Reactions to repression
Resistance literature during military rule, 1964–85
Political literature in Brazil is not usually treated as a separate category. However, owing to the significant impact that the military regime exerted upon culture and literature between 1964 and 1985, this period can be classified as a notable and separate period of expression in reaction to the authoritarian rule of the time. Literary and cultural expression during Brazil’s military rule can be categorized into three major periods. The first, from 1964 to 1968, was characterized by mild repression and overt popular protest. Socially committed Cinema Novo (“New Cinema”) and other forms of cultural protest became representative of leftist mobilization. Examples of resistance literature are Veríssimo’s O senhor embaixador (1965; His Excellency, Mr. Ambassador), Antônio Callado’s Quarup (1967; Eng. trans. Quarup), Carlos Heitor Cony’s Pessach: a travessia (1967; “Pessach: The Crossing”), and José Agrippino de Paula’s PanAmérica (1967; “PanAmerica”). With the Fifth Institutional Act (1968), often called the “coup within the coup,” severe censorship (especially of the press) and limitations on all civil rights led to the arrest and imprisonment of artists and intellectuals and to new conditions of life for Brazilians.
Within the second phase, from 1968 to 1978, the sufoco (“suffocation”) period (1968–73) represented the darkest time and the height of intense censorship and repression. While some works were censored (for example, Rubem Fonseca’s collection of short stories about urban violence, Feliz ano novo [1973; “Happy New Year”]), literature—with the exception of theatre—was afforded more autonomy, because a limited reading public represented no threat to the regime. Other resistance works of this five-year period are João Ubaldo Ribeiro’s subversive Sargento Getúlio (1971; Sergeant Getúlio), Lygia Fagundes Telles’s As meninas (1973; The Girl in the Photograph), about three women from different social classes affected by the dictatorship, Amado’s Tenda de milagres (1969; Tent of Miracles), on racial prejudice, and Veiga’s A máquina extraviada (1968; The Misplaced Machine, and Other Stories), a collection of magical-realist stories dealing with the effects of totalitarianism.
In 1975 the government began a dialogue with artists through the establishment of a new policy toward culture. That year also marked the start of a “boom” in the Brazilian novel that had several important currents: testimonial literature, which condemned torture and other forms of violence; autobiographical narratives, which evoked collective memory via individual experience; and journalistic novels, known as romances-reportagens, which spoke for a censored press about real events of violence and abuse. Some of the most significant novels of the period drew upon a combination of these trends, frequently with allegorical statements on power, violence, freedom, and culture. The most acclaimed narratives of political resistance are Ivan Ângelo’s A festa (1976; The Celebration), Sérgio Sant’Anna’s Confissões de Ralfo (1975; “Confessions of Ralph”), Roberto Drummond’s A morte de D.J. em Paris (1975; “D.J.’s Death in Paris”), Moacyr Scliar’s Os deuses de Raquel (1975; The Gods of Raquel), Ignácio Loyola Brandão’s Zero (1975; Eng. trans. Zero), Autran Dourado’s Os sinos da agonia (1974; “The Bells of Agony”), Renato Tapajó’s Em câmara lenta (1977; “In Slow Motion”), Renato Pompeu’s Quatro olhos (1976; “Four Eyes”), Márcio Souza’s Galvez, o imperador do Acre (1976; The Emperor of the Amazon), and Carlos Sussekind’s Armadilha para Lamartine (1976; “Booby Trap for Lamartine”).
The third period of military rule, from 1978 to 1985, celebrated the end of censorship and the declaration of political amnesty for exiled writers, intellectuals, and political prisoners. The first anthology of female writers, O conto da mulher brasileira (1978; “Brazilian Women: Stories”), was published, and it was followed by other writing by women in the 1980s. The career of the feminist writer Nélida Piñon took a new turn with her immigrant saga A república dos sonhos (1984; The Republic of Dreams). Fernando Gabeira’s O que é isso, companheiro? (1980; “What’s This, Pal?”) and Alfredo Sirkis’s Os carbonários (1980; “The Carbonari”), both testimonies by political exiles, also became best sellers. In 1978 a political opening-up (abertura) paved the way for the redemocratization that was established in 1985.
