relationship between automobility and modernity in Brazil. In fact, he obscures the relationship between the two concepts when he states that “there is no simple, agreed-upon formula for what constitutes modernity, but several fundamental aspects of Brazilian automobility constitute its key features” (p. 10). By treating autos, progress, and modernity—the book title’s core terms—as analytically inseparable in the case of Brazil, Wolfe deprives himself of the tools for historical explanation.

Instead, the reader is treated to crônicas automobilísticas, a series of stories about the increasing presence of the automobile in twentieth-century Brazil. The stories convey a sense of the awe inspired by the earliest imported automobiles, of the desire to create road networks, and of the commitment to manufacturing cars as a key element of Brazil’s industrialization drive in the 1950s. Most stories are interesting, some amusing, but they do not constitute an argument as to why and how the history of automobility changes our understanding of twentieth-century Brazil. The stories are interspersed with sweeping but ultimately empty claims about the links between automobility, modernity, progress, national unity, and—for good measure—democracy. The book presents no evidence or line of reasoning to support the assertion that “automobility quickly took on the qualities of an ideology, promising to cure all of Brazil’s problems” (p. 27) or that “the physical unification and transformation of the nation had been a central tenet of automobility since at least the 1920s” (p. 124), to highlight just two of dozens of such statements scattered throughout the text.

For sources, Wolfe relies heavily on Brazilian automobile magazines and the company documents of major automobile manufacturers, supplemented by newspaper articles. The result is a pro-auto bias, as both magazines and manufacturers had an obvious interest in overstating the importance and transformative potential of the automobile. We learn much more about the hopes and dreams of automobile aficionados than about the limits imposed on automobility by Brazil’s climate, its uneven regional development, and its stark income inequality. Wolfe presents sufficient evidence to support the stories about automobilistic exploits and the growth of the automobile industry. The parts in which he attempts to link his stories to the broader narrative of Brazilian history have too few notes, however, and rather than support the claims made in the text with evidence they often cite additional readings that are only peripherally related. How does a note citing scholarship on NASCAR drivers, for example, support the assertion that Getúlio Vargas was attracted to automobile racing? (p. 101, n42)

A 650-word review cannot do justice to all of the book’s flaws. The highlights would have to include Figure 5.1, a photograph of a man cutting a ribbon in a new Ford factory, but the man is not President Juscelino Kubitschek, as the caption suggests (p. 118). Figure 5.3 displays a map of the state of Bahia, not a “standard map of Brazil” (p. 124). As deeply embarrassing as these mistakes are, an errata slip could correct them, but that option would not redeem the book’s analytical hollowness. Wolfe declares in the introduction that the book aims to complement rather than alter “the dominant interpretations of twentieth-century Brazil” (p. 4), a surprisingly modest goal for a scholarly monograph published by Oxford University Press. Rather than establish his own interpretive framework, Wolfe bases much of his narrative on Thomas Skidmore’s Politics in Brazil, rehashing now-stale interpretations from the heyday of Cold War-driven area studies, such as the characterization of President João...