Revolution in the Terra do Sol: The Cold War in Brazil 9781503605596

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Revolution in the Terra do Sol

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Revolution in the Terra do Sol The Cold War in Brazil

Sarah Sarzynski

Stanford University Press Stanford, California

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2018 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sarzynski, Sarah, author. Title: Revolution in the terra do sol : the Cold War in Brazil / Sarah Sarzynski. Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017050478| ISBN 9781503603691 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781503605596 (electronic) Subjects: LCSH: Ligas Camponesas (Brazil)—History. | Brazil— History—­Revolution, 1964—Causes. | Brazil—History—Revolution, 1964—Propaganda. | Social movements—Brazil, Northeast—History— 20th century. | Peasants—Political activity—Brazil, Northeast—History— 20th century. | Rural poor—Political activity—Brazil, Northeast—History— 20th century. | Brazil, Northeast—History—20th century. | Cold War. Classification: LCC F2583 .S27 2018 | DDC 981.06—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017050478 Typeset by Newgen in 11/13.5 Adobe Garamond Cover design: Rob Ehle Cover image: (inset) detail from still, Lima Barreto’s O cangaceiro (1953)

Contents

Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Tropes of o Nordeste: Contested Visions of the Region During the Cold War

Part One: O Nordeste in the Cold War

1 Revolution in Brazil: Historical Context and Key Players

1 25 27

2 Masculinity, Barbarism, and Honor: Representations of the Cangaceiro 65

3 The Coronel and the Rural Poor: Narratives of Class Struggle

112

4 Racialized Representations: Slavery, Abolition, and Quilombos 145 5 Religion as a Political Tool: Resurrecting Canudos and Revolutionizing Jesus

182

Part Two: Recollecting the Ligas Camponesas

213

6 Survival and Resistance: Remembering the Ligas Camponesas in the 1980s

215

7 Zito de Galiléia: Preserving a Past and Envisioning a Future for the Engenho Galiléia and o Nordeste

242

vi Contents

Notes 259 Bibliography 299 Index 319

Acknowledgments

This book is the product of many conversations and experiences that I have had over the years, and it is my attempt to question the resilient discriminatory practices and beliefs about Northeasterners in Brazil. The research for the book took me to libraries and archives throughout Brazil, including museums in small towns in the sertão, the secret police archives in the industrial district of Recife, film-viewing carousels at the Banco do Brasil in downtown Rio and the well-organized archives in São Paulo. I am immensely grateful to all of the archivists who assisted me in locating documents and films. The book would not have been possible without the funding I received from various institutions, including the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research program, the David Driskell Center for the Study of the African Diaspora, the Department of History at the University of Maryland, the Claremont McKenna Faculty Research Committee and the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies. I also want to thank Margo Irvin and the editorial staff at Stanford University Press for their support and transparency, and the anonymous reviewers for their generous feedback and critical insights. With this support, I have been able to make meaningful friendships in Brazil and learn from Brazilians, debating arguments about Cinema Novo films, racism, and politics. In particular, Adilson Menedes, a tremendous scholar on Paulo Emilio Salles Gomes, helped me navigate São Paulo and feel less “Macabéa-ish.” Up through assisting me in obtaining copyright permissions, Adilson went out of his way to support my scholarship. I want to recognize the amazing people at the Cinemateca Brasileira

viii Acknowledgments

in São Paulo, FUNARTE in Rio, and the Cinemateca at the Modern Art Museum in Rio for their generosity in assisting me, as well as the filmmakers, family members, and production companies who granted me permission to reproduce images in this book. Brazilian and Brazilianista scholars, including Anatailde Crespo and Cliff Welch, went above and beyond in helping me to locate sources and discussing specific issues in the book. Fabio Rilston-Paim always welcomed me into his home, and we’ve enjoyed many tapiocas and movies together over the years. Ricardo Medeiros introduced me to dance groups in Olinda where I fell in love with the Maracatú. Over the years, Ricardo moved me with his determination, and his generosity let me experience highlights of Northeastern culture such as Recife’s March of the Oppressed. Zito de Galiléia shared his life history with me, and inspired me to recognize the meaning of historical projects even on an isolated, defunct plantation in Northeastern Brazil. I am deeply thankful to Barbara Weinstein for her guidance as I developed as a scholar and transformed my initial research questions into this book. Her academic brilliance is equaled only by her warmth and kindness as a human being. Barbara read and listened to so many versions of this book—I can’t express enough gratitude for her engagement with my work over the years. I still feel that I came to the historical profession by happenstance, and without the inspiration, respect, and support that Barbara provided, I don’t think I would be where I am now. This book benefited from the numerous discussions and workshops with colleagues and friends who prodded, tore apart, and helped me revise my manuscript. At my current institutional home, Claremont McKenna College, colleagues in the history department painstakingly read my manuscript and offered advice on revisions, especially Lisa Cody, Wendy Lower, Diana Selig, and Tamara Venit-Shelton. Lily Geismer, Heather Ferguson, Jonathan Petropoulos, and Norman Valencia also offered their expert advice as the book went to production. I especially want to recognize Ellen Rentz for her advice about publishing and her support throughout this process. At New York University, I had the privilege of working with Ada Ferrer, Pamela Calla, and Sinclair Thompson, among others at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and appreciated the opportunity to present a chapter at the New York Latin American History Workshop. Teaching at CLACS helped me frame the book as I worked through how to clarify the broader issues and discuss interdisciplinary methodolo-

Acknowledgments ix

gies. The book also benefited from the expertise of the best writing group imaginable, with Michelle Chase, Tamara Walker, and Marcela Echeverria. Before NYU, as a visiting professor at Mount Holyoke College, I became incorporated into the dynamic Latin Americanist community in the Five Colleges, which offered me the opportunity to workshop chapters at the Afro-Luso-Brazilian seminar and to discuss my work in conversations with colleagues Millie Thayer, Sonia Alvarez, Joel Wolfe, Malcolm McNee, Lowell Gudmundson, Roberto Marquez, and Manuela Picq. From the University of Maryland, I’d like to recognize Mary Kay Vaughan, Daryle Williams, Saverio Giovacchini, David Gordon, Shari Orisich, Laura Lenci, Paula Halperin, Linda Noel, Leandro Bernmegui, Giacomo Mazzei, Luc LeBlanc, David Sartorius, and Mary Junqueira, among others. In particular, I want to thank Patricia Acerbi, the bravest person I know, who has been a true friend through good times and bad, and Shervin Malekzadeh, whose friendship and enthusiasm for the project extended from its initial stages to comments on the final draft. I’d also like to express my appreciation to my mentors at the University of Arizona, who helped ignite my interests in Brazilian film and the Ligas Camponesas: Ana Maria Carvalho and, in memoriam, Nivea Pereira Parsons and Bert Barickman. My family has been instrumental in supporting me as I have researched, written, and revised this book. My mom spent a month with me in Brazil, being thrown in the air as the bus to Olinda sped over a bump, and drinking cachaça out of a cow-foot flask passed around on the bus of women headed to the passion play spectacle outside of Caruarú. She has always listened to me and calmed my stress levels through all the bumps in the road. My dog, Uncas, was there through many long runs and hikes as I tried to clear my mind and clarify my thoughts during the writing. Mark Lauer read versions and kept me laughing throughout the revision process. He supported me professionally, picking up and moving to California, which allowed us to expand our family. Welcoming our son Niko into the world has been my greatest achievement, and I am sure he will grow up loving Brazil as much I do.

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Revolution in the Terra do Sol

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Introduction Tropes of o Nordeste: Contested Visions of the Region During the Cold War

Que a terra é do homem num é de Deus nem do Diabo O sertao vai virá mar e o mar virá sertão The land belongs to man, not to God or the Devil. The land will turn into the sea, and the sea into land. —The repeated verse that concludes Glauber Rocha’s Deus e o diabo na terra do sol, 1964 Given the revolutionary wave reverberating throughout the Americas following the Cuban Revolution, in 1959, Glauber Rocha could have portrayed Northeastern Brazil as a land erupting in social revolution in his groundbreaking film Deus e o diabo na terra do sol (released in En­ glish with the title Black God, White Devil). At the time of the film’s release, in 1964, hundreds of thousands of rural men and women in Northeastern Brazil were demanding land, labor, and citizenship rights through protests, strikes, and land invasions. Insiders and outsiders alike drew direct com­ parisons between the Northeastern rural social movements and the Cuban Revolution, raising both hopes and fears of an encroaching Brazilian social revolution. But Rocha’s film did not allude to the massive social mobili­ zations occurring in Northeastern Brazil. Instead, Rocha chose to depict historical struggles involving messianic cults, violent bandits, hired thugs, greedy large landowners, and miserable, ignorant rural people. Deus e o diabo criticized historical forms of rural rebellion, such as messianism and cangaceirismo (banditry), as primitive forms of resistance emanating from hunger and alienation. Throughout the film, protagonists Manuel and Rosa escape from the historical legacies plaguing this region

2 Introduction

of the terra do sol (the land of the sun). In the open-ended finale, the rural couple flees from a battle between a hired gun and the backlands bandits, running across the dry lands of the sertão toward the presumed salvation of the sea. The folk ballad that narrates the film picks up tempo, suggest­ ing the potential for change in the region when rural people become aware of their political rights instead of following false prophets (messianic cults) or partaking in unorganized, violent rebellion (banditry). The film is one of the founding films of Cinema Novo, or New Cin­ ema, a radical cultural movement that challenged romanticized Hollywood and European depictions of Third World poverty and sought to transform the passive spectatorship experience of cinema as entertainment into a po­ litical consciousness-raising exercise. Deus e o diabo was widely applauded nationally and internationally on its release, and it continues to be cel­ ebrated today as one of the most important Brazilian films ever made.1 In 1964, Brazilian critics applauded Deus e o diabo for being a “truly revolu­ tionary film” and a “huge leap in the development of Brazilian cinema,” comparing it to Citizen Kane in terms of its impact on Brazil’s national cinema.2 Others compared Glauber Rocha to Euclides da Cunha, author of the canonical book from 1902 Os sertões (Rebellion in the Backlands), for creating a national epic that portrayed the desperation of the homem nordestino (Northeastern man), and described Deus e o diabo as the first Brazilian film to offer an “impressive real and authentic vision of North­ eastern misery, its causes, and consequences.”3 To achieve this “reality ef­ fect,” Rocha filmed the landscape of Northeastern Brazil in high contrast to accentuate the region’s relentless sun and arid topography. He portrayed local inhabitants as nonwhite, small-in-stature victims, whose hunger and passivity preordains their death by messianic cults, backlands bandits, or the harshness of the terra do sol itself. While I agree with critics that Deus e o diabo is a cinematic master­ piece, my analytical interest in the film returns to the question of why Rocha made a film in the early 1960s using the historical symbols of the cangaceiros (backlands bandits) and messianic cults. Investigating the film as a historical artifact of the time, I found that the references to cangaceiros and messianic cults were anything but unusual. It seemed that everyone— including commercial filmmakers, leaders of rural social movements, jour­ nalists, large landowners, intellectuals, popular poets, and Brazilian and US government officials—communicated about Northeastern political and social struggles in the 1950s and 1960s in a language borrowed from the past or, at least, composed of historical themes, narratives, and symbols

Introduction   3

associated with the region of Northeastern Brazil. This realization led me to inquire further about why people referred to historical themes when arguing for or against agrarian reform in the era of the Cuban Revolution and the consequences the discourse has held for the region and its people. Marx, in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Napoleon Bonparte, invoked the idea of “borrowed language” to explain that the French Revolution of 1848 had failed because of its repetition of past revolutionary ideas and symbols, which led to “farce” instead of a proletarian revolution. Marx implied that a language for the future had to be created for a social revolution to be successful, one that abandoned the past and its superstitions. In North­ eastern Brazil, in the 1950s and 1960s, an entirely new language would have been impossible and impractical. Historical symbols and themes such as messianism and backlands banditry are core components that define Northeastern Brazil, forming part of a regional trope that distinguishes the region and its people as the Other in Brazil. In Brazilian society, assumptions that Northeasterners are backward, violent, illiterate, and exploited victims who lack agency are readily be­ lieved to be true and acted on as if they were true.4 Instead of creating a new language, the leaders of the rural social movements found that the best way to challenge existing social structures, such as the latifundio (large landholding system), was to engage with the region’s historical symbols and themes and imbue them with new revolutionary meanings. And yet even when rural social movements and other advocates for agrarian reform attempted to assert new meanings for historical symbols and themes, the images they produced often served to further entrench the assumptions about the region and its people, as in the case of Rocha’s terra do sol. By analyzing the debates over the meanings of historical symbols and themes in Northeastern Brazil in the 1950s and 1960s, I show the political conse­ quences of regionalist stereotypes and their power to legitimize the state’s violent repression of Northeastern rural social movements, provide a ra­ tionale for the 1964 coup, and influence how the history of the Cold War has been written.

Historical Overview: Brazil in the 1950s and 1960s After the Second World War, Brazil, like many Latin American c­ountries, transitioned from being a dictatorship (Getúlio Vargas’s Es­ tado  Novo, 1937–45) to having a reasonably democratic government

4 Introduction

(1945–64), though many Brazilians remained disenfranchised, mainly be­ cause of literacy requirements. In 1950, more than half the Brazilian popu­ lation, an ­estimated 15,200,000 to 16,700,000 adults, was illiterate and thus ­ineligible to vote.5 Vargas returned to the presidency in 1951, employ­ ing a nationalistic language to drive forward the impetus to “improve” the Brazilian nation through moderate social-reform programs, industrializa­ tion, and l­arge-scale development projects in areas such as petroleum and energy. These projects and reforms did not include development projects for the rural Northeast until the late 1950s. Even though populist leaders like ­Vargas often used anti-imperialist slogans, the government passed laws such as SUMOC 113 (Currency and Credit Board, Instruction 113) to en­ courage direct foreign investment, which increased US business interests in Brazil.6 The emphasis on economic development and growth based on fur­ ther industrialization and large-scale development projects accelerated during the presidency of Juscelino Kubitschek (1956–60), who had been elected on the slogan, “Fifty years (of progress) in five.” During these years, the Brazilian government built a new capital city, Brasília, “the city of the future,” to usher in a modern era. As James Holston has argued, architects, urban planners, and the Kubitschek administration designed Brasília as a “blueprint” for the modern Brazilian nation.7 Brasília would lead by exam­ ple, becoming a model city that would eventually colonize the social order and transform Brazil’s social structures without social upheaval. Those who could not be incorporated into the national vision, such as the “nonmod­ ern” Northeastern rural population, remained further marginalized in the national project. The spread of modernization projects like Brasília in the 1950s in­ spired social scientists in Brazil and beyond to offer novel ways to define regional difference in Brazil. Through a new language of social indicators and statistics, journalists, scholars, and politicians could now prove that the Northeast was Brazil’s most unequal and “underdeveloped” region. The new, modern language replaced previously used racist terms, such as savage or barbaric, without diminishing social divisions predicated on racialized notions of superiority and inferiority. Commonly cited demographic in­ dicators rarely put life-expectancy rates above thirty years for nordestinos (people from Northeastern Brazil); mothers were described as offering their infants coffee, farinha (yucca flour), and sugar instead of milk, which resulted in severe malnutrition, and infant mortality rates were reported to

Introduction   5

reach 700 deaths per 1,000 infants under the age of one.8 Illiteracy rates and parasitic infection rates were also extremely high in the rural North­ east, a­ veraging over 70 percent. Journalists, intellectuals, and politicians jumped on the production of such “social scientific” knowledge to reinforce their political projects aimed at social change and economic development in the region. They produced new catchphrases to define the entrenched poverty of o Nordeste, describing the region as “600,000 square miles of suffering,” a land of “crab people” trapped in a repetitive cycle of scaveng­ ing and starvation, where human survival was “a miracle.”9 The synopsis on the book jacket of one of the most important books in English on the Ligas Camponesas (Peasant Leagues), Joseph Page’s The Revolution That Never Was (1972), provided a poignant example of this poverty discourse, explaining to readers that the “Northeast is indeed ‘underdeveloped,’ if so mild a word can be used about one of the most extensive and wretched wastelands of poverty in all of the world, where legions of the poor live on so little food that medical science says they should not be living at all.”10 Northeastern miséria, a combination of misery, wretchedness, and extreme poverty, became a newsworthy political issue in the 1950s and 1960s, in part because of the influence of social science and modernization theory, but also because of prevailing interpretations of the Cuban Revolu­ tion and the belief that impoverished peasants could form the social base for a revolution. In the mid-1950s, the rural social movement in Northeast­ ern Brazil that later became known as the Ligas Camponesas began orga­ nizing rural workers to fight for radical agrarian reform and to extend labor laws to rural workers and grant citizenship rights to rural people, such as voting enfranchisement. In late November of 1959, the Ligas Camponesas won their first legal victory in the state court, mandating the expropriation of the defunct sugar plantation, the Engenho Galiléia. After this initial victory, the Ligas expanded rapidly throughout Northeastern Brazil, en­ couraging the growth of other rural social movements led by the Ligas, the Catholic Church, and the Brazilian Communist Party. The mainstream media drew connections between the Ligas and Cuba, “revolutionizing” the rural social movements and influencing how Brazilians and foreigners interpreted the Northeastern rural movements. Rural social movement leaders realized that the most powerful strat­ egy for gaining support for their political projects was to infuse the legends and historical symbols of the Northeast with new revolutionary meanings. The dominant symbols associated with the Northeast had to be reclaimed

6 Introduction

or transformed into symbols that expressed resistance and demanded ­justice, transferring the power attached to the landowning elite to the rural laborers. By appropriating regional symbols, social movements could generate popular support for the struggle for land or, metaphorically, for power in the region and the nation. For example, the Ligas challenged the traditional view that the backlands bandit was a sadistic, mixed-race criminal, transforming the cangaceiro into a regional Robin Hood fighting in the style of a guerrilla warrior against the latifúndio system and for rural people’s rights to the land. The Ligas used the symbol of the cangaceiro to encourage rural men to join the fight against the large landowners and for radical agrarian reform. The rural social movements contributed to broader debates over the future of the Northeast, the Brazilian nation, and the Western Hemisphere being articulated by a range of political and cultural actors active in the region in the 1950s and 1960s, including Cinema Novo directors. For ex­ ample, Northeastern state officials supported radical social-reform projects such as the adult literacy programs Paulo Freire discussed in his famous Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968), now the bible of popular literacy pro­ grams around the globe. The Brazilian government inaugurated a widely celebrated development institute in 1959, SUDENE (Superintendência de Desenvolvimento do Nordeste, “Superintendency for Northeast De­ velopment”) headed by Celso Furtado, to raise the region’s economic prospects. The first funds from President Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress were allocated to the United States Agency for International Development (US AID) for development projects in Northeastern Brazil meant to thwart the threat of communism and promote the American way of life. Regional landowners formed organizations to lobby for economic aid to modernize agricultural production as a strategy to regain their traditional regional power. An array of foreign luminaries, including Roberto Rossellini, Ralph Nader, Jean-Paul Sartre, and the mother of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, trav­ eled to the Northeast to assess whether Brazil would be the “next Cuba.” Carefully cultivating fears of “another Cuba” enabled large landown­ ers, Brazilian military officials, the US government, and others I label here as Conservatives to offer Brazil a military solution.11 Citing escalating vio­ lence and chaos in the Northeast and alleged communist infiltration in the region, Conservatives argued that the Ligas Camponesas posed a threat to the modern Brazilian nation. On March 31, 1964, the Brazilian Armed

Introduction   7

Forces overthrew democratically elected leaders, including Brazilian pres­ ident João Goulart and Pernambucan governor Miguel Arraes, and ar­ rested, tortured, and disappeared Northeastern social-movement activists, beginning a military dictatorship that would rule Brazil for over twenty years. Over those two decades, the military government enacted “agrarian reforms” that favored policies to increase the mechanization of agricultural production, leading to an even more inequitable distribution of land in Northeastern Brazil. Talk of the Ligas Camponesas and other rural socialmovements from the 1950s and 1960s fell silent against the national over­ ture of order and progress. The widely accepted interpretation of the Brazilian military dictator­ ship is that the 1964 coup was “mild” and that the first military president, General Humberto Castelo Branco (1964–67) was a “moderate.” This description erroneously suggests that the Brazilian military did not seize power through violent means, even though scholars, reporters, and activ­ ists were publishing reports about the human rights violations taking place in Northeastern Brazil after 1964.12 Most scholarly analyses of the dictator­ ship concentrate on the linha-dura (hard line) or anos de chumbo (leaden years) that began after 1968 with the leadership of General Artur Costa e Silva (1967–69), who increased censorship and repression through extra­ constitutional decrees that limited citizens’ rights and sharply increased in­ cidents of political arrest, torture, disappearance, and exile. This historical narrative developed out of testimonies and studies on student movements and guerrilla movements located in the urban centers of Brazil—namely, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Brasília. Scholars João Roberto Martins Filho, James Green, and others have questioned the traditional historio­ graphical interpretation, claiming that the authoritarian decrees Castelo Branco enacted were neither mild nor moderate and framing Brazilian authoritarianism as progressing along a continuum instead of starting in 1968.13 Revolution in the Terra do Sol furthers these critiques of the tradi­ tional interpretations of the coup and military dictatorship by showing how the law of national security was used in the Northeast before the 1964 coup, how state and landowner violence regularly targeted rural men and women throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and how rural social-movement leaders and participants, particularly those affiliated with the Ligas Cam­ ponesas, faced violent forms of repression after the coup and during the dictatorship.

8 Introduction

What Was the Ligas Camponesas? The Northeastern rural social movement Ligas Camponesas devel­ oped on the defunct sugar plantation known as the Engenho Galiléia, outside Vitória de Santo Antão in the state of Pernambuco, in the mid1950s. After lawyers won the legal battle to have the property expropri­ ated, in 1959, the movement expanded rapidly throughout Northeastern Brazil, primarily in the states of Pernambuco and Paraíba, and largely in the coastal (mata) and transitional (agreste) regions of these states. The Ligas Camponesas was an autonomous Northeastern movement without broader affiliations to political parties or institutions. They fought for radi­ cal agrarian reform under the banner “by law or by force” to continue to push for the expropriation of latifúndios. The Ligas also fought to end coercive rural labor systems, such as the cambão or the day of unpaid labor that large landowners required from their tenant workers.14 They tried to establish a minimum wage for rural workers and limits on numbers of hours and weeks worked and to extend the Labor Relations Code (Con­ solidação de Leis Trabalhistas, CLT), to rural workers. I refer to the Ligas Camponesas in the plural because that is how they are referred to in Portuguese, as Ligas Camponesas, which is an umbrella term used to describe the collective of community-led and organized ligas (leagues). When rural workers established a liga (league) in their commu­ nity, the liga was often referred to by its location (e.g., Liga de Galiléia, Liga de Sapé). The name “Liga” signified that the rural workers were ­associated with the broader social movement known as the Ligas Camponesas, but each community liga had its own elected leaders, interests, and priorities, which meant that some leagues employed more radical strategies than oth­ ers in their struggles for land rights, for example, using “force” instead of legal action by threatening to take over property and displace the landown­ ers and their administrators. Ligas members often had passbooks, paid monthly dues, and participated in political rallies and conferences with other rural workers who supported the Ligas Camponesas. Lawyer Fran­ cisco Julião of the Brazilian Socialist Party, the Partido Socialista Brasileiro (PSB), who served as Pernambucan state representative from 1954 to 1962 and as federal representative from 1962 to 1964, is generally considered the leader of the Ligas Camponesas. The social movement also published a newspaper, LIGA, had a “hymn,” and published materials detailing the political motivations of the movement and its organizational structure.

Introduction   9

Although I am interested in revealing the dialogues among the politi­ cal and cultural actors in the Northeast, I focus more heavily on the Ligas. The Ligas became the focus of media and public discussions in the early 1960s, and the target of Conservatives’ fears about the spread of commu­ nism and social unrest in the Northeast. Because of the movement’s rapid acceleration, its connections to Cuba, and Francisco Julião’s prowess as a public speaker and organizer, the Ligas also attracted a good deal of atten­ tion in Brazil and the United States. Conservatives, the new military gov­ ernment that seized control in 1964, and other competing groups on the left blamed the Ligas for instigating the coup. Scholarly publications have also focused more on the Ligas than other rural social movements. Because of this presence, the sources used to write history are available, making it possible to discern how the Ligas engaged with the trope of o Nordeste. Initial studies of the rural social movements in Northeastern Bra­ zil addressed why they had emerged and spread so quickly throughout the region. Scholars investigated their participant bases, leaders, tactics, structures, political persuasions, and broader national or global connec­ tions.15 Following the coup and the silencing of the rural social move­ ments, scholars—with an eye to social struggles elsewhere—turned to the pressing question of the time about the revolutionary potential of the peas­ ant versus the rural proletariat.16 Aspasia Camargo and Florencia Mallon’s studies transcended the stalemate of the peasant-versus-wage-labor debate by reframing the question, arguing that alliances between rural workers, peasants, and other social groups created a revolutionary force.17 By the 1980s, scholars studying rural social movements returned to the questions about the political organization of the social movements, the political po­ sitioning of movement leaders and their strategies, and the major struggles the movements faced. Studies by sociologist Fernando Antônio Azevedo and by political scientist Elide de Rugai Bastos, both titled As Ligas Camponesas, have become the core works to which many scholars turn in order to understand the rural social movements in the 1950s and 1960s.18 Both studies take questions about why the Ligas emerged as their starting point, using a Marxist theoretical framework to argue that the rural social move­ ments formed as a reaction to the stage of capitalist development and ex­ pansion in the countryside in the 1950s. Yet even with the greater visibility in the 1960s and as a focus of schol­ arship, a number of questions about the Ligas Camponesas remain diffi­ cult to answer. For instance, it likely will remain impossible to ­determine

10 Introduction

the actual size of the Ligas Camponesas. Some estimate that the Ligas had about 80,000 members in the states of Pernambuco and Paraíba.19 Pho­ tographs and film footage from the 1960s show enormous political rallies in support of the Ligas in the Northeast. A special report for O Estado de São Paulo, in 1963, estimated 30,000 to 40,000 registered Ligas members in Pernambuco but argued that this number was misleading, because the region’s misery and the intensity of the leftist activists could easily have led to an explosion of membership numbers. The article went on to insinuate that the 250,000 people who voted for Miguel Arraes for state governor could be considered Ligas sympathizers.20 According to a military pub­ lication produced by the Second Army, in the second half of 1963 there were 218 Ligas distributed throughout every Brazilian state, sixty-four in Pernambuco alone.21 This said, I am wary of any estimate of the number of Ligas members, for several reasons, including a lack of trustworthy sources. Rural workers were often affiliated with more than one rural social movement, making it difficult to draw definitive lines between the Ligas, the Rural Syndicates, and the Catholic Church Federations of Rural Workers. In some com­ munities and at some times, the rural social movements collaborated; at other times, they opposed one another. Some leagues had passbooks and records, but many did not, and most of that information has been lost. Because of the violence, disruptions to rural communities, and immediate illegal status of the Ligas and the PCB Rural Syndicate after the 1964 coup, many records were destroyed. Likewise, the historical memory of the Ligas has been erased in many communities, making it difficult to determine which communities may have had leagues. Rather than address a question I believe is not possible to definitively answer, I employ a cultural approach to analyze the participation of the Ligas in political debates and struggles about the future for the region, nation, and the Third World in the 1950s and 1960s. This history is a product of the Cold War, both shaped and being shaped by the broader ideological conflicts between capitalism and communism, the quest for Third World independence, political polariza­ tion, and the radicalization of political struggles.

Incursions into Cold War and Diplomatic History The Cold War has long been defined as a confrontation between the superpowers, a lengthy period of time, from 1945 to 1991, when the United

Introduction   11

States and the Soviet Union battled for alliances in the countries in the socalled Third World, manifesting fear of “communism” or of “capitalism” to legitimize the build-up of nuclear weapons. Most studies of the Cold War focus on diplomatic history, examining international policy making and national security strategies at the state level. Latin American Cold War his­ tory largely focused on diplomatic history from a US perspective, position­ ing the United States as the political actor shaping international relations and Latin America as the dependent victim.22 More recent histories of in­ ternational relations during the Cold War have challenged this perspective by providing perspectives from Latin America and examining conflicting definitions of concepts such as anti-Americanism or modernization theory and how such definitions shaped policies.23 Among others, Greg Grandin claims that although the Cold War played out differently throughout the Latin American nations, the era can be defined by its radicalization of po­ litical strategies and political polarization.24 Recent works on the Cold War in Latin America detail how Latin American anticommunist leaders did not rely on Washington and instead manipulated US officials and pursued projects of inter-American diplo­ matic relations outside the sphere of US influence.25 This allows scholars to question the amount of power the United States government and CIA had in dictating Latin American policies during the authoritarian period while also emphasizing the ignorance of the United States in its relations with Latin American nations. Such studies rely on recently declassified US and Latin American government documents, often with the inten­ tion of explaining what happened during the Cold War by examining the degree of US involvement, the actual threats of terrorism or armed resis­ tance, and the diplomatic relations between Latin American countries, as in Operation Condor. Scholars have taken an international approach to studying the Cold War in Latin America, comparing the perceptions of events between two or more countries as detailed in official documents. This scholarship tends to focus on key events and hotspots, such as Cuba, Guatemala, Allende’s Chile, and the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. This book builds upon the appeal of Gilbert Joseph and Daniela Spenser’s edited collection In from the Cold to develop a “new history” of the Latin American Cold War, showing how the local–foreign struggles for power functioned through representations and symbolic systems and shaped ordinary people’s experiences and political activism.26 My interpre­ tation of Joseph’s call for a re-envisioning of Cold War history from the

12 Introduction

grassroots level distinguishes my work from other Cold War histories in terms of its source base, methodological approach, and focus on a marginal region that temporarily became a major global hotspot. In addition to tra­ ditional historical sources such as government documents and periodicals, I interpret a variety of sources from popular culture and oral histories. I take a cultural approach to analyzing my sources, meaning that I use discourse analysis to uncover the significance of the political and cultural debates about Northeastern Brazil during the Cold War. This means that I am less concerned with uncovering the degree of US involvement in Northeastern Brazil and more concerned with revealing what US officials were saying about regional underdevelopment and the threat of commu­ nism and how they were saying it. Revolution in the Terra do Sol illustrates why the so-called margins are crucial to understanding the Cold War. While writing the book, I often thought of the Cold War as a soundtrack to a film. The Cold War increased and diminished in volume, sometimes narrating the plot, at other times, fading into the background, replaced by local voices and local concerns. Conservatives drew from Cold War discourses that emphasized the fear of “foreign agitators,” communism, and deviancy in order to criticize the Ligas Camponesas and depict them as criminal elements that threatened the Brazilian nation. The Ligas looked to Cuba as a role model for creat­ ing social revolution in Brazil, re-appropriating historical regional figures as native guerilla warriors and precursors in the battle for agrarian reform. To challenge Conservatives, they drew from a Cold War language that designated the traditional landowning elite and the United States as im­ perialist enemies who sought to further exploit and enslave Northeastern rural workers. Although the global debates over the Cold War themes of capitalism versus communism and the meanings of freedom, modernity, and underdevelopment circulated throughout the rural Northeast, local struggles focused on such problems as acquiring stable access to land; put­ ting an end to extralegal violence and exploitation; and addressing the lack of rural social services, such as education and health care; and labor rights. In these local struggles, Cold War discourse was used as a form of political power to attract attention to local problems and to create allies and support for competing political projects. Since the local and global debates and struggles were in and about Northeastern Brazil, they also had to engage with the trope of o Nordeste, a powerful discourse that Brazilians generally perceived to be real or true in the 1950s and 1960s.

Introduction   13

Regionalism: Northeastern Brazil and the Trope of o Nordeste Northeastern Brazil is easily located on a map (see Figure 0.1) as the mass of land in South America that extends easterly into the Atlantic Ocean; or as an American journalist described in 1962, it is the “enormous, bloated paunch protruding from the edge of the Amazon basin in the north and then receding.”27 Although political borders of the region have changed over time, in the 1950s and 1960s the region included the states of Pernambuco, Paraíba, Alagoas, Sergipe, Rio Grande do Norte, Ceará, Piauí, and Maranhão.28 In the 1950s and 1960s, around twenty million people inhabited the region, which stretched over 400,000 square miles. The region is often divided into three topographical zones: the mata, or

Maranhão

Ceará

Rio Grande do Norte Paraíba

Piauí

Natal

Sapé

Pernambuco

Buíque

João Pessoa

Recife Vitória de Santo Antão Palmares

Alagoas Sergipe Bahia

Brazil

Brazil Brasília Rio de Janeiro

Bahia and Sergipe were not politically designated as Northeastern Brazil until 1969. Bold indicates names of state capitals.

Figure 0.1

Map of the region defined as Northeastern Brazil from 1950 to 1969.

The states of Bahia and Sergipe become part of the Northeast in 1969.

14 Introduction

fertile cane-growing coastal area; the agreste, or transitional farmland area; and the sertão, or arid backlands. Neither the topographical nor the politi­ cal borders have been hard-and-fast designations.29 While political borders and topographical features offer one defini­ tion of the region, the narratives and traditions of the imagined community of o Nordeste are the threads that strongly bind the region together.30 The idea of o Nordeste is broad enough to apply to the region as it is variously defined so long as each conception is seen to reflect the overarching themes of misery, poverty, violence, inequality, climatic harshness, folk religions, the nonwhite, and the nonmodern. Drawing from Edward Said’s Orientalism, Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Júnior has argued that through a repetition of texts and images, Northeastern Brazil was nordestinizado, or turned into the Other of the modern urban center-south of Brazil.31 Ex­ amining discourses of o Nordeste in literature and art, Albuquerque shows how the landowning elite invented o Nordeste as a way of maintaining their dominance and to avoid being “swallowed up” by the larger nation.32 Albuquerque’s work details the “truth regime” produced by intellec­ tuals and regional elites that emerged in the early twentieth century, natu­ ralizing the differences among Brazil’s regions. One of the foundational narratives defining the region and its people was Euclides da Cunha’s 1902 exposition on the War of Canudos, Os sertões (Rebellion in the Backlands). Da Cunha portrayed the Northeast as a threat to the modern Brazilian nation, depicting nordestinos as both resilient warriors and immiserated mixed-race pathogens whose traditions and backwardness left them prey to devious messianic leaders. Filmmakers, novelists, and artists further de­ veloped o Nordeste as a trope in the 1920s and 1930s, portraying an imag­ ined land of starving drought victims, a traditional plantation society ruled by rural elite families, and a region defined by its folkloric traditions.33 Regionalist images weigh so heavily on the national imagination that they have long influenced how people think about Northeastern Brazil, rein­ forcing assumptions of o Nordeste and limiting the possibilities for change in the region. Much of the literature on the emergence of Latin American nations, reflecting a teleological bias, considered regions to be provincial and tra­ ditional, and depicted them as areas condensing the material and social problems that afflict the Third World. Scholars who examine regional­ ism in Latin America have treated the processes of regional constructions as related to colonial legacies, ethnicities, and topographical distinctions

Introduction   15

(i.e., highlands/coast).34 The region often symbolizes the authentic roots of a people, as well as a provincial space at odds with the modern nation. Regional differences in Latin America are usually racialized, othering rural, black, and indigenous regions as backward in contrast to wealthier regions portrayed as whiter and more modern.35 In the Brazilian case, some schol­ ars have argued that regionalism persists because of the socioeconomic in­ equalities that distinguish the Southeast from the Northeast, emphasizing material conditions rather than a geographic or cultural difference.36 While I agree that material conditions often underpin regional distinctions, the regime of representations defining o Nordeste relies heavily on naturalized characterizations of impoverishment that are racialized and gendered and based on the notion that Northeastern culture is inferior. Historians Barbara Weinstein and Stanley Blake have examined the processes that led to the creation of regional difference in the twentieth century. To challenge the assumptions entailed, Blake shows how elites and intellectuals constructed the nordestino as a separate racial category early in the century. State-sponsored development projects defined the nordestino as a part of nation through discourses of scientific studies on race and medicine. Such studies and development projects naturalized regional ra­ cial and social differences as defining the modern Brazilian nation, consti­ tuting what Blake labels a “neo-orientalism.”37 In The Color of Modernity, Weinstein examines how uneven patterns of regional development created racialized regional identities. Focusing on the 1930s and 1950s, she shows how people from São Paulo envisioned themselves as superior to those from the North and Northeast, producing their own identity as a compos­ ite of economic prosperity, modernity, and whiteness. She argues that in the case of São Paulo, the region became the place to construct the nation, an imagined community in which São Paulo placed itself at the top of a hierarchy of regions that made up the Brazilian nation. Revolution in the Terra do Sol further develops the historiography on Brazilian regionalism by showing how people used popular culture and political discourse during a period of conflict to draw from and ­reconfigure the trope of o Nordeste in their struggles to change the ­traditional power structures in the region. Although I agree that the trope of o Nordeste has primarily been mobilized by elites, intellectuals, and state ­officials to claim and maintain their power, my study shows how nonelites also en­ gaged with the trope of o Nordeste to shape resistance movements that countered elitist or state conceptions of the region and its people. To

16 Introduction

stretch beyond elite and nonelite dichotomies, I also examine mass media and popular culture and its power, via repetition and circulation, to rein­ force or potentially change people’s assumptions about the region and its people. To show the debates and how they connected to Brazilian regional­ ism and Cold War history, I focus on analyzing the conflicting representa­ tions of the key symbols of the trope of o Nordeste in political discourse and popular culture. Applying the theoretical works of Stuart Hall and Pierre Bourdieu on representations exposes the fundamental blind spot in much of the scholarship on regionalism, identity formation, and the Northeastern rural social movements. Pierre Bourdieu argues that an analysis of ­regional identity must locate a separation between representation and reality, even if this only involves the study of struggles over representations and the “social demonstrations whose aim it is to manipulate mental images.”38 The repre­ sentations are the means through which “social agents imagine the divisions of reality and which contribute to the reality of the divisions.”39 Bourdieu’s point about the power of representations to create and reinforce notions of difference in a society is further developed in Stuart Hall’s work on rep­ resentations in popular culture. In a study explaining why popular culture matters, Hall claims that “how things are represented and the ‘machiner­ ies’ and regimes of representation in a culture play a constitutive, and not merely a reflexive, after-the-event role.”40 Even though the discursive or the representational realm is not an innate or real ­distinction—people know that what they see in movies is not “real” per se—at the same time, repre­ sentations in popular culture influence what people believe to be true or false, possible or impossible. As Stuart Hall argues, the longer or the more frequently such ideas circulate in society, the more likely it becomes that people will believe the representations as truths.41 In the case of Northeastern Brazil, stereotypes about o Nordeste and nordestinos are so entrenched that they are better defined as a trope, or the themes, conventions, or devices a filmmaker or author employs to tell a story, which the audience will recognize and understand instantly because they are commonly used in popular culture.42 As Hayden White argues, tropes are the “soul of discourse.”43 White’s interest in trope focused on how forms of writing created the structure and language of the historical narrative. I use the notion of a trope to describe how representations of his­ torical figures and narratives have created a language to define the region and its people, or to distinguish o Nordeste as the Other in the Brazilian

Introduction   17

nation. Like Foucault’s arguments about discourse, tropes circulate and are held as truths within a society. But tropes are so widely accepted that they become figures of speech that stand in for a broader array of visual im­ ages, themes, phrases, accents, and stereotypes and other representations of difference.44 As such, tropes are entrenched stereotypes that are rarely questioned within a society. As figures of speech, tropes are also ambigu­ ous, holding different meanings for groups and individuals. Tropes can be repressive but they also offer the possibility for resistance, subversion or contestation.45 The trope of o Nordeste emerged in the late nineteenth century as intellectuals defined Northeastern Brazil and its inhabitants, nordestinos, as the backward, nonwhite, folkloric, impoverished, and violent Other threatening the modern Brazilian nation. The trope includes historical symbols, such as the cangaceiro, the impoverished drought victim, the rural poor, the religious pilgrim, and the coronel (rural political boss), and his­ torical themes, such as plantation slavery, patriarchy, and messianic move­ ments. The trope of o Nordeste encompasses multiple themes and symbols that overlap and, at times, contradict one another. For some, o Nordeste might bring to mind sugarcane fields and slave labor while for others, o Nordeste is the barren, dry lands of Rocha’s Deus e o diabo. The trope can invoke visions of ignorant, vulnerable rural people brainwashed into a messianic cult, or the same rural people, depicted as strong and virulent warriors fighting against the Brazilian Armed Forces for a different type of nation. The repetition of such symbols and themes naturalize and repro­ duce the idea of Northeastern Brazil as nonmodern and chained to its past, while also being unstable and ambiguous. This study examines the influ­ ence of the trope of o Nordeste in shaping the political debates over and in Northeastern Brazil during the Cold War. While themes and symbols composing the trope of o Nordeste, such as cangaceiros, rural poor and coronéis, slavery, and messianism, formed the language of the political debates in the 1950s and 1960s, other themes or symbols associated with o Nordeste were rarely mentioned. For example, although the symbols mulher macho (butch woman) and mulher braba (bossy woman) or mulher brava (warrior woman) are associated with the masculinized regional trope of o Nordeste, they were not a part of the lan­ guage commonly used to discuss agrarian reform and rural workers’ rights in Northeastern Brazil in the 1950s and 1960s. The idea of “mulher macho, sim senhor!” describes the “masculine” characteristics of rural nordestinas,

18 Introduction

whose bodies have been masculinized in descriptions of muscles and phy­ sique, as in Domingos Olímpio’s Luzia-Homem (1903). Mulher macho and mulher braba also refer to women who take on “masculine” roles that sub­ vert the traditional gendered hierarchies in the family, with sexual part­ ners, or in societal roles. The terms often have a negative connotation, suggesting that a woman is “barbarous” or unreasonably confrontational. While the idea of mulher macho has been used in conjunction with the idea of mulher brava46 to describe historical women who followed the cangaço, such as Maria Bonita, this idea was not addressed in connection to debates using the symbol of the cangaceiro in the 1950s and 1960s. The struggles of the 1950s and 1960s were perceived as masculine, and women rarely ap­ pear in historical sources except as figures to illustrate a man’s masculinity or honor. The few Northeastern women who are mentioned in newspaper articles and other documents are women whose husbands led Ligas and were assassinated, such as Elizabeth Teixeira, or nonrural women who were often involved in the organizations because of their husbands. The Ligas published a few reports on the emergence of Ligas Femininas and Rural Women’s Congresses in the Northeast, but I never found additional docu­ mentation on such organizations.47

Organization of the Book Using a cultural approach to Cold War history to recognize the power of regionalism in Brazil, Revolution in the Terra do Sol is themati­ cally organized and divided in two parts: the first contains five chapters centered on the debates over key historical symbols of the trope of o Nordeste in the 1950s and 1960s; the second and much shorter part consists of two final chapters in which I analyze the historical memory of the Ligas Camponesas. Chapter 1 establishes the historical context of the Cold War in Brazil and introduces the cast of characters, including the rural social movements, politicians, development agencies, Conservatives, and radical cultural movements. The following chapters in the first part of the book address the main historical symbols and themes associated with the trope of o Nordeste that formed the language of the debates about the region: the cangaceiro, the rural poor and the coronel, slavery, abolition and quilombos, and messianic cults such as Canudos. I attempt to recreate the dialectic exchange among competing groups to show how they appropriated the historical symbols and themes to bolster their arguments about the type of

Introduction   19

development projects or reforms needed in Northeastern Brazil to combat rural poverty. In doing so, I employ discourse analysis to recognize how categories used to distinguish difference such as race, social class, gender, and religion informed the debates and experiences of social and political struggles. I use four different types of sources to find the voices debating the future of Northeastern Brazil in the 1950s and 1960s. Official documents in Brazilian and US archives about Northeastern Brazil offer government officials’ perceptions about Northeastern Brazil and its people. Such docu­ ments express broader concerns about foreign influences in Northeastern Brazil, primarily Cuba and the United States. The secret police records (DOPS, Department of Political and Social Order) in Recife, Pernam­ buco, and São Paulo offer perspectives of rural elites and the military po­ lice. Newspapers, magazines and news documentaries compose another set of sources I use to uncover representations of Northeastern Brazil and nordestinos in the 1950s and 1960s, including mainstream and alternative periodicals in Brazil and the United States. In the context of the Cuban Revolution, the rural social movements, in particular the Ligas Campone­ sas, generated a tremendous amount of interest not only in the media but also among scholars. I analyze books, articles, and conference papers pro­ duced in the 1950s and 1960s in the United States and Brazil to understand how intellectuals perceived the region and its people. I analyze works by foreigners who visited the area, such as Jean-Paul Sartre; papers about the literacy projects Paulo Freire led in rural Northeastern Brazil; and con­ ferences held at the main Northeastern research institute, the Joaquim Nabuco Foundation. Popular culture sources such as films, literatura de cordel (popular chapbook poetry), theater plays, songs, and artwork are the fourth set of sources I use to engage with popular perceptions of North­ eastern Brazil. By examining the representations across diverse media and in the context of one another, or employing an intertextual analysis, I show how difference was represented, challenged, and sustained during the Cold War while suggesting the repercussions of such representations in terms of legitimizing violence against rural people, creating support for the military coup, and structuring inequalities in the Brazilian nation.48 The point of this kind of analysis is to render visible the entrenched stereotypes composing the trope of o Nordeste, recognize the power they have held in legitimizing political processes that limited rural men and women’s citizenship rights, and to advocate for the need to denaturalize

20 Introduction

such stereotypes, interrupting the power they hold to create hierarchies of superiority and inferiority in Brazilian society. Many politicians, artists, social movement leaders, and participants fighting for agrarian reform and rural workers’ rights in the 1960s engaged with the trope. In some cases, they sought to counter the dominant meanings of a symbol, replacing them with new meanings that empowered rural people and turned rural nordestinos into the heroes of the Brazilian nation. In other cases, social movements tried to reframe ideas of criminality, replacing the idea that the rural worker who stole food from the large landowner was a criminal with the idea that the large landowners were the “real” criminals for beating, starving, exploiting, and, at times, murdering rural workers. But, in still other cases, social movements relied upon the trope, further entrenching stereotypes of nordestinos as impoverished and backward victims. Politi­ cal filmmakers such as Glauber Rocha may have intended to bolster the fight for agrarian reform in the Northeast through films such as Deus e o diabo, but in doing so, they reinforced stereotypes that distinguished the region and its people as the Other. This book shows the past attempts to challenge the dominant stereotypes through political projects demanding greater social and political equality, and the second part of the book de­ scribes projects to replace the negative meanings associated with o Nordeste with positive meanings in today’s Northeast. The final chapters of the book examine the question of memory and how the story of the Ligas Camponesas turned into a historical narra­ tive. In this effort, I analyze oral histories, autobiographies, museums, and documentary films. Chapter 6 shifts forward to the 1980s when the topic of the rural social movements resurfaced in the final years of the military dictatorship. As a form of resistance to the dictatorship, the history of the Northeastern rural social movements in the 1950s and 1960s was written as tragedy, reinforcing a central theme in the trope of o Nordeste. ­Chapter 6 analyzes why certain versions of history have been accepted as “true.” Al­ though these versions drew from stereotypes associated with o Nordeste to reinforce their argument, they also offered a new narrative of suffering, resilience and resistance. The final chapter evaluates the story of one of the few surviving members of the Peasant Leagues in 2005 in the context of other memorial projects in Northeastern Brazil. An autodidactic historian and political militant residing on the plantation where the initial Peasant League victory for land expropriation occurred, Zito de Galiléia’s story demonstrates the power of the trope of o Nordeste both as a tool of dis­ crimination and a platform for resistance.