The musical and dramatic theatre of political resistance exemplified by the Grupo Opinião (“Opinion Group”) combined song and testimony with protest against the censorship of the 1960s and ’70s. It was followed by the musical plays of the leftist singer and composer Chico Buarque de Hollanda and his collaborator Ruy Guerra. The anticonventional, vanguardist, postmodern musical movement known as Tropicalismo (Tropicália), which staged rock shows, concerts, and poetry readings accompanied by imported electronic instruments, lasted from 1967 to 1968 and was launched by the songwriters and singers Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, who “cannibalized” foreign music to produce original musical expression. Many years later, in Verdade tropical (1997; Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil), Veloso recounted the musical spirit and sociopolitical mood of this intense period.
Redemocratization
After redemocratization and the end of military rule in 1985, literature came to be dominated by established writers who had made their careers during the 1960s and ’70s. Fonseca published best-selling detective fiction, including Bufo & Spallanzani (1985; Eng. trans. Bufo & Spallanzani), as well as other novels and short stories. As horas nuas (1989; “The Naked Hours”) expressed Fagundes Telles’s female loneliness and isolation, while Sant’Anna’s view on the integration of art and life appeared in Um crime delicado (1997; “A Delicate Crime”).
The novels of resistance had called attention not only to political but also to racial and social repression. Consequently, the myth of racial democracy, first suggested by Freyre and promoted by the military government, was repeatedly challenged, and questions about other Brazilian myths were also raised. While redemocratization restored civil rights, it also witnessed the emergence of muted voices seeking artistic expression. These new voices—immigrant, gay, feminist, and Afro-Brazilian, among others—articulated experiences that had traditionally been marginalized but could only now, after the return of civilian government, be described freely.
Beside the surge of historical novels and biographies in the last decades of the 20th century, one strong current was immigrant literature. Jewish expression in Brazil first began with Samuel Rawet’s Contos do imigrante (1956; “Tales of the Immigrant”; Eng. trans. in part as The Prophet, & Other Stories), a collection of short stories about alienation, cultural clashes, and family feuds. However, only with the prolific novelist and short-story writer Moacyr Scliar, the most renowned contemporary Jewish author in Brazil, did Jewish expression receive more attention. Scliar’s work transmits a multicultural perspective on ethnicity and national culture that humorously grapples with difference, identity, and allegiance, as in O centauro no jardim (1980; The Centaur in the Garden) and A estranha nação de Rafael Mendes (1983; The Strange Nation of Raphael Mendes). Younger Jewish writers, such as Bernardo Ajzenberg and Roney Cytrynowicz, frequently dramatize the impact of the Holocaust on Brazilian Jews. While there exist other immigrant literatures (such as Italian and German), a current that emerged in the 1970s is the literature of writers of Arab descent. Brazilian-Arabic prose first found vibrant expression in Raduan Nassar’s Lavoura arcaica (1975, revised 1982; “Old-Fashioned Farming”), which is centred on a father-son conflict. Another dynamic Brazilian-Arabic voice is that of Milton Hatoum, who in Relato de um certo oriente (1989; The Tree of the Seventh Heaven) presented a multitextured narrative of a Lebanese family in the Amazon.
Another form of expression that gained attention at the end of the 20th century was gay literature. Notable writers in this field include Caio Fernando Abreu, Aguinaldo Silva, João Gilberto Noll, Silviano Santiago, and João Silvério Trevisan.
The post-1985 period also brought a boom in female voices. De Queiroz, Fagundes Telles, and Piñon were among the first women to be admitted to the Brazilian Academy of Letters, and Piñon became its first female president. Female writers who blossomed during this period confronted issues of independence, confinement, rage, madness, silence, lesbianism, and sexual freedom. Among the notable female writers of this period are Sônia Coutinho, whose O último verão de Copacabana (1985; “The Last Summer in Copacabana”) is about women in urban settings far away from their regional hometowns, and Lya Luft, whose works evoke the difficulty of communication, especially within families, as in her novel O quarto fechado (1990; “The Closed Door”; Eng. trans. The Island of the Dead). Other important female writers are Marina Colasanti, Márcia Denser, Zulmira Ribeiro Tavares, Tânia Faillace, Ana Maria Machado, Patrícia Bins, and Cíntia Moscovich. Marilene Felinto also became one of the most recognized Afro-Brazilian writers. Marginal literature from the favelas—the slums that surround many of Brazil’s cities—is representative of the new current in subaltern expression; Paulo Lins’s Cidade de Deus (1997; City of God; film 2002) is an example of such literature. As Brazilian literature reached the 21st century, it was gradually manifesting more diverse and more democratic expression commensurate with the multicultural experiences of the diverse identities in Brazil’s variegated society.