Introduction   21

I divide the book into these two sections to separate the “truths” revealed in the oral histories, documentaries and autobiographies created during the final years of the dictatorship (1979–85) from the insights of the sources created in the 1950s and 1960s. Throughout Latin America, schol­ ars have turned to oral history and memory projects to contest the official histories of the dictatorship created by the military or military support­ ers.49 Such an approach relates to work done by human rights commissions in collecting testimonies to put military officials on trial. In addition, oral histories offer a source to tell “other” histories of authoritarian regimes be­ cause censorship and repression during the dictatorships limited the pro­ duction of historical sources. In Brazil, as the dictatorship drew to a close in the 1980s, two re­ search institutions funded major oral history projects interviewing leaders and political players who had been involved in politics and the rural social movements in the 1950s and 1960s in Northeastern Brazil. While the re­ corded testimonies provide invaluable information about the political and social movements, they also carry the burden of time and the discrepancies of being produced in an entirely different historical context. It is impos­ sible to separate the stories told in the 1980s from the multiplicity of expe­ riences that individuals encountered after the 1964 coup, including arrest, torture, imprisonment, political silencing, and in many cases, the experi­ ence of over fifteen years of exile. Likewise, perspectives on Cuba, China, and the Soviet Union had changed drastically between 1964 and the early 1980s. Many of the interviews were produced as a form of resistance to the dictatorship, emphasizing the tragic defeat of the revolutionary political and social projects and the further impoverishment of the Northeast that had occurred during military rule. Such sources are more relevant to un­ derstanding how, as Dominick LaCapra argues, oppressed or marginalized people reclaim history, transforming it into a way to understand their lives in the present.50 The final chapters reveal how people transformed the his­ tory of the Ligas at two different historical moments and how this relates to the power of regionalism. Before moving forward to the 1980s and 2005, it is necessary to go back to the 1950s and early 1960s, providing the context in which the “revolutions” developed. Chapter 1 introduces the major players who en­ gaged in the debates about the Northeast, the Brazilian nation, and the Third World. Not only did filmmakers, popular poets, playwrights, and artists actively shape commonly held assumptions about the region and its people, but a wide range of political actors including international,

22 Introduction

­ ational and regional state officials, journalists, landowning elites and n other Conservatives, intellectuals, social movement leaders, and rural workers engaged with the trope. For many, it was a time in which change seemed imminent, offering people hopes and fears of what such changes could mean. The traditional landowning elite who had been in power for as long as anyone could remember no longer controlled politics as they had previously, allowing new voices to emerge with new political projects for the Northeast. The global context of the era of the Cuban Revolution sent sparks flying throughout Latin America, and suddenly revolutionary social movements and cultural movements in Northeastern Brazil seemed to have the potential to turn Brazil into another Cuba. And yet for many, the rural social movements seemed more similar to the nineteenth-century messianic movement known as Canudos in the backlands of o Nordeste than a social revolution.

Note on Terms and Translations All translations from Portuguese are my own except where otherwise indicated. In cases when the Portuguese phrasing influences the tone, or when the Portuguese word may be misspelled or have dual meanings, I include the original Portuguese in the notes. This is particularly relevant with one of my key sources, literatura de cordel (popular pamphlet poetry or chapbook literature) commonly referred to as folhetos, which is a form of poetry associated with Northeastern Brazil, printed on both sides of large sheets of newsprint paper, folded in four sections into pamphlets that are hung on a string and sold in markets, hence the name, cordel (twine). This form of “folk” culture has a rhythmic cadence as it was often performed rather than read, and it often derives humor from phrases or words with dual meanings. In the printed copies of the folhetos, phonetic spellings or misspelled words could have signaled the author’s limited lit­ eracy or been used by literate authors to create an authenticity based on the idea of the nordestino as semiliterate and informally educated. I have left film and book titles in their original Portuguese followed by their En­ glish titles in parentheses. If the film or book has been officially translated in English, I use italics but if it is my own translation, the translated title is not italicized. I attempt to distinguish between the trope of o Nordeste and nordestinos and the actual place and people of Northeastern Brazil and Northeasterners by using Portuguese italics to distinguish the trope and English translations to refer to the place and people.

Introduction   23

I use the term rural worker to characterize rural men and women who work in the rural Northeast, unless I have evidence that they iden­ tified themselves as camponesas (peasants) or any other category used in the rural Northeast related to their work contract or the various types of rents or free labor tenants provided landowners in exchange for living or ­squatting on the land, including eiteiro, foreiro, posseiro, meeiro, or parceiro. The broad designation includes rural women and children who may not have earned wages or held official jobs but who worked in the fields, on the plantations, in their homes, and on their plots of land. In its Portuguese translation, the term “rural worker” (trabalhador rural) specifically refers to itinerant wage laborers, but to be clear, I do not wish to invoke this definition in English. Many of the rural men and women in this book were resident laborers, living on the properties where they worked.

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Part One O Nordeste in the Cold War

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1 Revolution in Brazil Historical Context and Key Players

It is a race: The hope of progress against spreading despair. And time is ­r apidly running out. —CBS news anchor Eric Sevareid describing the potential of new development projects in Northeastern Brazil, The Rude Awakening, 1961.

surrounding the Cuban Revolution and John F. Kennedy’s Latin American aid program Alliance for Progress, revolution or evolution (modernization) were often depicted as the two possible paths for the Third World. As suggested in the above quote from a CBS news report in 1961, the debate about revolution or evolution suggested a feeling of urgent and imminent change. While this sentiment is at odds with the trope of o Nordeste that defines the region as impervious to change, drastic changes were occurring in the region in the 1950s and 1960s. During this period, Conservatives and rural social movements portrayed one another as the enemy, but they all advocated for some form of agrarian reform as a solution to regional poverty. The widely held belief in the need for change in the landholding system demonstrates that the traditional rural elite had lost their hegemonic power, allowing for an opening in the political landscape. Northeastern large landowners could no longer control the terms of political debate as they had in the past; they were forced to enter into a battle among numerous groups and individuals all seeking to gain popular support for their political projects and visions of change for the region. Scholar Fernando Antônio Azevedo has labeled this transformation as the ending of “agrarian peace,” or the end to the domination of the rural elites who had ruled with the privileges of the old rural oligarchies, maintaining In the years

28  O Nordeste in the Cold War

“peace” by overexploiting rural labor and excluding rural workers politically and socially.1 This chapter introduces the major political and cultural actors who held stakes in projects advocating for change in Northeastern Brazil and provides background information about the 1950s and 1960s to contextualize the debates analyzed in the chapters that follow. Although most of the book focuses on the period from 1959 to 1964, it is necessary to understand what led up to the dramatic political debates, protests, land seizures, labor strikes, and revolutionary cultural and educational projects that characterized the era. This chapter also describes some of the key events and actors in the late 1950s and early 1960s; it is organized into stories about the movements or political parties instead of an all-encompassing chronological narrative. Analyzing the different “origin” narratives or how, why, and when the different groups began to take interest in the rural Northeast also shows how such stories relate to the trope of o Nordeste.

Origins of the Ligas Camponesas Although disparate origin stories offer a wealth of reasons why the rural social movement that came to be known as the Ligas Camponesas began in the mid-1950s, the most commonly repeated version starts with death. In 1954, around 140 rural workers formed the Sociedade Agrícola e Pecuária dos Plantadores de Pernambuco (SAPPP, the Agricultural and Livestock Society of Pernambucan Planters) on the former sugar plantation named the Engenho Galiléia, “Galilee Planation.” According to most accounts, resident rural workers had been borrowing the communal coffin, or loló, from the local municipal government when a community member died. After the body was buried, the coffin had to be returned to the municipal depository. The mutual-aid society began as a way to guarantee workers the right to have their own coffins when they died, a fate that came early to most rural Northeasterners in the 1950s.2 Even though the rural workers elected the owner of the Engenho Galiléia as their first honorary president, his initial support for the association quickly waned. By early 1955, landowner Oscar de Arruda Beltrão demanded the shutdown of the association, and he moved to expel rural workers and tenant farmers from his lands. The rural workers resisted their expulsion by seeking assistance from Recife lawyer Francisco Julião, who was rumored to defend rural people’s rights. Julião began organizing a legal case for the expropria-

Revolution in Brazil  29

tion of the Engenho Galiléia. As the case evolved, journalists renamed the SAPPP the Ligas Camponesas, drawing a connection between the mutualaid society and the defunct Communist Party Peasant Leagues (1946–48). At the end of 1959, the Galileus (workers residing on the Engenho Galiléia) won the legal case for the expropriation of the Engenho Galiléia, and the Ligas Camponesas started to expand rapidly throughout rural communities in the Northeast. Although the funerary story is widely accepted, it has also been nordestinizado, that is, turned into a story that reaffirms commonly held beliefs about o Nordeste and nordestinos.3 Stories about the frequency of deaths linked to impoverishment and the ceremonies surrounding death in the Northeast flourish in popular culture and scholarship, forming a key strand in the trope of o Nordeste.4 This version of the origin story emphasizes the harshness of regional poverty, portrays the rural workers as fatalistic and nonpolitical victims who lack the material conditions to afford coffins, and suggests that the social movement developed because of leader Francisco Julião. An article entitled, “Now, They Have a Coffin,” which was accompanied by the photograph in Figure 1.1, provides a clear example of how the mainstream Brazilian media drew from the trope of o Nordeste in their coverage of the Ligas Camponesas.5 The article begins by describing the author’s perception of the “misery” he finds upon arriving at the Engenho Galiléia: Without any previous understanding, if one arrived in front of this shed covered in palm fronds, a simple hut with a rustic sign, they would not believe it is the site of the most famous nordestina Peasant League. . . . The land, completely eroded, almost doesn’t grow anything other than manioc. Dirty children with extended bellies emerge from the miserable huts alongside men with fixed stares and women who are prematurely aged.6

The opening paragraph draws from the trope of o Nordeste in its description of poverty. The article emphasized the funerary version of the Ligas’s origins in the title, the final sentence, and Zezé de Galiléia’s highlighted response to a question about the benefits of the Ligas, in which he says the Ligas provided individual coffins for community members. But a deeper reading of Zezé’s complete response to this question suggests an alternative explanation for the popularity of this story. Although the article focuses on how the Galileus started the association to provide coffins to community members, Ligas leader Zezé (José

30  O Nordeste in the Cold War

Figure 1.1 The photograph of the SAPPP building and rural workers appeared in O ­Estado de São Paulo in 1961, although the building was probably constructed between 1954 and 1959 before the SAPPP became known the Ligas Camponesas.

Source: “Agora eles têm um caixão, . . .” O Estado de São Paulo, August 8, 1961, 7. Courtesy of O Estado de São Paulo.

Francisco de Sousa) seems to be telling the story to prove that neither Francisco Julião nor the Galileus were communists. He counters the idea that the community members are brainwashed victims by discussing a political issue about literacy requirements for voting enfranchisement. As Zezé said: The Ligas are defending our rights and are helping us. Look, before, when one of us died, the coffin was borrowed from town hall. After the body was lowered into the pauper’s grave, the coffin was returned to the municipal depository. Today, the Liga pays for the funeral and the coffin goes into the ground with the body. They go around

Revolution in Brazil  31

saying that Dr. Julião is a communist. But a communist wouldn’t do that. Here, we are all Catholics. Dr. Julião is our friend. We don’t vote for him because we don’t know how to write.7

In his response, Zezé offered an alternative version about why the community formed the SAPPP. His version portrayed community members as consciously forming the association as a form of protection and resistance. We established this association [SAPPP] to fight against our expulsion from the land. The Engenho’s owner lived in Recife and charged us all foro (payment for land one cultivates) without ever being interested in what was happening here. The land almost produced nothing, but we went on surviving. All of a sudden, the landowner decided to increase the foro. But we couldn’t pay more. We refused. Since the police wouldn’t solve the case, the plantation owner went to the Justice department. We had to defend ourselves and for this reason, we started the association.8

Although the rural workers on the Engenho Galiléia may have included the need for individual coffins on their list of reasons for staring a mutual-aid association, as this example demonstrates, community members probably had additional or other reasons for forming an association. According to other accounts, the community organized the SAPPP to build a school on the Engenho and hire a state teacher.9 A former Ligas participant remembered forming the SAPPP to pay for a community dentist and to assist pregnant women, young mothers, and infants.10 Beyond the community’s service needs, another version describes the political motivations behind the formation of the mutual-aid association, linking leaders of the SAPPP to an earlier Communist Party rural social movement from the 1940s.11 Although scholars have argued about which version is true, I am not sure it is possible to determine absolute truth in this case. Not only are multiple truths likely, but many of the stories also carry reflections of the time period and politicization of agrarian reform. Although Zezé’s explanation related to rising costs of the foro makes sense, it is necessary to take into account that he was telling this story in 1961 after years of political experience as a Ligas leader, and he was aware that he was speaking to a reporter from one of Brazil’s largest national newspapers. Zezé’s story also fails to explain why the SAPPP leaders would make the landowner honorary president if they had created the organization to combat the rise of rent costs. I believe that instead of judging true and false in this case, a more pressing question is to consider why the coffin story is the most w ­ ell-known and repeated

32  O Nordeste in the Cold War

origin story. Drawing from the trope of o Nordeste, this version emphasizes the connection between misery, poverty, and death and also portrays rural men and women as nonpolitical zealots who are victims of the landowner’s exploitation and Francisco Julião’s brainwashing. In the next section, I further question such assumptions by detailing how the SAPPP turned into a wide-scale social movement that captured national and international attention in the early 1960s.

Transforming the SAPPP into the Galiléia “Revolution” Led by the ex-administrator of the Engenho Galiléia,12 José Francisco de Souza (velho Zezé) and José dos Prazeres, a group of rural workers from the Engenho Galiliéia traveled to Recife, in early January 1955, to meet with state legislator Francisco Julião at his house outside of Recife, in Caxangá. Julião (PSB, Brazilian Socialist Party) agreed to take their case pro bono, thus beginning the legal process for the expropriation of the Engenho Galiléia. The frequently told origin story often jumps forward from this meeting to the legal victory, in late 1959, but this leap glosses over the processes that took place from 1955 to 1959 to allow the case to even be heard in the state court. During this period, the lawyers and the Galileus had to find ways to gain support for agrarian reform from a broader coalition of rural workers and urban supporters. To do so, they had to make the dangers of organizing seem worthwhile to the workers, elevate urban middle- and upper-class concerns for the plight of the Northeastern rural workers, and establish the idea that agrarian reform was a feasible solution to poverty and inequality in the Northeast. A major obstacle to the efforts to organize the rural workers was the history of how rural justice functioned in Northeastern Brazil. Until the election of Pernambucan governor Cid Sampaio in 1958, Northeastern political power had always been in the hands of the traditional rural elite who exerted their influence over the police and justice system. In the countryside, this meant that landowners’ justice was the only justice, or that the police generally supported landowners over rural workers in conflicts. Landowners employed private security forces or hired thugs known as capangas or grilheiros, who often used violence to control rural workers. For instance, a story in the mainstream newspaper O Diário de Pernambuco in 1955 described an incident in which a plantation administrator stole

Revolution in Brazil  33

the only goat of a sixty-year-old female worker and her young child. In an act of resistance, she seized her goat from the administrator, who then invaded her house, beat her, took the goat, and told her child not to complain, threatening to put a bullet in the child’s mouth and beat his mother again.13 Rural workers frequently recounted such stories of violent punishments for “crimes” against the landowners’ rules. From 1955 to 1959, Francisco Julião faced physical threats by capangas and the police on numerous occasions. Former Ligas member José Joaquim da Silva or “Zito da Galiléia” remembered a time when Julião was arrested for being at the Engenho Galiléia. Since a local police captain forbade the Galileus from holding meetings, Julião asked the group to send him an invitation to come to Galiléia in his formal capacity as state legislator. When Julião arrived, the police captain and eight officers seized and beat him, arrested him, and took him to prison. The state governor, Cordeiro de Farias, freed Julião since he had not committed any crime; nevertheless, the police captain was promoted to major for his actions.14 One of the other lawyers for the Galiléia case, Djacy Magalhães had bullets fired at him in 1956.15 And on October 7, 1959, Julião’s cousin, camponês Antônio, was in his house, eating a piece of yucca, when someone opposed to the expropriation fired a bullet through a window and killed him.16 Besides strategies of avoiding violence through escape and alarm systems, Ligas leaders attempted to delegitimize the use of such force by making rural workers’ issues visible regionally and nationally while also urging them to form their own associations. On September 3, 1955, the first Pernambucan state meeting of peasants was held in Recife, bringing together around three thousand participants. After the conference, the participants took to the streets, marching in what was declared to be the first organized protest by rural workers in Pernambuco.17 The success of this march and the need to create broader visibility for the struggle of rural workers as an issue central to regional politics led to more organized protest marches, occurring frequently from 1955 to 1959.18 In addition, new associations similar to the SAPPP emerged during these years, such as the Association of Rural Workers of Sapé, in Paraíba, led by João Pedro Teixeira.19 Another obstacle to the movement was challenging the mainstream media coverage of the SAPPP and the expropriation case. It was soon after Julião had accepted the Engenho Galiléia case that the mainstream media labeled the SAPPP the Ligas Camponesas, an effort to create an association with the defunct PCB Ligas (1945–47). The mainstream newspaper

34  O Nordeste in the Cold War

O Diário de Pernambuco published the majority of articles on the Ligas Camponesas on the police pages of the newspaper. This placement suggested the criminal aspects or illegality of the movement, and the Ligas were depicted as “tearing apart the peace in the countryside.”20 To challenge the idea that there was peace in the countryside and that rural workers were criminals, Ligas members frequently told stories about the injustice and violence of the landowner justice system. This process is further discussed in the forthcoming chapters on debates about the meaning of Northeastern symbols of cangaceiros (backlands bandits), messianic movements and slavery. To win the court case aimed at expropriating the Engenho Galiléia, the Ligas Camponesas also had to gain broader popular support for rural workers’ rights and agrarian reform among a broader coalition of rural and urban populations. In the countryside, this meant that the Ligas had to address the concerns faced by the majority of rural people regardless of their labor conditions as tenant farmers or wage laborers. The Ligas had to create a political identity broad enough to encompass all rural workers. In a speech, in 1955, in front of the state legislative assembly, Julião used the term camponês (peasant) when discussing an issue related to agriculture. Before this time, only leftist groups had used the term camponês, but it was not commonly used to refer to rural workers. Julião was interrupted and asked to use a less politically charged word to describe the rural population, such as rurícola, an obscure term that meant rural person, possibly a deriving from Latin (country-dweller) or scientific names (i.e., Clytus ruricola, Gecarcinus ruricola).21 Rurícola may have been the rural elite’s formal term for the rural population, but it was not a term rural people themselves used. No Brazilian would say “I am a rurícola,” but would refer to the type of labor relationship they maintained (“I am a parceiro, foreiro, etc.”) or their job title (“I am a cane cutter”). Julião defended his use of camponês because rural people came from the campo (countryside) and they did not know the term rurícola.22 Julião later claimed that he used the term camponês because it had an ideological and political connotation of a group that opposed the latifundiários (landowning elite).23 From 1955 to 1959, Julião and the other leaders of the Ligas Camponesas used three tools to transform the SAPPP into a rural social movement fighting for rural workers’ rights and agrarian reform: the civil code, the Bible, and literatura de cordel, or popular pamphlet poetry, also translated as “chapbooks.” While lawyers used the civil code to argue for the le-

Revolution in Brazil  35

gality of expropriating large estates and leaders referred to biblical passages in their speeches to gain legitimacy for rural people’s rights, literatura de cordel was the mass media that spread news about the Ligas Camponesas throughout the countryside. Thousands of folhetos (pamphlets) were distributed throughout the countryside, and the stories they contained were performed by poets (repentistas, folheteiros) at weekly fairs, informing illiterate audiences about the rural struggles for land, enfranchisement, and labor rights.24 According to Julião, even though the popular poetry was not explicitly political, most of the stories told of struggles of “the weak against the strong, the poor against the rich, the peasant against the large landowner. At the fairs they sing the news of the poor worker who killed the patrão, the large landowner, because he deflowered the worker’s beloved fiancé.”25 Such stories—along with tales of cangaceiros such as Lampião and Antônio Silvino—nourished the “dream of liberty” among the rural population.26 The poets, singers, and publishers were a vital component of these rural struggles because they were able to spread news about the Ligas to areas where social-movement activists could not go because of threats from the large landowners.27 The Engenho Galiléia case went to trial in 1959. The lawyers Djacy Magalhães, Carlos Luiz de Andrade (state legislator, PSB), and Francisco Julião presented their arguments for the Galileus. It was the first time that rural workers had shared a state courtroom with a large landowner in the state of Pernambuco. During the hearing, over three thousand rural workers converged on Recife, accompanied by another three thousand urban supporters. The mainstream newspaper reported that the state felt threatened by the presence and visibility of these thousands of rural men and women who had gathered in the capital city to hear the decision. The judge handed down his decision in late November, deciding in favor of the workers: the Engenho Galiléia was to be expropriated and proper reimbursement paid to the landowner. O Diário de Pernambuco listed the expropriation of the Engenho Galiléia as one of the ten most important events of 1959.28 A party was held to celebrate the victory, attended by politicians and intellectuals, as well as busloads of rural men and women, who came from diverse areas throughout Pernambuco to the newly expropriated Engenho Galiléia.29 With fireworks, music, speeches, and a barbeque feast of five cows, numerous pigs, and turkeys, the victors toasted the first successful expropriation for the Ligas Camponesas.30 From its inception, the rural

36  O Nordeste in the Cold War

social movement began using broader symbols to show a united struggle for agrarian reform and rural workers’ rights. Josué de Castro, federal legislator, ex-president of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), and author of numerous books on underdevelopment and hunger in Northeastern Brazil, gave a speech at the party in which he compared the fight for land on the Engenho Galiléia to the biblical struggles of Jesus in Galilee.31 Ligas leader and lawyer Francisco Julião was described as the new Joaquim Nabuco, the famous nineteenth-century Pernambucan abolitionist. Following the victory, the Ligas Camponesas wasted no time expanding throughout the Northeast, immediately inaugurating forty new leagues. As economist Celso Furtado claimed, “[The Ligas] had a rapid expansion that is unparalleled in the history of Brazilian social movements. They communicated their messages through symbols . . . creating martyrs there where the population—without a present or a future—took any type of message that would give meaning to the rural worker’s life.”32 Later chapters examine how the Ligas appropriated symbols to further their own political projects, yet it is important to recognize that the Ligas emerged out of a wider context of change occurring in state, national, and international politics. The Ligas were in constant dialogue with other groups who were also trying to find a solution to the plight of rural Northeasterners, arguing for the necessity of regional development, broadly defined. While the historiography frequently places the emergence of the PCB Rural Syndicates and the Catholic Church Federation of Rural Workers as subsequent to the formation of the Ligas, both the PCB and the Catholic Church had been engaged in projects to combat rural poverty since in the early 1950s. The historiography on Northeastern rural social movements in the 1950s and 1960s also tends to draw distinctions between the three main movements but such distinctions are tenuous at best because many rural people were involved in more than one movement. In some locations and on some issues, the movements allied with one another. At the same time, the three social movements had different political objectives, and each told its own “origin” story explaining how Northeastern rural social activism began in the era of the Cuban Revolution. The PCB and the Catholic Church rural social movements, unlike the Ligas, had broad institutional ties, which meant that they had an “official line” to follow. Yet these institutions also were undergoing significant change during the period, and practices on the ground in the Northeast at times strayed from official ideologies. The next sections recount these origin stories to elucidate the political landscape of Northeastern Brazil.

Revolution in Brazil  37

The Brazilian Communist Party: Revolutionary to Reformist Historically, the Brazilian Communist Party was the strongest and largest nonruling Communist Party in Latin America. The Party followed the Soviet line, and most of its leaders were former military men.33 Luís Carlos Prestes was one of the PCB’s most significant national leaders in the twentieth century. From 1950 to 1964, the PCB went through significant shifts in ideologies, practices, leadership, and membership, which reflected the broader changes occurring in the Communist world and within the Brazilian nation. As many scholars argue, the Communist Party’s political position shifted from revolutionary to reformist in 1958, when it started working with the state to create a peaceful, national, and democratic Brazilian revolution. Although the PCB was a hierarchal organization, and the Comintern exerted its influence on the national and regional PCB associations, some differences existed. According to Chilcote, Pernambucan PCB leaders had a much lower level of formal education than their counterparts in São Paulo.34 Pernambucan PCB leader Gregório Bezerra, for example, was the son of a poor peasant family and had been in the Brazilian Armed Forces.35 As Cliff Welch argues, one of the important developments in the postwar period was the creation of peasant leagues, community organizations, led by the PCB in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Paraná, and Pernambuco. Although the PCB’s peasant leagues operated on a relatively small scale, they were designed to empower rural workers, register qualified rural voters, and increase the party presence in the countryside.36 The PCB’s leagues were reformist oriented and focused on community issues, such as how to provide rural people with better credit, lower rents, and better access to schools and health care. Pernambucan PCB leader Paulo Cavalcanti quoted David Capistrano’s recollections of the PCB’s long history of activism in Pernambuco as the starting point for the PCB rural unions, recognizing PCB martyrs such as the president of the PCB’s Liga Camponesa of São Lourenço who had been assassinated in 1946 by hired thugs from the Usina Tiúma.37 Most of the PCB’s leagues were shut down in May 1947 when the Communist Party was declared illegal. But, PCB leaders continued to organize the working class in urban and rural areas. In the August Manifesto of 1950, Luís Carlos Prestes advocated for agrarian reform, the immediate expropriation of latifundios, and the formation of liberation armies to free

38  O Nordeste in the Cold War

Brazil from the US imperialists and their elite Brazilian collaborators.38 These strategies were founded in party’s belief that Brazil was involved in a semicolonial relationship with the United States.39 They believed that US imperialists and Brazilian rural elites were only interested in the production of export commodities, and thus were inclined to maintain the ­Brazilian countryside in a feudal or semifeudal state. In the early 1950s, the PCB believed that the first step toward their desired end goal of socialism was to breakdown the feudalism in the countryside. This meant, as Cliff Welch argues, that “Brazil would have to break its ties with the imperialists and restructure agriculture to favor production of foodstuffs for the home market.”40 Foodstuff production for local and national consumption would fuel the urban working class as Brazil’s industrial development expanded, allowing capitalism to firmly root itself in the Brazilian nation. Once capitalism developed, it would then be possible for the proletariat to rise up and overthrow the government and move toward socialism. Particularly after the Fourth PCB Congress, in November 1954, militants tried to put into practice the revolutionary mandates of the August Manifesto.41 As Reis Filho argues, during this period rural workers put their lives on the line to fight for land rights, facing strong repression, but also forming a base on which future rural unions and Ligas could build. One of the best examples of this was the War of Porecatú or the Guerrilha de Porecatú (1950–51), an armed conflict between the police, landowners, and colonos (prospective farmers) southwest of the Paranapanema, a river that divides the states of Paraná and São Paulo.42 When the armed conflict between rural workers and landowners began, the PCB supplied the resisters with guns, ammunition, and military training in an attempt to start the agrarian revolution, but the conflict ended when the military police interceded, a move that resulted in numerous deaths and injuries.43 Another effort was the sertanejo revolt of Dona Noca (1951) in Marnahão in which Dona Noca, the “matriarch” of the sertão, armed rural workers from São João dos Patos during the “Revolution” of Maranhão, a disputed gubernatorial election in 1951. Dona Noca supported Raimundo Bastos, a journalist turned Marnanhese guerrilha, who led the “liberation army” in the conflict.44 Starting in 1950, squatters (posseiros) seized the areas of Trombas and Formosa in Goiás, a relatively large tract of land located about 300 kilo­meters from where the future Brasília would be built.45 Many were drought refugees from the Northeast who settled in the area as a part of the

Revolution in Brazil  39

Vargas era colonization project, such as in the first agricultural colony in the city of Ceres established in 1941, CANG (Colônia Agrícola de Ceres). These settlers then engaged in armed struggle (1954–57) against soldiers and landowners’ hired hands to defend their settlements. Leaders José Firmino and José Porfírio sought legal options for the communities and in 1960, Zé Porfírio was elected to state congress. Working with the PCB, the communities formed the Association of Rural Workers of Formosa and Trombas, and for a short time, the PCB claimed the towns as independent territories, or the Socialist Republic of Formoso and Trombas. In the mid-1950s, around the time when the SAPPP was founded, the PCB in Pernambuco was involved in a number of clandestine organizations that may have numbered as many one hundred PCB Ligas Camponesas.46 The PCB tried to hold a peasant conference in Palmares in 1953, although the police banned the meeting.47 According to PCB leaders, the Galileus had originally approached the PCB to help them avoid expulsion from the engenho. Rural leaders of the SAPPP, such as José dos Prazeres, had long been affiliated with the PCB, organizing PCB Ligas in the 1940s. Once contacted, the PCB recommended that the Galileus contact Francisco Julião, who they believed could handle the situation more efficiently because of his position as state legislator. What the PCB did not expect was that Julião would turn the case into a large rural social-movement that did not follow the official party line. When it became clear to PCB leaders that Julião refused to follow the party line, the PCB started organizing its own rural social movement. The PCB Rural Syndicates were mostly involved with cane workers who they felt were the most revolutionary force in the countryside. This meant that their efforts focused largely on the southern coastal area in Pernambuco. In São Paulo, in 1954, the PCB pushed for “democratic agrarian reform” in a campaign to get the state to expropriate unproductive large estates with the foundation the Union of Farmers and Agricultural Workers (ULTAB, União dos Lavradores e Trabalhadores Agrícolas do Brasil).48 From 1957 to 1964, rural workers accounted for 30 percent of all claimants who went to court to claim their rights under Brazilian labor law.49 By 1958 international and national changes had led the PCB to abandon revolutionary strategies such as the creation of liberation armies, even though the PCB had been creating such armies for years. In a speech, “The Personality Cult and Its Consequences,” at the Soviet Union Communist Party’s Twentieth Congress, Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin for the crimes

40  O Nordeste in the Cold War

he had perpetrated. The international repercussions of Stalin’s repression had led to people leaving the party. Debates in the Brazilian Central Committee and among party members affirmed the existing divisions that would lead the PCB to splinter into separate parties.50 By the early 1960s, the PCB was no longer the only important actor on Brazil’s political left. New parties and social movements emerged alongside the PCB, inspired by or allied with Communist parties outside the Soviet Union—namely, in China and Cuba. In a March 1958 declaration, Prestes released a new political program for the PCB, urging the formation of a united, democratic national front that would incorporate the working class and peasants together with progressive urban industrialists, the middle classes, large landowners, and other rural and urban elites who believed in strengthening the independent development of Brazil’s economy and opposed US imperialism.51 While remaining critical of the “feudal” social relations in the countryside and US imperialism in Brazil, the PCB encouraged peaceful forms in moving toward the “Brazilian Revolution,” avoiding the idea of armed struggle.52 As Reis Filho argues, with this declaration and changes in the national government, the PCB gained a new social legitimacy and PCB leaders were able to actively participate in public life without the threat of imprisonment.53 Scholars recognize the First Congress of Rural Workers and Landless Peasants in Belo Horizonte in 1961 as the point in which it became clear that the Ligas Camponesas and the PCB rural union movement differed in terms of strategies, objectives and ideology. At this conference, Francisco Julião emerged as the national leader of the peasantry, giving a powerful speech that demanded radical agrarian reform, or the immediate expropriation of the latifundios, “by law or by force.” Leaders of the PCB’s ULTAB opposed Julião’s proposals, which they believed were too radical. Instead the PCB prioritized the organization of legal rural unions in the countryside and the extension of labor laws to rural workers with a focus on wage earners, such as sugarcane workers.54 The 1961 Belo Horizonte Congress gave formal political support to ULTAB at the national and regional levels. For example, João Goulart, who attended the Belo Horizonte Congress, supported ULTAB efforts to legalize rural unions. Miguel Arraes of the Socialist Labor Party (Partido Socialista Trabalhista, PST) was elected governor of Pernambuco in 1962, a major victory of the Recife Front (Frente do Recife), a coalition of leftist

Revolution in Brazil  41

parties. What Arraes’s election meant for the PCB Rural Syndicates was that they had a leader in power who would not use the military police to invade rural unions and repress strikes. In June 1963, the Rural Laborer Statute (ETR, Estatuto de Trabalhador Rural) went into effect, extending urban labor laws to the countryside and regulating rural labor relations such as fixing the percentage of rent deductions to a maximum of 20 percent of a worker’s salary.55 By 1963, 270 rural unions had been formally recognized, and 557 were awaiting recognition.56 As an effect of the law, ULTAB became the National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (CONTAG, Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores Rurais), mandating the creation of state federations of farmworkers unions that fed into a national confederation.57 CONTAG’s leadership consisted not only of PCB militants but also radical Catholics.

The Radicalization of the Catholic Church in the Northeast According to many scholars, the Northeastern Church Federations emerged in 1962 as a reaction to Julião’s Ligas and the PCB rural unions. The Church felt particularly challenged by the Ligas because Julião used the Bible as one of his main organizing tools, developing radical interpretations of biblical texts, such as that Jesus aligned himself with the poor to encourage the expansion of the Ligas.58 To combat the Ligas, priests, such as Father Antônio Melo (secular) and Father Paulo Crespo (Jesuit), began leading rural unions to fight for rural workers’ rights.59 In the context of the Cold War with mounting fears about communism in the Northeast, the Church-led rural social movements gained support as the “safest” option. Although in some cases the Church Federations worked with the Ligas Camponesas, the prevailing scholarship claims that the Church only started rural unions in areas where the Ligas or the PCB held popular support. Allegedly, the C.I.A. supported the Church Federations, though this claim may reflect the politicized atmosphere of the Cold War. Other scholars deny that the Church rural movements only began as a reaction to the Ligas and the PCB. Many Church leaders claimed that the Church had been at the forefront of the rural struggles, pushing for social change in the Northeast much earlier, starting in the late 1940s. In the early years of the Cold War, the Catholic Church prioritized efforts to promote social reform.

42  O Nordeste in the Cold War

Like the Communist Party, the Catholic Church underwent major changes internationally, nationally and regionally from 1950 to 1964. The papacy of John XXIII (1958–63) and the Second Vatican Council (1962) foregrounded the problems of poverty and inequalities in the Third World, calling on lay people to end suffering and injustice by redistributing economic power throughout the world. During these years, the Brazilian Church hierarchy was split, dividing progressive Northeastern bishops from “conservatives” in the Southeast.60 The papal nuncio to Brazil from 1954 to 1964, Monsignor Armando Lombari, supported the promotion of progressive Catholics to the Brazilian hierarchy during these years, creating 109 new bishops and twenty-four archbishops.61 Even though many Church leaders and lay people were inspired to turn their attention to the poor during these years, conservative elements in the Brazilian Church, such as Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), supported the 1964 coup and denounced communism as the cause of unrest and violence in the nation.62 According to Eul-Soo Pang, the greatest achievements of the Northeastern Church from 1950 to 1959 in terms of rural development were a series of regional conferences, the promotion of Northeastern problems to the national political agenda and the lobbying of the Kubitschek administration to create SUDENE.63 Dom Eugenio de Araujo Sales and Dom Helder Câmara were two progressive bishops who helped start the “Natal Movement,” which focused on rural development through radio programs, workers’ unions, co-operatives, and health clinics.64 This led to the development of the Rural Assistance Service (SAR, Serviço de Assistência Rural) in 1949 in Rio Grande do Norte, encouraging clergy and lay people to work together to solve underdevelopment through literacy programs, maternity centers, and labor unions. A number of conferences took place from 1955 to 1959, uniting bishops with politicians, journalists, lawyers, engineers, and Ligas members to discuss key problems in underdevelopment in the Northeast and potential solutions (for instance, the Conference of the Salvation of the Northeast in 1955 and the First and Second Northeastern Bishops’ Congresses, in 1956 and 1959). Delegates discussed such issues as agrarian reform, migration, the inequalities between the Northeast and Central-South regions, rural credit programs, colonization programs and social services such as education and rural electrification. The outcome of conferences was the inauguration of the development plan OPENO (Operação Nordeste, “Operation Northeast”) that preceded the creation of the

Revolution in Brazil  43

national agency for Northeastern development, SUDENE.65 Through the conferences and the SAR, the Catholic Church played a significant role in developing national programs for regional development in Northeastern Brazil.66 But the question of what led priests to start the rural unions still remains. The two main priests involved in the rural union movement in Pernambuco were both from the Northeast, Paulo Crespo and Antônio Melo. According to Paulo Crespo, leader of the Servico de Orientação Rural de Pernambuco (SORPE, the Rural Orientation Service of Pernambuco), he became involved once he became a priest and saw the misery in the countryside.67 Since misery had existed in the Northeast for centuries, it is likely that priests such as Crespo recognized poverty as a concern because of institutional changes that prioritized social reform and educational programs over charity. After talking with Dom Eugenio Sales about SAR and its benefits to rural people in raising literacy rates, healthcare and rural workers’ associations, Crespo decided to start a similar organization in Pernambuco, the Rural Orientation Service. Crespo believed that rural workers needed a program that would teach rural people how to acquire what they wanted and needed, allowing them to form legal rural unions. Crespo supported this objective by quoting Pope John XXIII’s recommendation that rural workers should be the protagonists of their own liberation, showing the link between regional movements and international mandates from the Vatican.68 Father Antônio Melo recognized that the changes in the Church came from Pope XXIII. Melo recalled that he felt a personal connection with the Pope because both of their parents were rural workers, which gave them the ability to understand the rural Church and its “simple” or ordinary parishioners.69 Melo believed the origins and experiences of Northeastern bishops in the 1950s and 1960s allowed them to better understand the rural people than their counterparts in wealthier regions. In 1961, Melo was sent to Cabo, Pernambuco as a priest, an area that had five Ligas led by Julião, which must have seemed ideal for a priest who described himself as passionate about religion and politics. He recalled that when he arrived in Cabo, the peasants were already organizing strikes, land occupations, fighting with landowners and in the courts.70 According to Melo, he and Julião did not share the same ideologies, but they also worked together, since Melo saw his role in Cabo as being dedicated to helping organize the peasants, helping them find their own leaders, and being in solidarity

44  O Nordeste in the Cold War

with them. Instead of radical agrarian reform, he believed the best solution was to form agrarian cooperatives so that peasants could become owners of the sugarcane and its production. Melo’s cooperative project, Tiriri, got support from SUDENE and the state and national government, a topic discussed later in the book. Priests leading the Northeastern Church rural social movements such as Melo and Crespo decided to organize peasants and rural workers not only because of their own personal experiences as rural men and priests but also because of the changes in the Vatican and in regional and national politics. While the strength of the Northeastern rural social movements led by the Ligas, the PCB and the Church would suggest increased national political attention to the agrarian sector, presidential administrations from 1950 to 1964 largely focused on the development of industry, almost completely ignoring agricultural development. The next section explains the national political landscape in the 1950s and 1960s to illustrate how and when the Northeast became a political issue while also describing the changes in Pernambucan politics.

The National Shift to the Left Although Vargas used populism as a style of politics during his previous presidency/dictatorship (1930–45), on his return to office (1951–54), Vargas employed even greater democratic appeals to competing social classes. In the 1950 presidential election, Vargas (coalition of Partido Socialista Democrática [PSD, Social Democratic Party]) and the Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro (PTB, Brazilian Labor Party) made promises for social and economic reforms that would benefit nearly every group in Brazilian society such as support for industrialization, increases in the minimum wage, low-cost credit for large landowners and a partial extension of urban labor laws to the countryside. In his quest to modernize the nation, Vargas focused on the development of heavy industry, creating national cultural foundations and national companies such as Petrobras, a state-controlled petroleum company with exclusive rights to produce petroleum in Brazil. To fund such projects, the Vargas administration adopted economic nationalist policies, known as import substitution industrialization that placed tariffs on imported goods to allow emerging national industries to find support from an existing internal market. Such policies often led to inflation and a shortfall in the balance of payments. Facing increasing

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tensions between industrialists and urban workers and mounting political opposition from the União Democrática Nacional (UDN, National Democratic Union) and the military, Vargas committed suicide in August 1954. In 1955, Juscelino Kubitschek (PSD) was elected president with campaign promises for rapid economic growth and development based on further industrial development. The day after his inauguration, Kubitschek announced the creation of a National Development Council responsible for presenting a plan of targets or goals for development concentrated on the expansion of Brazil’s infrastructure, such as transportation networks, energy and electricity, and the intensification of industrial development, particularly heavy industry. The Kubitschek administration’s (1956–61) development strategy prioritized urban industrial development over agri­ cultural development and social reforms such as agrarian reform, and it focused on further developing the central-south urban areas of Rio de Janeiro–São Paulo–Belo Horizonte over the Northeast.71 But by the end of the 1950s, the government’s neglect of rural development projects had led to mounting social and political pressures. In 1958, one of the periodic droughts that plagued Northeastern Brazil hit the region, drawing attention to problems of rural poverty and migration. An estimated two to three million Northeasterners left in search of work, migrating to urban and rural areas in the Southeastern states of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Minas Gerais and to build the new capital city of Brasília. The mass migration set off alarms, partly because the Northeastern migrants were perceived as poor, backward, and unable to integrate into the new utopian project of a “modern” Brazil. To discourage the migration process and promote development in the Northeast, the Kubitschek administration initiated a number of new organizations to study the possibilities for Northeastern development, such as the Working Group for Northeastern Development (GTDN, Grupo de Trabalho para o Desenvolvimento do Nordeste), in 1956, and SUDENE, in 1959. Federal funds were designated to initiate development projects in the Northeast, including rural electrification projects, hydroelectric dams, and the development of industry, but the years of governmental neglect had already put in motion nonstate efforts pushing for change. Short-termed Brazilian president Jânio Quadros (UDN, January to August 1961) continued such developmentalist policies, elected with the slogan to “sweep away” the type of personalistic and paternalistic styles of governance seen in previous administrations and put an end to the

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i­nflation experienced under Goulart and Kubitschek. Quadros is one of the most controversial presidents in Brazilian history, in part because of his sudden resignation on August 25, 1961.72 In the first months after taking office, Quadros established relations with Communist Bloc countries and recognized Ernesto “Ché” Guevara and other Cuban revolutionaries as heroes. Quadros’s “independent” foreign policy raised alarms in the United States, although the United States supported Quadros, as can be seen in the May 1961 financial agreements.73 However, when Quadros unexpectedly resigned in August 1961, allowing leftist vice president João Goulart (PTB), to succeed him as president, US newspapers uniformly criticized Quadros for abandoning his post, labeling him “neurotic,” irresponsible, impulsive, and quixotic.74 Many assume that he resigned hoping that Brazilians would demand that he return to the executive office because they feared Goulart’s radical leftism, a political gamble he believed would win him greater political power. But that did not happen. Goulart returned from a diplomatic trip to China, and Congress instated a parliamentary system to limit Goulart’s presidential powers. Although Goulart was not as radical as Pernambucan governor Miguel Arraes, conservatives in the United States and Brazil perceived Goulart as a threat because of his possible communist leanings and his interest in social reform. Goulart had served as minister of labor under Vargas and had support from PCB labor leaders. In 1961, upon ­Quadros’s resignation, Conservatives formed IPES/IBAD (Instituto de Pesquisas e Estudos Sociais/Instituto Brasileiro de Ação Democrática, “Institute of Research and Social Studies/Brazilian Institute of Democratic Action”), a well-funded think tank supported by coalition of Conservatives who supported military intervention. Funded in part by the United States and foreign corporations, IPES/IBAD created media campaigns about the threat of communism in Brazil and funded Conservatives’ political campaigns. Goulart’s Three-Year Plan, developed by Celso Furtado in 1962, focused on decreasing inflation while continuing to develop industry and on instating structural reforms, such as land and tax reforms to address rural poverty and income inequality. Although all of these issues were consistent with the goals of the President Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress, the United States never offered the Goulart administration the aid it needed to fund such projects. When it seemed clear that Goulart would regain full political powers, the US government strengthened anti-Goulart political and military forces in an attempt to persuade him to collaborate more

Revolution in Brazil  47

with noncommunist leaders.75 In 1963, Goulart held a national plebiscite that overturned the parliamentary system and allowed him to resume full powers as president. Although Goulart continued Quadros’s independent foreign policy, the United States’ main fears about Goulart were his ties to the PCB and the potential that Brazil would become another Cuba. Throughout the Goulart years, inflation remained high (for example, 75.4 percent in 1963) and the balance of payment deficits continued to grow.76 Besides the United States, Goulart also faced political opposition in Brazil, particularly from the UDN and Carlos Lacerdo, governor of Guanabara; from sectors of the Brazilian Armed Forces, and from Conservatives who feared Goulart’s social reform projects. Goulart announced his Basic Reform project on March 13, 1964, a plan for agrarian, educational, and electoral reforms in Rio de Janeiro. The speech was met with popular marches intended to put pressure on Congress to support the basic reforms, but it also had the effect of strengthening the opposition to Goulart. His speech is often cited as being one of instigating causes of the coup on March 31, 1964, that ended the democratic postwar period in Brazil (1945–64). Another reason for the coup was the mounting popularity of Pernambucan governor Miguel Arraes and fear that Arraes would win the next presidential elections, a topic that brings us back to the Northeast and its shift to the left in the era of the Cuban Revolution.

Politics in Northeastern Brazil Traditionally, politics in the Northeast had been defined by coronelismo (a rural political boss system) but in the 1950s, the political system began to open democratically, providing a space for new voices and for political issues such as agrarian reform and other social reforms to emerge. For example, the position of mayor of Recife had long been an appointed position, but in 1955, Recife held its first democratic election for mayor.77 The recently formed Recife Front (coalition of leftist parties including UDN, PCB, PTB, PSB, PSP (Partido Social Progressista, “Social Progressive Party”), PTN (Partido Trabalhista Nacional, “National Labor Party”), had its first victory when Pelópidas Silveira was elected mayor. The rural elite faced its next significant rupture with the election of Cid Feijó ­Sampaio (UDN) as governor in 1958. Sampaio, an industrialist who had previously served as director of the Serviço Social da Indústria,

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(SESI, Industrial Social Service), was elected as part of a broad coalition of political parties that included the PCB. Sampaio was not associated with the political left even though he had support from the PCB, but his ­developmentalist politics distinguished him from conservative candidates of Pernambuco’s PSD, a party that was run by rural elite families.78 As Joseph Page claimed, “The 1958 election not only broke the PSD hegemony but also proved to the ­progressive elements in Pernambuco that they could shake the status quo.”79 In 1959, Miguel Arraes (PST) won the mayoral election in Recife, marking a significant shift to the left in Pernambucan politics. As mayor, Arraes focused on public works projects in poor urban neighborhoods and started the Popular Culture Movement in 1960, a literacy project with lessons that promoted democracy and attacked social problems of hunger, sickness, and unemployment. In 1962, with the support of the Popular Front coalition (PCB, PTB, PSB), Arraes won the gubernatorial  ­elections, defeating PSD candidate João Cleofas. Brought to power peacefully through democratic elections, Arraes was staunchly anti-imperialist and antifeudal, considered the ideal political leader to bring about progress toward the PCB’s envisioned Brazilian revolution. As governor, Arraes held a staunchly anti-American line and increased the ability of rural workers to legally organize by restricting the power of the state police, who had traditionally served the interests of the rural elite. These policies allowed for the continued expansion of the rural social movements and their tactics of pushing for agrarian reform and workers’ rights through land invasions and labor strikes. For example, in November 1963, a large sugarcane strike paralyzed the sugar industry in southern ­Pernambuco during harvest season, amassing 200,000 rural workers—or 90 percent of the area’s workers—who demanded an 85 percent increase in the minimum wage.80 The strike was successful. Planters promised to comply with the new labor laws, and rural workers credited Arraes with making the changes possible because he had prohibited the police from breaking up the strike.81 The Arraes administration further developed social reform projects, including adult literacy projects, such as Paulo Freire’s Popular Culture Movement and state-owned rural ­cooperatives. Such programs attacked the existing structures that reinforced Brazilian inequalities—namely, the high illiteracy rate and its connection to voting enfranchisement rights and unequal land tenure patterns. A discussion that took place four years after the coup showed how Arraes had disrupted

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the traditional state power in Pernambuco. Journalist Márcio Moreira Alves asked a young, illiterate boy who worked as a cane cutter if he knew anything about Arraes. The boy said that Arraes had been the government. When asked why he was no longer the government, the boy responded, “Because he was for the people.”82 Other Northeastern states shifted toward the left with Pedro Gondim (PSD) elected as governor of Paraíba (1960–64) and Natal mayor, Djalma Maranhão (1956–64), described as a “left-wing nationalist” with educational and social reform projects.83 In Rio Grande do Norte, Governor Aluizio Alves (1961–66, UDN) held a more moderate position than Arraes, aligning himself with the US government to the point that the US media labeled him as the one hope for the Northeast. Like Arraes, Alves was a very popular Northeastern politician. Alves believed the Northeast was subversive because the social order invited violence and revolution.84 He staunchly believed that democratic politics could bring about social and political change, and during his years in office, he advocated for literacy programs and educational reforms, extending the vote to illiterates and eliminating the political police in the state.85 But, even though many state politicians elected in the era of the Cuban Revolution were progressive or “Leftist,” this did not mean that the Conservatives completely lost power. State congresses were filled with officials who supported the interests of the rural landowning classes and regularly protested about the “communists” and “communist sympathizers” throughout the Northeast. To advocate for competing political projects about Northeastern development, politicians at the state and federal level established new research institutions to study the causes of underdevelopment and look for solutions.

Development and Research Institutions In the wake of the 1958 drought, Brazilian mainstream newspapers denounced the national program for relief aid and development in the Northeast, the Departamento Nacional de Obras Contra as Secas (DNOCS, “National Department of Drought Relief Works”) as corrupt, inefficient, and a failure. Labeling DNOCS as “the drought industry,” reports detailed the agency’s mismanagement of funds and resources. The US government also attacked DNOCS, blaming “corrupt politicians” for inefficiency in distributing food sent by US aid programs that was spoiled before it reached drought victims.86 In response to the criticism of

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DNOCS and the mounting public concern in the Southeast about Northeastern migrants, the Brazilian federal government inaugurated new development institutions and projects in the late 1950s and early 1960s including OPENO, the Paulo Alfonso hydroelectric dam, the Bank of the Northeast (BNB, Banco do Nordeste), the Northeastern Development Agency (SUDENE), the Institute of Immigration and Colonization, the Agrarian Reform Institute (Superintendência de Reforma Agrária, SUPRA), Rural Social Services (Serviço Social Rural, SSR), the National Rural Extension Service (ANCAR), and the Cultural Extension Service of the University of Recife. At the regional level, the Joaquim Nabuco Institute of Social Research (Instituto Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais, IJNPS), founded in 1949 by Gilberto Freyre, sponsored research projects focused on the problems of the Northeast and potential for Northeastern development.87 Between 1956 and 1970, the IJNPS funded 110 research projects, published 83 studies, and hosted 1,159 conferences or training workshops on mental illness in rural areas of Pernambuco, rural-urban migration, religious beliefs in the Northeast, rural living conditions and nutrition, and Northeastern popular and folk culture.88 For the most part, the administrators of the development projects considered the Northeast a feudal area in need of “evolution” to become a modern society. In their descriptions of rural Northeasterners, a number of reports produced in the mid- to late-1950s illustrate the commonly held perceptions in Brazil about Northeastern development projects and the influence of the trope of o Nordeste. For example, a 1956 report on Northeast “extremism,” prepared at request of the Escola Superior da Guerra (ESG), the Brazilian Higher War College, to instruct the Fourth Army Division in Recife, discussed what they saw as the problems and solutions to poverty and backwardness in the Northeast. According to the researchers, the Northeast needed “cultural change,” a premise many US social scientists studying the differences between “modern” and “traditional” societies shared.89 According to Paulo Frederico Maciel, the biggest hindrance to the development of industry was the Northeastern conception of time. The solution lay in creating a new notion of “industrial time” to teach the rural man to understand time as factory time, instead as a “convenient pleasure.” The nostalgic music, the use of hammocks, the pleasure in violent sports, and even the more “frenetic” rhythm of popular music had to be reformed to accustom nordestinos to the modern discipline needed for factory work.90 Folklore made the rural nordestino resistant to “evolution,”

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but all this could be changed by radio (modern technology), which could introduce the nordestino to urban culture and make the sertanejo psychologically capable of socioeconomic change.91 The discussion made no reference to the sizeable Northeastern labor force already employed in factories in the urban Southeast, focusing instead on a stereotypical nordestino from the trope of o Nordeste.92 Similar arguments emerged after economist Celso Furtado released the GTDN report that established the building blocks of SUDENE. On one hand, the immediate reaction to the report was that the Northeast was not “ready” for industrial development. As Pernambucan geography professor Mário Lacerda de Melo argued, the Northeast was underdeveloped because of the backwardness and “primitivism” of its people. Any economic development, according to Melo, had to incorporate social and cultural change.93 Gilberto Freyre was skeptical of such development projects, which he considered “unnatural” to the region. He believed the Armed Forces were the only Brazilian institution capable of executing such a project. On the other hand, journalist Antônio Callado, who had written national reports on the failures of DNOCS, applauded the GTDN report, recognizing the need to overcome the disparity between the wealth of development projects in the Southeast and the absence of such projects in the Northeast. Callado reinforced his argument, describing Brazil as two separate nations that needed to be consolidated into one.94 The Brazilian Congress approved SUDENE, in 1959, as the new development institution that would replace the DNOCS. People throughout Northeastern Brazil celebrated its inauguration as the development pro­ ject that would bring modernization and socioeconomic change to Northeastern Brazil. In Riordan Roett’s analysis of SUDENE, he argued that SUDENE was seen as an “essential ingredient of modernization” in terms of the political development of Northeastern Brazil, defined as “increasing governmental efficiency in utilizing the human and material resources of the nation for national goals.”95 Yet SUDENE’s purpose was twofold. Not only did the agency’s goals include development projects to raise the standard of living in the Northeast, but SUDENE was also supposed to address social unrest in underdeveloped regions of Brazil that were seen as a potential threat to national economic productivity and stability.96 According to director Celso Furtado (1961–64), SUDENE’s goals were focused on how “to create an economy resistant to the drought, and to restructure the agrarian economy and intensify industrial investments.”97

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Furtado saw the main problem in Brazilian economic development as the emphasis on industrial development in the Southeast and the steady loss of assets from the Northeast to the Southeast.98 The 1961 SUDENE plan focused mainly on developing infrastructure in the Northeast—namely, road building and electric power expansion.99 Social development, the next priority, focused on constructing water and sewage systems, and the third priority was transforming the agricultural system through colonization programs and agrarian cooperatives.100 The underlying reason why Brazil and the United States gave priority to SUDENE was the threat of revolution supposedly posed by the level of inequality and the so-called communist rural social movements. As Riordan Roett demonstrated in his study on the relations between SUDENE and the United States Agency for International Development (US AID), the relationship between SUDENE and US AID officials was tenuous because of their competing visions about SUDENE’s objectives and strategies. Brazilians felt that “subversion” was a Brazilian problem that needed to be solved by Brazilians, and the United States felt that Brazilians did not adequately prioritize the threat of communism.101 Suggesting that the Brazilians were inept, US officials and journalists claimed that communists were infiltrating SUDENE102 and that SUDENE was not acting quickly enough to convince nordestinos that social revolution was not the solution to poverty. But, before we delve further into this conflict, it is necessary to explain why the US government was interested in the Northeast and SUDENE.

The United States and o Nordeste Although the United States had sponsored governmental and nongovernmental development in the Northeast throughout the 1950s, after the success of the Cuban Revolution, US interest in the Northeast increased. This interest intensified after Tad Szulc’s article on the Ligas appeared on the front page of the New York Times, on October 31, 1960, often described as the United States’ “discovery” of Northeastern Brazil, followed the next day by a subsequent article. Lincoln Gordon, US ambassador to Brazil (1961–66), recalled that before Szulc’s articles, most people had never heard of the Northeast, but that these articles “sensitized” the American public to the potential for the explosive political, social, and economic conditions to erupt.103 Soon after these reports, Northeastern Brazil

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was labeled the “next Cuba,” a “tropical China” or “another Vietnam.” To describe Northeastern poverty, Szulc used social indicators and statistics that came to define Northeastern Brazil in the US media in the era of the Cuban Revolution. As the first article in the series described, The makings of a revolutionary situation are increasingly apparent across the vastness of the poverty-stricken and drought-plagued Brazilian Northeast. In the area, 20,000,000 live on average annual incomes of less than $100. Racked by chronic malnutrition and rampaging disease, they seldom live much beyond the age of thirty. . . . There are sections of the arid Northeast where the annual income is about $50. About 75 percent of the population is illiterate. The average daily intake is 1,644 calories. Life expectancy is 28 years for men and 32 for women. Half the population dies before the age of 30. The birth rate is 2.5 per cent, annually. Gastric disease takes an enormous toll in babies less than 1 year old. In two villages in the state of Piauí, taken at random, not a single baby lived beyond one year. Those who stay alive are attacked by a belly-swelling disease, schimatosis, transmitted by water snails in the polluted rivers. Hookworm and tuberculosis also take a tremendous toll.104

Although I am not necessarily questioning the veracity of the shocking demographic, socioeconomic, or statistical evidence compiled about the region’s inhabitants in the 1960s, I believe the repetition of such quantifiers deserves further analysis because of the language it created to characterize impoverished peoples and regions. In a study on the representations of poverty, Arturo Escobar argues that the dehumanizing representations of the “malnourished” are the “most striking symbol of the power of the First World over the Third.”105 Social indicators such as those mentioned in the article became a modern language and continued to emphasize social divisions predicated on racialized notions of superiority and inferiority, particularly between “modern” nations such as the United States and “traditional” regions such as Northeastern Brazil. After Szulc’s initial depictions of Northeastern Brazil, it was rare to find a report in the US media that did not use similar social indicators to describe the region and its people; these both contributed to and drew from the trope of o Nordeste. Although statistics and social indicators created an image of o Nordeste and nordestinos in the United States as a Third World Other, descriptions of poverty and warnings about the dangers that Northeastern poverty held for the democratic world brought the numbers to life. The first photograph of the Ligas is almost identical to the one published in O Estado de São Paul (Figure 1.1), except the New York Times photograph depicted

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around fifty rural men gathered under a SAPPP sign, all facing the camera. A map under the photograph has a caption that reads, “An area of ferment: Disease and malnutrition are stirring up unrest in Northeast Brazil.” Drawing from the trope of o Nordeste and its emphasis on miséria, the report describes the “destitute peasant masses in this vast region,” who are “thin and hollow-cheeked,” living on an “arid, sun-baked estate.”106 Describing rural backwardness, Szulc portrayed popular poets as “traveling troubadours who act as human newspapers,” who took Julião’s manifestos to the “miserable, drought-plagued hamlets of a region that comprises a third of Brazil’s population.”107 The articles also describe urban poverty and, in particular, a certain strand of the trope that describes urban inhabitants as “crab people,” who live in “caves and holes in the ground or in shacks precariously perched atop stilts on fetid, low-tide marshes. When the tide recedes . . . the dirty brown waters of the tidelands become suddenly alive with thousands of men, women and children,” who comb the bottom for crabs to eat and sell.108 Szulc’s reports demonstrate that the threat of communism was why Northeastern poverty was newsworthy. As the second paragraph in the first article warned, The misery is exploited by rising Leftist influences in the overcrowded cities. The Communist-infiltrated Peasant Leagues, organizing and indoctrinating, have become an important political factor in this area. Cuba’s Premier, Fidel Castro, and Mao TseTung, Communist China’s party chairman, are being presented as heroes to be imitated by the Northeast’s peasants, workers and students.109

The bolded subheadings throughout the report emphasize the connection between poverty and an imminent social revolution, for example, “Time Is Key Question,” “Illiteracy Is 75%” “Revolution Looms,” “Peasants are Wooed,” and “Long a Red Stronghold.”110 The second article in the series, “Marxists Are Organizing Peasants in Brazil: Leftist League Aims at a Political Army 40 Million Strong,” reinforces the sense of threat, describing the Ligas as the “closest thing to a ‘Fidelista’ movement in Latin America.”111 The articles reinforce the threat of communism by describing Julião’s trips to China and Cuba, and by claiming the peasants are being taught to see the United States as the enemy. Warnings about what might happen if the United States did not get involved are repeated throughout the reports. For example, an unnamed Northeastern official warned, “The Northeast will go Communist and you will have a situation ten times worse than in

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Cuba if something is not done. If the Brazilian Northeast is lost to you Americans, the Cuban revolution will seem like a picnic by comparison.”112 Although Szulc mentioned Celso Furtado’s development plans and efforts to address the problems of Northeastern poverty and quell the threat of communism, the overarching message of the articles is that the United States needed to intervene and provide assistance to the region. He describes Furtado’s and SUDENE’s development plans to construct highways and railroads to link old and new production centers, which would increase the possibility of attracting industrial development in the Northeast and create more jobs. Although this seems like a logical strategy for long-term development, Szulc’s depiction of the “looming revolution” suggests that they would not be sufficient to thwart the encroaching Leftists. Less than five months after Szulc’s reports, President Kennedy announced the Alliance for Progress, a development and aid program for Latin America whose goal was to combat the threat of communism. Northeastern Brazil was the first target of two of the crucial Kennedy-era modernization programs. The region received the first US AID funds of $276,000,000 for development projects and the first Peace Corps volunteers, who were initially tasked with setting up 4-H clubs in collaboration with the ANCAR.113 The aid and volunteer programs increased the presence of the United States in Northeastern Brazil, with a large US AID mission in Recife, the only mission in the world established outside of a country’s national capital.114 US economists, engineers, journalists, researchers, C.I.A agents, and consular officials in Recife established a “colony of homes” in Boa Viagem, an upper-class neighborhood on the beach.115 High-ranking officials in the Kennedy administration, such as Edward Kennedy and Arthur Schlesinger, made personal visits to the region and to the Engenho Galiléia. At a congressional hearing in 1962, Peter Nehemkis Jr. ranked Brazil as one of the key target countries for the Alliance for Progress, arguing that the Northeast is “the real testing ground for the Alliance for Progress. If the Northeast explodes, Cuba will seem like a firecracker by comparison.”116 Besides the alarmist reaction to the Szulc articles, US foreign policy in the early 1960s relied on certain assumptions that led policymakers to the conclusion that Northeastern Brazil was a key area of concern.117 Briefly, these premises were that (1) poverty and “traditional” societies are breeding grounds for socialist revolution; (2) anti-Americanism means pro-­communism; and (3) Latin American governments are incapable of

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handling these problems and cannot be trusted. Proposed solutions to the “feudal” conditions in Northeastern Brazil drew from modernization theories, emphasizing the need to fight communism in Latin America, “not with armed force but with the kind of economic aid that proceeds from science and proper understanding.”118 Programs included development projects sponsored by the United Nations, loans from the InterAmerican Development Bank, the US Food for Peace program, the United Nations Children’s Fund, training and research programs hosted by US research universities, and the Alliance for Progress. Although the United States promoted its development and aid programs as the best hope to put Northeastern Brazil on a path to peaceful modernization, the theory of modernization in practice revealed its ambiguities. At the same time that the US government was investing billions of dollars in aid projects, consular reports exposed skepticism about the feasibility of any development project in Northeastern Brazil.119 Officials explained their pessimism using a language that drew from modernization theory’s descriptions of “traditional” societies and the trope of o Nordeste, portraying o Nordeste as “naturally” backward and nordestinos as adverse to change. One reason for the skepticism concerned the poor soil conditions, which hindered increased agricultural production.120 Reports also depicted developing industry in the Northeast as a precarious experiment that was “alien” to the region. Even with “highly trained” scientists providing support, US consular reports claimed that industrialization might “quickly wither and die” because it had no natural roots in the Northeast.121 Again, the report made no mention of the hundreds of thousands of Northeasterners already employed in factories in the Southeast regions. Consular analyses of development projects for the Northeast suggested that the only possibility for modernization was through education.122 At the same time, education was seen as a dubious undertaking because the nordestino mentality resisted the possibility of educating the rural nordestino. According to these arguments, nordestinos were not only incapable of learning; they also lacked the motivation to improve their economic status, possessing an “antipathy toward new ways.”123 Such statements reflect how the entrenched trope of o Nordeste combined with modernization theory ideologies in shaping the realm of the possible. For the United States, the Northeast seemed to be an “experiment” of modernization theory in practice that could reveal the modernization’s power or impotence to combat the backwardness and misery intrinsic to the Northeast.

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“Conservatives”: The Opposition to the “Left” As noted earlier, throughout this book, I use the term Conservatives to speak generally about those who opposed the “Left” (e.g., rural social movements, Leftist-leaning politicians, and radical cultural movements). The category of “Conservatives” includes landowners, sugar producers, US government officials, regional and national state officials, and the Brazilian Armed Forces, as well as some intellectuals, mainstream journalists, and some sectors of the Catholic Church. Both Conservatives and Leftists had internal divisions that held conflicting positions and used different strategies, and neither can be considered a cohesive or allied group. Although I recognize the imperfection of these broad categories, I believe it useful to talk about some of the larger conflicts over and about Northeastern Brazil during the Cold War. When possible, I refer to the specific group or person that I am including in the category of Conservatives. Although those I label Conservatives staunchly opposed the strategies and proposals for agrarian reform proposed by the rural social movements, the Arraes administration, and the Goulart administration, most Conservatives did not oppose programs for modernizing the agricultural systems in the Northeast through colonization programs, technical training, and limited agrarian reforms. Sugarcane producers lobbied for greater national subsidies to help them modernize and mechanize Northeastern plantations and sugar cane mills. For example, the Auxiliary Agricultural Society of Pernambuco,124 an umbrella group associated with the sugar plantation owners and the fornecedores de cana (sugarcane suppliers), promoted the modernization of agriculture. They published an article in the Revista do Nordeste in support of agrarian reform in 1959 in which president Zilde Maranhão claimed, “We’re not against the organization of rural workers in associations of class. Well, if we were, we would be denying all the democratic privileges. We understand that the rural worker should organize to defend their legitimate interests.”125 According to the article, the Agricultural Society approved of expropriation of large estates as long as it was done legally and the landowner received a just price. They opposed the case of the Engenho Galiléia and other Ligas cases based on their disapproval of radical agrarian reform, claiming such cases were illegal land seizures led by communists. Faced with attacks about being backward and feudal, Conservatives began re-inventing themselves as a modernizing force in Northeastern Brazil and in doing so, discursively supported agrarian reforms.

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Even though the rural elite lost their gubernatorial dominance in Pernambuco in 1958, and developmentalists labeled them a backward and traditional element impeding modernization, this does not mean they passively accepted such threats to their power and their property rights. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, rural elites could translate their wealth into quasi-police power.126 Although the rural social movements were loosely organized and barely legal organizations, the rural elite belonged to well-organized associations and institutes, many of which had national support. Such organizations include the Sugar and Alcohol Institute, the Sugar Producers Cooperative, the Federation of Rural Associations of Pernambuco, the Association of Sugarcane Alcohol Producers, the Association of Coffee Growers, the Auxiliary Agricultural Society of Pernambuco, and the Cane Growers Association, among others. These organizations probably expanded in size during the Cold War because of the threat to the rural elite’s hegemony in the state. For example, large landowner and organizer of the Rural Landowners’ Association in Paraíba, Sabiano A. do Rego Maia, recalled needing to create a landowners’ association because of the threat the Ligas posed to private property and the lack of state or police support.127 From 1955 to 1959, the rural elite continually filed complaints about rural workers who were threatening their personal security and private property. Here, they could draw on a tradition of popular violence associated with the trope of o Nordeste, with its well-established narratives of vicious cangaceiros and sadistic religious fanatics. By 1959, landowners claimed that the sugar industry might collapse because of the tactics of the Ligas that increased cane fires and decreased available labor.128 Landowners frequently appealed to the police and the Secretary of Public Security for help in defending their private property and their lives from the Ligas.129 Another strategy the Conservatives used to bolster their power in the region was to attack the legitimacy of the Ligas and other rural social movements by latching onto Cold War fears and by labeling the members of the Ligas as communists, subversives, and foreign agitators. The rural elite tried to portray themselves as victims in need of police and military protection from the attacks by “communist agitators,” who incited the rural masses to act violently. For example, a report by the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS, Departamento de Ordem Política e Social) from August 30, 1955, listed the names of leaders who had been

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“indoctrinating” the local population and mentioned weapons the rural workers had in their possession.130 Mainstream Northeastern journalists drew from the trope of o Nordeste, often describing rural workers as violent and linking the Ligas to communists and criminals. In narrating the expropriation case for the Engenho Galiléia a few months before the judicial decision on Galiléia, O Diário de Pernambuco ran an article claiming that 130 of the Galileus were communists.131 O Diário de Pernambuco claimed that if the judge had decided against the Ligas, “there would be a bloodbath.”132 The main newspapers in the Northeast, O Diário de Pernambuco and O Jornal do Commércio, remained sympathetic to the rural elite. The Diário was considered the paper of the establishment and the Jornal the more “alternative” press, or perhaps a paper that provided a more centrist political perspective. By and large, the Diário supported a Conservative position, criminalizing the Ligas and supporting Conservative politicians in elections.133 For example, the Diário supported Cid Sampiao in 1958, but strongly opposed Miguel Arraes and João Goulart. In this book, I use the Diário to represent Conservative voices during the period. Another significant Conservative group included certain sectors of the Brazilian Armed Forces and the police. During the Cold War, the Brazilian Armed Forces acquired new roles in Brazilian society and government. The ESG, which was a pedagogical think tank, was inaugurated in 1949 with the objective of producing a model for Brazil’s economic and political development.134 Although the ESG is probably best known for producing the Doctrine of National Security, a document used to justify military rule that appealed to nationalism, development and anticommunism and located the enemy as subversives within the nation, it is necessary to recognize that this doctrine was in its early stages of development in the 1950s.135 During these years, the Brazilian military elite remained divided over issues such as the amount of foreign influence or capital that would be optimal for developing the Brazilian nation without constituting a form of imperialism.136 They also debated issues related to social class and race in trying to define the appropriate role of the military in the nation, such as the ability of uneducated masses to make rational political decisions and the irresponsibility of civilian politicians who they claimed used politics for personal gains. Although high-ranking officers were debating the role of the military in Brazilian society, rank-and-file soldiers and their immediate superiors

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expressed more immediate concerns about the threat of a communist uprising in Pernambuco. An officer who had been in Recife in the years surrounding the coup, Carlito Lima, described in his memoirs the feelings of the lower-ranking officers who had direct contact with the troops. As he said, “In the barracks, the most radical couldn’t wait for the coup, wanting action immediately.”137 He recalled that troops in Pernambuco were nervous, fearing the possibility of “another Cuba” since Arraes and the Ligas were rumored to have had guerrilla training and Russian arms. They believed that if the “communists” were victorious, soldiers would be the first to face the firing squads. He claimed that all the soldiers and officers seemed to be in support of the coup, especially those stationed in Recife, who were ready to put an end to the “disorder, anarchy, subversion and the implantation of a communist republic.”138 And yet, as Lima describes, through his experiences in the military and in speaking with political pri­ soners such as Miguel Arraes, Francisco Julião, Paulo Cavalcanti, and Paulo Freire, he started to question the military’s actions, the sensational media representations, and the criminalization of the “communists.” In 1979, in opposition to the military, he publically declared that the military had not solved any of Brazil’s problems in the past fifteen years, a statement that made national and international headlines. (See Chapter 6 for further analysis of the narratives of resistance to the military such as Lima’s).

Cultural Actors: Reimagining the Trope of o Nordeste The remaining group of “main actors” active in the debates and struggles in and over Northeastern Brazil who deserve an introduction are a broad category of people I identify as cultural actors. In the 1950s and 1960s, Northeastern Brazil was not only a major topic of political debate and scholarly studies, but o Nordeste also became the centerpiece of Brazilian cultural production. Filmmakers, popular poets, playwrights, artists, and novelists engaged with the project of representing o Nordeste and nordestinos in ways that both challenged and reaffirmed commonly held assumptions about the region and its people. Although many were associated with radical cultural movements, such as Cinema novo, and ascribed to “Leftist” political beliefs, others opposed the rural social movements and Leftist politics, and fit into the category of Conservatives. Some received excellent funding for their projects and their productions reached national

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and international audiences, whereas others had precarious sources of funding and reached relatively small audiences. Popular culture can shape societal views because of its ability to reach broad segments of a population and influence what people believe to be true. By analyzing different forms of popular culture such as films and literatura de cordel, alongside the messages in political discourse and activism in the 1950s and 1960s about Northeastern Brazil and Northeasterners, the goal is to try to understand how audiences translated the messages and images they consumed based on their previous and current experiences and knowledge of o Nordeste. When ideas and images circulate widely throughout society and are reinforced across diverse media, they legitimize those ideas and images as true or real. Such discourses often reaffirmed what people believed about Northeastern Brazil as poor, backward, violent, macho, nonwhite, uneducated, and folkloric and fanatical. This section introduces some of the groups of cultural actors who engaged in reproducing o Nordeste in the 1950s and 1960s, focusing on filmmakers and popular poets. Although o Nordeste had long been a focus of Brazilian cultural production, in the era of the Cuban Revolution, three cinematic genres reproduced the Northeast for national and international audiences: commercial films, political films, and experimental regional documentaries. Two commercial films from this era—O Cangaceiro (1953) and O pagador de promessas (1962, The Given Word)—reached international audiences, winning prizes at the Cannes Film Festival. Lima Barreto’s O Cangaceiro, a Vera Cruz studio production, was both popular with national audiences and influential in shaping commercial Brazilian films. It was the first “Nordestern” or Brazilian Western film set in the Northeastern sertão and featuring the backlands bandits known as cangaceiros.139 Lima Barreto said that he became interested in making films about the Northeast because he adored Euclides da Cunha’s Os sertões and through the book, “he discovered Brazil and learned Portuguese.” When he discovered the world of cinema, he immediately started thinking about how to bring da Cunha’s Nordeste to the movies.140 Although Barreto’s film portrays the dry, mixedrace, folkloric, and violent version of o Nordeste, Anselmo Duarte’s O pagador de promessas produced a different Nordeste, set in urban Salvador, Bahia with cultural production associated with Bahia’s Afro-descendent population. O pagador de promessas won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1962, telling a story of a rural nordestino who carried a large cross from the sertão to a church in Salvador as a promise to Candomblé deity Iansã to protect

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his donkey from illness. Although it is a very different Nordeste than in O cangaceiro, the film upholds the trope of o Nordeste. The main character is ignorant, poor, and naïve, folkloric, easily manipulated by those around him, and “quaint” in his mission to save his donkey. In contrast to the commercial productions, directors such as Glauber Rocha, Ruy Guerra, and Nelson Pereira dos Santos produced revolutionary films on the Northeast, such as Deus e o diabo na terra do sol, Vidas Secas (Barren Lives, 1963,), and Os fuzis (The Guns, 1964). Artists affiliated with radical cultural movements such as Cinema Novo, the Popular Culture Movement in Pernambuco, and the CPC da UNE (Centro de Cultura Popular da União Nacional dos Estudantes, “Popular Culture Center of the National Student Movement”) felt that art and culture needed to focus on the underdevelopment and violence of the Third World to raise people’s political consciousness and force them to react to poverty and oppression, which would lead the audience to pursue revolutionary action.141 They looked to the Northeast for their subject matter because of its poverty and inequality, its revolutionary social movements, its legacies of exploitative labor relations, its climate and topography, and its historical place as the Other in Brazil. In creating a new language of cinema capable of ­reproducing the “reality” of the poverty and hunger of the Third World, Cinema Novo directors borrowed from Italian neorealism and Northeastern documentaries.142 In their quest to challenge the romanticized versions of the Third World they saw produced in Hollywood, European, and commercial Brazilian films, Cinema Novo directors turned to the Northeast itself. A short documentary film, Linduarte Noronha and Rucker Vieira’s Aruanda, screened in São Paulo in 1960 and 1961, created intense debates, and was met with applause from directors such as Glauber Rocha. The poor quality of the film and the roughness of the novice filmmakers’ techniques inspired Rocha, who called the film “primitive” or “savage” cinema, capable of representing the reality of the Third World.143 For other critics, the film simply reflected the underdevelopment of o Nordeste and the inexperience of the filmmakers.144 Noronha and Vieira were part of the Paraiban documentary school (ciclo do cinema documentário Paraibano) of filmmakers who began producing short documentaries about rural Northeastern Brazil and the region’s culture, poverty, and backwardness in the late 1950s. Even though the documentaries were only screened at Brazilian film festivals, the aesthetics influenced national film production

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and, in doing so, shaped how people imagined o Nordeste, reaffirming and challenging notions about what it meant to be nordestino. Noronha, a journalist and film critic, had grown up watching weekly film screenings in the streets, mostly Hollywood westerns. In his career as a journalist, he had produced a report on a group of Afro-descendents from Serra do Talhado, Paraíba, and wanted to make a film about them. He took his script and ideas to the National Film Board (Instituto Nacional de Cinema, INCE), and was allowed to borrow a camera. Along with radio announcer and photographer Rucker Vieira, and with support from the IJNPS, they made Aruanda.145 All the Paraíban filmmakers made their first films without funding and with limited equipment, producing the rough documentaries about rural culture in the Northeast. Yet, the documentarians had an idea of the Nordeste that they wanted to portray that drew from the trope of o Nordeste. Vieira remembered filming a nordestino working in the cane fields listening to a soccer game on a battery-operated radio. The director decided to exclude the radio because it did not fit into the “reality” of o Nordeste.146 Although Vieira used this example to question the “reality” of documentary films, his recollections of the filmmaking process also demonstrate how the trope of o Nordeste influenced the filmmakers’ perceptions about what to include in a documentary about Northeastern Brazil. In addition to cinema, literatura de cordel was another means of communication in the Northeast and about the Northeast in the era of the Cuban Revolution. Literatura de cordel, commonly referred to as folhetos, had long been a popular form of communication and entertainment in rural Northeastern Brazil, specifically in the dry hinterlands (sertão).147 Poets, or folheteiros traveled throughout Northeastern Brazil, singing their stories in public arenas and selling their pamphlets at weekly open-air markets.148 Although their audiences were often illiterate, consumers bought their favorite folhetos to later hear them repeated by friends or relatives who were literate. Poets usually came from rural agrarian backgrounds and many were rudimentarily literate themselves but skilled in the art of telling cordel stories. Literatura de cordel has often been compared to the corridos of Spanish-speaking Latin America in terms of how popular poetry has been an important tool for construction of regional identities.149 As Mark Dinneen argues, the folheto has served “to confirm and reemphasize shared experience and perceptions of daily community life . . . and confirm the group’s cultural identity and values.”150

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In the 1950s and 1960s, literatura de cordel became an active medium in which to discuss, debate, and denounce political struggles.151 Conservatives and Leftists both funded poets to write and sing poems that supported their projects for Northeastern Brazil. For this reason, I analyze literatura de cordel as a key source to understanding what messages were circulating in the rural Northeast about agrarian reform and the Cold War. Although poets did not share the same political ideological beliefs and many Conservative folhetos criticized the Ligas, literatura de cordel became associated with the Ligas in part because Julião claimed it was one of his three tools in organizing the Ligas. Even the initial reports in the New York Times about the Ligas described the poets and provided an example of the political messages in the poetry.152 Due to the alleged connection with “Leftist” politics, the military restricted gatherings of poets and singers after the coup. Throughout the book, I refer to examples from literatura de cordel, films, and other popular-culture sources to offer a glimpse into what narratives about o Nordeste were circulating during the 1950s and 1960s. Where possible, I use reviews and other informational sources about production, distribution and circulation to address issues of reception. I analyze popular culture sources to suggest what Northeasterners, Brazilians, and foreigners had at their disposal to inform their beliefs about o Nordeste and nordestinos. At times, representations of the region and its people challenged the enduring stereotypes by contributing new definitions and identities. Other narratives only served to reaffirm the existing trope of o Nordeste, further dehumanizing the “miserable” inhabitants and their “pathological” tendencies toward violence and deviant, nonmodern behaviors. Chapter 2 is the first of four chapters that focus on a symbol or narrative of the trope of o Nordeste. I analyze how a broad array of political and cultural actors engaged with the symbol of the cangaciero in their attempts to gain support for competing political projects.

2 Masculinity, Barbarism, and Honor Representations of the Cangaceiro

“That one was a good godfather,” recalls Ana Maria dos Santos (Dona Nô), 77 years old, related to Lampião. She only holds good memories of this polemic mythic figure and prefers to invoke his heroic profile. There are many who disagree and treat him like a cruel bandit. There are those who criticize the violence but see his struggle as a form of resistance against an oppressive system. No one ignores him. —“Histories of the Cangaço Inspire Tourism,” O Jornal do ­Commércio, 1997

in a mainstream Northeastern newspaper in 1997 illustrates that the symbol of the cangaceiro has long carried multifarious meanings, located between honor and ruthless violence, resistance and barbarity, a brave warrior or a tragic victim of unequal social structures, and a hero or a criminal. Elite discourse traditionally defined the cangaceiro as a criminal, emphasizing how the backland bandits’ racial degeneracy led to manifestations of violence. Likewise, as Juan Pablo Dabove argues, elite literary narratives of banditry have defined the Brazilian regionalist narrative, turning the rural outlaw into the “paramount Other of Latin American modernity.”1 Although cangaceiros worked and lived in bands or groups, certain leaders attracted more attention, historically and in contemporary Brazil. Lampião, or Captain Virgulio Ferrerira da Silva (1897–1938), whom Ana Maria dos Santos references, is the most famous cangaceiro in part because he brought filmmakers and photographers to document his band. His partner, Maria Bonita (Maria Déia), contributed to the legends, turning the pair into a Brazilian “Bonnie and This quotation from an article

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Clyde.” Another well-known cangaceiro was band member Corisco, who may have been the last cangaceiro to be active in the Northeast, until his death in 1940. During the Cold War, the traditional elite definitions of the cangaceiro were challenged by new definitions that construed the cangaceiro as a hero and a victim of the social inequalities and “feudal” structures of the Northeast. During these years, political and cultural actors appropriated the historical symbol in their attempts to gain support for competing political projects. Such appropriations evoked gendered meanings of what it meant to be a man in the rural Northeast by challenging hegemonic ideas of the cangaceiro as barbarous, violent, and racially degenerate. As one of the key historical symbols composing the trope of o Nordeste and because of the general curiosity social bandits or Robin Hood figures illicit, the cangaceiro has long been an attractive topic for scholars to investigate. Because of the myths and legends that surround the cangaceiro specifically and the social bandits in general, a central topic of scholarly inquiry addresses their representations in popular culture. A number of studies emerged after the release of Eric Hobsbawm’s monograph Bandits (1971), in which he chose to use popular representations, instead of actual accounts, interviews, film footage, and photographs of cangaceiros, as evidence of his argument that cangaceiros are primitive rebels who disappeared in modern society.2 In response to the book, scholars began investigating the representations of cangaceiros in popular culture to show how they differed from reality. For instance, Linda Lewin argued that representations of cangaceiros in popular culture reflected elite politics and popular poets’ own politics more than they factually recounted the history of the cangaço.3 Besides attempts to distinguish fact from fiction or representation from reality, other studies have looked at the competing meanings of the representations in popular culture. Scholars have found that symbol of the cangaceiro was not limited to its historical reality of representing the sertanejo; it functioned to represent the nordestino, as well as the Brazilian and the Third World. Maria Isuara Pereira de Queiroz analyzed how the cangaceiro has functioned as a symbol of the Northeast even as it simultaneously represents the Brazilian nation—as a symbol of the national versus the foreign.4 The cangaceiro also has signified the inequalities and relations of dependency between the industrialized, modern South and the feudal, backward Northeast. As a national symbol, the cangaceiro also came to represent the povo (people) discursively positioned as the heart of

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the nation in populist politics.5 Through such symbolic associations, the cangaceiro became a symbol of resistance or a symbol of the struggle of the poor against the rich. More recent studies have shown how communities in the sertão have used popular symbols in local contemporary struggles, interpreting the symbol of the cangaceiro to inform community identity and mobilize community members politically. Marcos Edilson de Araújo Clemente connects the symbol of the cangaceiro to memory studies, showing how local communities with a history of cangaceiros have been able to turn this history into sites of memory, such as museums and lieux de memórie. For example, a community group in Paulo Afonso, Bahia, performs a play each year that uses the history of Lampião to narrate present-day struggles.6 Contemporary forms of memorializing the cangaceiro illustrate the multiple meanings the figure has in Brazil and how people can mobilize the symbol to narrate their cultural and political struggles. Such appropriations also occurred in the 1950s and 1960s when rural social movements and popular poets turned the cangaceiro into a popular hero, a “father” of agrarian reform and an autochthonous warrior, comparable to Cuban and Chinese guerrillas. With the increased power of the rural social movements and the displacement of the rural elite’s hegemony, the symbol of the cangaceiro became fertile territory for debating the future of the Northeast. This chapter analyzes representations of the cangaceiro in popular culture and political struggle during the Cold War, showing how rural social movement leaders, filmmakers, popular poets and Conservatives used the symbol of the cangaceiro to support or oppose radical agrarian reform. As a historical figure defining the trope of o Nordeste, the cangaceiro aptly demonstrates the multifarious nature of the trope.7 Although dominant characterizations of the cangaceiro continued to portray the historical figure as a violent and backward criminal, new arguments emerged in the late 1950s that portrayed the cangaceiro as a heroic father of agrarian reform or as a victim of the unequal social structures defining the region. The Ligas attempted to redefine the cangaceiro as an honorable, masculine, and revolutionary warrior, who fought to protect his land and family. Conservatives drew from the dominant language used to characterize the cangaceiro in their attempts to criminalize rural social movements and to legitimize the use of violence by landowners and, eventually, by the Brazilian military against rural workers. Filmmakers portrayed the cangaceiro as a sadistically violent, racially degenerate criminal, a victim of nordestino poverty, and as

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a hero of the people. Although the films were drastically different in terms of their genre, argument, style and popularity, their depictions of the cangaceiro show how multiple—and often conflicting—notions of Northeastern Brazil can still fit within the trope of o Nordeste.

Representations of the Cangaceiro in Film From 1960 to 1976, over forty films associated with the Nordestern genre were produced in Brazil, making it one of the most prolific types of films produced in Brazil.8 These films cast the same standard characters: soldiers, religious fanatics, poor peasants or cowhands, coronéis or large landowners, and cangaceiros; some films also included prostitutes. Filmmakers employed the cangaceiro to code the film’s location as o Nordeste, allowing audiences to immediately identify the setting as Northeastern Brazil, since the cangaceiro is one of the quintessential historical characters of the region. Yet filmmakers depicted the cangaceiro differently in each film: hero and villain, sadistic thug and impoverished victim, macho and at the same time the ideal father figure. Although the cangaceiro is an ambiguous figure, the directors all claimed to be portraying the “authentic” or “real” cangaceiro of the Northeast, illustrating how multiple Nordestes exist in framing the region and its people as the Other in the nation. This section starts with an analysis of the cangaceiro in two political films: Glauber Rocha’s Deus e o diabo na terra do sol and Paulo Gil Soares’s Memória do Cangaço (Memories of the Cangaço, 1965). Political filmmakers constructed the cangaceiro as masculine and rebellious and a victim of unequal social structures. Commercial filmmakers, such as Carlos Coimbra, turned the stories of the cangaceiro into a western fable located in Northeastern Brazil, representing the cangaceiro’s masculinity as marker of a man’s character while depicting the Northeast as a harsh, violent land. I use examples from political and commercial films to analyze how filmmakers employed representations of the cangaceiro in portraying o Nordeste, and then I discuss how filmmakers furthered the “reality effect” of their films by making claims to authenticity. Representations of the cangaceiro in Cinemanovista Glauber Rocha’s Deus e o diabo na terra do sol unmistakably coded the film as o N ­ ordeste. As in all Nordesterns, Rocha’s cangaceiro is defined by his costume: a ­crescent-shaped leather hat adorned with metallic symbols, leather clothing, a large knife and often Pancho Villa–style bullets wrapped around his

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torso, and leather sandals in Othon Bastos’s interpretation of Corisco in Deus e o diabo (see Figure 2.1). Rocha’s cangaceiro has often been analyzed as representing a stage in the process of peasants gaining a revolutionary consciousness. For Rocha, the cangaceiro was a symbol of primitive and anarchist rebellion, a type of rebellion that had to be overcome for nordestinos to acquire the political consciousness that would make them actors in a social revolution. To express this message in the film, Rocha emphasized the violence of the cangaço. The two nordestino peasant characters, protagonists Manuel and Rosa, encounter cangaceiros shortly after escaping from a messianic cult. When Manuel and Rosa first gaze upon the cangaceiros, the band is executing a group of rural people with their large knives and rifles, including a woman and her child. Although many Cinema Novo films used nonprofessional actors to enhance their films’ authenticity, the lead cangaceiro Corisco in Deus e o diabo was a trained stage actor whose presence dominated the screen. After the execution scene, the camera cuts to a close-up of Corisco in a stylized pose, shouting while holding his rifle in the air, claiming to embody the spirit of Lampião, as well as himself. He declares, “Here’s my rifle to save the poor from starving.” Manuel and Rosa are then inducted into the band, and Corisco baptizes Manuel with a new name Satanás

Figure 2.1 Corisco, in Deus e o diabo na terra do sol (1964).

Source: Cinemateca Brasileira, São Paulo. Courtesy of Glauber ­Rocha’s heirs, Copyrights Consultoria Ltda.

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(Satan). The group proceeds to the house of a rural elite family, which they attack, torturing the family and, eventually, killing them. Corisco explains to Manuel/Satanás: “Men from these lands only have validity when they take up arms to change their own destiny. It is not with the rosary, Satanás. It is with the rifle and the knife!”9 Corisco’s violence doesn’t discriminate: he kills the rural poor as well as the rich. In Deus e o diabo, Rocha portrays Corisco’s masculinity as both sadistic/barbaric and strong/virile. He kills without remorse, wearing traces of his victims’ blood. He murders women and children instead of protecting them, and Rocha uses graphic torture scenes to emphasize his sadism. At the same time, the actor he chose to represent Corisco is a handsome man who is also “white” or, at least, not the mixed-race type often associated with elite descriptions of the “degenerate” cangaceiro. In his costume and with the effect of staging and camera positions, Corisco is portrayed as a strong leader in size and stance in comparison to other characters, including Manuel (interpreted by another well-known professional actor, Geraldo del Rey). Corisco’s male virility provokes a sexual reaction from the women—Rosa and Dadá—who form intimate bonds with him and with each other. These intimacies suggest the sexual allure of the cangaço and the virile manliness of Corisco but also a sexual deviancy from the conjugal family unit. Toward the conclusion of the film, character Antônio das Mortes, the hired gun or assassin of cangaceiros draws closer to the cangaceiros to fulfill his condemned destiny. The film’s blind narrator Julio asks Antônio if killing Corisco is the way that he helps his brothers, the povo (people). Antônio responds, “Someday a greater war will burn these backlands. A war without the blindness of God or the Devil. And for this war to begin sooner, I, who have already killed Sebastião [the messianic leader], will also kill Corisco.”10 According to Rocha’s Deus e o diabo, the “cangaceiros and fanatics” must die before the true revolution can come to Northeastern Brazil. As the stylized battle between the cangaceiros and Antônio das Mortes begins, Manuel and Rosa escape, running across the desolate, sandy hills of the sertão. The soundtrack picks up its tempo as the camera tracks the couple as they flee, zooming out to a long shot emphasizing the vast, barren terrain, as the verse repeats, “The sertão will turn to the sea and the sea to sertão. The land belongs to man, not to God or the Devil.” Suddenly, Rosa and then Manuel trip and fall as the camera rises, offering a bird’s-eye view. With an abrupt jump cut, the final scene shifts to images of ocean

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waves crashing to the operatic chants of a Villa-Lobos piece. Critics and scholars consider the ending as symbolizing a liberation for Manuel and Rosa that is both undefined and shakily uncertain.11 Although this film was produced at a time when rural Northeasterners seemed as revolutionary as their counterparts in Cuba and China, Deus e o diabo does not depict a situation of triumph for nordestinos. Change for o Nordeste is insinuated when Manuel and Rosa run away from the cangaceiros, but the filmic representation of such change is left open-ended in an attempt to provoke reaction and discussion from audiences.12 As explained in the introduction, although the film suggests the possibility of change, the broader discourse of o Nordeste as a region immune to change and chained to its past is also present in Deus e o diabo, with its standard set of Northeastern characters and settings. The final dialogue between Manuel and Rosa reinforces an uncertainty about change, with Rosa’s announcement that she is going to have a baby, an announcement that follows the love scene between Rosa and Corisco, suggesting the possibility of a future for the cangaço and o Nordeste chained to its past.13 The possibility for continuance of the cangaceiro in Northeastern Brazil even after the final band has been killed, imprisoned, or dispersed is common in many popular culture representations. A similar conclusion also appears in the final stanza of José Pacheco’s well-known popular poem, or folheto: No inferno não ficou He didn’t stay in Hell No ceu também não chegou But he also did not arrive in Heaven He must be in the backlands Por certa está no sertão In many representations of Lampião in popular culture, the cangaceiro continues to live in the sertão, more popular after his death than during his lifetime. Such stories further the idea that o Nordeste is impervious to change. Paulo Gil Soares, assistant director of Deus e o diabo and the person on the film crew who Rocha claimed knew the most about Northeastern Brazil, continued this examination of the continuance of the cangaceiro in his political documentary, Memória do Cangaço (1965). Soares’s documentary directly challenged elite descriptions of the violent, racially degenerate cangaceiro, putting forth the argument that social conditions led Northeastern men to make a rational decision to join the ­cangaço. He interviewed elites, large landowners, and policemen who fought against the cangaceiros, as well as contemporary cowhands, and former cangaceiros.

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Soares was also the first director to incorporate scenes from Benjamin Abrahão’s 1936 footage of Lampião’s band. Although Soares challenges the idea that the cangaceiro was a violent, sadistic criminal, his cangaceiro is still a nordestino because he is a poor, uneducated victim of unequal social structures. Similar to many films about Northeastern Brazil, this one opens in a Northeastern market, using nordestino music and repentistas who perform literatura de cordel to immediately code the location as o Nordeste. A voiceover states that in the nineteenth century, groups of cangaceiros emerged to construct o Nordeste, performing acts of heroism and goodness in creating agrarian organizations despite pressures from soldiers, who were their constant enemy. From the initial market scene, the film shifts to the Instituto Médico Legal Nina Rodrigues in Bahia, an Institute under public scrutiny in the 1950s and 1960s. Images of a whitewashed courtyard and Europeanstyle statues appear on the screen while the director, Estácio de Lima, gives a scientific explanation of the cangaço. Estácio de Lima argued that the cangaceiros existed because of a criminal predisposition in the nordestino population, who had “endocrinatic disturbances and morphological factors typically characteristic of these individuals.” He described biological reasons for their criminal predisposition related to glands and testicles that created “extremely dangerous” men. As the university doctor provides his “expert” testimony, Soares shifts from images of the university to images of present-day cowhands at a local market, dressed in leather and riding their small horses in a corral. “To see if this professor is correct, we spoke with one of these men,” announces the documentary-style voice-over. Soares interviews an older cowboy, mounted on his horse (see Figure 2.2). Seu Gregório explains that he does not earn monthly wages, that he is illiterate, and that schools are unavailable where he lives. His wife died because the folk medicine he could afford was ineffective. As Seu Gregório rides off into the sertão, another voice-over explains how the sertanejo has been abandoned by the state. Soares’s representation of the cangaceiro depicts him as a ­victim-survivor, struggling to exist in the precarious conditions of the rural Northeast. Rebellion is thus explained as resulting from the lack of justice, precarious material conditions, and the abandonment or persecution of the sertanejos by the state. A voice-over tells us, “When they organized themselves as cangaceiros, society used the worst of all medicines against them—the police.” Soares then turns to the interviews with Zé Rufino, the coronel responsible

Masculinity, Barbarism, and Honor  73

Figure 2.2

Memória do cangaço (1965).

Source: Acervo Cinemateca Brasileira/SAv/MinC, São Paulo. Courtesy of the Thomaz Farkas Estate.

for killing and beheading over twenty cangaceiros; Ângelo Roque, one of Lampião’s cangaceiros who now works as a security guard; and Dadá, Corisco’s widow. Toward the end of the documentary, Soares shows the cangaceiro’s embalmed heads, held on display at the Nina Rodrigues Institute in glass display domes. The scripted but never filmed third sequence of Deus e o diabo supposedly would have approached the topic of present-day rural activism such as the Ligas Camponesas, and Paulo Gil Soares intended to film this sequence. It is therefore likely Memória do cangaço was not only a documentary about the history of the cangaceiro, but also held broader implications about historical interpretations of the possibilities for change in the Northeast. Memória do cangaço subverted the official history and “expert” explanations of the cangaceiro while also critiquing the social and economic conditions that continued to create miséria for the present-day rural population. According to the documentary, the police continue to be the “worst medicine” for solving such socioeconomic problems, and the state continues to neglect the rural population. Through such arguments,

74  O Nordeste in the Cold War

the film implies that the Northeast could face a resurgence of cangaceiros because the rural people continue to be afflicted by the same violence and poverty. Besides the political films, commercial Nordestern directors also chose to produce films about o Nordeste and the cangaceiro during the Cold War, also engaging with themes defining the region and its people such as masculinity, violence, race, and savagery and the idea of o Nordeste chained to its past. In the early 1960s, Carlos Coimbra released two extremely popular films, as measured by ticket sales: A morte no comando do cangaço (Death Commands Brigandage, 1960) and Lampião, Rei do cangaço (Lamipião, King of the Badlands, 1962).14 The 1960 production A morte no comando do cangaço established Coimbra as a prominent director of commercial Nordestern films.15 The film begins with a line of cangaceiros coming over the top of a hill, a reference to the opening sequence in Lima Barreto’s Cannes-winning film, O cangaceiro (1953; see Figure 2.3). As mentioned in Chapter 1, O cangaceiro was one of the first Nordesterns, and thus was frequently cited. In Coimbra’s A morte, the cangaceiros, after appearing on the hill, engage in a battle with a family of smallholders. The male protagonist, Raimundo Vieira (Alberto Ruschel), is wounded and loses consciousness in a trench. The family loses the bloody battle against the cangaceiros, and afterward their heads are severed and impaled. After the gruesome battle,

Figure 2.3

Lima Barreto’s O cangaceiro (1953).

Source: Acervo Cinemateca Brasileira/SAv/MinC, São Paulo.

Masculinity, Barbarism, and Honor  75

the hero Raimundo awakes to find his house on fire and his family’s heads displayed on poles. The rest of the film traces the hero’s travails in gathering forces in pursuit of revenge against the cangaceiros. In many of the commercial Nordesterns, cangaceiros are defined as good or bad characters based on whether their actions are honorable and brave or sadistically violent. In A morte, Milton Ribeiro interpreted the “bad” cangaceiro as Capitão Silvero (see Figure 2.4).16 The spectacle of ­violence in an early scene codes Capitão Silvero as the barbaric villain, and he often carries blood-stained knives, such as the one in he holds in ­Figure 2.4. His barbarism is also coded as “mixed-race” or “black,” emphasized through techniques of marking and mythification. When Capitão Silvero first appears in the film, an Afro-descendent priestess (Ruth de Souza) is blessing him in front of an altar of human skulls and candles. She cuts his arm with a knife, wiping blood on the host to protect his body from harm. The scene establishes Silvero as “black” and deviant through the allusion to black magic. Not only does the idea of the cangaceiro as racially degenerate and criminally violent refer to commonly held assumptions supported by elite discourse, but Silvero’s actions in the film also mark him as savage.

Figure 2.4

Milton Ribeiro in A morte comanda o cangaço (1960).

Source: Centro de Documentação e Informação da FUNARTE, Rio de Janeiro.

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After the attack on the innocent homesteaders, the cangaceiros celebrate, dancing and drinking. Capitão Silvero sits on a hammock, apart from the action, chewing on a piece of meat he has stabbed with his large knife. His band brings him a woman dressed in tight clothes as Silvero’s gaze—also held by the camera—scrutinizes her body. Soon afterward, he attacks and rapes the woman, and then discards her. In a later scene, the same woman helps the cangaceiros escape sabotage by soldiers and is, in turn, shot by the soldiers. Capitão Silvano kills the soldiers and rides away, allowing the woman to die without acknowledging her role in protecting them. Whereas an honorable man is defined by how he protects women, Silvero’s actions toward women mark him as dishonorable. Although Capitão Silvano is portrayed as powerful, he is also marked as dishonorable through his violent actions, his deviant religious beliefs, and his treatment of women. The mythification and marking function because Coimbra cast the white Alberto Ruschel as the hero Raimundo opposite the non-white Milton Ribeiro as the villain (see Figures 2.4 and 2.5). Raimundo inhabits a different world than the cangaceiro Capitão Silvero, reinforcing a n ­ aturalized difference between the two characters as white/brave/heroic versus mixed-race/violent/villain. Raimundo is a hardworking rural rancher, ­ bound by the honor code to seek revenge for the murder of his family. His honorable status is further reinforced by his treatment of women. Along his journey, Raimundo rescues the virtuous white female protagonist Florinda, interpreted by the Pernambucan producer and a­ ctress Aurora Duarte, from captivity at the hands of the cangaceiros (see Figure 2.5). She accompanies the hero in pursuit of revenge, but she is afraid to use a gun. As an honorable man, Raimundo treats her ­respectfully, protects her, and averts his gaze from her body when she must change her clothing near him. To reach the bad cangaceiros, Raimundo and his group must traverse through land covered with caatinga, a dry bush with sharp thorns. In the  backlands, Raimundo and Florinda construct a rustic cross and exchange marriage vows. By the end of the story, Raimundo and Florinda become cangaceiros themselves, donning the typical clothing and hats as they make their way to the final battle scene (Figure 2.5). The narrative suggests that they had to become cangaceiros to engage in the violent battle in the sertão. In the final battle, the villain and the hero fight with machetes, and F ­ lorinda ends the conflict by shooting Capitão Silvero to save her husband’s life. She is no longer an innocent flower and has transformed into a

Masculinity, Barbarism, and Honor  77

Figure 2.5

Alberto Ruschel in A morte comanda o cangaço (1960).

Source: Centro de Documentação e Informação da FUNARTE, Rio de Janeiro.

cangaceira. In the final scene, drawn from classic westerns, the couple rides off into the sunset, followed by their own band of cangaceiros, suggesting a continuance of the cangaceiro in o Nordeste. Coimbra’s second Nordestern film, Lampião, Rei do cangaço, starts at a local fair, where a blind man recites literatura de cordel, coding the film’s location as o Nordeste. Coimbra used artisan-crafted clay figurines associated with Northeastern artisanry to precede major scene changes, which were also narrated by singers performing literatura de cordel. Coimbra’s o Nordeste is a folkloric fable, containing such elements as the clay figurines, literatura de cordel, messianic preachers, drought refugees, bumba-meu-boi, and the cangaceiro. But o Rei depicts a different version of the cangaço than A morte. Coimbra claimed that the film was based on research he conducted in the sertão, interviewing rural people in Bahia and Pernambuco, who spoke of Lampião in the present tense and referred to Lampião and Maria Bonita only as heroes. Thus, this film depicts the cangaceiro, Lampião, as a heroic Robin Hood. For instance, when Lampião arrives in one small town, he distributes money to all the townspeople and celebrates

78  O Nordeste in the Cold War

with dancing and music, singing “Lampião, the greatest governor of the sertão.” When the film starts, Lampião is a young man. Bad cangaceiros murdered his father, which led Lampião to join the cangaço. Throughout Rei do cangaço, Lampião saves women from being raped; he only kills people who want to kill him, and everyone in the sertão reveres him except the soldiers. Soldiers, or macacos (monkeys), and coronéis (rural political bosses) are the film’s villains. The soldiers torture and kill cangaceiros and rural people, working for the coronéis to implement a regime of violence in the sertão. But, the fight of the cangaceiros is in vain, as they grapple with the reality of the violent life of the sertão. The cangaceiros continually question their situation, wishing the war and violence would end but also feeling trapped by their circumstances.17 As Lampião explains to Maria Bonita, “Twenty-one years of fighting. For what? The sertão continues to be the same. People continue to be persecuted. For the world to be a better place, we must make another.”18 The final battle scene between the cangaceiros and the soldiers heeds the proclamation, ending dramatically in the deaths of Lampião and Maria Bonita. The film ends with scenes of their severed heads being held up to the crowds. The film portrays the cangaceiro as a heroic yet feudal Robin Hood who must be eliminated so that society can move on to the next stage of its development. Like the hero in A morte, Lampião in Rei do cangaço, is white, interpreted by the actor Leonardo Villar, who starred as Zé do Burro in O pagador de promessas (The Given Word, 1962; see Figure 2.6). Although many of the Lampião’s troops are white, Lampião’s second-in-command, Sabiano, is played by Milton Ribeiro (Capitão Silvero in A morte), whom soldiers kill halfway through the film. The other lead cangaceiro, played by Dionísio Azevedo, helps establish the cangaceiros as white. Maria Bonita (Gloria Menezes), who is also white, is a virtuous woman, loyal wife to Lampião, and loving mother; she is also brave and entirely devoted to Lampião though she is subservient to him. When she first appears in the film, she tells her father that if Lampião ever passes through Bahia she will go away with him because she recognizes the power a woman could have by his side. She refutes her father’s claim that Lampião is a bandit, instead calling Lampião the “Capitan of the Patriotic Forces.” In Rei do cangaço, many of the cangaceiros have traditional nuclear families, emphasizing the version of the cangaceiros as honorable, ordinary heroes of the Nordeste. The cangaceiros’ treatment of women, children, and

Masculinity, Barbarism, and Honor  79

Figure 2.6 ­Promotional

material for Lampião, Rei do cangaço (1964).

Source: Centro de Documentação e Informação da FUNARTE, Rio de Janeiro.

the rural poor nordestinos establishes Lampião and his band as honorable. Women in rural brothels are depicted as the victims of the soldiers and the coronéis, who have forced the women into prostitution. In contrast, Lampião refuses to sleep with prostitutes and prohibits his men from sleeping with them. In one scene, some of Lampião’s men come across a woman washing clothes in a river and attempt to rape her Lampião rescues the woman and kills the men for disrespecting her. Maria Bonita, the brave, virtuous mother and wife, protects children, exemplifying her goodness and maternal virtue. She encourages Lampião to make the sertão a better place. Rei do cangaço’s version of the cangaceiro differs from that in Coimbra’s earlier film, in which the cangaceiro was portrayed as villain. The contrasting versions reflect the idea that to some, the cangaceiro was a hero;

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to others, a villain. Coimbra’s contention that the version of the cangaceiro depicted in Rei do cangaço was based on popular or folktales suggests that these different reactions may reflect social class. For many of the rural poor, the cangaceiro was a hero but for the rural elite, he was a villain. Although the cangaceiro seems to have a definitive ending in Rei do cangaço with the death of Lampião, Maria Bonita, and his band of cangaceiros, the film’s message, expressed in the dialogue about continuing violence, draws on the idea that the conditions that led to the emergence of the cangaço will continue until it is possible to “make a new world.” At first glance, these four films appear to have little in common other than their focus on o Nordeste and the cangaceiro. But all the films employ the standard set of characters and address the themes of “feudal” violence, the harshness of the geography in terms of the climate and the vegetation, and the general poverty of the region as exemplified by illiteracy, hunger, and miséria. Each director used the folk culture of o Nordeste, such as literatura de cordel, bumba-meu-boi, xaxado and other rhythms, and feiras (outdoor markets) to code the film’s location as o Nordeste. Most of the films perpetuate the notion of a continuance of the cangaço in the Northeast while portraying the region as violent, nonmodern, and abandoned by the state. Such characteristics identified the characters as nordestinos and the region as o Nordeste, but to increase the films’ power, the directors and film critics emphasized the idea of “authenticity” to bolster their claims of portraying the “real” history of the cangaço. In the late 1950s and 1960s, directors making films about o Nordeste all claimed to be portraying the true story. These claims of authenticity were partly in reaction to the studio productions from a previous era,  such as Lima Barreto’s O cangaceiro (1953), which was criticized as being a “Holly­woodization” of the Third World.19 The attention to authenticity also reflected the influence of the realism of Italian Westerns in terms of their depictions of bodies and scenery and the film style of neorealism.20 In the Cold War context, the interest in authenticity is also connected to the rise in nationalist projects in the Third World and filmmakers’ desire to reject exotic Hollywood and European versions of the Third World. Directors from the Third World often painted themselves as the legitimate authority in depicting the “reality” of the Third World. The “reality effect” of these films also shaped people’s perceptions of the region and its people, and contributed to the stereotypes associated with the trope of o Nordeste.

Masculinity, Barbarism, and Honor  81

Filmmakers based their claims to authenticity on the research they conducted for the script, location shooting, and the mise-en-scènes. Paulo Gil Soares claimed that the reason why they paid attention to these details was to “implode the boundaries between fiction and reality, confusing representation and reality.”21 For example, Glauber Rocha based his character Antônio das Mortes on the real-life figure of Coronel José Rufino from Bahia, and Coimbra claimed to have based Rei do cangaço on interviews with rural nordestinos. The filmmakers traveled to the sertão of Northeastern Brazil to shoot the films on location, and they supported this reality effect with the use of authenticity of dialogue, costumes, and scenery. In a debate about Deus e o diabo in late March 1964, sponsored by the Federation of Brazilian Cinema Clubs (Federação dos Clubes de Cinema do Brasil), Glauber Rocha emphasized the authenticity of his film, stating that the actor who played Corisco looked exactly like the actual Corsico, or to put it more precisely, the actor had “90 percent of the characteristics of the real figure.”22 Rocha’s claim was verified in interviews with local nordestinos, who said they believed the actors were the actual historical figures.23 In a different Coimbra production, Corisco, o diabo loiro (The Blonde Devil, 1969), Coimbra worked with a former cangaceira, Dadá, to reconstruct the story of Corisco (who was Dadá’s partner). Dadá sewed the costumes of all the male and female cangaceiros, a detail that was greatly praised in all the major Brazilian newspaper film reviews. Many film reviews of Nordesterns commented on how well they reproduced nordestino speech patterns; for example, in a review on Coimbra’s A morte comanda o cangaço, one critic wrote that “the language is pure Nordeste, in the accent well rehearsed and employed, in the constructions of phrases, in the sweetness of singing the words, in the terminology.”24 The films were also shot in film styles associated with documentaries or cinema-verité. For Memória do cangaço, Soares filmed interviews with sertanejos, former cangaceiros, and Coronel José Rufino, the famed “cangaceiro killer” with the purpose of “demystifying the figure of the cangaceiro and bringing him to back to his real space within the Northeast.”25 Coimbra’s films focused on local and regional culture such as clay sculptures, regional dances, and music such as bumba-meu-boi, and local foods. The films often used voice-overs in the initial sequences, explaining the social and political history of Northeastern Brazil. Aesthetically, the political films employed what have been labeled “realistic” techniques. Filmmakers

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used hand-held camera shots, nonprofessional actors, natural lighting, and often shot in black and white using direct sound. Debates between filmmakers and critics about realism versus authenticity ensued, often basing the distinction on a film’s similarity to Hollywood movies or to Italian westerns. Although some critics praised the authenticity and realistic depiction of nordestino culture and history claimed in Coimbra’s productions; more frequently critics compared the commercial productions with political productions, arguing that the latter portrayed “reality” while more popular films portrayed a “fable.” Critics based their evaluations of authenticity on the film’s aesthetics, production costs, representations of Northeastern Brazil, and intended audiences, as well as on the director’s use of horses. Whereas American cowboys always appeared on horseback, critics claimed that the cangaceiro never used horses, and instead traveled only on foot. The use of horses in Nordesterns immediately flagged them as inauthentic copies of Hollywood or Italian films. Sometimes horses were seen as authentic if they were small and undernourished, depicted as “typical” nordestino horses; for instance, the horses ridden by the cangaceiros in Nelson Pereira dos Santos’s Vidas Secas (Barren Lives, 1962). Brazilian Nordesterns also centered on the theme of violence in the Northeast, as was clear in the promotional materials (see Figures 2.7 and 2.8). The poster for Deus e o diabo features a large knife, held by Corisco, who has long, wild hair and an angry expression, framed by a jagged, red sun. In the promotional posters of Coimbra’s films, the cangaceiros are savages, blurred images with long hair and screaming mouths, holding large knives covered in blood. The films and posters advertise severed heads, portrayed as a “typical” occurrence in Northeastern Brazil in battles between soldiers and cangaceiros. Most films employed bloody battle scenes and often featured slayings with large knifes and bodies riddled with bullets, as well as scenes of torture and rape. Violence was promoted both as an aesthetic, as Rocha’s claimed in his manifesto “The Aesthetic of Hunger,” and a way to attract audiences. Amid media reports of violence in the Northeast, and increased incidents of land occupation, these cinematic representations of the cangaceiro as violent shaped commonly held perceptions about the region and its people as violent, chaotic, and in need of control. Although directors and film reviewers often focused on authenticity, film scholars have largely denounced Nordesterns as exoticizing the

Masculinity, Barbarism, and Honor  83

Promotional material for Deus e o diabo na terra do sol.

Figure 2.7

Source: Acervo Cinemateca Brasileira/SAv/MinC, São Paulo. Courtesy of Glauber Rochass heirs, Copyrights Consultoria Ltda.

region and its people. One of most important Northeastern film critics condemned the commercial Nordestern as being a denial of the “authentic” Northeast, “The genre of the cangaço films represents only one thing: the negation of the authentic nordestino cultural, political, social, humanist, folkloric and geographical values.”26 According to film critic Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes, the “authenticity” of the Nordestern was a product of the South “using, interpreting and industrializing the folklore of the Northeast,” since the film industry was located in Southeastern Brazil and the directors exoticized the Northeast as the Third World.27 Taken together, the commercial and political Nordesterns constructed the folklore, the towns, and even the “accent” of Northeastern Brazil, a region that is actually much more diverse and varied than depicted on screen. In the political filmmakers’ rejection of the romantic or exotic version of poverty in the Third World, they created an ugly and miserable version that was not any

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Figure 2.8 Promotional material for A morte comanda o cangaço.

Source: Centro de Documentação e Informação da FUNARTE, Rio de Janeiro.

more realistic or less of a representation than the European, Hollywood, and studio films. One recent study on the “rural” in Brazilian film argues that with the Nordesterns, the cultural industry imported the format and selected an “other” [sertanejo] to affirm Brazilian national identity.28 In contrast to the scholarly analyses, most film reviewers and filmmakers during the Cold War claimed that the Nordestern films reproduced the reality of Northeastern Brazil. This illustrates Stuart Hall’s arguments about how representations in popular culture play an active role in constituting reality. Commercial and political Nordesterns drew from Brazilian stereotypes of o Nordeste that were widely accepted as “real” and “authentic.” Beyond reinforcing the idea that a singular regional accent, cast of characters, topography and traditional culture could encompass all of the vast region of Northeastern Brazil, depictions of violence also informed commonly held assumptions about the Northeastern rural social movements in the 1950s and 1960s. Regardless of the directors’ intentions of

Masculinity, Barbarism, and Honor  85

challenging the dominant trope of o Nordeste, the films implied a continuance of the cangaço, which—in the context of the era of the Cuban Revolution—alluded to the contemporary struggles for land and labor rights in Northeastern Brazil. Representations of the cangaceiro were not limited to the film industry. The next section evaluates how the living memory of the cangaceiro turned into a contentious legal debate in the late 1950s eliding the rural social-movement struggles for land and for workers’ rights, providing an initial legitimacy for rural people’s rights based on the Christian right to properly bury the dead.

A Few Embalmed Heads At the same time that the Ligas Camponesas were arguing in the state courts for expropriation of the Engenho Galiléia (between April and September 1959), the mainstream Northeastern newspaper O Diário de Pernambuco published a series on the cangaço, interviewing ex-cangaceiros, surviving family members, politicians, and soldiers. Most of the stories ran alongside gruesome photographs of severed heads. The series started with coverage of debates in the Pernambucan state congress about the legal right of the Instituto Médico Legal Nina Rodrigues in Bahia to put the heads of cangaceiros on public display at the Ethnographic and Anthropological Museum Estácio de Lima; the display included the heads of Lampião, Maria Bonita, and Corisco. Although this was not the first time the issue had arisen in Pernambucan politics—a governor of Pernambuco had denounced the display of the heads as early as 1938—the timing of the hearing coincided with the legal struggles for the expropriation of the Engenho Galileia and illustrated the more widespread challenge to elite rule and outspoken criticism of the state that was occurring in the Northeast in the 1950s and 1960s. As in the Engenho Galiléia case, the cangaceiros’ families brought the issue to the state court system using the Brazilian Penal Code. Citing Article 5, Chapter 2 of the code, which declares the disrespect of cadavers to be crime punishable by prison and monetary fines, the families argued for the right to bury their family members’ heads.29 O Diário de Pernambuco sided with the families, denouncing the act of holding dead bodies on display for twenty-one years as criminal, and suggesting that such a form of punishment was “barbaric.”30 The cangaceiro heads had been studied in the 1930s and 1940s to better understand what biological traits the bandits had

86  O Nordeste in the Cold War

possessed to make them criminals. Even in 1938, the validity of such research was questionable, but by 1959, anthropometry was seen as a vestige of the past. The heads were displayed in a case alongside clothing, weapons, and other personal items to render the power of the state visible.31 By putting the heads of the famous cangaceiros on public display, the directors of the Nina Rodrigues Institute were also displaying their ownership of the nordestino body, which served as both a threat and a warning to the Northeastern public about the tolerance and consequences of rebellion. O Diário de Pernambuco even claimed that the heads were a “conquest trophy.”32 The exhibition is an example of how the state demonstrated its power over the cangaceiros’ bodies and, symbolically, the Northeastern body. Michel Foucault’s concept of biopower is helpful in recognizing how the display is connected to state power, historically and in the 1950s and 1960s. When the cangaceiros were captured, the heads were sent to the odontology department at the Federal University of Bahia to be specimens in criminology and anthropometric studies designed to prove the dangers of racial mixing to Brazilian society. In doing so, the state subjugated human bodies to scientific study to control the population, a core definition of bio-power.33 But the studies alone were not enough, because the state wanted to punish the cangaceiros, and to make visible the punishment for the crime of rebelling. Here, Foucault’s ideas about punishment are useful for understanding how the heads demonstrate the exercise of state power in disciplining the Northeastern population. After the police captured and killed Lampião’s band in 1938, the severed heads were sent on a tour through the Northeast, where the trophies attracted large crowds. After six years of study at the Federal University, the heads were again put on public display, this time at the Nina Rodrigues Institute. The public display of human heads in a museum can be compared to the disciplinary technologies of the school and the prison, institutions intended to create “docile bodies.”34 But, contrary to Foucault’s idea of surveillance as a modern form of punishment that would not need public displays, the heads also suggest a type of spectacle of violence that Foucault believed would disappear with the panoptic machine. Displaying the heads reveals how the modern Brazilian state envisioned rural nordestinos as an inferior Other. The human heads could be held on public display because of widely held perceptions of o Nordeste as a feudal or semifeudal region. Based on this premise, the modern disciplinary state needed to perform spectacles of violence to reinforce its power in a language that nonmodern nordestinos

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could understand. Although the public spectacle provided a platform for resisting the state’s power, as Foucault might have predicted, the case of the human heads on display edges toward the absurd, particularly when considering the museum director’s rationale and treatment of the display. One of the stories on the cangaceiros’ heads portrayed Director Lima holding the heads of Maria Bonita and Lampião under his arms as if they were soccer balls. The caption read, “Completely deformed, these heads cannot be used for studies. They should be buried.”35 In the article, Lima claims that the heads were “anatomic pieces,” comparable to mummies in Egypt, and needed to be preserved in the name of science and as “priceless evidence of an era of Brazilian criminality.” Yet, the photograph of Lima casually handling the embalmed human heads challenges the idea

Figure 2.9 Cangaceiro heads. “Severino Barbaosa, ‘Colecionar cabeças humanas é crime!’” O Diário de Pernambuco, August 12, 1959, 10.

Source: Arquivo Público Estadual de Pernambuco, Recife.

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that the museum was carefully preserving the heads for scientific study, or that they were considered precious historical artifacts. Lima is not wearing gloves or a mask, as one might expect when dealing with precious artifacts or scientific evidence. The photograph also provides visual evidence of the power relations that the state or dominant groups envisioned themselves as having in subordinating rural nordestinos. While the well-dressed director holds the macabre heads, he is not the subject of the photograph. His downward gaze leads the viewer’s eyes to the cangaceiros’ lifeless eyes, which stare out from the image. As a figure of authority and representative of the state, he is in control of the representation, whereas the subjects of image—the nordestinos—have no ability to control how they are portrayed or scrutinized, and have even lost the right to privacy in death.36 O Diário de Pernambuco also ran feature stories on the cangaceiros’ family members, portraying them as humble, Christian nordestinos. For example, the Diário reported that Expedita Ferreira, Lampião and Maria Bonita’s daughter, prayed every night for her parents’ souls and made promises to saints, which emphasized her Catholic education and Christian upbringing and underscored her reasons for imploring the institute to allow her to bury her parents’ heads. Expedita Ferreira described her parents as good, caring parents.37 Photographs of Expedita smiling with her own children, emphasized her legal marriage and “poor but happy” home. She made a plea to government officials in the newspaper report: I don’t know why the cultured men of this land still don’t understand the size of their mistake. The death penalty does not exist in Brazil. However, my parents were killed. And even worse, they cut off their heads, threw their bodies to the vultures and still after twenty-one years, they prohibit Lampião’s family from burying his mortal remains, a right that is ours. I don’t know why they do this. Sirs, as a daughter, I beg you to allow me to bury the heads of my parents, for the love of God. They were also human beings.38

Reporter Severino Barbosa noted the tears in her eyes when she spoke about the injustice of keeping her parents’ heads on display, and portrayed Expedita as a devoted daughter and mother with Christian values who was seeking justice. Expedita’s plea bears a resemblance to another story of resistance in Northeastern Brazil in 1959. Although she lacked the power or education of the “cultured men,” Expedita positioned herself as morally superior to those with power. She insinuated that the government and the directors

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of the institute lacked Christian values and morals because the continued display of the cangaceiros’ heads disrespected not only bodies and the bond between parent and child but also the right of burial. Expedita’s plea is similar to the “origin” story of the Ligas Camponesas put forth in the media and the courts at the same time, which told of rural workers on the Engenho Galiléia organizing a mutual-aid society to provide rural workers with the means to pay for proper burials instead of having to borrow a communal coffin from the municipality. Central to both the Galileus and Expedita’s plea was the idea that the poor, as good Christians, have the ability to use their moral superiority to resist the power of the large landowner, the government, or the director of a research institute.39 Expedita’s plea challenged hegemonic notions of honor based on social status. By positioning herself as more honorable than the educated directors of a prestigious scientific institution, she argued for her rights.40 The topic of violence figured prominently throughout the case of the cangaceiros’ heads, as the soldiers—the instrument of enforcing the disciplinary power of the state and the elites—were portrayed as more violent and less honorable than the cangaceiros. As one report explained: The cangaceiros represented crime, violence, justice in people’s own hands. The soldiers should have represented the law, but they symbolized something quite different. Young women lost their virginity in the hands of the police. Soldiers burned ranches and plantations and were often worse than the cangaceiros in terms of their violence and thirst for blood.41

Newspaper reports questioned the soldiers’ honor as men and their abilities as soldiers, denouncing their acts of barbarism and depicting them as unable to kill the cangaceiros due to their ineptitude. One investigator claimed that Lampião’s band of cangaceiros had died as a result of poisoning before the soldiers attacked. According to this report, after encountering the dead bodies of Lampião’s band, “the soldiers, as in a macabre festival, had their own fun shooting the already decaying cadavers. Suddenly, when a soldier discovered the body of Maria Bonita, he ripped off her clothes and threw himself upon her corpse, plunging his large knife in her vagina.”42 According to the reports surrounding the case of the embalmed heads in O Diário de Pernambuco, the cangaço had emerged as a result of unjust social structures, inequalities, and violence that led rural people to mistrust the laws and to fight for their own rights and survival.43 Although

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the life of the cangaceiro was not depicted as honorable, newspaper reports connected their existence to the rule of coronéis and the absence of a modern state in the rural Northeast. In trying to investigate the true cause of Lampião’s death, O Diário de Pernambuco interviewed a former cangaceiro, José Alves de Matos (alias Vinte e Cinco), who was working as a civil guard for the Tribunal Regional Eleitoral in Maceió at the time of the interview. Matos declared the time he spent in the cangaço was a nightmare.44 He challenged the dominant view that the cangaceiro had emerged because of racial degeneracy, reflecting that “no matter how punished a man is for his illegal actions, he is never looked upon as good by society even when people know that most criminals are victims of social inequalities.”45 In another report, a soldier who fought against the cangaceiros for twenty years, Coronel Higino José Belarmino, denounced large landowners for causing the problem of the cangaceiros, suggesting the absence of the modern state in the rural Northeast.46 He categorized the cangaço as a backward symbol from Brazil’s past, appealing to the need for a modern state to distance itself from banditry and the forms of state punishment used on criminals in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1959, reports on the issue of agrarian reform followed a similar line of logic. Many reports advocated for agrarian reform to end the exploitation of the rural worker in the unjust social conditions of the landholding system and quell the emerging rebellions of the Ligas. For example, Representative Andrade Lima Filho claimed that the Ligas were criminal organizations because the leaders had been communist agitators but also said that the underlying reasons they had emerged was valid. “Agrarian reform is a basic problem that cannot be denied . . . the paus-de-arara [colloquial name for Northeastern migrant workers] have begun to demonstrate that they no longer will remain in the situation of living almost like animals in a feudalistic system. . . . They are ripe for a structural revolution soon that could be conditioned but not controlled.”47 Andrade Lima argued that the solution to the protests was not repressing the rural workers. The only option was to “put an end to the phenomenon of exploiting the rural man, or reforming to survive.” Similar to the historical arguments about the cangaceiros as victim-criminals caught in the web of large landowners, an ineffective state, and unjust social structures, the reports on the Ligas Camponesas claimed that their “illegal” actions, such as land invasions, were also related to structural issues. Whereas historical arguments about cangaceiros helped legitimize the argument for returning the cangaceiros’ heads to their families for burial, a similar line of argumentation encour-

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aged the legal decision in favor of rural workers allowing for the expropriation of the Engenho Galiléia in January 1960. In a session of the state legislature in mid-May 1959, Francisco Julião drew an explicit connection between Lampião and the struggle for agrarian reform. Although a state deputy was arguing for making an appeal to the governor of Bahia to return the heads to the families, Julião interjected to say that Lampião was one of the main victims of the large landowners because he had revolted against the “inhumane” rule. As Julião claimed, “Lampião was the first man of the Northeast, oppressed by the injustice of the powerful, to fight against the latifúndio and its arbitrariness. Lampião has been a symbol of resistance.”48 Julião cast Lampião as a guerrilla warrior and a symbol of resistance against the large landowners, a strategy he continued to employ in an attempt to gain popular support for the Ligas and agrarian reform. The hearings about the burial of the embalmed cangaceiro heads together with the expropriation of the Engenho Galiléia represented a simultaneous attack on the power of the large landowners, the latifúndio system, and the absence of the state in the Northeast. This allowed political and cultural actors to mobilize the cangaceiro as a political tool, denouncing the traditional rule by the rural elite. And yet, as the reports in O Diário de Pernambuco suggest, though the dominant interpretations about the cangaceiros began to change in the 1950s and 1960s, the violence attributed the cangaço still drew public criticism, and the public continued to think of cangaceiros as criminals and undesirables in the Brazilian nation.

The Cangaceiro and the Struggle for Agrarian Reform In a 1963 series in LIGA, the newspaper of the Ligas Camponesas, an article on cangaceiros elaborated on Julião’s 1959 statement about Lampião, which described how the Ligas mobilized the symbol of the cangaceiro in the fight for agrarian reform. The article defined the cangaceiro as a historical revolutionary figure who fought against the latifúndio, originating class struggle in Northeastern Brazil. According to the article, the cangaceiro was a species of revolting column that everyone on these burned lands of the sertões of our country had respect for. . . . What did the cangaceiros want? To demoralize the constituted power of the time based on social maladjustments and plundering discrimination imposed by the privileged minority against the majority of the Brazilian population.

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And it was just for this reason that the governors were impotent in suffocating the rebellion in the Northeast. For more than 30 years, Lampião and his band roamed through the lands of Bahia and Ceará. . . . The cangaceiros almost never harmed the povo, because their wrath was against the latifúndio. It’s frequently told how Antônio Silvino took from the rich and distributed to the poor. From this we can conclude that even though the cangaceiro appeared in the form of banditry, the struggle of the cangaceiros fundamentally had its origins in class struggle. The government forces that pursued the bandits were accomplices in innumerable atrocities. Because they were constantly tricked by the cangaceiros, the soldiers took out their rage on the peaceful sertanejo population, committing perverse acts against them. The government’s presence motivated the people to wake up. They said that in the region, the soldiers were more criminal than the cangaceiros.49

The leaders of the Ligas Camponesas viewed Lampião as a hero. Although the Ligas’s definition of the cangaceiro is comparable to versions constructed in some Nordestern films, such as Rocha’s Deus e o diabo and Coimbra’s Rei do cangaço, unlike in these films, the Ligas avoided direct references to the violence incited by cangaceiros. The Ligas’s appropriations of the cangaceiro were based on their sense of masculine honor, bravery, and skill; the Ligas challenged the Northeastern hegemonic masculinity associated with the landowning elite by invoking the cangaceiro as a symbol of resistance. As Marta Santos has shown in her study of nineteenth-century Northeastern masculinities, male honor has long been associated with the ownership of land, which not only allowed men to provide for their families but also distinguished rural men from the dishonorable ranks within the patriarchal hierarchy, such as women and slaves.50 In the era of the Cuban Revolution, rural social movements directly challenged the power and honor of the landowning elite through legal expropriations and illegal land invasions.51 Although land ownership continued to define male honor in the 1950s and 1960s, new demands arose that expanded what it meant to be honorable. As rural social activism increased, landowners had to treat their employees honorably by offering fair wages and other protections to avoid uprisings. At this time, the “feudal” systems associated with the coronéis and landowning elite were labeled “backward,” and measures were taken to push for “modern” systems, such as political democracy and mechanized agricultural production. The landowning elite and state’s use of violence to maintain order in the Northeast faced challenges as rural

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workers denounced acts of violence and protested against assassinations and torture while also using violence as a means to affirm their own masculine power within the patriarchal system. In a letter to the Brazilian minster of war, written in 1962, Francisco Julião described the rebellious nature of the peasant. “When he rebels he becomes a Zumbi or Balaio or Cabano, or Antônio Conselheiro, Felipe dos Santos, Antonio Sílvino or Lampião; and then he is written off as a bandit or fanatic threatening the latifúndio and the “Christian” family, law, order and everything else corrupt; but he becomes a ray of hope for the poor; an avenger for the crimes which are visited on him from the day of his birth.”52 By invoking these historical figures as “heroes” of the rural population, Julião describes the difference in historical interpretations between the dominant classes and the subaltern. According to Julião, the cangaceiro was not just a part of history but also a historic symbol that continued to fuel revolutionary sentiment in the countryside and thus was useful for mobilizing camponeses to fight for radical agrarian reform “by law or by force.” Julião frequently argued that the “true” history of the cangaceiros had yet to be written because the dominant classes had controlled their historical narratives and focused on depicting them as bandits and violent outlaws. Attempts to write the history of the cangaceiro from the subaltern perspective appeared in LIGA. For example, Volta Sêca, a former cangaceiro, explained in an interview, “Lampião was a protector of the poor against the injustice of the coronéis.” The article compared the cangaceiro to the Ligas and to the Cuban or Chinese guerrilheiros, illustrating how the Ligas had imbued regional historical symbols with new, revolutionary meanings attached to the historical context of the era of the Cuban Revolution.53 According to Volta Sêca, as in the case of Euclides da Cunha’s “bronzed Titans,” the “warriors” of o Nordeste had not disappeared after the war; they had been oppressed into silence. The article drew comparisons between the Ligas and the cangaceiros to suggest that nordestino warriors were rising up again, preparing to fight against the dominant class. Another example of the Ligas rewriting of history from the subaltern perspective was in the publication of popular poetry. For example, José Pacheco’s popular poem “The Arrival of Lampião in Hell” was published in LIGA, in 1963. According to the poem’s preface, the folheto shows the “admiration that Northeastern peasants have for Lampião, this intelligent guerrilheiro, whose true history still remains to be told.”54 Lampião is a

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symbol who allows the rural population to combat their oppression. “In these verses, Hell is the casa-grande [plantation owner’s house] of the large landowner.” Lampião creates a revolution in Hell, battling against all the devils. Upon his victory in Hell, Lampião declares, “If there is not enough for everyone then no one has rights to anything.” The author of the preface emphasized the socialist motivations behind Lampião’s struggles in Hell, presenting him as a revolutionary hero. In the poem, when Lampião arrives at Hell’s gates, the Devil explains why Lampião cannot enter: Só me chega gente ruim Eu ando muito caipora Estou até com vontade De botar mais da metade Dos que têm aqui pra fora

Only bad people come here I go along hapless I even have the desire To throw out more than half Of those who I have here

Lampião é um bandido Ladrão de honestidade Só vem desmoralizar A minha propriedade

Lampião is a bandit Thief of honesty He only comes to demoralize My property

The Devil tells the watchman to gather three dozen negros, “the armed troops,” to defend the Devil’s property. Lampião triumphs in the great battle by setting a fire that burns the cotton warehouse and all the money the Devil possesses. This ending may reflect claims that the Ligas set fire to cane fields in the 1950s and 1960s in rural workers’ attempts to gain control over the land. By making the landowner the Devil in the poem, and Lampião the hero of the rural worker, the Ligas legitimized such actions as lighting cane fires or invading property to fight against the power of the Devil/large landowner. Although dominant historical narratives described Lampião as a bandit and mercenary, the Ligas countered this narrative by arguing that the real criminal was transferring the blame for the crime to the accused. The Ligas frequently mobilized this strategy of questioning who was the “real” criminal to legitimize and gain support for rural protests and land invasions. In the interview with Volta Sêca, the former cangaceiro claimed that oral traditions in the rural Northeast supported his version of the history over elite versions of history. As Volta Sêca described: There was respect, respect for everything and everyone, for us to also be respected. This business of saying that the band would rape young women never happened. It is

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proof enough in the case of old Justino, known in the band as Old Father. This man joined the cangaço with his son, whose name was Arvoredo, to take revenge on soldiers commanded by Sargeant Otaviano, who used an excuse of fighting against Lampião to invade the old man’s house, killing and raping his wife and daughters after forcing the poor girls to strip and walk around the corral. This good old man died in jail. Today, when the peasant sees his daughter deflowered by the large landowner or his son scarred with the branding of the landowner’s thugs, his revenge is to join the Liga. And if in the past the cangaço expanded with the violence of the soldiers, today the arbitrary crimes committed by the police and army strengthen the revolutionary scene of the Ligas.55

The Ligas appealed to rural men’s desires and code of honor to protect their families, turning the large landowners into villains or criminals. Volta Sêca’s story illustrates how the Ligas reappropriated historical narratives of o Nordeste while also addressing contemporary Cold War struggles. The article made a historic comparison to explain the contemporary context of the Ligas: “Today the usineiros [sugarcane factory owners] of Pernambuco order the cane fields burned and then blame the Ligas for the fire. . . . The militaristic North-Americans attack Cuba in many different ways and then claim that they are threatened by Cuban aggression.” In other words, groups or nations with power, such as the large landowners and the United States, were portrayed as using their power to blame the less powerful—the nordestino peasant and Cuba—for the crimes the powerful committed. Such revisions of history and contemporary politics delegitimized the power of the dominant class, appealing to rural workers to join the Ligas and rebel. The article goes on to argue that the Ligas’s “new” consciousness and tactics for fighting against the dominant power came from the experiences of the cangaço and the contemporary examples of Cuban and Chinese revolutionaries. For example, cangaceiros had used noms de guerre to protect their families from persecution, as did revolutionaries in Cuba. The article also detailed similarities between Cuban, Chinese, and cangaceiro warfare tactics—namely, guerrilla warfare. Lampião was a strategic genius who often used a tactic commonly employed in China and Cuba, and which Mao Tse-Tung and Che Guevara called “encircle and destroy.”56 The origins of the “new” peasant consciousness came from the battles of the cangaceiros, who worked with other groups to fight against the enemy. To exemplify this point, Volta Sêca used a historical example, stating that the cangaceiros never fought against the Prestes Column57 because both

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groups had the same enemy, the rural oligarchy that ruled Brazil in the Old Republic. The article instructed the reader: “By observing the sense of class strategy (unity against the common enemy), the natural conclusion is that both shared a singular dialectic of the tactics of struggle (a singular front as the result of the practice of the revolutionary process, stemming from their own material circumstances).”58 Implied in this statement is the notion that a broader coalition would form naturally from diverse groups such as the Ligas and the PCB as the revolutionary process progressed to unite in the fight against the dominant elite and police in the Northeast.

Contrasting Definitions of the Cangaceiro: The Ligas versus the PCB Even though Conservatives and some Communist Party members considered the Ligas Camponesas to be a communist group, Francisco Julião’s use of the cangaceiro differed from the PCB’s appropriations of the cangaceiro. Through this symbol, it is possible to perceive some of the underlying differences between the Ligas and the PCB by analyzing how leaders used the image of the cangaceiro to mobilize the rural population and to define the objectives of agrarian reform. Whereas Julião portrayed the cangaceiro as a historical figure that held contemporary relevance in the struggle for agrarian reform, the Brazilian Communist Party saw the cangaceiro as a hindrance to the progress needed in Northeastern Brazil. In the PCB’s linear and progressive history, the cangaceiro was a rebellious historical figure whose actions were formed as a reaction to unjust landholdings. The cangaceiro no longer existed because history had advanced. The nature of rural conflicts had changed, eliminating the need for the cangaceiro; rural workers were urged to organize against the latifúndio in rural unions. This reflects the “reformist” strategies after 1958, when the PCB began to encourage militants to work with the state to create legal rural unions instead of making their previous “radical” appeals to create national liberation armies. An article in the PCB newspaper Novos Rumos about a violent shootout at the Engenho Estreliana in 1963 substantiated this position: The times in which the injustices practiced against the peasants dragged them into criminal actions and the formation of thieving bands like that of Lampião have already passed. Today, the misery that devastates our rural population and the injustices practiced by landowners inevitably leads the peasants to the Ligas, the rural unions and other such organizations. Rural workers are learning from urban industrial workers

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that organized labor is the only way to free themselves from the yoke of the latifúndio, from the unhuman exploitation of the feudal landowners in Pernambuco.59

Although the article was discussing an instance of armed conflict on the Engenho Estreliano, the PCB downplayed the conflict by focusing on the legal rights of rural unions to organize and fight for the right to land. Rui Facó, scholar, journalist, member of the PCB, and a Ligas sympathizer, published a series of articles on Northeastern Brazil in the PCB newspaper Novos Rumos, as well as an influential book, Cangaceiros e fanáticos, before his death in Bolivia in 1963.60 To conduct research, Facó had traveled throughout Northeastern Brazil starting in late 1960, producing a series of reports on the culture of o Nordeste and on the Ligas Camponesas. Facó’s articles described the cangaceiro as a type of primitive historic rebel who had been engaged in a “civil war” that could be defined as class struggle.61 Even though the rural poor did not know what they were rebelling for, they knew what they were rebelling against, which was the power of the latifúndio. Facó’s studies emphasized the notion that the cangaceiros were historical predecessors to the Ligas and the PCB rural syndicates, creating the idea of the continuities and traditions of struggles in the Northeast.62 Facó’s praise for the Ligas in Novos Rumos, seem to depart from the party line, but this may also reflect the time of publication, before the 1961 Belo Horizonte Congress. In a review of the Russian preface to José Lins do Rego’s 1953 novel, Cangaceiros, published in Novos Rumos, Facó criticized the Russian scholar’s interpretation of the cangaceiro: Although it [cangaceirismo] had its origins in the spontaneous revolt against terribly unjust systems, it did nothing to lead the exploited and oppressed peasant masses. On the contrary, the bands of Lampião, Antônio Silvino, Luis Padre, Corsico and many, many others degenerated into simple thieves and assassins. Invariably, they were put forth in service of the large landowners in the bloody battles between the landowners. . . . . . . What we must condemn of cangaceirismo is not only the violence for the sake of violence but also that they did not take into consideration the true state of the spirit of the peasant masses. They were completely alienated from all popular movements and from the struggle for land or simply against the feudal exploitation. This absence of ideology and the consequences of lacking clear and defined class-based objectives is the degeneration of the cangaceiro into the lumpen. The cangaço only had one positive trait: the sentiment of rebellion that it produced. But next he betrayed this sentiment because his actions were blind.63

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Facó explained that while the cangaço engaged in what was a “stage” of guerrilla combat, it lacked a “central leader” or a “head office” to orientate the actions of rebellion. The cangaço was only interested in attacking other bands or assaulting certain fazendas and thus lacked a “revolutionary spirit.” Although Facó’s interpretation of the cangaceiro differs from the ­dominant elite narrative, he nonetheless positioned the cangaceiro as a primitive rebel who preceded rural unions, which were a more developed form of resistance against the latifúndio. His criticism of the need for “­leadership,” ideo­logy, and unionization alludes to the PCB’s attempts to incorporate rural workers into their patriarchal hierarchy through unionization. In another report, Facó argued that literatura de cordel was losing popularity because younger generations were no longer interested in stories about cangaceiros. Instead, they wanted to know about the Soviet Union and educational programs and scholarships for students from Brazil. According to Facó, this proved that nordestinos were “solidly resolved” to take control of their own future.64 Facó believed that the Ligas Camponesas were headed in the right direction because leader Francisco Julião’s revolutionary consciousness had “evolved” through the struggle from a sentimental spirit to a revolutionary one.65 Facó saw the expansion of the Ligas and other rural social movements as “showing a rare effervescence amongst the rural poor masses” that caused the latifundiários concern because “the rural poor today have use of one of the most powerful weapons, one that they had not held before: they are becoming aware of their oppressed and exploited miserable situation and they are organizing themselves as no other rural workers have done before in Brazil. This consciousness raising and organization is worth a pledge of victory.”66 Whereas the Ligas used the symbol of the cangaceiro as an example for contemporary struggles for agrarian reform, the PCB used the cangaceiro to illustrate a stage in the development of revolutionary consciousness in the Northeast and to emphasize a need for a patriarchal incorporation of rural workers into labor unions. Through the symbol of the cangaceiro, the Ligas appealed to rural men’s code of honor to protect their families from the landowners and police, while also legitimizing the rural men’s use of violence as a form of resistance. Both the Ligas and the PCB attacked the dominant understanding of the cangaceiro as a racially degenerate criminal and relabeled the large landowners, the police, and the latifúndio system as the “real” criminals. But such challenges to the elitist trope of o Nordeste did not rest quietly. Conservatives mobilized their own version of history

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with different heroes and villains. Similar to the depictions of cangaceiros’ “savage” violence in the Nordesterns, Conservatives invoked a discourse of criminality, chaos, and fear to implore protection by the state and the police and to legitimize their use of violence against social movement participants and leaders. The next section shows how Conservatives portrayed the actions of the Ligas Camponesas in the mainstream media and in police records. By publishing what they considered to be legitimate sources and using sensationalist photographs, Conservatives effectively construed the Ligas as instigating violence and threatening the Brazilian nation.

Nordesternesque Violence in Northeastern Brazil As mentioned in Chapter 1, O Diário de Pernambuco placed most of the stories about the Ligas Camponesas on the criminal pages of the daily newspaper, frequently illustrating them with mug shots or photographs of rural workers, armed with hoes, in confrontations with the police. By doing so, the mainstream media publication framed the rural social movements as criminal, even when reporting on noncriminal activities such legal protest marches, court trials, or agitations, a term used frequently to describe the Ligas as a threat. Relegating the Ligas to the criminal pages reinforced Conservative arguments against the rural social movements, and the media also gave extensive coverage of landowner accounts versus those of the rural workers. Conservatives often portrayed rural men and women as brainwashed victims who reacted violently when provoked by communist leaders because of their primitive nature and ignorance, which is a well-developed theme in the trope of o Nordeste. By placing the blame for the violence on social movement leaders, Conservatives reinforced the idea that the rural population lacked agency and political awareness. Although themes of violence and criminality remained similar throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, the media’s focus on armed conflicts escalated in 1963, transforming the region from an area of localized protests into what they labeled a “war zone.” Starting in 1959, O Diário de Pernambuco regularly reported on land invasions, protest marches, and cane field fires, blaming the Ligas Camponesas for the increased violence, using language that criminalized the rural social movements by claiming that the land invasions and rural workers’ strikes were “implanting a regime of terror” in the Northeast. Such reports often described the Ligas as “subversive” and having a “communist

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agenda.” For example, a story in 1959 claimed that 130 rural workers on the Engenho Galiléia had police files identifying them as communists. According to the article, the workers threatened local large landowners with land invasions, telling them to leave their property. The local police feared the “communist” Ligas, and claimed they needed reinforcements to dispel the squatters and peacefully restore order to the engenhos.67 Words such as subversive, fear, and terror appeared often in titles and subtitles. And, as the police chief of Vitória de Santo Antão warned in a letter to the head of the Secretary of Public Security, the communists might not appear dangerous at first sight, but in reality, leaders such as Zezé da Galiléia (José Francisco de Sousa) were “dangerous elements . . . already processed for crimes of subverting order.”68 To further support the idea that the Ligas were a threat to order in the Northeast, the paper regularly reported on Ligas’s weapons and how they used them to harm “innocent” landowners. In 1960, when a landowner’s son drove on to his father’s property, Ligas members allegedly attacked him with hoes and machetes, cutting his arms, thorax, and head.69 Another story about a conflict in Mamanguape, Paraíba, described the deaths of three employees of the landowner, whose necks had been cut by peasants’ hoes and knives.70 Newspaper reports were frequently illustrated with photographs of confiscated “peasant weapons,” often consisting of hoes, machetes, and rifles.71 For example, at a rally in Caruaru, Paraíba, where Julião spoke, soldiers confiscated the weapons of two dozen Ligas members, including machetes, serrated spears, and three revolvers.72 According to the report, Julião’s brother had escaped with all the machine guns when the soldiers invaded. The newspaper claimed that the Ligas had brought weapons to the rally, intending to instigate violence after the speech for political effect. In other stories, the newspaper published photographs of machine guns that had been confiscated by the state police, described in the article as Ligas-owned weapons imported from Cuba. Notably absent from the newspaper’s coverage was any discussion of the landowners’ weapons, positioning the peasants’ weapons as criminal and the landowners’ weapons as legitimate.73 Landowners regularly claimed in newspapers and police reports that Ligas members started cane fires as a means of protest and for revenge.74 When the police arrested rural workers for starting the cane fires, O Diário de Pernambuco published photographs of them as they were being arrested, often labeling them as criminals or as guilty (see Figures 2.10 and 2.11). In

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Figure 2.10 Rural workers portrayed as criminals on the police page. “Volante da P.M. Capturou Mais Quatro Incendiários de Canaviais, em Ribeirão,” O Diário de Pernambuco, January 14, 1960, 5.

Source: Arquivo Público Estadual de Pernambuco, Recife.

Figure 2.10, the newspaper refers to three rural workers—one of whom is clearly a young boy—as “arsonists,” portraying them standing as if in a police lineup flanked on both sides by military police. In Figure 2.11, the newspaper labels Joaquim Camilo de Santana a criminal, and provides visual evidence of his guilt by portraying his face in a mug shot even though the article states that he claimed to be innocent. In both illustrations, the men are nonwhite, and in Figure 2.10, the contrast between the uniformed police and the accused arsonists emphasizes their Otherness as poor nordestinos in disheveled clothing with missing buttons and no shoes. In addition to media coverage, police reports on the Ligas detailed the types of weapons confiscated from the Ligas and the names of all the leaders and members including brief sketches of their “criminal activities.” For example, a 1962 police report claimed that Ligas members on the Engenho Arandú were all “well-armed, including a machine gun, pistols, revolvers, and rifles.”75 Police reports often described the Ligas and their leaders as violent and “cheeky.” Such reports described rural workers as

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Joaquim Camilo de Santana, labeled by the newspaper as an “aggressor” against the engenho and a “head” of the Ligas Camponesas movement in an attack on Engenho Manassu. O Diário de Pernambuco, June 7, 1960, 7.

Figure 2.11

Source: Arquivo Público Estadual de Pernambuco, Recife.

“tough,” “not intimidated by the police,” and well armed. One man was described as armed with a knife, “waiting for the Ligas to win so that he could use his knife and demonstrate his skills with it.”76 Another man, described as one of the most daring and shady characters, reportedly shouted to the police that they “would only leave after the spilling of blood” and that he wanted to see “blood running out of their knees.”77 The statement seems to be a quote from a Nordestern film, describing Northeastern violence similar to film advertisements of Deus e o diabo and A morte comanda o cangaço, reinforcing savage violence as a characteristic of o Nordeste. Although many police reports described rural workers as having a proclivity for violence, other documents and police reports found in Pernambuco’s DOPS archive portrayed rural workers as victims brainwashed by social movement leaders. According to a report in 1961, “Because of

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their lack of education and social assistance, they are easily attracted to communism, becoming fanatics to an extent that terrifies the landowners.78 In a handwritten letter, Manuel Vicente de Lima, police chief in Paudalho, wrote, “The peasant is ignorant and miserable but he is good.”79 Police reports frequently depicted Julião as cowardly because he allowed rural workers to commit crimes that only served Julião’s personal political objectives. They further cited the fact that the Ligas required all members to pay fees as evidence of Julião’s personal political motivations, essentially suggesting he was robbing from the rural workers. Many police reports cited Francisco Julião for motivating criminal acts through “agitation,” instructing rural workers that they had the right to the land they worked, and leading them to invade property, build houses and Ligas headquarters on rural properties, and disobey the landowner. The choice of using the word agitator versus labor organizer demonstrates how Conservatives framed the discourse that criminalized rural social movement leaders. With the expansion of the Communist Party’s rural unions, the mainstream media began linking the two groups together as “agitators” who were trying to create a violent rebellion and instate a communist regime in Brazil. For example, a report on the Engenho Marí described leaders as “satanic adventurers who place them [rural workers] in fratricidal struggles as if the human blood were fertilizer to make the land produce enough to satisfy the hunger that plagues the Northeast.”80 Ligas leaders, such as Joel Câmara, appeared in the news after his arrest, with photographs depicting them behind bars in jail. O Diário de Pernambuco claimed that Câmara was arrested for “agitating rural workers,” providing Ligas members with bombs, and promoting the flags of Fidel Castro and Khrushchev.81 Upon Câmara’s arrest, sensationalist reports labeled him the “crazy man of the Northeast,” describing him as crying repeatedly in his prison cell and pacing back and forth. Such depictions functioned to delegitimize Ligas leaders by suggesting their mental instability and predisposition to violence, which were similar to narratives used to describe the cangaceiros and religious fanatics in the trope of o Nordeste.

The Creation of o Nordeste as a “War Zone” Although some landowners responded to the Ligas by appealing to the police for protection,82 other landowners used violence and threats of violence to challenge the rural social movements. Newspapers reported

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on armed conflicts between landowners and rural workers, constructing a narrative of landowners seizing the right to protect their property and families with weapons.83 Such accounts relied heavily on landowner perspectives, legitimizing the landowners’ actions of injuring and sometimes killing rural workers.84 For example, one newspaper report published a threat by sugar factory owners in southern Pernambuco, who claimed that they were “armed to the teeth” and ready to fight the “communists” associated with the Ligas “with bullets.”85 In a meeting held in the police chief ’s office, two sugar-factory owners sent a warning to Julião or any communist leader in the state: “In Palmares no place exists for subversive preaching and any attempts of doing so, will lead to disagreeable consequences for the perpetrators.” These kinds of threatening statements flourished as reports of armed conflicts between landowners, soldiers, and peasants increased in 1963 and 1964 accompanied by continual media coverage of weapons, injuries, and killings. One article declared that the police were not able to guarantee order on the threatened fazendas, obliging landowners to organize their own defenses and arm their “trusted men,” transforming the rural area into an “authentic far-west,” where violence threatened the tranquility of productive work.86 Shocking photographs (see Figures 2.12 and 2.13) depicted five anonymous contorted and blood-covered bodies of rural workers, alongside small knives and a wooden spear, and policemen standing over the bodies “contemplating the dead and injured.” An editorial commenting on the conflict noted it had occurred only a week after the inauguration of Miguel Arraes as governor of Pernambuco, claiming that the “dangerous and criminal works” of subversives were expanding in the region. The author warned that with the “blood running” in the rural areas and the subversives “on the loose,” no one could predict what would happen in the future. The editorial said the rural social-movement leaders were to blame for the violence, but the “poor, coarse, uneducated rural workers” had paid the cost with their lives.87 Throughout 1963 and early 1964 O Diário de Pernambuco published over thirty-four different stories about land invasions accusing rural workers of creating chaos in the rural areas by punishing and killing landowners and administrators. Headlines suggested that Ligas leaders were issuing death threats to large landowners, that the Ligas were instating a “terror regime” on the engenhos, that Christmas had been a “bloody affair” on many engenhos, and they often listed the number of rural workers killed or

“The tragedy of ‘Estreliana.’” O Diário de Pernambuco, January 9, 1963, 1.

Figure 2.12

Source: Arquivo Público Estadual de Pernambuco, Recife.

The rural area is turning into an authentic far-west where violent acts threaten to replace productive work. O Diário de Pernambuco, January 9, 1963, 7.

Figure 2.13

Source: Arquivo Público Estadual de Pernambuco, Recife.

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injured in conflicts. O Diário de Pernambuco declared 1963 the “year of agitation” and a “violent year,” detailing all the strikes, armed conflicts, land invasions, and crimes.88 Photographs of the mutilated bodies of the landowners and administrators provided evidence of peasant brutality, such as that of the corpse of Raimundo Luiz, which carried the caption “butchered by a mob of 400 men who used hoes, knives, and sticks to kill him. The aggressive men cut off parts of the terribly mutilated cadaver.”89 There was a separate photograph of the administrator’s wife and children, to emphasize the barbarity and criminal inclinations of the peasant mob. Another story described a “peaceful” town being taken over by a band of three hundred armed peasants who threatened to kill anyone who got in their way. When a journalist approached the group in the union headquarters, one of the men said, “We don’t want anything to do with the media and whoever enters will not leave alive.”90 Landowners appealed to federal authorities for assistance in restoring order, and by 1963 they were claiming that the state police were incapable of controlling the violence.91 Accompanying such requests, reports blamed Governor Arraes for instigating the violence and for creating an atmosphere of insecurity in the Northeast.92 In a DOPS file, landowner José Vinha Varela testified that “starting with Miguel Arraes’ government, there was disquieted atmosphere here [Vitória de Santo Antão], with constant strikes for no reason, all aiming for subversion and affecting the Democratic regime.”93 After an invasion by rural workers, the mayor of Barreiros blamed Arraes directly, who he believed was a “demagogue, orientated by communists who, in a short time, plan to attack the power. The proof of this connection between the governor and the peasant agitators is that they used a state jeep in their attack.”94 State representatives argued that Pernambuco was an anarchist state without a governor, and that the insecurity had only worsened under Arraes because of increased land invasions and strikes that Arraes seemed to support.95 In early 1964, reports described conflicts between peasants and the police in which the peasant masses attempted to take control of police weapons, resulting in numerous deaths and injuries. These reports condemned the rural social movements and Leftist politicians for instigating violent armed conflict in the rural Northeast, and no longer even superficially offered the Ligas perspective. Multiple photographs showed the cadavers of rural workers and soldiers, some of which were particularly disfigured and bloody. Conflicts such as the one on the Engenho Marí in Sapé

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were described as a “fierce battles.” The newspaper argued that speeches by Julião and SUDENE official Maria Soares had caused an “agitated climate, threatening rural landowners and creating revolutionary tension” and motivated rural workers to attack landowners and not fear the police.96 As an editorial explained: It would be unjust to bring these wretched pariahs [rural workers] to the whipping post because agitators use a remote-control to lead them to animalistic explosions. The great crime, the great fault, and the final responsibility has to fall on the miserable exploiters, the true enemies of the people, criminals damaging the nation, corrupt marginal people who society should expel from its breast as non-assimilating cysts. . . . Their crazy and disastrous preaching is what transforms the peasant masses, awakening their instincts as wild beasts, transforming them into a horde of jungle animals, spilling blood and fighting wherever they go, filled with hate and revenge.97

Although the editorial places the blame on social movement leaders, the language describing the rural workers drew upon discourses of nordestino savagery and barbarism, reflecting the language used to describe cangaceiros in the trope of o Nordeste. In February and March of 1964, the mainstream newspaper described other land invasions using a militaristic language, similar to language used in wars, such as the invasion of the Engenho Serra in Pernambuco, which was described as turning the property into a “presidio.”98 According to the reports, trucks and other vehicles continuously flowed into the Engenho Serra, blocked off by two hundred armed Ligas participants. The Ligas invaded the houses of the landowner and administrators, stocking their supplies with weapons and ammunition.99 The engenho owner claimed the police had no means to combat the “guerrilheiros” who they had let run wild throughout the region.100 In the weeks leading up to the military coup of 1964, similar reports filled the newspaper, stating that the Ligas were distributing revolvers and ammunition to Ligas participants.101 Alongside such reports of violent rural conflicts and peasants arming themselves, O Diário de Pernambuco published a special report on Colonel João Bezerra, the soldier responsible for killing Lampião.102 ­Photographed wearing the traditional clothing of the soldiers in the 1930s and 1940s and carrying a rifle, Bezerra recounted the military campaign to hunt down Lampião. He described Lampião as a “fierce, cruel killer” and a “­terrible criminal,” and he rejected popular legends that painted Lampião as a Robin Hood. Bezerra argued that the legends endangered

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his life b­ ecause Lampião’s supporters still wanted to kill him for his role in killing Lampião. The article portrayed Bezerra as a humble soldier who had saved the Brazilian nation by doing away with the violent regime of backlands bandits. O Diário de Pernambuco chose to focus on the heroic actions of the soldier in restoring order and peace, which was at odds with earlier reports on cangaceiros from 1959 that had described the soldiers as inept. Although the article did not refer directly to the rural social movements or the contemporary Brazilian army, the presence of the cangaceiro as a symbol of o Nordeste and the comparisons of the cangaceiro with the Ligas Camponesas suggest that it was not only about the historic struggle between cangaceiros and soldiers, but was also meant to serve as an example for struggles between the Ligas and Conservatives in 1964, and potentially to legitimize a military coup. Even though the Ligas Camponesas may have effectively transcoded the symbol of the cangaceiro as a hero for rural workers, taking the existing meaning of the cangaceiro and re-appropriating it for new meanings, the new meanings could not overturn the dominant narrative of the cangaceiro in Brazilian society. Photographs of mutilated corpses, armed peasants confronting landowners and soldiers, and vivid narratives criminalizing the rural social movements as violent and communist resurrected popular ideas of the savage world of the cangaço. The emphasis on violence and criminal acts in the media coverage of the rural social movements in Northeastern Brazil alongside representations of barbaric acts of cangaceiros in Nordesterns reaffirmed stereotypes of o Nordeste as a backward region, prone to violence, that threatened the modern Brazilian nation. A number of highly publicized appeals to the Brazilian Armed Forces in 1964 to restore order and peace in the Northeast helped legitimize the coup and repression of the rural social movements. Reports on Ligas weapons and murderous acts excused the type of violence used against social movement leaders and participants in the wake of the coup. Some scenes during the coup, such as when the Armed Forces dragged a naked PCB leader, Gregório Bezerra, through city streets behind a horse, also seemed to recall a type of capital punishment as spectacle employed in the era of the cangaço, confirming spectators’ preconceived ideas about o Nordeste. During the dictatorship, the dominant discourse of Brazilian military officials focused on bringing modernity, order, and progress to the nation and to Northeastern Brazil. They delegated the era of the cangaço and the violence of rural social movements to history, as exemplified by the story of the severed heads.

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A Return to Severed Heads In 1965, Director of the Nina Rodrigues Insitute Estácio de Lima published a book entitled O mundo estranho dos cangaceiros: Ensaio bio-socioglogico (The Strange World of the Cangaceiros: Bio-sociological Essay) dedicated to those who wrote about the “cruel drama of the Northeast.”103 The book described the sertão as an uncivilized region, a place where violent people lived barbarically and grotesquely. Lima claimed that Lampião’s “sexual sadism” was connected to the topography of the sertão. Lima compared the cangaceiros to the mafia in Sicily and Chicago and the cowboys of the Wild West, although Lima believed the cangaceiro was most like a caveman because of his violent nature and his failure to be disciplined or to respond to repression. Also in 1965, another movement among lawyers, Church leaders, and the families of the cangaceiros again began advocating for the right to bury the heads. A law was proposed in 1965, connected to the University of Brasília and the Catholic Church, and on May 24, 1965, the National Congress passed a decree directing that the heads on display at the Nina Rodrigues Institute be buried fifteen days after the publication of the law.104 The University of Bahia and director of the Institute were responsible for ensuring burial in a Christian cemetery. The decree prohibited the “exhibition of human organs of dead people for profit or for scientific inquiry, punishable by 5 to 10 years imprisonment for those responsible.”105 According to Grunspan-Jasmin, the new dictatorship wanted to make it absolutely clear that “archaic” methods of repression would no longer take place in Brazil, and that in prohibiting such spectacles of punishment, Brazil had arrived at an “advanced stage of social evolution.”106 With the military’s strategies of the torture, imprisonment, murder, and disappearance of thousands of Brazilian citizens during the dictatorship, it is clear that a “social evolution” did not mean less violence or repression; it simply alluded to different means and methods. But the saga continued. The heads were not buried fifteen days later as decreed. In 1967, O Diário de Pernambuco resumed publishing reports on the heads. Corisco’s son, Dr. Silvino Hermano Bulhões, attacked Director Lima’s right to continue to hold the heads as “macabre trophies” in the name of science at a conference in São Paulo.107 Not until 1969—shortly after the instatement of Institutional Act Number 5 (AI-5) and the shift in the military regime to a heightened state of repression and limitation of political rights—were the cangaceiro heads released for burial. The heads

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were released around the time of carnaval (February) and, at least in O Diário de Pernambuco, the burials received almost no press coverage. The timing and lack of coverage may illustrate the power the symbol of the cangaceiro as a hero and rebel still held for the rural population. Conservatives wished to relegate the cangaço to history, silencing the revolutionary potential of the symbol, as well as its representations of “backwardness.” The burial of the heads did not end the debate about the circumstances of Lampião’s death or lessen the attention given to the cangaceiro in Brazilian cinema. After 1964, both commercial and political Nordesterns flourished in the Brazilian film market, providing multiple versions of the cangaceiro, each often claiming to be narrating the “true” history. Carlos Coimbra made two additional Nordesterns: Cangaceiros de Lampião (Lampião’s Henchmen, 1967) and Corisco, o diabo louro (Corisco, the Blonde Devil, 1969), with similar depictions of the violent realm of o Nordeste. Political filmmakers, including Eduardo Coutinho, Marcos Faria, and Hermano Penna made cangacairo-themed feature films that deviated from the commercial films in terms of actors, dialogue, and plot. Pornochanchadas, a genre of comedic soft-porn that was popular during the dictatorship, also incorporated the cangaceiro in films such as Roberto Mauro’s As cangaceiras eróticas (The Erotic Outlaws, 1974) and its sequel A ilha das cangaceiras virgens (The Island of the Virgin Outlaws, 1976). The popularity of the Nordesterns throughout the 1960s and 1970s suggests that the cangaceiro had not disappeared entirely from Brazilian society and remained a key figure in popular culture. In 1970, the Pernambuco state tourism organization, EMPETUR (Empresa de Turismo de Pernambuco) conducted a study in which it interviewed former cangaceiros to discover the “true” history of the cangaço. In one interview, former cangaceiro João Circinato stated that Lampião had not been assassinated in 1938 and had only recently died (in 1970). According to Circinato, he was told by a member of Lampião’s band, Luiz de Triângulo, that Lampião was still alive and had escaped to Goías. As Circinato described, Why . . . no one ever killed Lampião. He fought when he wanted. He had his own protectors and places to hide. He spoke with the soldier and told him he wanted to leave that life, he had a place to go and he wanted to give up the cangaço. And then the soldier said, “There’s a way to do it. You ask them to buy meat and I’ll order the meat to be poisoned. When they eat the meat, you stay away and don’t eat it and when they are sick, I’ll surround them and kill everyone and you won’t be there and can be free.”

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Scholars also articulated stories about Lampião’s survival; for example, Algae Lima de Oliveira claimed, in 1974, that Lampião was living in the north of Bahia, “79 years old, thin, hairy and rigorously protected by dogs.”108 The continued presence of narratives claiming that Lampião never died may also stem from narratives in popular culture that insist on Lampião’s continued presence in the sertão. As mentioned earlier in the chapter, a popular cordel narrative states that Lampião was expelled from heaven and hell, and so he must be still in the sertão. Such narratives must also be read as an insistence that the cangaceiro as a symbol of o Nordeste who remains—a rebel for some and a criminal for others—part of nordestino identity. Another figure often associated with the cangaço and the o Nordeste is the coronel, as alluded to in this chapter. Although the coronel is not as commonly referred to as a symbol in the Northeastern struggles in the 1950s and 1960s, this is more related to a change in vocabulary employed during this period than a disappearance of the idea of the coronel. Although a coronel was not necessarily a large landowner (latifundiário), during the Cold War the two identities overlapped, particularly in descriptions of the type of law instituted on the latifúndio and the landowner’s means of legitimizing and maintaining his power. But, as the next chapter shows, the figure of the coronel as a symbol of o Nordeste also held multifarious meanings. Although most definitions relegated the coronel to a historical era associated with backwardness, figures such as Coronel Delmiro Gouveia offered ideas about how the coronel could be a modernizing, progressive force in the Northeast. Similar to the debates over the cangaceiro, debates over the coronel as a symbol of o Nordeste show the competing meanings of masculinity and honor during the Cold War.

3 The Coronel and the Rural Poor Narratives of Class Struggle

Brazil, land of contrasts. . . . Geographic contrasts, economic contrasts, social contrasts. —Roger Bastide, Brasil, terra de contrastes, 1957 The Northeast is a region of contrasts where you can find seminomadic people . . . and groups who have reached the most advanced stages of civilization. —Carlos Garcia, O que é o Nordeste Brasileiro, 1999 In the 1950s and 1960s , Brazil was often described as a land of contrasts to denounce the social inequalities that existed within the nation. Even today, the region is often defined by its social inequalities, as is clear in Carlos Garcia’s more recent definition of o Nordeste.1 In addition to Bastide’s well-known study from 1957, scholars and journalists frequently pointed to the marked differences between the wealthy minority and the poor majority, distinguishing the industrialized modern cities of the south such as São Paulo from the “feudal” rural Northeast. Such comparisons led to the coining of Brazil as “Bel-India,” which described the South as having an economy similar to Belgium and the North as being as impoverished as India. The region of Northeastern Brazil was seen as an exaggeration of national differences in terms of its social and economic inequalities. Numerous reports in the 1950s and 1960s emphasized the region’s social stratification, noting that the majority of the people had no access to land and that a few people owned most of the land. For example, in a 1963 article in U.S. News & World Report, a US official who had previously

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worked in Asia and Africa described nordestinos as “living in abysmal poverty and on poor diets in the midst of a rich land devoted to the profits of a few.”2 Northeastern Brazil has frequently been cited as one of the most unequal areas in the world. This chapter examines class struggle in Brazil in the 1950s and 1960s by focusing on representations of rural workers, rural elites, and the idea of the “land of contrasts.” Similar to the cangaceiro and the religious fanatic, the coronel is one of the typical characters in the trope of o Nordeste, often dressed in a white suit with a broad-rimmed hat and surrounded by ostentatious displays of material goods. He is further distinguished by his weapons and hired thugs, which demonstrate how he uses violence to maintain power. Scholars have characterized the coronel or rural political boss as being associated with the First Republic (1889–1930), loosely defined as a rural elite who based politics on patronage and used violence to reinforce his power.3 Although coronéis existed throughout Brazil, most popular and scholarly sources associate the coronel with being a large landowner in the rural Northeast.4 Although the coronel was designated as a symbol of the backward and feudal past who used violence to maintain despotic power,5 this was not a hard-and-fast definition. The connotation of the coronel as feudal and backward meant that the use of the term fell into decline after 1945, when the preferred address became doutor (university-educated person) rather than coronel.6 This may have been a formal attempt to change the rural elite’s image, but rural workers continued to refer to rural elites as coronéis. In the 1950s and 1960s, a number of different professions composed the “rural elite,” including the fazendeiro (farmer), usineiro (sugar-mill owner), senhor de engenho (plantation owner), empresário rural or empresário agrícola (rural or agrarian businessman), and latifundiário or latifundista (large landowner). The counterpart of the coronel in the trope of o Nordeste is the figure of the rural poor, encompassing a wide variety of historical rural people, including cowhands from the sertão, manioc farmers, sugarcane workers, drought refugees, smallholders, and slaves, among others. The drought refugee (flagelado, retirante) captured particular attention in the regionalist literature and art of the 1930s, such as in Rachel de Queiroz’s novel on the great drought of 1915, O quinze (1930); Graciliano Ramos’s Vidas Secas (1938); and Cândido Portinari’s paintings of drought victims such as “Criança morta” (1944; see Figure 3.1).7 Part of a series on drought refugees, Portinari’s famous painting depicts a nordestino family mourning a dead

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child, whose corpse looks skeletal, with its open mouth prominently featured. The jarring image accentuates the family’s impoverishment through Portinari’s details of bone and muscle in their arms and legs, their bare feet and threadbare clothing, as well as the starkness of the land. In the 1950s and 1960s, the social sciences reinforced visual images and descriptive statements about poor nordestinos with social indicators and statistics. Although this new scientific language defining poverty tended to bolster entrenched notions of poverty as a fatalistic condition inherent to rural people, many rural social movement leaders, politicians, journalists and intellectuals believed in the possibility—no matter how precarious—to change the social conditions and cultural traits associated with regional poverty. The next sections further analyze descriptions of nordestino pov-

Candido Portinari, “Criança morta [Dead Child],” 1944. Oil on canvas 182 x 190 cm Inv. 326 P, Collection: Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand.

Figure 3.1

Source: Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand. Photo by João Musa.

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erty during the Cold War, suggesting how competing groups used the idea of poverty to gain support for their political projects.

Poverty in o Nordeste In the 1950s and 1960s, poverty in Northeastern Brazil was measured by social indicators and exemplified through representations of misery, illiteracy, and disease. From rural social movements to the US mainstream media to radical theater and cinema productions, representations of Northeastern poverty remained remarkably similar. In the US mainstream media, representations of misery and poverty appeared in every article on Northeastern Brazil following Tad Szulc’s front-page piece in the New York Times on the Ligas Camponesas in late October 1960 (see Chapter 1). For example, modifiers used to describe nordestinos suggested that the nordestino was different than “normal” humans. Nordestinos “gravitated” like “sewage” to the poor areas of town, instead of “walking” to them.8 Health was precarious at best in towns such as Ponta de Pedras, Pernambuco, where the US media reported there was “severe malnutrition, worms of every known description, anemia, and numberless skin and fungus diseases; nine out of ten inhabitants have syphilis; two out of three children die before they are a year old.”9 Drought-victims “gnawed cactus,”10 and babies “never taste milk” but are “fed a diet of manioc flour mixed with molasses.”11 Journalists covered visits to Northeastern Brazil by US politicians, such as George McGovern (director of Food for Peace) and Arthur Schlesinger (presidential assistant), emphasizing the poverty they had observed: “In one mud-walled mocambo [hut], 14 persons were assembled including spindle-legged stunted children with protruding abdomens.”12 The region itself even acquired abnormal traits as o Nordeste was described as “an enormous, bloated paunch protruding from the edge of the Amazon basin in the north and then receding.”13 Such dehumanizing representations defined poverty in the Third World in the US media in the early 1960s, creating the region and its people as the impoverished Other whose condition could lead them to rebel in a form similar to rural Cubans. Yet, representations of nordestino poverty were not only limited to the United States; Northeastern rural social movements, politicians, and filmmakers used similar descriptions to fuel their projects for radical change. Josué de Castro, an international and regional politician who had been the Brazilian representative to the United Nations FAO published numerous studies on the poverty and misery of Northeastern Brazil in the

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era of the Cuban Revolution.14 His studies provided empirical evidence about the degree of poverty and inequality in the region, but he also constructed a powerful narrative of nordestino poverty, describing o Nordeste as 600,000 square miles of “cosmic suffering” or of hunger and misery.15 Castro’s idea of the ciclo de caranguejo (crab cycle), reprinted in the US media, depicted the urban poor as living in shacks on riverbanks, surviving by hunting for crabs as their main source of nutrition. O Diário de Pernambuco published similar reports, describing Recife as a place where “pigeons, pigs and children fight over the same trash in neighborhoods where misery arrives before the garbage collectors.”16 In his studies, Castro argued that the suffering of the nordestino led to the current state of “political agitation and its tense explosiveness.”17 The suffering was not caused by the region’s climate or propensity for droughts, but by the economic situation rooted in colonialism and in the internal colonialism that encouraged regional underdevelopment. For modernizing projects to work in Northeastern Brazil, Castro believed that the first step was to combat the region’s monocultural agriculture and the latifúndio, its agrarian feudalism and the capitalist exploitation of the region’s natural resources.18 Conservative viewpoints on Northeastern poverty blamed the region’s “sickness” on climatic problems such as droughts and floods and argued that the solution to poverty was to build dams and canal systems to bring water to drought-ravished areas.19 According to this argument, Brazil did not share India’s problems of overpopulation and inadequate foodstuff production. Instead, droughts destroyed small landholders’ ability to raise subsistence crops, and forced an eventual rural migration to urban centers. Many drought victims, already weakened, ended up in refugee camps, where doctors failed at fighting disease and malnutrition, resulting in high infant mortality rates.20 Proposed solutions included large-scale development projects as proposed by SUDENE and colonization projects to move Northeasterners to more hospitable farming territories in Brazil. The Ligas Camponesas frequently described rural nordestinos as miserably poor and exploited as a way to gain support for agrarian reform. For instance, one article in LIGA claimed that 800,000 babies died annually in Brazil from illness related to hunger and malnutrition.21 Comparing statistics of infant mortality in the developed world to those in the Northeast, the author claimed that the Northeast faced a guerra branca (invisible war) that “kills slowly and has no defensive barricades,” and is a consequence of class struggle. As the article explains,

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Brazil loses arms that could set in motion industry and development, cultivating its countryside where production diminishes. It loses its brains that could teach children who end up illiterate because of this war. It loses future liberal technical professionals, missionaries, and apostles. It loses soldiers to defend the nation. But no one perceives this devastation. It is not in anyone’s interest to recognize the war. The children of the dominant class are born strong, nourished, and are well fed. They grow up strong and healthy. They are not swallowed up by premature death. Only children of the humble people die, or better phrased, those who already are born with their feet in the grave. All of us were frightened when we heard them talk about Hitler’s Nazi delirium that exterminated around 4 million Russians in seven years of war between 1949–45. But we forget that every seven years, around 4,800,000 children die in Brazil without reaching their first year of life. . . . There could not be a larger crime than infant mortality as it is a true genocide. It is a cold extermination of innocent lives. But no one blames anyone else. No one is punished for this crime, or for the national crime of spending money on maintaining horses for the Army with the financial resources that could go to support maternal and infant health. We live in a regime that places greater value on horses than humans. We live in a government system where the privileged classes fight cruelly for the retention of their secular privileges that are the remote and real cause of infant mortality. We live in a regime where the right to life is still a privilege of the minority, where the poor’s greatest right is to resign themselves to dying of hunger without the right to protest because if they protest, this is labeled as communist agitation.22

As in the US media reports on poverty, the Ligas also suggested that such poverty motivated revolution. As Ligas leader Padre Alípio declared in public on March 27, 1963, “The empty pots in the workers’ homes today are the drums of revolution.”23 Like Euclides da Cunha’s contradictory descriptions of the nordestino as an immiserated pathogen and as a strong warrior, depictions of regional poverty in the 1950s and 1960s bounced between dualistic images of fatalistic, brainwashed peasants and violent, revolutionary masses.

Cultural Representations of Poverty and Inequality Although many representations of poverty in Northeastern Brazil connected impoverishment to revolutionary action, other interpretations of nordestino poverty argued that it created an alienated population of miserable nordestinos too downtrodden to have any political consciousness

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about their state of misery. Such versions drew from the dominant trope of o Nordeste, characterizing rural nordestinos as miserable victims of drought, hunger and exploitation. As cultural critic Jean-Claude Bernardet claimed, many of the films made in the early 1960s wanted to show the disease of Brazilian society: “The people are exploited, they don’t have even the minimum basic conditions; if the country evolves, the people wouldn’t have any knowledge of this evolution.”24 The contrast between depictions of poor people as fatalistic victims and violent revolutionaries is particularly clear in cultural productions of o Nordeste in the era of the Cuban Revolution. This section focuses on critiques of theater plays and films in the mainstream media and in rural social movement publications to illustrate the competing meanings of poverty during the Cold War. In March 1963, LIGA reviewed Augusto Boal’s radical theatrical production, Julgamento em Novo Sol (Judgment in the New Sun), also known as Mutirão em Novo Sol (Uprising in the New Sun),25 performed by the Popular Cultural Movement in the Teatro do Arraial Velho.26 Although Julgamento was based on the state of São Paulo, the article noted that it raised issues pertaining to rural life throughout Brazil. The play depicted a struggle between 3,000 rural workers against the large landowner who wants to expel them from his lands, so that he can grow more grass to feed his cattle. In the play, the coronel claims, “My intention always had one goal: to enrich this region. It cannot remain in the hands of the ignorant rural workers. I said that foreign refrigeration systems are interested in my herds. They are looking to help the progress of the country. And, I find my hands tied by the stupidity of the people.”27 Julgamento aligned foreign business interests and the landowning elite against the rural worker, a common theme in Brazilian politics during this period. Similarly to LIGA, the review in the Recife-based PCB newspaper Jornal dos Bancários declared Julgamento em Novo Sol “pioneering” and “revolutionary” for bringing theatrical productions to the povo, “through the most modern theater techniques.”28 The Jornal dos Bancários reviewer applauded the play’s criticism of the Church for its role in upholding the landowning system, and echoed the play by pointing out that the landowners never forget to build a church on their property, where the starving rural workers can go to thank God for their misery and the “kindness” (bondade) of the master, even though the landowners never remember to pay their workers a decent salary. In contrast, the Diário de Pernambuco reviewer described the play as terrible; an “extremely oversimplified farce”

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that made it impossible to feel solidarity with the rural workers in their conflict with the landowner, because of the proposition that violence was the only solution.29 The reviewer claimed that the playwrights had used theater as a means of distributing ideological propaganda. Although they disagreed about the political message of the play, all of the reviews emphasized the importance of the actors’ ability to interpret the authentic Northeastern peasant—as poorly dressed, impoverished, and malnourished. The Diário de Pernambuco reviewer claimed that apart from a few of the actors who had some talent, many of the actors had simply been cast because “their physical types were used to characterize the figures authentically.”30 The Jornal do Bancário reviewer’s only criticism was that the lead actor was a poor choice for the role because his “athletic form is not that of the Brazilian peasant.” In other words, for the Jornal do Bancário reviewer, the exploitation of the peasant and portrayal of the evil large landowner were accurate but the peasant himself seemed too robust to accurately represent the miserable nordestino. In contrast to Julgamento, the Movimento Cultural do Nordeste (Northeastern Cultural Movement) sought to present “artistic” rather than “political” plays, drawing inspiration from classic (Greek and Roman) theater, with the objective of “educating” and entertaining the povo.31 Through such objectives, the Northeastern Cultural Movement could counter the Popular Cultural Movement’s political theater by obtaining greater audiences.32 Meira Pires’s João Farrapo, produced with the support of the Rio Grande do Norte state government and governor Aluízio Alves, provided a different view of revolution in the Northeast than offered by the more radical theater productions. Meira Pires located the solution to Northeastern poverty as coming from the Northeast itself, particularly from the landowning elite. According to the director, the objective was that the play would have no political affiliation or foreign influence. As Meira Pires claimed, I wanted that the hero, affected by so much misery, would end by agreeing with the people about the loss of the traditional village. He would join them and their faith as the only resource capable of solving the serious problems of our suffering region, even though the “non-local men” continue to be insensitive to the complaints and worries of the hungry and needy sertanejos.33

Instead of joining the revolution, João Farrapo was supposed to represent the common alienated man of the Northeast, who chose to pray rather

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than fight. According to Meira Pires, “The people are tired of being deceived and for this reason, they prefer to appeal to God. Their anguished cries of desperation and pain do not reach our leaders who busy themselves with continually growing support for martyrs.”34 The Diário de Pernambuco reviewer praised João Farrapo because the play showed that underdevelopment in the Northeast had created an alienated population, not a revolutionary population. According to the reviewer, the people in the Northeast, like the people in the play, do not believe in or desire armed revolution. As the reviewer states, it is better for the povo to pray as a way “to fight hunger” than to pick up arms to destroy their own brothers.35 The reviewer argued that though the play might seem to serve the political right, antinationalists, and imperialists, the real problem in the Northeast was that the guerrillas were taking the prayer books out of the hands of the people and replacing them with Che Guevara’s guerrilla manual. In other words, the reviewer contended that the play accurately presented the reality of the Northeast, even though this reality was continually threatened by the Leftist social movements that attempted to seduce the rural population to start a violent revolution. The solution to both problems would be to recreate idyllic scenes of the historical plantation system with peasants working peacefully for benevolent large landowners. One of the most famous “revolutionary” Brazilian films from this era, Nelson Pereira dos Santos’s Vidas Secas (1961) also portrayed rural nordestinos as alienated, passive victims. Nelson Pereira dos Santos used realistic filming techniques associated with the New Cinema Movement to portray the harsh landscape and the animalesque human dwellers. For example, the film opens with a long hand-held shot of the dry lands of the sertão. The only sound is the uncomfortable noise of a screeching wooden oxcart wheel that increases in volume as a family of drought refugees walks slowly into view. The mother, father, two boys, a parrot, and a dog, along with their hand-pulled ox cart walk past without speaking a word, traversing the sandy lands (see Figure 3.2). The discomfort caused by the length of the shot and stillness of the camera in the first scene breaks when the family stops for a meal. The meal scene emphasizes the family’s impoverishment and animalesque existence when the mother, Sinha Vitória, breaks the neck of the family pet parrot and then grills it over a few sticks to feed the family of four. The film’s plot illustrates a cyclical, entrenched poverty and exploitation of rural nordestinos. After the opening scenes, the family finds an

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Figure 3.2

Vidas Secas (1962). Northeastern migrant family in the sertão.

Source: Centro de Documentação e Informação da FUNARTE, Rio de Janeiro.

abandoned mud-thatched house and starts to work as cowhands for the local coronel. Dramatic lighting contrasts are used throughout the film to convey the harshness of the sun. The characters are shown as unable to communicate with one another; they are alienated in the backlands. In their interactions with people in positions of power—the coronel and the soldier—the family members are shown as victims of exploitation and abuse. When the cangaceiros offer them a chance to rebel, the family declines, passively retreating from the scene. Another confrontation between the father, Fabiano, and the soldier (Soldado Amarelo) leads to a stalemate. Eventually, drought strikes the area again; cows start to die of starvation and heat exhaustion; the family dog contracts rabies and must be shot; and the family abandons the house. The final scene, like the opening scene, shows the family carrying their belongings and heading out on an un­ defined path through the harsh terrain of the sertão. In the Brazilian mainstream newspapers, critics applauded Vidas Secas for its realism in depicting the social and economic problems of the Northeast and for inventing a new national cinematographic language. The film was frequently compared to Italian neorealist productions, such as Vittorio de Sica’s The Bicycle Thief (1948),36 and critics recognized the novelty of

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dos Santos’s direction and filming techniques, calling Vidas Secas the best Brazilian film ever produced.37 Critics made note of how dos Santos reproduced the reality of the terra assassina (assassinating land) of the Northeast on screen, commenting on the misery of the land and its people. Cláudio Mello de Souza described the “real” Nordeste as a seemingly endless dry land that condemns the tough, stoic humans to live like animals.38 Citing João Cabral de Melo Neto, he argued that dos Santos provided a cinematic version of how life in o Nordeste is “less lived than defended,” and that the silence of the land and man exemplifies how o Nordeste and the nordestino are trapped forever in time. Although the Brazilian critics often recognized dos Santos’s talents for filmmaking and marveled at the capacity of a Paulista to make such a realistic film about the Northeast and its people, the Ligas Camponesas were more critical. LIGA reviews drew from comparisons with Graciliano Ramos’s novel Vidas Secas (1938) and claimed that the film version failed to communicate the strength and intelligence of the rural nordestinos in their struggle for survival against the dominant power of the soldiers and the rural elites.39 The LIGA critic referred to two scenes to support this argument about the “false” reality depicted in the film. The critic argued that dos Santos missed the point of the final fight between Fabiano and the soldier in the sertão. Instead of being fatalistic, as in the film, Ramos’s novel portrays Fabiano as strong and brave for choosing to fight the soldier, because in the fight Fabiano proves that he is a man who can alter his destiny. The critic also claimed that dos Santos did not understand the sertanejo’s intelligence and way of communicating. Dos Santos chose to emphasize that the couple cannot communicate with one another, as portrayed by the actors talking simultaneously. The LIGA critic believed that the couple had a deeper intellectual understanding of one another, even if their vocabulary was limited, that was not adequately captured in the film. The critic also found that the scene of Fabiano in jail did not reproduce the novel accurately. In the film, Fabiano is alone in the jail, whereas in Ramos’s novel, the jail is filled with other noncriminal characters from the marginalized classes. In the novel, the soldiers and the coronel beat and punish all the prisoners, illustrating the broader societal divisions of the Northeast between the powerful and the powerless, whereas in dos Santos’s version, only Fabiano is persecuted, suggesting that his situation is unique. Another significant film depicting Northeastern poverty in the early 1960s was ABC News’s documentary film Brazil: The Troubled Land, di-

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rected by Helen Jean Rogers and broadcast in the United States, portraying the Northeast as a feudal society, desperate for change.40 The Los Angeles Times described the film as “examining the ferment and political awakening of Brazil’s millions of half-starved peasants.”41 In a photograph taken during shooting (see Figure 3.3), Helen Jean Rogers and Francisco Julião are standing with the rural workers. The film contains many of the common assumptions about Northeastern Brazil held in the United States in its depictions of Third World poverty, feudal large landowners, the hope of symbolic modernity, and the strength of the “communist” threat. The Troubled Land depicts o Nordeste as a “land of contrasts,” with its modern urban areas, the Wild West feudalism of the rural areas, and the raging threat of revolution. Symbols of modernity exist in the Northeast, but most of the region’s people still have no access to this modernity. Northeastern Brazil is in a precarious position, and the threat of a Cuban-style revolution seems like a stronger possibility than a peaceful road toward modernization.

Figure 3.3

(1961).

Francisco Julião, Severino, and Helen Jean Rogers in The Troubled Land

Source: Author’s collection.

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The Troubled Land starts with the leader of the Ligas Camponesas, Francisco Julião, speaking about the struggles of the peasants in Latin America but quickly shifts to the modern, urban cityscape of Recife and the upper-class beach neighborhood of Boa Viagem and symbols of modernity, such as images of skyscrapers, modern stores, and cars. Then the viewer is introduced to the character Severino—a common nordestino name similar to “Joe Smith”—who is described as an illiterate forty-nineyear-old peasant who cuts sugar cane (see Figure 3.3). The camera follows Severino, barefoot and wearing shabby clothing, as he walks through the streets of Recife, peering into stores selling televisions and other modern electronic equipment. Severino’s journey ends at the headquarters of the Ligas Camponesas, which the film calls the “Communist Front headquarters.” He stands in line to meet Francisco Julião, who sits at a table under Abelardo da Hora murals of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and Francisco Julião. Despite the documentary newsreel style, Severino’s journey seems staged. As he walks through downtown Recife, the camera focuses on his bare feet and his gazing at the store windows, depicting the “land of contrasts” for a US audience. The next scene shifts to the countryside, the cane fields, and a “typical” rural house, where Severino’s wife, Dona Julia, makes dinner (manioc flour) for their six children and a voice-over declares, “Such is their world, a world with only one toy. What good is schooling in their world?” The narrator claims that the children have never tasted milk, and that life has been this way since the days of slavery. To exemplify the feudal power relations, the camera cuts to a large house with a pool, the home of a large landowner, described as “Severino’s master, Constâncio Maranhão.” Maranhão is showing off his new 38-caliber gun to the camera crew, saying that it is the “best gun made in the United States,” and that the gun is “law” on the plantation: “It decides everything. Not any police or any law, but my gun.” He laughs and shoots the gun in the air, and says, “My peasants are just lazy. If anyone comes here and tries to organize, I’ll kill him.” Reviewers interpreted this scene as demonstrating the backwardness, violence, and feudal nature of the rural landowning elite.42 Although Maranhão’s attitude toward the rural workers undoubtedly existed among people in Northeastern Brazil, the scene with Maranhão is interesting because he struts like a peacock in front of the camera, showing off just how modern and “American” he is with his pistol and his Wild West cowboy mannerisms. Like Severino performing the role of a nordestino peasant, Maranhão appears to be performing a cowboy for the cameras.

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In the film, SUDENE director Celso Furtado argues that the problem of the Northeast is a “Brazilian problem” that must be solved by Brazilians. He claims that Julião is not an important political figure. The clips from his interview present the US perception that Brazilian government officials are not able to confront the very real threat of communism in the Northeast. The scenes that follow Furtado’s interview reinforce that message. The film cuts to images of Julião leading rural workers’ rallies, and describes him as “ambitious, fighting and able to ride to power on the backs of peasants to be President of Brazil.” Julião is popular among the rural workers, who embrace him warmly and throw flower petals over his head. At a rally, Julião states that the hoe is the symbol of backwardness and misery, in contrast to the luxury of the lives of large landowners, who dwell in the cities and enjoy modern comforts. Julião declares, “If the peasant cannot win in peace, it will have to be revolution!” The voice-over explains that the enemy of the Ligas Camponesas is American capitalism, and that their heroes are Fidel Castro and Mao Tse Tung. This message is also highlighted in a New York Times film review that focuses on the Communist threat to the region.43 The film’s argument reflects the contradictions between the US discourse promoting the possibilities for modernization and the feasibility of US aid producing significant change in the region. The final shot takes the audience back to Severino, as he walks along a dirt road lined with sugar cane. A voice-over explains, “They cannot prosper. Life is hard. There are more opportunities in São Paulo and Rio. If only there were someone to help? Give us land . . . fertile land. . . . (pause) As if they were not the product of 3,000 years of Western progress. There is much talk of freedom and democracy but not much to understand in a world of hunger . . . of misery . . .” The final voice-over suggests that the United States needs to help redistribute land or provide aid to nordestinos to alleviate their hunger and misery in the name of democracy. But, the statement also includes a rather fatalistic message about the hopes of introducing such modern values to o Nordeste, the “product of 3,000 years of Western progress.” The Troubled Land’s contradictory message about the need for US aid along with doubt that it will be effective echoed concerns expressed in congressional hearings and the US media.44 By 1963, reports in the US media more frequently emphasized the region’s revolutionary potential. A Newsweek article described Northeastern Brazil as a “Texas-sized slum” and Julião as “a deceptively mild-mannered Fidelista who looks forward to the day when he can lead a bloody revolt against the landlords.”45 According

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to another source, guerrilla training was underway in Northeastern ­Brazil, and Czech-manufactured arms, wrapped in Havana newspapers, had been found.46 Djalma Maranhão, mayor of Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, was quoted as saying, “Northeast Brazil today is much like Cuba in the last days before the Castro Revolution.”47 And even though the nordestinos supposedly only wanted land security and a way to support their families, the “communists” were doing their best to light the fuse of a “social explosion unequaled since the Russian Revolution.”48 Such reports legitimized the idea that a military coup was the only possible way to promote democracy and modernization and prevent a communist revolution. These films and plays depicted Northeastern poverty in the 1950s and 1960s and its consequences as leading to exploitation and victimization or rebellion and social revolution. In João Farrapo and Vidas Secas, the peasant is an alienated, passive victim who lacks agency. Whereas in João Farrapo, the solution to the peasant’s poverty is the goodness and charity of the large landowner and God, in Vidas Secas, the solution is fatalistic and open-ended; the film asks the audience to debate the solution to nordestino misery and the cyclical nature of nordestino poverty. Both Julgamento em novo sol and The Troubled Land suggested the revolutionary potential of the nordestino, but whereas Julgamento suggested that a revolutionary reaction would mean progress for the region, The Troubled Land depicted revolution from below as a threat to democracy and freedom. Except for João Farrapo, the figure of the coronel or large landowner was portrayed as a part of problem because of his use of violence, his backwardness, and his disregard for his workers’ well-being. He acquires power and wealth by exploiting the poor and using violence to quell any type of rebellion. The next section examines how rural social movements challenged the traditional authority of the rural elite or coronel in the 1950s and 1960s by criticizing their feudalistic use of violence to maintain their power.

Challenging the Coronel’s Rule In the 1950s and 1960s, rural social movements, journalists, politicians, filmmakers, and popular poets questioned the use of violence by large landowners and the exploitative labor conditions of the latifúndio and plantation. Attacks on rural elites demonstrate the political opening in the Northeast at this time, as new voices emerged to challenge the traditional elite’s hegemonic rule. Rural social movements regularly denounced

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the types of weaponry and violence that large landowners used against rural workers as they questioned the dominant perception that the rural social movements were illegal, instigated violence, and brought chaos to the Northeast. To question the rural elite’s legitimacy to rule and encourage rural men to join a Liga, the Ligas challenged perceptions of the coronel as an honorable figure. In this section, I first analyze denouncements of violence as a way to challenge the rural elite’s power. Then I show how rural social movements used the language of honor to urge men to join the Ligas. To show how rural social movements portrayed violence and how the Conservatives reacted to these challenges to their authority, I analyze the media coverage of the assassination of Ligas leader João Pedro Teixeira. As mentioned earlier, although scholars often relegate the figure of the coronel to the period of the First Republic (1889–1930), rural social movements frequently drew comparisons between historic coronéis and contemporary rural elites to create a common enemy and encourage rural workers to join the fight for radical agrarian reform. According to an article in LIGA, the methods of repression employed by the dominant classes had remained the same from the time of the cangaço to the struggles of the Ligas. “The army invades the Ligas’ headquarters, taking the peasants’ woodpecker-like rifles and turns a blind eye on the true arsenals of war weapons held by the large landowners.”49 The PCB also denounced the violence of the latifúndio and large landowners, supporting their arguments with examples of assassinations, beatings, and arrests. An article in Novos Rumos claimed that “the latifundiários impose terror, violence and crime,” and the camponeses organize peacefully.50 The article supported this assertion with an example of how the large landowners had brought the Brazilian military to Sapé, Paraíba, to invade peasants’ houses and search for weapons. But the military only found work tools in the peasants’ houses. All the guns were in the large landowner’s house. The article also threatened to make the large landowners pay for their hideous crimes of torturing, beating, and murdering peasants when the social movements’ prevailed and radical agrarian reform was enacted. Givaldo Rios, writing for the Jornal do Bancário, described the details of life on the Engenho Serra, owned by the former secretary of public security, Alarico Bezerra Cavalcanti.51 Of the fifty families who lived on this engenho, only one worker was literate; most were over sixty years old. And the landowner frequently threw workers off his lands, which threatened their survival. Photographs of tools used for torture on the plantation

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a­ccompanied the article, showing men pointing upward at a structure, with the caption “The ‘forca’ as it is called is the instrument that the landowners used to condemn those peasants who rebelled against their ‘law’ as depicted in the photograph above.” As Álzira Lourdes da Silva, mother of three, described: My husband was cutting cane when his pipe accidentally caused a small fire. Even though he burned his own arms, with the help of other workers, they put out the flames and the fire only burned a handful of cane. At night, when we were sleeping, the police invaded our hut and they brought my husband to Recife. For 45 days, José was in prison, shabbily dressed and without much food. Afterwards, the guards returned him to the engenho, where he was tied up, hanged by his arms on the “forca.” There, hanging, he was whipped violently a number of times until the wall behind him was covered in blood. When he was almost dead, he was brought to the “estufa” [stove] and crying, I went with other women to Coroné Alarico, begging him not to burn José. He responded to our pleas, “You are miserable wenches who have come here asking me not to burn this man.” “He deserves to be burned in the same way that he burned my cane fields. But in spite of not being burned, he will regret it.” And, then, he took José prisoner and tied him up with the help with a number of his thugs. On the next day, when we arrived at the Big House, we saw poor José hanging by his neck by a cord, tied up in a tree next to the Big House. We can only tell this story now because the Coroné is not here.

The murder of José is yet one example of many that appeared in social movement publications, denouncing the violence used on the lati­fúndio against rural workers. Besides the PCB and Ligas, the Catholic Church Federations of Rural Workers became more involved in organizing rural workers, they also began criticizing large landowners. Padre Paulo Crespo, for instance, publicly denounced landowners who expelled rural workers from their property without just cause. In one such case, Crespo told the story of a rural worker who had lived in his house with his family for over ten years and always paid rent. Without any explanation, the landowner threw the rural worker off the land, hiring six capangas (armed thugs) to threaten his wife and children, throw all their belongings out of the house, and destroy everything.52 Although the rural social movements all publicly denounced the horrific violence against rural people, the police rarely investigated and the courts never punished such crimes. Other tactics used to challenge the

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rural elite’s rule were to question the large landowners’ rights over rural men’s bodies, families, land, and livelihood. Padre Emerson Negreiros reportedly told rural workers to defend themselves against such injustices, preaching “a do-it-yourself justice to his peasant flock: ‘You should raise a goat to give milk to your children. If the landlord comes to kill your goat, he is threatening the lives of your children. Do not let him kill your goat! Kill him first!’”53 The Ligas encouraged rural men to join the Liga and participate in strikes by referring to a man’s right to protect his wife and children. As reported by the police in a case on the Engenho Malemba, leader Mariano Pedro Gomes instructed rural workers not return to work because “with their victorious ‘laws,’ they [large landowners] seize and rape your women and children.”54 Much of the advice published in the Peasants’ Proverbs section of LIGA encouraged rural men to be skeptical of relations with large landowners. For instance, “when a rich man asks the poor man to be a godfather it is because he has his eye on his wife or daughter,”55 and “when the latifundiário says hello it is because he has his eye on your daughter or wife.”56 Social movement leaders appealed to rural men’s honor when organizing strikes and land invasions, instructing rural workers about how to challenge the violence of the latifúndio. The Regime as It Is: A Complicated Story of Daily Life, a comic series published in LIGA in 1963 (see Figures 3.4 and 3.5), depicts a rural community standing up to the coronel and his jagunços (hired thugs), who are threatening to expel the workers from their land.57 In Figure 3.4, rural men are flexing their arm muscles, declaring that no matter what resistance they may face, they are determined to fight to stay on the land where their children were born. The comic shows his wife and children to further establish the rural man’s strength and motivation. In the comic series, hired thugs are heavily armed with rifles, and follow the orders of the coronel. Figure 3.5 depicts an episode about a conflict between the rural workers and the hired thugs. As rural workers attack the hired thugs, they taunt the thugs, saying, “Learn to be a man, cretin!” and “You’re so macho, aren’t you? That’s why you’re running away.” Such examples demonstrate the gendered appeals to rural men to join the fight for radical agrarian reform and unite against the landowning elite. The Ligas encouraged rural men to protect their wives and children, to use their strength to attack the landowner’s thugs in a show of “real” masculinity. One of the cases of landowner violence that attracted attention in the US and Brazilian mainstream media was the murder of Ligas leader João

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Figure 3.4 “The Regime as It Is: A Complicated Story of Daily Life,” LIGA, May 29, 1963, 4. Translation: He was determined not to leave. “I’m staying.” “No. I’m staying in the house I built. Where my children were born. That is the same where I was born. Where my wife works in our family plot that takes the hunger away from my children. The plot where I bury my fingernails, that I water with my sweat, I’m staying. Even if that means dying to stay.”

Source: Centro de Documentação e Memória da Unesp (CEDEM/Unesp).

Pedro Teixeira in Sapé, Paraíba, on April 2, 1962. According to the media reports, João Pedro Teixeira had just gotten off a bus and was walking home along the side of the road in the late afternoon. He was returning from a brief visit to the capital of Paraíba, João Pessoa, when he was shot and killed by between three and five gunshots. The police brought a number of suspects in for questioning, including two soldiers. Soldier Antonio

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Figure 3.5

1963, 2.

“The Regime as It Is: A Complicated Story of Daily Life,” LIGA, June 12,

Source: Centro de Documentação e Memória da Unesp (CEDEM/Unesp).

Alexandre da Silva was believed to be the person responsible for the shooting, but on further investigation, he claimed to know nothing about it and established an alibi for himself. A month later, O Diário de Pernambuco wrote that João Pedro would be declared a “martyr” for agrarian reform, and a “victim of the latifúndio.”58 Although O Diário de Pernambuco only briefly touched on the allegation that landowner Pedro Ramos had been involved in the murder,59 rural social-movement publications claimed that the large landowner had hired capangas to murder João Pedro.60 According to Novos Rumos, this type of violence was symptomatic of the “feudal” Nordeste because the landowner’s house was an arsenal and he employed a private police force. The “feudal landowner” owned the police force of the local town, as well as the mayor and the judges.61 Although the title of feudal landowner—latifundiário—replaced the title of coronel, the two labels were similar in that both figures used violence and political power to maintain their dominance. Following the murder of João Pedro, the US media also published examples of the type of “feudal” system that was intact in Northeastern Brazil, and warned of the “open hostility” of the landowners toward the organized rural workers.62 Reporters offered an example of the “feudal” system by way of a poster found on the workers’ dwellings that listed prohibitions and obligations along with the threat that any tenants who did “not faithfully adhere to these regulations” would have twenty-four hours to evacuate their homes and leave the property.63 The prohibitions

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included “going armed, drinking any alcoholic beverage, playing cards or any other game of chance, making purchases outside the property, hunting or possessing hunting arms, fighting with the neighbors or other ­people, sitting up with the sick, holding dances without the consent of the proprietor, rearing illiterate children, gossiping and feigning sickness to avoid work.” The Ligas Camponesas continued to implicate the large landowner in the murder of João Pedro, an effort that was facilitated when Elizabeth Teixeira replaced her husband as a Ligas leader. Elizabeth spoke regularly at political rallies and even ran for office as a state representative. A courageous, dedicated, honest, and sincere mother of eleven children, Elizabeth became an example of how to confront and overcome the tragedy of violence by continuing the fight for radical agrarian reform.64 LIGA published the threats she received from latifundiários who ordered hired thugs to cut out her tongue for being an “agitadora da peste (pestering agitator),” a physical and gendered intimidation not commonly articulated in these years, reflecting how she transgressed rural women’s traditional roles as mothers and wives or widows by becoming a labor leader and politician.65 Large landowners also asked for support from the police and the military because they felt threatened by her regular public denouncements of their use of violence.66 The Ligas insisted the latifundiários had been “excessively cruel” to her by killing her husband and her ten-year-old son, causing the suicide of her eldest daughter, and also regularly threatening her life.67 The Ligas implored rural workers to defend (widow/mother) Elizabeth at any cost, appealing to rural men’s honor to fight against the violence and power of the large landowner. Although reports appeared in O Diário de Pernambuco about the landowners’ use of violence against rural workers through examples of beatings, expulsions from land, shootings and in some cases, such as João Pedro, murder, the reports downplayed the landowners’ guilt for such acts of violence by suggesting such acts as “reasonable” in the face of threats from “communists” and threats to private property.68 Rural elites began their own campaigns, focused on their need for protection from communists and for assistance in raising sugar cane prices and modernizing their plantations and farms.69 Scholars have been skeptical of the Northeastern rural elite’s real interest in modernizing projects in the early 1960s because of their ability to generate profits without modernizing production or labor.70 But, when the traditional rural elite had lost their strong grasp on

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hegemonic power in the region, they began to feel the need to negotiate for the types of regional change they felt would be less harmful to their power and wealth. They wanted to be able to influence the direction of agrarian reform projects if such projects were to come to fruition.

Redefining the Rural Elite: Modernizing Projects for o Nordeste When the Pernambucan state court decided in favor of the expropriation of the Engenho Galiléia in 1959, some Conservatives supported the decision because they saw it as a positive move toward a modern society. Aníbal Fernandes, the editor of O Diário de Pernambuco, exalted the expropriation of Galiléia as a triumph in that it was a move toward creating a more equitable landholding system to replace the “feudal” system of the latifúndio and coronéis.71 As mentioned in Chapter 1, in the era of modernization theories, Conservatives, including rural elites, had to embrace some type of social reform projects or face being labeled “backward” or “feudal.” It became increasingly impossible to justify the latifúndio system in an era of modernization; land reform was seen as a necessary component of modernization and development in that it would create a rural middle class. According to such logic, rural elites would be classified as backward if they did not support land reform, so many advocated for new projects to modernize and develop the Northeast, and they depicted themselves as the ideal force to bring modernity to the Northeast. By and large, the projects they supported did not include agrarian reform. One of the proposed alternatives to land reform was the creation of land cooperatives, or colonização. At a talk at Recife’s Rotary Club in January 1959, Dr. Jair Meireles described the “progress and modernization” that could be introduced to Northeastern agriculture by Japanese immigrants. According to Meireles’s racialized explanation, the rural Northeastern worker was “poorly accustomed to methodical work and beyond all else, in his great ignorance, he insists on African methods to cultivate the earth and continues to fight pests based on superstitious practices of prayer, blessings, etc.”72 The Japanese were seen as the “best immigrants to save the Northeast” because, according to Meireles, São Paulo’s agricultural sector had achieved modernization through their Japanese immigrants. “The Japanese colonization in Pernambuco will have as its primary function the conditioning school of work, revolutionizing the methods of agrarian

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production and implanting a new mentality in the rural areas, capable of introducing agriculture as a dignified profession.” The Rural Extension Service, ANCAR, INIC, the secretary of agriculture, and the Bank of the Northeast supported the colonization project. From 1955 to 1959, around five thousand Japanese immigrants were brought to the Northeast to modernize the system of agriculture, based on the premise that Japanese immigrants had modernized agriculture in São Paulo, Paraná, and Rio de Janeiro.73 Figure 3.6 depicts new Japanese arrivals on a bus in route to the agricultural community in Rio Bonito, Pernambuco. Another reason for the state’s interest in Japanese immigrants had to do with possibilities for the Japanese government and private industry to invest in Northeastern development projects.74 The Pernambucan governor believed Japanese immigrants would open the door for “Japanese investments of capital and equipment, first in agriculture then in industry.”75 Projects included a cooperative established in Gameleira, Pernambuco, in 1955, in which forty Japanese families were brought in to join a community of sixty Northeastern families.76 In 1958, the Catholic newspaper A Defesa described the goals of the colonization project in Bonito, Pernambuco, as stimulating agricultural production and instructing nordestino rural workers in modern skills and techniques.77 In 1959, six Japanese families went to Garanhuns, Pernambuco; thirty families went to a fazenda in Caruaru, Paraíba; and five families went to Rio Bonito (see Figure 3.6).78 Smaller colonies were established in Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, and Bahia.79

“Five Japanese Colonist Families on Route to Rio Bonito,” O Diário de Pernambuco, January 13, 1959, 3.

Figure 3.6

Source: Arquivo Público Estadual de Pernambuco, Recife.

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What is remarkable about the colonization projects is the degree to which race was considered a vital factor in the modernization of agriculture in Northeastern Brazil. Socioeconomic factors such as the role that government subsidies had played in the development of agriculture in São Paulo and other states in the south of Brazil were not mentioned. Instead, the “modernity” of the Japanese race had shaped agricultural development in the south, and thus, Japanese immigrants in the rural Northeast could also modernize the inherently backward and inferior Northeastern rural workers, who were often depicted as “African” or as using “African agricultural techniques,” carrying the assumption of “primitive lifeways” at the time. The language used to argue how and why Japanese immigrants could facilitate a move toward a modernized agricultural system in the Northeast illustrates the insistence upon the idea that modernization was not a trait of Northeastern rural workers. Modernization was foreign to the region, but a foreigner could teach modern systems to nordestinos. The nordestino did not need to be replaced or annihilated; instead, his racial and cultural inferiority could be erased through education, training, and modernization introduced by (racially superior) foreign, and specifically, Japanese “know-how.” This possibility for educating the nordestino is significant in that it counters dominant perceptions of nordestinos as fatalistic and doomed to misery. The possibility for change through education and training also arose in narratives about industrialization and rural education in the 1950s and 1960s.80 In May 1963, the IJNPS held a conference on “Regional Transformation and Ecological Science” to investigate the agrarian problems of Northeastern Brazil from an objective and scientific perspective.81 One of the main debates focused on how to change the latifúndio system. Some argued for its complete destruction, advocating for radical agrarian reform, the unionization of rural workers, and the creation of agrarian cooperatives. Others proposed projects of land colonization, or relocating nordestino peasants to the Amazon to diversify the system of monocultural agricultural production. But most of the conference panelists advocated for the need to modernize agricultural production and the cane industry by raising the price of sugar and increasing the amount of the US sugar quota allocated to Northeastern sugar producers. Scholars, activists, and government officials argued that the problem of the Northeastern latifúndio system was that antiquated practices led to low productivity rates that stifled rural workers’ salaries. Modernizing the latifúndio system would bring capitalism to the feudal Northeast, allowing for modern labor

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­ ractices such as the regulation of a minimum wage for rural workers, an p eight-hour workday, hygienic housing, and educational reforms for adult and rural instruction. In their effort to redefine the coronel in Northeastern Brazil, rural elites looked to the past to find a symbol of the “new Northeast.” As the Brazilian developmentalist state invested in industrial programs, such as SUDENE, and massive public works projects, such as the hydroelectric dam of the Companhia Hidrelétrica do São Francisco (CHESF, San Francisco Hydroelectric Company) in Paulo Afonso, one particular historical figure emerged as a way to discuss the possibilities and hindrances to development in the Northeast. Even though Coronel Delmiro Gouviea was not historically the only industrialist-coronel in Northeastern Brazil, he turned into a symbol in the 1950s and 1960s because his factory town was located in the sertão and because of the new hydroelectric dam on the São ­Francisco River.82 Delmiro Gouveia’s death and the destruction of his textile factory also turned into symbols and were pulled into debates over the possibilities for Northeastern industrialization and discussions about the foreign exploitation of dependent regions. Depictions of Delmiro G ­ ouveia from the 1950s to the 1970s show the competing visions of what an ideal modern society would entail in Northeastern Brazil, and views on what hindered Northeastern modernization. What follows is not a historical examination of Delmiro Gouveia, but an analysis of how historians, social movement leaders, filmmakers, and journalists depicted the symbol of Delmiro Gouveia in the 1950s and 1960s, and how these stories drew from and challenged the trope of o Nordeste.

Coronel Delmiro Gouveia and Patriarchal Modernization The narrative of the life and death of Delmiro Gouveia describes a Northeastern-style modernization, led by a “true” Northeastern man, a coronel, born in the rural sertão. In recounting his life, biographers focused on Gouveia’s plans to bring modernity to o Nordeste by founding a modern market in Recife and a modern factory town in the sertão. Such accounts define modernity as patriarchal and industrial, where characteristics such as “hard work” and cleanliness made Northeastern Brazil comparable to the United States and Western Europe. The reasons for Gouveia’s death, which ended the modernizing project for o Nordeste, suggest what bio­

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graphers believed were the biggest threats to a modern Northeast, ranging from nordestino culture to foreign imperialism. Biographers frequently described Gouveia as one of the symbols of Northeastern Brazil; for example, “Until now, the Northeast has given us three men: Padre Ciçero in oration, Lampião in bravery, and Delmiro Gouveia in work.”83 But, unlike Lampião, Gouveia remains a rather obscure historical figure, making it difficult to consider him a regional symbol. His absence from the regional cannon may be related to the fact that Gouveia was an industrialist and entrepreneur, whose story of innovation and industriousness seems to be at odds with the definition of o Nordeste as nonmodern and impervious to change. I analyze two parts of Gouveia’s story as told by biographers, journalists, and book reviewers in the 1950s and 1960s. First, I examine how biographers described his attempts to bring modernity to the region to understand their definitions of “modernity.” By and large, Gouveia’s story supported Conservative arguments that positioned large landowners as the best group to modernize o Nordeste. Then, I look at the competing versions about Delmiro Gouveia’s death to show whom biographers and others writing about Gouveia defined as the Northeast’s enemy. The narratives about Gouveia demonstrate how his story fits into the trope of o Nordeste, or how Delmiro Gouveia was nordestinizado. Gouveia’s story conforms to the trope of o Nordeste in certain ­aspects—namely, its emphasis on the region as masculine and patriarchal. As Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Júnior argues, masculinity and “being macho” has played a central role in defining the nordestino.84 In her work on the postrevolutionary Mexican state, Mary Kay Vaughan described a state-led process of modernizing patriarchy in peasant households “not to emancipate women and children but to subordinate the household to the interests of national development.”85 Similarly to Mexico, in the early twentieth century, many nations implemented social policies to rationalize the domestic sphere, teaching mothers how to organize hygienic, efficient households in which they would raise healthy and productive children to modernize the nation.86 Even though Gouveia’s plans for modernizing Northeastern Brazil were not state-supported projects, I find the concept of patriarchal modernization useful because it explicitly refers to the maledominated power structures and to Gouveia’s role as a father figure for the community. According to arguments made by his biographers, Gouveia replaced the feudal and violent coronel with a cosmopolitan, hardworking, and nationalistic industrialist whose fatherly nature allowed modernity to

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thrive in the most backward regions of the Brazilian nation. The stories about him published in the 1950s and 1960s portrayed him as a strict and benevolent father with the power to modernize the structures and habits of nordestino families. The implied message was that similar patriarchal projects could transform o Nordeste into a modern region through the fatherly guidance of progressive rural elites. To establish Gouviea as a modern Northeastern man, biographers used examples of Gouveia’s international or cosmopolitan experiences in the United States and Western Europe. For example, accounts claimed that at the turn of the century, Gouveia had visited the United States and Europe, and that he had attended the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. He made connections with international firms and banks, such as J. H. Rossbach Brothers of New York and Keen Sutterly & Co. of Philadelphia, to establish his company, Delmiro Gouveia & Cia, in 1894.87 These experiences allowed him to recognize the inhumane quality of life in Recife, the need for modernization, and the intellectual ideologies of socialism.88 His home in Recife was described as Swiss chalet in Shaffuse or a Dutch tulip cultivator’s house because of its cleanliness and order.89 But Gouveia was not just modern because of foreign influences. As a patriotic leader from the sertão,90 he transformed modernity into something even better, and used foreigners to assist him in the project of creating Northeastern modernity. Biographers described how Gouveia contracted technical professionals from numerous countries to build the dam and the factory town; foreigners did not “exploit” him. Gouveia “improved” typical English sayings, changing the notion that “time is money” into “time is more than money.”91 Gouveia’s first major attempt to introduce modernity to o Nordeste was the creation of the Derby Market. Because of the high prices of the basic foodstuffs at the São José Market in Recife and the inability of the poor to purchase this food, Delmiro Gouveia established a new market at Derby, where basic necessities were sold at lower prices than those at São José. Felix Lima Júnior described the Derby market as impeccably clean and organized, with electricity, sewers, and running water. It was supposedly modeled on European and US markets, and in the plaza in front of the Derby Market, Gouviea built a recreational area, where people could take part in activities that resembled “American fairs,” featuring clowns, a carrousel, and stands selling popcorn.92 According to Olympio de Menezes, the Derby Market grew out of Delmiro Gouveia’s vision for modernizing

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Recife that had been inspired by his visit to the Chicago World’s Fair.93 Delmiro Gouveia was a “progressive business man with great visions, who was able to combine his legitimate personal interests of caring for and serving the people with dedication.”94 But on January 1, 1900, a fire “devoured the structure that was the pride of Recife and that had served the povo.”95 Gouveia was arrested after the fire, but the circumstances of his arrest remain unclear. He may have been responsible for the fire; the political and economic elites in Pernambuco may have created a scandal to defame him; or, he may have been having nonconsensual relations with an underage girl.96 Whatever the reason, Gouveia fled Pernambuco to the neighboring state of Alagoas, where he began to formulate the idea of Pedra, the factory town on the banks of the São Francisco River. Pedra is the focus of most of the biographies because the story shows how Delmiro Gouveia turned a backward, isolated place in the Northeast into allegedly the most modern factory town in all South America. Gouveia constructed a textile mill, Estrela, on the banks of the São Francisco River and installed a hydroelectric dam to power the machines and supply the town with electricity. But, the introduction of industry alone was not enough to create modern society in o Nordeste; Gouveia had to enforce rules and provide benefits to educate the workers and their families and turn them into modern citizens. Biographers have emphasized Delmiro Gouveia’s role in this transformation as a patriarch and a good boss, suggesting that exceptional men had to lead the transformation to modernity in the Northeast. Gouveia’s project also challenged the divisions in cultures that he had found at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. With education and modern industry, Gouveia’s “triumph” in Pedra was seen as proof that the Dahomeyans of the Midway Plaisance (or the sertanejos of o Nordeste) could, in fact, become the kind of modern civilization on display in the White City. Descriptions of Pedra and of Gouveia’s leadership style offer a definition of “modernity” and perceptions of the patriarchal leadership skills needed to be successful in 1902 and in the 1950s and 1960s. In Pedra, Gouveia built new houses for his workers, all painted white and impeccably clean. Inspired by his travels in Italy, he built Romanesque columns in front of the houses, lining the main streets. According to the biographies, Pedra had the most advanced electric system in Brazil, running water that passed through a filtration system, telephone and telegraph systems, and even an ice cream store and an ice factory.97 Gouveia instated leisure ­activities,

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such as a town band, free tickets to the cinema, soccer games, and skating exercises. Other symbols of modern civilization included eight schools, medical facilities, public parks, a pharmacy, as well as the carrousel and the cinema.98 The textile industry required new infrastructure, so Gouveia built roads and brought the first automobiles to the sertão.99 Gouveia, as a “good” and “modern” boss, established an eight-hour workday, and on Sunday, the factory was closed. He required everyone in the town to wear shoes, and the workers had to wear a uniform, an azulão, which Gouveia himself wore, so that no one felt “humiliated or diminished.”100 He was described as having a “patriarchal and educational mission”; all the people in the town, regardless of age, were required to attend classes for literacy and training.101 According to many of the biographies, everyone in Pedra learned the national anthem, and Delmiro Gouveia led the town under the motto of “order” and “progress.” He named the streets after famous Brazilian and Northeastern figures and dates, such as “José de Alencar,” “Rui Barbosa,” and “13 de Maio.”102 But to live and work in Pedra meant that workers had to follow Gouveia’s rules: he did not allow police or soldiers in Pedra. The descriptions of these rules in the biographies further define modernity in Northeastern Brazil. Townspeople were forbidden to spit in the street, drink, or gamble, and prostitution was illegal.103 Everyone was required to take a bath daily, to comb their hair, and to wear shoes.104 He inspected houses for their hygiene and prohibited domestic abuse. Of the few stories that appear repeatedly throughout the accounts describing Gouveia’s regulation and education, one relates that as he was bringing a visitor through town and saw a man leaving his house through the window instead of through the door, a prohibited action, and the offender was scolded in public. Another story tells of a “new arrival” to the town who built a shack outside Pedra. When Gouveia found the shack, he invited the man and his family to either become employees of the factory and move into town or to leave the area. The shack was destroyed, since it did not fit into the “modern” Pedra. A similar story was repeated in the opening sequence of Geraldo Sarno’s film Coronel Delmiro Gouveia (1978), suggesting the significance of Gouveia’s patriarchal policies to how and why he has been remembered. In the film, a former Pedra factory worker states, “When a drought refugee would arrive naked, he would order him clothed. Gouveia sent him to his store and dressed him like everyone else. If he was hungry, Gouveia gave the refugee food. And the next day, the refugee would already be working.”

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The most commonly repeated story about Pedra involved Gouveia’s promotion of weddings and the establishment of nuclear families in Pedra. As Olympio de Menezes explained, “In his [Gouveia’s] proletarianized city, all the dresses of the workers’ brides were paid for out of his own pocket, from their shoes to their veils.”105 Almost every account of Delmiro Gouviea discussed the fact that he promoted weddings by paying the bride’s expenses for a formal ceremony. Modernity meant marriage in a church. But what is also curious about Gouveia’s desire to promote marriage is that one of the controversies surrounding his death suggests that he was murdered because he had an illicit affair with one of the young brides.

Delmiro Gouveia’s Death and Its Repercussions for o Nordeste The trope of o Nordeste suggests that any story about change or the possibility of overturning the region’s traditional power structures is preordained to end in violence and defeat and, ultimately, to strengthen the traditional power structures. This narrative is even more striking in the case of Gouveia because he was portrayed as the exception to the norm in o Nordeste. And yet, the trope of o Nordeste influences the narration of his life story, highlighting “barbaric” forms of violence that destroyed his success in creating a new type of Nordeste.106 As one biographer described, “The sad reality is that the homicidal bullets used against Delmiro Gouveia did not just interrupt the course of an extraordinary pioneer’s life. They also delayed the march of progress by forty years in the lands of o Nordeste.”107 The multiple stories about his death illustrate the competing visions for Northeastern Brazil in the 1950s and 1960s and who or which groups were seen as the enemy to progress in the Northeast. Some versions of Gouveia’s death blame nordestino traditions, such as coronelismo, or honor killings. According to one account, competing coronéis had sent three cangaceiros (José Inacio Pia “Jacaré,” Róseia Morais, and Antônio Félix) to kill Delmiro Gouveia.108 The coronéis who hired the assassins felt threatened by his “strong nordestino audacity and initiative and dreams of the greatness and economic independence of his homeland.”109 Even though two of the men served life sentences, their guilt has always been disputed.110 Supposedly, Delmiro’s three dogs did not make a sound when the cangaceiros approached. A preta velha explained their silence as a premonition, recalling that the dogs had spent the entire day yowling, to

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the point that Delmiro Gouveia had asked what the dogs could foresee.111 By invoking folklore and perhaps “black magic,” this account shows how the life of the modern Delmiro was doomed by the traditional society of the Northeast, or how the account of his death has been nordestinizado. The greater forces that had preordained Gouveia’s death also prevented modernity, order, and progress from changing the backward sertão. A different version connects his murder to nordestino traditions of honor killings. According to such accounts, Gouveia had raped a young bride on the way to Recife to buy her wedding gown, and this provoked the groom to defend his honor and kill Gouveia. Another argument about the cause of Gouveia’s death that appears frequently in the biographies is that he “died barbarically assassinated, the victim of foreign trust interests.”112 The British company Machine Cotton had allegedly done everything in its power to destabilize and destroy Gouveia’s textile company. As Mauro Mota claimed, “Even today, nobody knows who sent the men to kill Delmiro Gouveia but everyone suspects it fell in the hands of the British imperialists.”113 The LIGA review of a Gouveia biography emphasized the role of Machine Cotton, with the added qualifier that after the Revolution of 1930, the British influence was eliminated and replaced by imperialist forces from North America.114 The Ligas’s explanation exemplifies how Gouveia’s story was not only about a historical figure but also about contemporary politics. After his death in 1917, foreign businesses undertook immediate efforts to close down Estrela. Most accounts refer to acts of dumping, fraud, spying, and other illegitimate business practice to describe how Machine Cotton eventually took control of the factory. As Lima Júnior described, Machine Cotton started selling its textiles at prices lower than market value in order to establish itself as a monopoly. “It was a warning to the national consciousness that the government of the Republic ignored. Unfortunately, no measures were taken and a few years later, Machine was able to liquidate our textile factory to the shame of the government and the disgrace of the Brazilian people.”115 “Imperialist take-over” is a frequently repeated narrative, particularly in Leftist interpretations of Delmiro Gouveia. For instance, the PCB newspaper A Hora focused on this issue: “In homage to Delmiro Gouviea, we wish to remind the nordestino people of the crime committed by the men of English capital against one of our industries. If the industry had continued, the appearance of our industries in the Northeastern sertões would be very different.”116 As a progressive, nationalistic bourgeois, Gouveia was an

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ideal symbol for the PCB’s envisioned alliance to bring about the peaceful united democratic front aligned against US imperialists.117 Pedra was renamed “Delmiro Gouveia” in 1952. Most accounts describe it as a place where civilization touched the sertão, and by the mid1950s, with the construction of the Paulo Afonso dam, the area was once again able to experience the “progress” and “order” of modernity. Although Delmiro Gouveia’s story is quite different from the histories of Canudos or Lampião, a similar type of regional narrative informs Gouveia’s trajectory: short-lived struggles are repressed or demolished, ending the possibility for change in o Nordeste. Biographers also claimed that Gouveia was not remembered as a national or regional hero because of national prejudices toward nordestinos. As Felix Lima Júnior claimed, “In this country of ungrateful people, Delmiro Gouveia is yet another victim of the conspiracy of silence.”118 According to one of Delmiro Gouveia’s daughters, her father was “persecuted in life by international trusts, [and] my father continues to be persecuted in death by the national trusts of silence.”119 The appropriations of Delmiro Gouveia in the 1950s and 1960s suggest why Gouveia became a popular theme in the media and books. Biographers portrayed him as an authentic nordestino who brought in modernity and civilization through the development of a textile industry to the region. He battled against national and international giants, using their ideas in the construction of a successful model factory town. At the same time, the narratives surrounding the symbol of Delmiro Gouveia did not contradict the entrenched trope of o Nordeste. The examples of his “modernity” supported the commonly held belief that nordestinos as rural workers could only become civilized with an education led by “great men” or patriarchs. Nordestinos themselves possessed little agency in the modernizing process, and could not combat the power Gouveia exerted over their lives and their brides, even though they consented because they were pleased with their salaries and improved living conditions. Gouveia’s patriarchal modernity created a “civilized” Northeast with the visual symbols of modernity associated with the United States. And yet, Gouveia had to be destroyed, upholding the dominant tragic trope of o Nordeste, emphasizing the idea that change is a precarious project in the rural Northeast. In this chapter, I have shown the circulating representations of class struggle in Northeastern Brazil in popular culture and political discourse in the 1950s and 1960s, focusing on two key symbols of the trope o Nordeste: the coronel and the rural poor. Although most representations of the

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rural poor continued to portray them as exploited victims, most political and cultural actors challenged the dominant idea that poverty was immutable and fatalistic, suggesting that the nordestino’s impoverished condition could change even if such possibilities were precarious. Solutions to nordestino poverty ranged from social revolution to introducing Japanese immigrants to the region to bring in “modernity.” Representations of the rural poor’s counterpart, the coronel or latifundiário, largely portrayed the traditional rural elite as violent, backward, greedy, and undeserving of power. At the same time, examples such as Coronel Delmiro Gouviea offered a vision of what a progressive rural elite could offer Northeastern Brazil if they adopted modern practices and ethics. As benevolent, modernizing patriarchs, “good” coronéis could educate the rural poor to create a modern Nordeste. The theme of patriarchy also forms a part of the discussion of race and blackness in Chapter 4. Although they did not completely overturn the prevalent beliefs about nordestinos and o Nordeste, rural social movements, filmmakers and some politicians and journalists began to question some of the discriminatory characterizations composing the trope of o Nordeste.

4 Racialized Representations Slavery, Abolition, and Quilombos

The national narrative of “racial democracy” often is asso­ ciated with Gilberto Freyre’s Casa-grande e senzala: Formação da familia brasileira sob o regime da economia patriarchal (The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization, 1933). Freyre argues that the benevolent nature of Brazilian slavery allowed for a racial demo­ cracy—that is, a society not based on racial divisions—to emerge through miscegenation.1 Even though Freyre focused on plantation life and culture in Northeastern Brazil, his arguments extended to the Brazilian nation. He argued that modernization led to Brazil’s downfall because of the disinte­ gration of the patriarchal Brazilian family. In the early 1950s, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) studies on Brazilian racial harmony raised considerable doubts at the in­ ternational level about Brazil being a “racial paradise” or nation of racial equality.2 Since then, a multitude of studies have refuted Freyre’s argu­ ments about the benevolent nature of Brazilian slavery and labeled racial democracy a “myth.” But in the 1950s and 1960s, government officials pro­ moted Brazil as a racial democracy in national and international politics.3 Although Gilberto Freyre is well known for his seminal work The Masters and the Slaves, in the 1950s and 1960s his political positions in Northeastern Brazil and his power as a voice of authority demonstrates how his intellectual production had real-life applications and consequences. Freyre was involved in Pernambucan politics, serving as an elected federal legislator in 1946. He founded and directed the region’s most important social science research center, the IJNPS, in 1949, and he participated in the UNESCO studies on Brazilian race relations in 1951. Throughout the

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1950s and 1960s, Freyre led seminars and courses at the IJNPS on North­ eastern Brazil, folklore, and rural living conditions. His broader research focused on the idea of Lusotropicalism, or how the Portuguese adapted to tropical conditions in Brazil and in other colonies or former colonies in the tropics. Most foreign journalists, intellectuals, and politicians who visited Pernambuco during this time met with Freyre, since he was considered an expert on Northeastern Brazil and an intellectual who had a “non­political” or “objective” voice.4 Freyre was also frequently invited to speak in the United States and Europe about race relations, Lusotropicalism, and Bra­ zilian politics. Freyre staunchly believed in regionalism, or the idea that Northeast­ ern Brazilian culture and society had developed because of the historical legacies of sugar production, colonialism, and slavery. He also believed that regionalism came from local ecological and economic conditions, going as far as to claim that “while states are political fiction; region is what is reality.”5 He defined the “Northeastern man” as a mixed-race regional type imbued with regionally specific cultural values and practices, such as superstitions and folklore. According to Freyre, the nordestino “sub-race” had developed in relation to their geographical context, isolation from the modern world, and poverty. Because of the nordestino’s isolation, Freyre claimed that development projects—such as those initiated by the Alliance for Progress and SUDENE—were doomed to fail because they focused on technology and technicians instead of “cultural persuasion,” education, and what he called “humanist concerns.”6 In other words, development of the Northeast rested on human behavioral change, not on technical advancement. As we have seen, the “Northeastern man” is an immediately recogniz­ able stereotype, encompassing cultural and physical traits that distinguish the nordestino as a racialized regional Other in Brazil. Associations with poverty and a mixed-race “type” have been strengthened by representations in the media and popular culture. For instance, the actor José Dumont (see Figure 4.1) is regularly cast as a nordestino in Brazilian films and telenovelas because he embodies the stereotypes associated with regional identity, such as being mixed-race, having a large forehead and a small physique based on the legacy of malnutrition, and speaking in an imagined regional accent. In visual culture, faces of nordestinos are often weathered from the harsh sun. They are depicted as rural laborers, often wearing tattered clothing, straw hats, and sandals, eating farofa (toasted yucca flour) with their hands

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Figure 4.1 Actor José Dumont as a nordestino in João Batista de Andrade’s O homem que virou suco (The Man Who Turned into Juice; 1980), a film produced by Assunção Hernandes. Photograph by João Farkas.

Source: Acervo Cinemateca Brasileira/SAv/MinC, São Paulo. Courtesy of Raíz Produções Cine­ matográficas.

or participating in folk rituals and celebrations. Throughout the 1960s, the reality effect of the caricature encouraged investigations about the biologi­ cal and physical traits of nordestinos. Considered a “sub-race,” nordestinos became a focus of the scientific gaze and were classified in ways resembling earlier racialized studies, such as anthropometry. Although the nordestino stereotype is an imaginary caricature and has taken on different appearances over time, it has long been perceived in Brazil as a real distinction between Brazilians and nordestinos. Stuart Hall refers to this as “inferential racism” or the process by which representations are naturalized through a set of “unquestioned assumptions” grounded in discriminatory premises and beliefs.7 Although stereotypes code nordestinos in the media, none of the characteristics are fixed or stable. People from the Northeast can “pass” as non-nordestino by not speaking with the ac­ cent associated with the region or by successfully i­ ncorporating themselves into the image of modern, urban Brazil through cultural ­associations. Al­ though the dominant stereotype of the nordestino suggested a “mixed-race”

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­ eritage, representations of the nordestino can fluctuate, encompassing h people of African descent and people with blonde hair and blue eyes (at­ tributed to the Dutch colonization of the region in the seventeenth cen­ tury) as long as they are poor, rural, nonmodern, and devoid of agency. The broad range of nordestino stereotypes exemplify Jan Nederveen Pieterse’s argument that neither race nor ethnicity informs imagery and discourse but that “the nature of the political relationships [italics in the original] between people . . . causes a people to be viewed in a particular light.”8 In other words, although people from the Northeast generally look like any other Brazilian, the entrenched beliefs about the fundamental differences that distinguish nordestinos from other Brazilians make these differences perceived as real in Brazilian society. The pervasiveness of national narratives of racial democracy and the enduring stereotype of the “mixed-race” nordestino have influenced the historiography on social activism in Brazil. On the one hand, scholars of the Northeastern rural social movements have largely overlooked the sig­ nificance of race, favoring instead a structural approach. For example, the most widely cited study on the rural social movements in the 1950s and 1960s—Fernando Antônio Azevedo’s As Ligas Camponesas (1982)—exam­ ines the political divisions between and among social movement leaders to argue that the social movements developed as a form of resistance to the expansion of capitalism in the countryside.9 These scholars investigated which groups of rural workers participated in the different social move­ ments, and most concluded that the Communist Party had support in the zona de mata, and that the Ligas and the Catholic Church maintained their power bases in the agreste. Although some scholars point out that the coastal workers were black and the agreste workers were mixed-race, this leaves the racialized dimensions of such categorizations underanalyzed, because it fails to explore connections between racial identities and labor organizing strategies. On the other hand, contemporary studies on racial identities and social and political activism in Brazil in the 1950s and 1960s tend to focus on Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Bahia without mentioning the Northeastern rural social movements. Although studies such as Paulina Alberto’s Terms of Inclusion demonstrate black intellectual’s resistance to the dominant myth of racial democracy during these years, scholars have not considered the Northeastern rural social movements as part of this dialogue.10 The lack of research on the racialization of the Northeastern rural social movements can be explained in terms of two main obfuscating as­

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sumptions. One commonly held belief is that the rural social movements would not have attempted to unify rural workers in a race-based struggle because of the power of the national narrative of racial democracy. If they used race as an organizing tool, the social movements ran the risk of alien­ ating the rural workers who identified as mixed-race nordestinos. Another assumption that has led scholars to overlook the significance of race to the Northeastern struggles in the 1950s and 1960s draws from a generalized understanding that using race in political organizing means making issues of race and racism the basis of the struggle, as in the case of black move­ ments such as the Movimento Negro Unificado (MNU; the Unified Black Movement). But if none of the Northeastern rural social movements could be considered “black” movements specifically based on race or racism, race was not absent either. An examination of political discourse and popular culture demonstrates the presence of race and the denouncement of racism as tools used to gain support for struggles for land and labor rights. Race and racialized perspectives of class conflict arose in the 1950s and 1960s particularly in relation to three historical themes: slavery, aboli­ tion, and quilombos. This chapter examines how rural social movements, politicians, journalists, Conservatives, popular poets and filmmakers ap­ propriated these themes to bolster their arguments about agrarian reform. Rural social movements compared the latifúndio system to chattel slavery to raise awareness of the exploited position of the rural worker. Describing nordestinos as slaves emphasized a victimization narrative, that nordestinos lacked agency. Comparing agrarian reform projects to abolition, the rural social movements provided Brazilians with moral, economic, and political reasons to support structural changes such as land reform. Although the rural social movements were rebelling against the dominant power of the rural elite and the latifúndio system, quilombos or references to slave rebel­ lion were not frequently mobilized in the 1950s and 1960s. This chapter makes two main arguments about the racialization of the struggles for land and labor reforms in the 1950s and 1960s. Narratives of slavery and abolition were powerful tools for rural social movements in their attempts to mobilize support for agrarian reform and rural labor rights that Conser­ vatives found difficult if not impossible to effectively challenge. In doing so, the rural social movements dismantled Freyre’s idea of a benevolent Brazilian-style slave system, questioning one of the core premises of racial democracy. And yet the strength of the arguments about slavery and aboli­ tion drew from the stereotype of nordestinos as a racialized Other who were nonwhite victims lacking agency. For the most part, advocates for agrarian

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reform preferred to mobilize the idea of the nordestino as a victim-slave instead of a rebel.

Representations of Nordestinos as Slaves To identify as a slave—in a region with a legacy of slavery and where some people in the 1950s and 1960s could still remember being chattel slaves—seems at odds with the idea of rural workers organizing to fight for land and labor rights, especially since slavery is commonly associated with victimization, exploitation, and a lack of political agency. For some, the comparison between nordestinos and slaves reaffirmed beliefs rooted in the trope of o Nordeste, depicting rural nordestinos as nonwhite “subhumans” without agency. For others, the comparison fueled support for the rural social movements by legitimizing the moral and economic arguments that equated agrarian reform with abolition. Slavery was a metaphor used to describe the four main issues in o Nordeste: migration from the Northeast to the Southeast, feudal land and labor relations, extralegal violence on rural estates, and the perils of communism or capitalism. As a Cold War metaphor, slavery was used in Northeastern Brazil to describe the threats posed by communism and the Soviet Union and capitalism and the United States. Rural social movements and Leftist poli­ ticians depicted capitalist ideologies as racist frameworks used to enslave Third World and nonwhite peoples to serve the capitalist white masters. Northeastern rural social movements frequently attacked the United States as a country that enslaved not only the Third World but also its own pop­ ulations. For example, an article in the Northeastern Communist Party newspaper, A Hora, described the Inter-American Conference at Punta de Este, Uruguay, as an attempt by the United States to use its power to enslave the Third World. “Once again, the North American imperialists try to overthrow the socialist regime of Cuba. They tried to transform the ‘pearl of the Antilles’—where the people now have power because of the Revolution—into a submissive colony of the US State Department, which would mean surrendering to United States’ desires to dominate and enslave the free peoples of the Third World.”11 The argument reflects the PCB’s objective after 1958 to attack foreign (specifically US) imperialism in Brazil as the enemy. The Ligas Camponesas racialized the Cold War metaphor of slavery by providing evidence of the United States’ “false democracy” through re­

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ports describing racism in the United States. Numerous reports in LIGA described the injustices African Americans experienced in the “Cortina de Dolar” or the “Dollar Curtain,” as opposed to the Iron Curtain, and the Ligas frequently compared the situations of African Americans, Cuban, Af­ ricans, and Brazilians.12 For example, one article in LIGA claimed that Bra­ zilians, too, would face discrimination in the United States—forced to sit at the back of buses, treated like animals or inferiors—because most Brazil­ ians have black blood in their veins.13 In September 1963, a significant year for abolition anniversaries in Brazil and the United States, LIGA published Mao Tse-Tung’s “message” to black North Americans and his “Emancipa­ tion Proclamation for African Americans.”14 Although Julião had made an official visit to China and met with Mao, the Ligas did not follow a Maoist line. The fact that LIGA published Mao’s statements on US racism can be understood as related to the Ligas holding a similar position about racism in the United States and the need for Third World solidarity. Mao urged the people of the world to unite against racial discrimination and North American imperialism based on the claim that nineteen million blacks in the United States continued to live under a system of slavery, oppression, and discrimination. The manifesto ended with a call for solidarity: I call to the workers, peasants, intellectuals, revolutionaries, sensible bourgeois sec­ tors and all other sensible people of all colors of the world . . . to unite against racial discrimination. With the support of 90 percent of the world’s population, I am pro­ foundly convinced that the just struggle of black North Americans will be victorious. The evil colonialist and imperialist system that grew out of slavery and the transatlan­ tic slave trade will also disappear with the emancipation of racism!15

Mao’s Emancipation Proclamation put North American racism into a global context and denounced it as a “threat to the entire world.” As Mao declared, “For the American racists, a person of color is worth less than a mongrel dog. This is the justice of the country that has proclaimed itself the savior of the world.” The Ligas found Mao’s declarations useful be­ cause they supported the Ligas positions that the United States was the enemy,  the Third World needed to join together in solidarity, and that unequal power relations had a racialized component. The Ligas ascribed the power to exploit others to whiteness, depicting white power as “evil” and as a threat to nonwhites. To emphasize solidarity with the global South, the Ligas reported on African independence struggles to illustrate the global battle between the

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white imperialists and nonwhite Third World rebels.16 Reports in LIGA explained the revolutionary struggles of the Popular Liberation Movement of Angola and its efforts to unite the peasant base against the common enemy of the Portuguese colonialists.17 The illustration accompanying the article (see Figure 4.2) depicted a number of small, triumphant black An­ golan soldiers happily marching on top of a giant, white Portuguese sol­ dier. The image supported the revolutionary argument that was popular in the era of the Cuban Revolution about the power of the people united and their ability to overthrow reigning imperialist powers like the United States or Portugal, often supported with references to David versus Goliath. In addition to expressing solidarity in armed conflict, the Ligas also pub­ lished poetry and literature from Angola, including works by Agostinho Neto, Manuel Lima, and Viriato da Cruz on the topics of slavery and imperialism.18 These cultural ties created a broader Third World platform, connecting the struggles of Northeastern rural workers to independence movements in Africa. In her work on US cultural imperialism during the Cold War, Chris­ tina Klein argues that disseminating the idea that communism enslaved free people was a part of the United States’ broader imperial project in the

Figure 4.2 Illustration of Angolan soldiers marching over Portuguese colonizers printed in LIGA, November 6, 1963, 3.

Source: Centro de Documentação e Memória da Unesp (CEDEM/Unesp).

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Third World.19 In the 1950s and 1960s, Conservatives frequently associated communism with agrarian reform to attack the legitimacy of Northeastern rural social movements and, in doing so, described life under communism as similar to slavery. Joaquim Batista de Sena’s chapbook The History of Agrarian Reform and Communism in Brazil describes the quality of life in “Communist Russia,” where people work as slaves of the government.20 The folheto is similar to a peleja or style of literatura de cordel in which poets battle one another when Sena tries to debunk ideas circulating through rural Northeastern Brazil about communism and agrarian reform. As he writes about workers in Russia: Trabalham forçadamente E ninguem tem liberdade Nem tão pouco se domina Não faz o que tem vontade É mentira de quem diz Que lá existe igualdade

They are forced to work And no one has freedom They don’t control their own lives They can’t do what they want to do Those who say that equality Exists in Russia are lying.

Sena continues the poem by challenging the “lies” circulating about Russia in the Northeast. He claims it is a lie that in Russia the poor baker makes the same salary as an engineer or that the son of the poorest worker studies at the same school as Russian nobles. The literacy rate may be higher in Russia than in Northeastern Brazil, but Sena warns that the schools teach the children from the time they are babies that God does not exist. In fact, to speak of God is a crime, and anyone who speaks against the government has his head cut off. The poem warns that if Brazil turns communist, the peasant will have to “work day and night like a poor, en­ slaved person who lacks the right to harvest an ear of corn from their plot” because all the production will go to the government to be redistributed among the population. This last statement may not have sounded to rural workers much different from their current position, but the threats against religion were meant to inspire their fear of communism. The poem also makes it possible to discern the Cold War discourses that were circulating in the Northeast at the time about the benefits of communism, such as equality and education, as well as the threats communism posed to Brazil­ ian society. Appropriating metaphors of capitalist or communist enslavement may make Northeastern Brazil seem similar to other Cold War cases. How­ ever, one thing that distinguishes the use of such metaphors are the “real” cases of slavery or indentured servitude that were documented in Brazil

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in the 1950s and 1960s that influenced the metaphoric realm.  Cases  of ­contemporary slavery became newsworthy at the time when internal migra­ tion from the Northeast to the Southeast came to be perceived as a problem. Starting in the 1950s, a number of studies focused on Northeastern migra­ tion to the Southeastern regions of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Minas Gerais. As proof of the problems associated with Northeastern migration, a number of stories denounced cases of indentured servitude. According to such reports, nordestinos were transported on paus-de-arara (flatbed trucks with bench seats) that brought rural people from the drought-ravished and impoverished areas of the Northeast to the large estates or fazendas in the Southeast. Upon reaching their destination, nordestinos were “sold” to a fazendeiro (large landowner), who paid their passage on the pau-de-arara in exchange for their labor, or at “slave markets” in town centers. Newspaper reports on Northeastern migration employed language associated with chattel slavery to describe working, living, and transporta­ tion conditions. For instance, the paus-de-arara were referred to as navios negreiros (slaving ships); the system was described as a “real slave system,” and the transaction as a “nordestino slave market.”21 Reports portrayed rural workers as enslaved on the fazendas, with virtually no chance to es­ cape, since those who attempted to flee were captured by capitães-de-mato (slave catchers) or drowned in the rivers.22 A few articles listed the prices paid for men and for families, emphasizing the comparison between the indentured servitude of Northeastern migrants and chattel slavery. Most stories focused on the inability of nordestinos to combat such violations because of the lack of federal protection and their impoverished status as “poor creatures looking to survive.”23 A poignant example of such a report appeared in the PCB newspaper Novos Rumos about the case of Manoel da Costa Santos and Maria Francisca Santos, who were sold in Montes Claro (Minas Gerais) for Cr.$4.000,00, “like a pair of animals.”24 Maria Francisca lost all of her children and was virtually turned into a slave because of the miserable circumstances caused by the unequal distribution of land and power in Brazil. Reporter Ana Montenegro claimed that many Southeast towns functioned as “selling posts,” where miserable nordestinos were auctioned off to fazendeiros. For­ tunately for the couple she reported on, journalists had bought them as proof of the commercial transactions, so they did not become slaves. An­ other article discussed the sale of nordestinos in Rio Grande do Norte stat­ ing that the drivers of the paus-de-arara received Cr.$3.500.00 for each nordestino transported to the South.25 Once the nordestinos arrived at the

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fazendas, they were required to sign a contract that gave them the right to three meals a day and Cr.$60.00 daily wages, with the understanding that this money would only be paid after two years of labor. The fazendeiro sub­ tracted the transportation costs from this amount, as well as any expenses related to food, housing and purchases from the company store that ac­ crued while the nordestino worked on the fazenda. Novos Rumos published a poem in the style of literatura de cordel and written in nordestino dialect about the life of the migrant in 1959, which shows the pervasiveness of such narratives. Zê Praxedi, “the cowboy poet,” described the life in the sertão as unsustainable and as motivating his deci­ sion to depart for the Southeast. This past week The caboclo26 Zê Vicente Gave us the news That still makes me feel happy even now There is a rich mineiro (person from Minas Gerais) Who is in the sertão buying people I thought the price, my friend Of a Brazilian was cheap Being that he is a good worker Well-respected and quick And not very sick He is worth the miserable amount Of only Cr.$2.000,00. If hunger is worth more I’m going to think about what to do What people here have to do If it means dying of hunger Then we will sell ourselves at this cheap price Those of us from Ceará Even if we don’t go there right now We question why we were born.”27 Written from the perspective of a Northeastern migrant, the poem dem­ onstrates the conditions of hunger and poverty that encouraged the nordestino to migrate to the south and accept a form of bondage. It also shows that the nordestino feels forced into the situation out of necessity to survive, even though he is aware that his labor is devalued and that he is being exploited.

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Conservatives denounced indentured servitude in the 1950s based on the perceived need to stop internal migration from the Northeast to the ­Southeast. For example, a 1957 Catholic publication described migrants as “chagas vivas (putrefying sores) that day by day are ruining the nation.”28 Depictions of nordestinos as “marginal,” socially different and a “sub-race” of the human species unprepared for the modern, urban life of the South­ east flourished.29 Some arguments drew from antiquated ideas associated with scientific racism, arguing that the nordestino was threatening the process of whitening and Brazilian racial mixing because nordestinos often “regressed to their original race,” stalling the process of social evolution.30 This type of racialized argument illustrates how Conservatives articulated their fears about Northeastern migration to the Southeast. Although most of the examples appeared in newspapers and books published before 1960, they exemplify some of the dominant ideas about rural Northeasterners that the rural social movements had to confront. The Ligas, PCB rural syndicates, and Church Federations all em­ ployed the metaphor of slavery to describe rural living and labor conditions in the Northeast in the 1950s and 1960s. The Ligas’s song, the “Peasant’s Hymn,” invoked images of slavery to describe the horrific living and work­ ing conditions, proposing a new Brazilian nation that honored workers instead of enslaving them and keeping them “chained to a hoe.” Comrades and brothers in suffering Our song of pain rises from the land. It is a fertile seed that the wind Broadcast through the valley and over the hills. Chorus The flag that we adore Should not be stained With the blood of a race Chained to a hoe. We do not wish to live in slavery Nor leave the country where we were born. For the land, for peace, for bread Comrades, we band together and we march. Today we are millions of oppressed Under the terrible weight of the cambão. Fighting we will redeem ourselves Agrarian reform is our salvation.

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Our hands are goldenly callused Attesting to our hard and honored labor. Our hands seek freedom And the glory of Brazil for the future.31 In the song, the Ligas portrayed rural labor as a heroic national characteristic even as it equated discriminatory practices and labor sys­ tems with slavery. Along with the other rural social movements, the Ligas wanted the unpaid labor systems such as the cambão and the eito declared illegal.32 Julião described the cambão as “a spark setting the countryside ablaze; a match under a charge as old as the peasant or the slave himself; a word signaling the start of a long and arduous journey. In every language in the world it has many names and each means slavery.”33 By drawing ­comparisons between unpaid systems of labor and slavery, the Ligas and the other rural social movements fought for the right to establish a mini­ mum wage for rural workers, hourly and weekly limits on time worked, and to extend national labor laws or the Consolidation of Labor Laws to rural workers. One difference between the Ligas and other social movements is that the Ligas explicitly talked about the chattel slavery associated with the transatlantic slave trade, whereas other social movements referred to slavery in a broader metaphoric sense. For instance, Padre Crespo of the Church Federations used the language of slavery to describe the situation of nordestino peasants: “The nordestino is a slave. We live in a slave soci­ ety that is well disguised. There are forms of slavery that are even worse than black slavery, where men only have responsibilities but don’t have any rights.”34 In comparison, the Ligas referred to the legacy of slavery in the Northeast in their comparisons between Northeastern rural workers and slaves. In a letter to Francisco Julião from a man interested in start­ ing a Liga in Upatininga, Pernambuco, the man described the miséria of the cane worker, asking for Julião’s assistance in organizing rural workers. He described the community as “a region with the typical kind of miséria where rural workers live on the plantations in an identical situation to the blacks in the last century.”35 The Ligas also provided visual depictions of the state of contempo­ rary labor relations in the countryside, which drew from narratives of the legacy of slavery in the region (see Figure 4.3). Unlike a photograph, which might be more difficult to interpret in terms of racial meaning in Brazil, the illustration in Figure 4.3 clearly distinguishes the landowners as white

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Figure 4.3 Illustration of a sugar plantation in the Northeast. “Rural Workers Earn ‘Death Wages.’” LIGA, November 13, 1962, 3.

Source: Centro de Documentação e Memória da Unesp (CEDEM/Unesp).

and the workers as black, showing the racialization of the symbol of slavery and the struggle for land. The racialization of the struggle for land also surfaced in popular poetry published in LIGA. One such poem explicitly referred to race and sexuality to provoke rural men to join the struggle for agrarian reform. Referring to the relations between rural workers’ wives and the large land­ owner, the poet recounts how his wife is called to the Big House and asked if her husband is a communist. She returns home with a present that is not for her husband, but for another worker’s wife. Reacting to his inability to protect his wife from the landowner and the challenge to his manliness that such interactions represent, he declares: The large landowner is very kind with our wives! The other day he took care of The son of Zé Pretinho (Joe Blackie) Who by way of some strange miracle Was born very blond.36

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Since the attack is directed at the landowner and not at the wives, the poem suggests that neither the married woman nor the husband could prevent such sexual violations. The poem alludes to forced sexual relations or the rape of married women by the landowner and a perceived inability to legally prosecute such crimes. Other Ligas members have denounced similar forms of sexual violations occurring on latifúndios throughout the Northeast.37 The poem racializes the power relations between the land­ owner and the rural worker by labeling the whiteness of the landowner and the blackness of the rural worker, which is a significant distinction to make that challenges the premise of racial democracy. The folheto implies a process of consciousness raising, calling on nonwhite nordestino men to combat the phallic power of the white landowner and regain control of their wives, families, and land. The implied way to do this is to join the Ligas and fight for radical agrarian reform. The slavery metaphor was not only a tool to urge rural workers to join the Ligas; it was also used to challenge the violence initiated by the large landowners and the police. As shown in Chapter 3, rural social move­ ments continually criticized the violence of the latifúndio in attempts to criminalize the large landowners. Many of the denouncements were racial­ ized, with references to the types of punishment employed by the land­ owners, vestiges of the time when the Northeast was a slave society. For example, the illustration of the lei da chibata (law of the whip) in Figure 4.3 shows the landowner and his hired thugs using whips, guns, and machetes to punish rural workers. Other reports denounced the “feudal” tools and punishment techniques used on the latifúndio associated with slavery such as stocks and whips. For example, Marcos Martins da Silva, president of the Rural Workers Unions in the towns of Escada, Ipojuca, and Amaragi, Pernambuco, claimed that “the law of the tronco [stocks], kidnappings and solitary confinement are common law in the municipality of Escada.”38 Another worker, Severino Francisco dos Santos, denounced the punish­ ment he received after refusing the cambão, reporting that he was “medi­ evally beaten up with blows until he lost his senses and was struck by a raw leather whip by the hired thugs of the senhor de engenho.”39 Both LIGA and Novos Rumos reported on this type of violence, and the reports increased in number in 1964. This may have been in reaction to the increased reports in mainstream newspapers on the violence in the countryside that criminalized rural workers for spreading chaos. The al­ ternative newspapers may have wanted to justify or even encourage acts

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of resistance against the latifúndio by documenting the illegal abuses per­ petrated by landowners and police. One particularly newsworthy case oc­ curred on the Engenho Serra, located near the Engenho Galiléia outside Vitória de Santo Antão. In 1964, a number of reports described the “feudal reign” of violence on the plantation in which the landowner and his hired thugs regularly beat rural workers with cipó-pau [type of vine associated with slave punishment] xique-xique [cactus] and horse whips, and they burned peasants alive who were considered rebels, placing a strong current on the necks of those who were tied to a tronco [stocks] with arms spread open to the Big House. They pulled out facial hair for arriving late or working slowly, committed murders in the middle of the night while everyone was asleep (the bodies were thrown into the pond or water reservoir where many bones were later discovered), and they refused to let any professor enter the engenho.40

The notoriety of the violence on the Engenho Serra also has been incorpo­ rated into popular stories and literatura de cordel. Even today, former Ligas members remember the violence on the Engenho Serra, perhaps represen­ tative of the violence of rural life and the challenges posed to such regimes in the 1950s and 1960s. In 2005, Zito de Galiléia spoke with pride about Julião, saying that he had “freed” the workers of Galiléia from the “slavery” that no longer existed in the community. By identifying as slaves or as workers in a slave regime, it seems that Northeastern rural workers were able to form a collective identity of resistance.

Abolition and Agrarian Reform From the political position of equating rural workers with slaves and social movement leaders with abolitionists, rural social movements reposi­ tioned the Northeastern rural worker as engaged in a fight for freedom or for the “new abolition” in Brazil. The discourse of abolition was an effective tool used by proponents of agrarian reform and rural workers’ rights to support social reform projects. Arguments for agrarian reform as “aboli­ tion” created a unified identity of Northeasterners advocating for change in the Brazilian nation. Such arguments helped position agrarian reform as a legal issue and also legitimized it as a moral, economic, and political neces­ sity, similar to historical arguments for abolition. Rural social movements such as the Ligas appealed to a broader audience through the discourse of abolition in an attempt to create a cross-class solidarity for agrarian reform uniting progressive landowners, students and urban workers. But, the dis­

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course of abolition also reveals some of the limitations of the social move­ ments in appropriating historical narratives. Although Conservatives found it difficult to challenge the discourse of abolition proposed by rural social movements, rural social movements also did not radicalize the historical interpretations of abolition. With the exception of a few PCB references to slave resistance, the social movements refrained from positioning the rural worker as a rebellious slave. Instead, they used the narrative of abolition to appeal to rural elites and other classes as the moral leaders of the nation, obliging them to help the powerless nordestino victims of an unjust land and labor regime by supporting social reform projects such as agrarian re­ form to create a more equitable and modern Brazil. This section describes how rural social movements and other advocates for social reforms used the discourse of abolition in different ways in the 1950s and 1960s. The Ligas frequently referred to well-known historical Northeastern abolitionists in appealing to progressive rural elites to advocate for agrar­ ian reform. In the context of rising tensions surrounding the Galiléia case in July 1959, O Diário de Pernambuco published a letter from Francisco Julião to Zilde Maranhão, a journalist who supported the Conservative Cane Growers’ Association (Associação dos Fornecedores de Cana).41 Julião claimed that Maranhão stood in opposition to the glorious Pernambucan past and the ideals of abolitionist Joaquim Nabuco (1849–1910) since free­ ing peasants from the “feudal regime of the latifúndio” was a part of the long process of emancipation. In an effort to urge Maranhão to refrain from criticizing the Ligas Camponesas, Julião referred to Maranhão’s hometown and urged Maranhão to follow the path of a historical regional hero: I don’t remember if it was Aliança, your birthplace, or Nazaré da Mata, where some of the plantation owners wrote letters to warn other slave masters about what Nabuco was threatening, advising them not to give shelter to Nabuco who they considered to be a communist agitator, nihilist and carbonário [rebel who fought for national­ ist liberal constitutions]. Look here Zilde, at what Nabuco and his contemporaries said. I really doubt that even one of those slave masters’ grandchildren today would denounce their grandfather as an enemy of abolition. Their grandfathers’ memory would be destroyed and the grandson would feel isolated in the editorial office of the newspaper where you work, in the clubs you attend, in the associations that you are a part of, in any place throughout the country. The day is not far off that the grandson will also keep silent about the horrible crimes that they are committing against the peasant today in the regimes of the cambão, vara, meia, terça, vale, barracão [unpaid labor systems] and any of the other thousands of ways the peasant’s work is exploited.42

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Julião urged Maranhão to read the poetry of Castro Alves about slavery, such as “A Conservative’s Words,” (1883) so that Maranhão could better understand the side that he was taking. In this article, Julião equated agrar­ ian reform to abolition, appealing to landowning elites in a way that would allow them to support agrarian reform from a patriotic and moral stance. By suggesting that agrarian reform is the only choice for the future, Julião suggests that if progressive landowners supported agrarian reform, they would be compared to Nabuco and other abolitionists. By distinguish­ ing the “grandfather” from the “grandson,” Julião refers to the patriarchal system and how the Northeast had changed over time while also appealing to the “grandsons” to become future historical heroes of the nation. The ar­ ticle also reflects Julião’s personal trajectory as a descendent of a traditional landowning elite family who had been slaveholders. But the Ligas did not focus on appealing to rural elites in their ap­ propriations of the historical narrative of abolition. They also used abo­ lition to appeal to a broader cross-class alliance they referred to as the povo. In trying to create a unified nordestino front advocating for agrarian reform, the Ligas challenged narratives associated with the tropes defin­ ing o Nordeste as backward and adverse to change. For example, Julião described nineteenth-century rebellions as proof of Pernambuco’s role in leading Brazil’s national independence movement.43 An article reporting on the commemorations of the seventy-fifth anniversary of abolition in Brazil focused on Mossoró, Rio Grande do Norte, a town that had passed abolition five years before the national Lei Aurea (Golden Law) went into effect. Descriptions of the celebration portrayed Mossoró as a town in the rural Northeast that had at one time been at the forefront of the abolition­ ist movement and thus one of the most progressive areas in the nation, showing how the struggle for freedom and rights had emanated from the Northeast and then spread to the rest of Brazil. The episode of Mossoró’s abolition functions above all else to situate this land and its people on the side of freedom and the equality of the rights of all men. . . . The struggle of our forefathers who battled against the feudal society, against the slaveholders and the exploiters of slave labor, was a struggle without truces and was highly dignified. It shook everyone’s consciousness and united the citizens as a broad army against the slaveholders. Over 80 years ago, when this city still did not have more than 3,000 inhabitants, the government officials who led the city as true leaders of the povo offered a marvelous lesson to the entire country by declaring all blacks subjected to slave labor free.

Racialized Representations  163

It is interesting to note that already at that time, the notion of freedom pulsated in the hearts of men here. The idea that a society cannot be perfect or Christian if it is based on the exploitation of some over others, and on the oppressive actions of the powerful against the humble which lingered in the souls of Mossoroenses as early as 1883. Today, Mossoró is more developed and is clearly integrated in the modern struggle for the conquest of progress. The romantic makings of its forefathers driven by those who became leaders in the abolitionist movement are still justly venerated. It is worthy of note that this small, poor city . . . let itself be cominated by those idea that had inspired the works of Castro Alves and served as the base for the civic cries by Joaquim Nabuco, Lopes Trovão and Eusébio de Queiroz. The 30th of September shows that Mossoró arrived early to accept these ideas and here, they quickly sprouted in fertile soil.44

The report described how the town’s commemorations included celebra­ tions uniting railroad workers, students, Ligas leaders, and peasants. By using Mossoró as an exemplary city in the struggle for abolition, the Ligas demonstrated that revolutionary change had come from the rural North­ east, preceding and leading the Brazilian nation as the Ligas hoped to do in the struggle for land reform. Yet, even though the report discusses the pro­ gressive government officials who represented the people, the Ligas nar­ rative of abolition focused more on the abolitionist ideas being accepted by the town. The noted absence of the slaves themselves as part of the resistance and struggle remained outside of the Ligas’s appropriations of the past. Similar to the case of Mossoró, the Ligas often referred to famous historical abolitionists when describing agrarian reform as similar to abo­ lition. Francisco Julião was often compared to well-known abolitionists, such as Joaquim Nabuco and Abraham Lincoln.45 For example, a scholar described Julião as a “protector of the homeless, defender of the rural worker, reminiscent of other descendants of senhores de engenho such as Joaquim Nabuco and José Mariano who took risks to defend black slaves.46 Julião also used the language and speeches of Joaquim Nabuco and the poetry of Castro Alves to further legitimize the push for agrarian reform.47 The Engenho Galiléia was also portrayed as the starting point for aboli­ tion. Journalist Antonio Callado of the Correio da manhã testified in front of Congress about the need for agrarian reform and in support of the ex­ propriation of the Engenho Galiléia in 1959.48 In his testimony, he used the language of slavery and abolition to argue that the force of agrarian reform

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was impossible to revert: “I confess that I don’t see those brave caboclos of Galiléia expelled from their small nest where they are now free men. These men would rather die of shame and sadness than return to the whips and chains after these four years of freedom.”49 In 1962, Julião made his famous statement, the Peasant’s Manumis­ sion Letter, which was also published as a lengthy folheto for popular circu­ lation throughout the Northeast, illustrated in LIGA (see Figure 4.4). The Manumission Letter lays out the objectives of the Ligas and their position on national issues about how to create a more equitable and democratic Brazil—namely, national legal reforms to extend labor laws to rural workers and enfranchisement for illiterates. Julião tells the peasants that the Ligas are the “handshake” of solidarity between Northeastern rural workers and world rebels such as Jesus Christ, Francisco de Assis, Mao Tse-Tung, and Fidel Castro. It is also a call to solidarity, as Julião declares, “Alone you are a drop of water but together you are a waterfall.” The seven-section folheto is a handbook for finding the “path to freedom,” which is defined as having

Figure 4.4

13, 1962, 4.

Illustration that accompanied Julião’s “Carta de Alforria,” LIGA, November

Source: Centro de Documentação e Memória da Unesp (CEDEM/Unesp).

Racialized Representations  165

land, bread, medicine, school and peace. Julião argues that the first step to freedom and democracy is to join the Ligas Camponesas. He defines democracy as “taking the solider from your doorstep. It is disarming the capanga (hired thug) because your issues should be resolved in the courts and never by the police, much less by the capanga.” Besides the Ligas, Julião recommends two other possible paths to democracy: the rural union and the cooperative, voicing support for other rural social movements and their projects for social reforms. The Manu­ mission Letter distinguishes the Liga as the organization for peasants (who work the land) from the rural union that is for eiteiros, or “hired hands,” who have no rights; work sunup to sundown; and die early, tired, and hungry. The eiteiro is “a slave by day a slave by night. You wake up a slave and go to bed a slave. Your child cries with hunger and when he dies, you don’t even feel pain because your heart is no longer a heart, but a callus in your chest. Your way is the sindicato or rural union, because you are already a factory worker (operário).” Julião suggests that the Communist Party unions are better than the Church unions because he doubts the ability of the priests to fight for freedom. The other possible path is the co­ operative, where it is “all for one and one for all.” According to Julião, the cooperative is the best way to fight against the latifúndio, where all foreiros, posseiros, and small and mid-sized landholders work together to produce products for the market and share the rewards. Throughout the Peasant’s Manumission Letter, Julião chooses the language of freedom, democracy, and abolition to advocate for agrarian reform and rural workers’ rights. Similar ideas appeared in other popular pamphlet poetry in the 1950s and 1960s, in which the process of gaining political awareness is com­ pared to abolition. Using a conversational style, Zê Taveira’s “Conversa de camponês,” describes the process of creating solidarity and how rural workers can learn from urban unions about how to defend their rights to better salaries and working conditions, including agrarian reform.50 Zeca, the person with knowledge about labor organizing, speaks with a peasant, who is impressed by Zeca’s perceptions about rural life and the possibilities for organizing workers. There is no difference between people all that exists is exploitation / Even without be­ ing literate / You have an understanding of the world. The others who are wise / who know how to read and write / think that ignorance / keeps us in chains. And they don’t open schools / out here in the sertão. / The only purpose of this practice / is to maintain slavery. I know that there are many caboclos / who don’t know their rights / For this

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reason, they don’t fight / They think everything is how it should be. For this reason we need / everyone, everywhere to recognize / that we are slaves / and that what we need to do is to fight against it. You are speaking so beautifully / You even seem like a doutor [educated person] / But you are illiterate / The same as me. Who taught you these things? / Where did you learn/ that things could be different / than how we were born? The son of Noca, my friend / who is a factory worker in the city/ told me that in our hands/ is where we can find happiness. Where he works/ there is a whole world of workers. / And they go on strike together / to obtain salary increases . . . the son of Noca explained to me that the slavery that exists in the countryside / has to end / The spoils for those who harvest / should be the same for those who plant.

The folheto emphasizes the solidarity between urban and rural workers, ar­ guing that all forms of labor exploitation are similar and unjust. The mes­ sage about the need for urban labor laws to be extended to include rural workers shows how “abolition” or workers’ rights come from organized labor. Education, stable access to land, and the right to organize are all presented as demands to combat the injustices in the countryside. The PCB also used the language of abolition to advocate for agrarian reform and workers’ rights, and similar to the folheto “Conversation with a Peasant,” the PCB focused on labor organizing and solidarity. Embracing the 1958 manifesto and its call for working with the government, the PCB opted to emphasize the legal path to social reforms. For example, A Hora suggested that if abolition had become a law, then agrarian reform could also become a law: The main argument that was used then is identical to what they are using today against agrarian reform. According to them, the national patrimony will be stolen, as if when the slaves were freed, they would leave to work in other regions of the globe. Similarly, they argue that if land were to be redistributed to many different people it would not be as productive, but in reality, it would multiply in its productivity, invigorated by the interest of thousands and thousands of new landowners.51

For the PCB rural movement in Pernambuco, abolition served as model to follow in contemporary Brazil, moving oppressed Brazilians who were caught in feudal and pre-capitalist systems to transform and develop, emancipating the Brazilian economy. During the seventy-fifth anniversary of abolition in Brazil, the PCB published a historical analysis of the process, arguing against dominant narratives that positioned Princess Isabel as the instrumental actor in abol­

Racialized Representations  167

ishing slavery.52 Instead, the PCB argued that the pressure for abolition came from below, from solidarity of students and artists, who played a key role in organizing the antislavery campaign, and from “authentic leaders” who fought against the groups struggling to preserve their own privileges. In appropriating the historical narrative of abolition, the PCB made one of the few references to slave resistance as crucial to the struggle for abolition: It can be said, without any fear of exaggeration, that the struggle against slavery started when slave labor was first introduced in this country. It was not possible that the black brought from Africa submitted himself without protesting this anti-natural, anti-­human labor for which he was destined. The history of slavery in Brazil is a heroic chapter of escape, quilombos and rebellions.53

The PCB used abolition to discuss the power of the popular pressure to make legal reforms while also recognizing the necessity of resistance and rebellion. This seems to be a departure from the PCB’s reformist platform and the recognition of slave rebels as heroes. The article continued, connecting the past to the present, claiming that the methods used to advocate for abolition are the same used today in the fight for agrarian reform: The example of the past guides our present struggles. Abolition of slavery teaches us that it would have never come about without mass mobilization, without the demands from popular organization, without the legitimate pressure put on the legislators. This is what we see now in regards to an immediate agrarian reform.54

Instead of debating agrarian reform and “preparing” rural workers to own their own land, the article in Novos Rumos argued that change must be implemented immediately. Legal agrarian reform would have the same benefits as abolition had on the Brazilian nation, democratically and eco­ nomically. Both the Ligas and the PCB used the narrative of abolition to emphasize the need for agrarian reform in Brazil using a language of freedom and democracy. Both rural social movements emphasized how the emancipating process was based in pressure from below, although the focus was more on forming cross-class solidarities rather than popular re­ bellions. The Ligas chose to focus on the Northeastern roots of abolition through examples of Northeastern abolitionists and the abolition process in Northeastern towns, illustrating their strong connection to the region. As a national political party connected to a broader international institu­ tion, the PCB seemed to follow the Soviet-line reformism by pushing for legal structural reforms and the need to develop the Brazilian economy.

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Regional and national Brazilian leaders also used the language of abolition to advocate for agrarian reform and other social reforms in the 1960s. For example, governor Miguel Arraes pledged support for agrarian reform and against foreign imperialism, declaring in a public speech, “Ours is a struggle for emancipation.”55 In July 1963, Brazilian President João ­Goulart presided over a celebration of the expropriation of the E ­ ngenho Massangana, the engenho of abolitionist Joaquim Nabuco (see Figure 4.5). The government project incorporated five engenhos of the Usina Santa Inácio into the Agrarian Cooperative of Tirirí.56 According to an editorial in O Diário de Pernambuco, the proposed cooperative went back to the historical roots of sugar cane production in Pernambuco, “an original col­ lective organization” first introduced in 1549 that allowed cane workers to grow their own cane and process it in the local sugar mill. The pilot project of Tirirí, financed by the state government and SUDENE, provided credit and technical assistance to the Agrarian Cooperative to create a more lu­ crative situation for cane workers by removing the plantation owner from the production process. At the celebration depicted in Figure 4.5 in front of the Big House at Massangana, João Francisco, president of the Liga Camponesa de Cabo, spoke with President Goulart. Forty-eight years old at the time, João Fran­

Photograph of the celebration inaugurating the Agrarian Cooperative of Tirirí. “Jango Presides Over the Handover of Land to Peasants of the Tirirí Coopera­ tive,” O Diário de Pernambuco, July 31, 1963, 3.

Figure 4.5

Source: Arquivo Público Estadual de Pernambuco, Recife.

Racialized Representations  169

cisco said he had worked “for 34 years for the latifundiários without having any power or even being able to approach those with power, and now he could hardly believe it because he was standing in front of the President of the Republic.” João Francisco spoke to the crowd about the history of the Liga in Cabo and declared his support for Padre Melo, the current leader of the Church Federations of Rural Workers.57 Emphasizing the violence of the latifúndio system, João Francisco pointed out a young boy in the crowd and told the story of the boy’s father, who had been killed for stealing a few coconuts from a tree. President Goulart was reportedly profoundly moved at being the “first national President to have spoken directly with a peasant.” From the Engenho Massangana in the Northeast, accompanied by Miguel Arraes and Celso Furtado, President Goulart declared national support for agrarian reform: “What the nation really needs is a reform that will benefit all of rural Brazil to take advantage of the vast national soil in the development and progress of the country.”58 The new administrator of the sugar mill, Rui Cardoso, presented the Casa-grande of the Engenho Massangana with a bronze plaque inscribed: On the dark, cane-growing soils of the old Engenho Massangana where Joaquim Na­ buco grew up and became inspired to lead the freedom campaign for the slaves, a century later has become the inspiration for President João Goulart to start a liberation campaign for land with the help of SUDENE as well as the Christian, democratic sup­ port from the rural workers and property owners of this engenho.59

The connection drawn between abolition and agrarian reform was so wide­ spread that it appeared in the official statements made by the president of the nation. Tirirí was declared the “great test” that could lead to triumph over the agrarian problems of the Northeast. A month after the celebra­ tion, the cooperative had 3,500 members on the five engenhos, who pre­ sided over a total of 6,000 hectares of land. Although neither Ligas leader Francisco Julião nor PCB leader Gregório Bezerra attended the celebra­ tion, the Ligas expressed their support for Tirirí in an article declaring that the cooperative was a sign that the “latifúndio has its days numbered.”60 Yet only eight months later, the military coup overthrew the democratically elected leaders Miguel Arraes and João Goulart, declared the rural social movements illegal, and withdrew support for the Cooperative of Tirirí. Government officials and the rural social movements associated freedom, democracy, and Christianity with agrarian reform in the early

170  O Nordeste in the Cold War

1960s, ­they supported with the narrative of abolition. Conservatives found it difficult to refute their claims. One attempt to fracture the connection between freedom, abolition and agrarian reform appeared in O Diário de Pernambuco in 1963, in the form of an advertisement featuring an image of Abraham Lincoln next to one of Lincoln’s statements from 1864: Property is the fruit of labor . . . property is desirable . . . is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.61

This advertisement lacked any identifying information, which makes it seem likely that it was a product of a US government propaganda cam­ paign, perhaps in coalition with the Institute of Research and Social Stud­ ies/Brazilian Institute for Democratic Action (Instituto de Pesquisas e Estudos Sociais/Instituto Brasileiro de Ação Democrático, IPES/IBAD). It may have been an attempt to attack the popular comparisons made between Julião and Abraham Lincoln by explaining that Abraham Lincoln believed in property owner’s rights. Since it was the only time O Diário de Pernambuco published such a statement, Conservatives may have realized that promoting private property using symbols from the United States was not the most effective way to challenge the Ligas. The discourse of abolition seems to have been effective to the extent that it gave Brazilians moral and economic reasons to support agrarian reforms. In discourse and practice, advocates of agrarian reform referenced nineteenth-century abolition to show that agrarian reform was a legal issue and that, as with abolition, a national law would have to be enacted to bring it about. Conservatives found such comparisons difficult to combat because of the historical context of the Cuban Revolution, when Brazil­ ians generally favored ideas of freedom, liberty, and independence and saw slavery as a negative and backward characteristic of the nation. The ef­ fectiveness of the theme of abolition in promoting agrarian reform may be explained by including certain strands of the historical narrative and excluding of others. For the most part, rural social movements, popular poets, and government officials framed the abolition struggle as one that was led by educated abolitionists who found a broad base of support in­ cluding student groups, artists’ associations, urban labor unions, progres­ sive rural elites, the povo, and morally conscious citizens. As noted earlier,

Racialized Representations  171

they rarely mentioned race, slave resistance, or the slave rebellions that had flourished in the Northeast throughout the nineteenth century. Although the rural social movements did not portray Brazilian slavery as benevolent, their depiction of rural nordestinos as victim-slaves was consistent with the trope of o Nordeste. In contrast to the difficulties rural social movements found in countering commonly held assumptions about the cangaceiro as barbaric and violent, the appropriations of slavery and abolition reinforced the dominant beliefs that slaves/rural nordestinos lacked agency. Two films produced in the 1950s and 1960s about quilombos illustrate this point.

Quilombos—The Black Northeast in Film By and large, advocates of agrarian reform chose not to mobilize the sym­ bol of quilombos, or runaway slave communities, even though quilombos have long been understood as acts of resistance and agency, and Palmares, one of the most famous quilombos, was located in the Northeast in the present-day state of Alagoas. Advocates of agrarian reform may have wanted to avoid the association of the quilombos with notions of exclusion and “running away,” since they were fighting for the inclusion of rural workers as citizens. Or, they may have seen the quilombo as having a closer association with Africa instead of Brazil. They also might have felt that the symbol of the nordestino victim-slave was more powerful in creating popular support than the symbol of the nordestino rebel-quilombolo. But, the quilombo was not entirely absent from the discursive realm of o Nordeste in the 1950s and 1960s. Two significant films of this era—Linduarte Noronha’s Aruanda (1959) and Carlos Diegues’s Ganga Zumba: O rei de Palmares (Ganga Zumba: The King of Pamlares; 1964)—focused on quilombos to discuss land and labor issues in Northeastern Brazil. Both films em­ phasized the violence and oppressive conditions of slavery and portrayed slave agency through running away. Aruanda and Ganga Zumba, by realistically depicting nordestinos as slaves of African descent and drawing connections between slavery and contemporary struggles in Northeastern Brazil, challenged dominant rep­ resentations of nordestinos as mixed race. They also challenged the national narrative of racial democracy by depicting the violence of slavery in Brazil and by explicitly connecting blackness to impoverishment. The short film Aruanda portrayed the lives of inhabitants of the contemporary ­sertanejo town founded by quilombolos. Ganga Zumba is a fictional film that showed

172  O Nordeste in the Cold War

slaves deciding to rebel and traced their journey to the quilombo known as Palmares. The two films differed in terms of the context of their release, budget, the director’s experience, genre, length, and their political mes­ sages. But both films focused on runaway slaves in Northeastern Brazil and offered definitions of the black Nordeste. Before Aruanda was released, in 1959, the image of the nordestino in Brazilian c­ inema emphasized a mixed-race, impoverished type described earlier in the chapter. The prize-winning studio production, Lima Barreto’s O ­cangaceiro (1953; see Figure  2.3) glorified this type with cowboyesque ­characters riding on horseback throughout the barren Northeast. Although some Brazilian films, such as the Cinema Novo collaboration Cinco vezes favela (1958) and Marcel Camus’s Black Orpheus, depicted black Brazilians, they focused on the urban slums of Rio de Janeiro and did not disrupt ste­ reotypes of o Nordeste. Before Aruanda, Glauber Rocha’s Barravento (1959) represented nordestinos as black and of African descent. By setting the film in the coastal area of the state of Bahia and referring to Afro-Brazilian religions such as candomblé associated with Bahia, the film supported an underlying assumption that Bahia was outside of the borders of o Nordeste. As explained earlier, in the 1950s and 1960s the political designations of Northeastern Brazil did not include Bahia, though parts of the state— specifically the interior region—have always been incorporated into the imagined Nordeste. Both Ganga Zumba and Aruanda located blackness within the trope of o Nordeste, portraying the Northeastern landscapes of the arid backlands and coastal cane fields with black characters instead of the mixed-race regional type. Just twenty minutes long, Linduarte Noronha’s Aruanda portrays the history and present-day lives of a quilombo community in the arid Northeast (see Figure 4.6). Following a script written by Noronha, Aruanda starts as a docudrama with a reenactment of a family escaping from the slave system, fleeing to the mountains of the Serra do Talhado, inter­ preted by the same people who lived in the community in 1959. The first part of the film shows Zé Bento leading his family—his wife, his naked children with distended bellies, and their burro—to their emancipation in the mountains. The film then turns into more of a documentary feature, showing daily life in the quilombo. The children eat sand-like farinha with their fingers out of gourds, and the women make clay pots, firing them in a rustic kiln. At the end of the film, the community descends from the mountains to sell their pots at the local market and buy items the commu­

Racialized Representations  173

Figure 4.6

Scene from Linduarte Noronha’s Aruanda (1959).

Source: Centro de Documentação e Informação da FUNARTE, Rio de Janeiro.

nity needs. A voice-over reminds the viewer of the quilombo community’s isolation, poverty, and backwardness, and folkloric music of the cocô and a small flute help to narrate the scenes, which Noronha claimed helped locate the film in the “African” Northeast.62 Noronha claimed that he had used local music to produce a “national document about regional art and misery, the main themes throughout the filming enterprise.”63 The film was not simply an ethnographic documentary about a quilombo commu­ nity; it was also a political statement about Northeastern poverty. Aruanda was the first film of the Paraíban journalist Linduarte Noronha and his cameraman Rucker Vieira. After publishing a series of ar­ ticles on the quilombo community of Santa Luzia de Sabugi for O Cruzeiro (Paraíba) in 1958,64 Noronha and Vieira applied for technical support and

174  O Nordeste in the Cold War

equipment from the famous Brazilian documentary filmmaker Humberto Mauro at the INCE and the Joaquim Nabuco Institute of Social Research in Recife. In 1959, their small production crew drove a jeep loaded with equipment as far as the road went and then proceeded on foot to the com­ munity. As can be imagined based on the filmmakers’ lack of filmmaking experience and the challenging production conditions, Aruanda is a rough, technically “imperfect” film. It features dramatic lighting contrasts, jump cuts, a metaphoric flashback, and hand-held camera shots, and it uses di­ rect sound along with a music track featuring regional folkloric music. Noronha also used nonprofessional actors to interpret the roles of the main characters in the docudrama reenactment sequences, but these characters never actually speak in the film. Ganga Zumba is a feature film that can be classified as a “road movie” because it shows the characters gaining awareness of their oppression and rebelling. Unlike dominant representations of Brazilian slaves and nordestinos, the majority of the slaves in Ganga Zumba are politically conscious, willing to use violence, and influenced by their African ancestry. Ganga Zumba opens with still frames of historical etchings of the sugar industry and the slave regime in Northeastern Brazil, then cuts to an almost naked black woman on her knees, slumped in front of a pole, her arms bound. It is nighttime, and she has been whipped to death. A group of slaves ap­ proach her, in silence at first, and then they start singing “Chora papai, chora mamai” (Cry father, cry mother) to an African drumbeat, a song and rhythm that are repeated throughout the film. Diegues then cuts to the Big House, showing the plantation owners observing the spectacle from a dis­ tance; this is followed by a series of close-ups of the slaves’ faces. The slaves exit the screen, and the camera remains focused on the dead woman for an uncomfortable length of time. A female domestic slave enters the frame, kneels, and begins humming the same tune. The camera stays on this scene as the film credits roll to the side of the two women, emphasizing both the violence of Brazilian slavery and the solidarity among slaves. The lead character in Ganga Zumba, Antão, is the son of the dead woman and the grandson of the King of Palmares. His image was used in the promotional materials for the film (see Figure 4.7). At the beginning of the film, Antão describes Palmares as a myth that an older slave, Aroroba, tells stories about, a free land where many people of the same color live. Before deciding to rebel, Antão skeptically declares to Aroroba, “The white man has guns and power. He owns everything. The white man will destroy

Racialized Representations  175

Figure 4.7 Promotional materials from Ganga Zumba (1964).

Source: Acervo Cinemateca Brasileira/SAv/MinC, São Paulo. Courtesy of Carlos Diegues, Renata Almeida Magalhães, and Christian de Castro.

Palmares one of these days.” But then a guide from Palmares comes to the plantation to lead the slaves to the quilombo, and they begin plotting their escape. Antão’s lover, Cipriani,65 uses her sexual powers to lure the overseer away from the Big House, and Antão kills him by ripping out his heart, thus starting the journey toward freedom. On the journey to Palmares, the group encounters a white master and his wife, whom they kill, and Dandara, a mulatta slave woman whom they force to join the group. Ini­ tially, Dandara believes that “black is black, white is white and blacks will always be the slaves of whites.” As the drumbeat representing Palmares gets louder, signifying that the escaped slaves are getting closer to the quilombo, Antão becomes increasingly committed to the idea of freedom. It is im­ portant to Antão that Dandara join them, and he tells her that when they get to Palmares, he will be the king and that he hopes that she will choose to stay with him.

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Eventually, the slave catchers find the runaways; a fight ensues, and Aroroba is mortally wounded in the battle. The group makes it to the Serra da Barriga, where they hide in the forest, but the slave catchers find them again. At this point, they are very close to Palmares and Antão is fully real­ izing the meaning of freedom. Looking directly into the camera, breaking the fourth wall, he shouts to the audience, “Move forward! We have to con­ tinue to fight! Fight! Many men no longer want to be animals. We have to do something!” The film ends after a final battle scene in which quilombolos help the runaways defeat the slave catchers. Lamenting Aroroba’s death, Antão screams and beheads one of the slave catchers with a machete. Antão and Dandara follow the quilombolos into the mountain forest. Ganga Zumba uses hand-held camera shots, static camera shots, and natural lighting to produce a reality effect. These techniques, as well as the opening scene, with its historical still images of slavery accompanied by a voice-over describing the horrors of human bondage, demonstrate the quasi-documentary style that is characteristic of Cinema Novo films. The film strives to engage the audience politically as a cinema of praxis to invoke transformation and revolution. Diegues explained his intentions in making the film: “Ganga Zumba must be understood from two funda­ mental perspectives. First, the ideological character reveals its central idea: freedom, the struggle for freedom and its use, and so on. The second is the fact that this film tried to remake a black legend.”66 As Robert Stam argues, the film “deserves praise for its uncompromising portrait of Brazilian slav­ ery. Enslaved Africans are whipped, raped, forced to work to the point of exhaustion, and murdered, a picture that refutes the Freyrean notion of a more gentle, charitable form of Luisitanian servitude.”67 Critics and reviewers celebrated Aruanda’s authenticity and realism and later criticized Ganga Zumba for being unrealistic. One of the reasons for the difference in reception is that Aruanda portrayed a peaceful but im­ poverished version of the black Nordeste, whereas Ganga Zumba portrayed nordestino slavery and slaves as violent. Noronha and Vieira’s version of Northeastern Brazil and Afro-Brazilian culture was mediated by dominant stereotypes of o Nordeste and its people. Their version emphasized the as­ sumptions that nordestinos are primitive, savage, impoverished, illiterate “subhumans,” isolated and possessing a strong survival instinct. Voice-overs and the music track narrate the film, and with the exception of the market scene, the characters never speak, which limits their portrayal as people having agency, or even having the ability to shape the narrative of the film.

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Both Noronha and Vieira were outsiders to the community, and the trope of o Nordeste influenced their comments about the actors. The film crew said that it had been difficult to get the community members to par­ ticipate because they believed the film crew was working for the military. Noronha described the challenge of getting one of the children to act in the film, saying that the boy was a “real little animal,” who would never come close to the filmmakers unless he was bribed with candy because “he was from such an isolated group.”68 Noronha described Paulino Carneiro, the man who interpreted the lead role of Zé Bento and someone who also illustrates the filmmaker’s desire to portray the quilombo-remanescente community, as savage and isolated: Paulo Carneiro is completely illiterate and because of this he is a man who has an unusual sensibility about his condition. He was never rude and understood his role in collaborating. As a matter of fact, the non-professional actor is much more productive. He obeys subserviently and this is incredibly important for a film director.69

Noronha’s description of Paulo Carneiro as illiterate, subservient, and po­ lite reflects the legacy of slavery in the Northeast, as well as the trope of o Nordeste. Unlike other documentarians, who want their subjects to reveal their ideas and experiences, it is clear that Aruanda is Noronha’s perspec­ tive on the quilombo community, and not a film in which subjects tell their own story. Unsurprisingly, reviewers found the character of Zé Bento cred­ ible, characterizing him in language drawn from the trope of o Nordeste as “an innately miserable man, derailed and misshapen because of the socioeconomic structure under which he lives.”70 Not only did Aruanda reproduce common stereotypes about rural Northeasterners, but its plot also emphasized one of the recurring themes in the trope of o Nordeste. Through the opening flashback and voice-over explaining the history of slavery and quilombos and the seamless shift to present-day 1959 with unchanged actors, Aruanda reproduced the idea of o Nordeste as a place where the past is the same as the present. Although some slaves escaped from their owners, they remained marginalized in Brazilian society. Noronha’s black Northeast is a “typical” Nordeste ­community: iso­ lated, poor, neglected, nonmodern, and impervious to change. And yet this poorly made, fictional documentary that relied on stereotypes provoked major discussions and debates when it was screened at film festivals in Brazil, and many of these ideas defined the emerging Cinema Novo move­ ment. Aruanda was screened at the first Convention of C ­ inematographic

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Critics in São Paulo, in 1960, and at the São Paulo Biennal, in 1961, start­ ing a discussion among the leading Brazilian filmmakers and critics about the aesthetic and thematic approaches to producing national cinema. The film provoked a polemical discussion among filmmakers, such as Glauber Rocha, and major film critics, such as Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes.71 What the filmmakers and critics saw in Aruanda was a “Third World” response to Hollywood and studio film productions, a technically “imperfect” film that reproduced the “authentic” and nonexotic poverty of Brazil. Critics and filmmakers classified Aruanda as “primitive” or “savage” cinema of the Third World, and some saw this as a revolutionary way to film the subject matter.72 For most of the directors associated with the nascent Cinema Novo movement in the early 1960s, to use “imperfect” style meant to chal­ lenge glossy and exotic imagery of the Third World that was found in Hollywood and European cinema to create a revolutionary response in the audience. The films were supposed to make the audiences uncomfortable, to provoke them to question their status as the Third World. Aruanda provoked audience discomfort and discussion, but not just because of its drastic lighting compositions, imperfect editing, and hand-held camera shots. The depictions of the black quilombo commu­ nity as “primitive” also inspired Cinema Novo directors, such as Glauber Rocha, who saw in Aruanda the language of cinema he had been striving to achieve—the language of an authentic, impoverished Third World cin­ ema. The people and places in Aruanda were the Other, the nonmodern, illustrating a reality to the cinemanovistas that they knew little about, per­ haps only from the novels that they had read about Northeastern Bra­ zil. Aruanda, with all its technical defects, became the symbol of Third World, or underdeveloped, filmmaking. According to many reviews, the poor production quality framed regional underdevelopment and poverty as “authentic.” And yet one of the reasons why the Cinema Novo filmmak­ ers and critics recognized Aruanda as “authentic” was related to their own preconceived notions of o Nordeste and its people as impoverished, illiter­ ate, isolated, nonmodern, and lacking agency. In sharp contrast to Noronha’s peaceful and impoverished runaway slaves, who barely speak, Carlos Diegues’s slaves and quilombolos speak and fight. Released a few weeks prior to the 1964 coup, Ganga Zumba pro­ voked widespread debate among Brazilian film critics because of its uncon­ ventional filmic style, political message, and depictions of Brazilian race relations and slavery. Many reviewers criticized Diegues for creating an

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unrealistic film that unbelievably connected the “black legend” of Palmares to contemporary political struggles in the Northeast.73 As the critic for the Jornal do Brasil explained, “Carlos Diegues aspired to establish a connec­ tion between the struggles of blacks historically and the current situation of the peasant and the worker. In my opinion, he came far from tying a coherent thread in his comparison with the epic tale of Ganga Zumba.”74 Critics found the portrayal of race relations disturbing and criticized Di­ egues for repeatedly showing scenes of black slaves overpowering white masters with violent force. Unable to recognize the racialized dimensions of slavery, a critic for Rio’s Jornal do Comercio found it disappointing that the struggle for freedom in the film was a struggle of blacks against whites instead of one of the exploited against the oppressors.75 Other critics tried to fit Ganga Zumba into Brazilian racial democracy by excluding commen­ taries about the film’s political message, focusing entirely on African slaves’ contributions to contemporary Brazilian culture through, for instance, the music of Bossa Nova.76 Contrary to what that reviewer tried to argue, Diegues’s interpre­ tation of history and present-day struggles for land and labor rights in Northeastern Brazil challenged the national narrative of racial democracy on many levels. Although Diegues relied on stereotypes of blacks as sav­ age and African—coded through drumming, violence, sexuality, religious rituals, and costumes (see Figure 4.7)—he created a racialized narrative of resistance.77 Although Ganga Zumba associated blackness with exploita­ tion and slavery, it also showed black power through resistance. The film portrayed the black slaves as fighting against the white masters for their rights and freedom. It challenged the idea of a benevolent Brazilian-style slavery, and it encouraged the audience to cheer for the black protagonists in their quest to reach Palmares. But, in March 1964, critics were not com­ fortable praising such perceptions about class struggle and rural rebellion in the Northeast. A few years after the military seized control of the Brazilian state, and in the context of an increasingly repressive dictatorship, Ganga Zumba re­ surfaced in cineclubes in Brazil and in Paris.78 By 1967 and 1968, the themes of resistance against the government, the use of violence to combat a re­ pressive state, and racial conflict were more accessible to audiences in exile or involved in guerrilla movements. For example, a Bahian cineclube pub­ lished a pamphlet to accompany the screening of the film, describing, “The violence that appears in the film is the natural consequence of oppression.

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The violence paves the way for the arrival of justice. . . . Black Brazil knows its first guerrilla leader, Zambi [sic] and its first land, Palmares.”79 The dis­ course and politics had shifted from the pre-1964 attempts of rural social movements to work with the state to demand the inclusion of rural work­ ers as citizens to guerrilla struggles that organized to fight against the state ruled by the military. The narrative of the quilombo became more useful and frequently used in Brazil during the dictatorship. It also appeared globally as a nar­ rative of resistance, used by the Black Panther Party in the United States and described in Miguel Barnet’s Autobiography of a Runaway Slave (1966) in Cuba.80 In Brazil, experimental theater groups associated with the Cen­ ter of Popular Culture, Arena and Oficina in São Paulo, and Opinião in Rio de Janeiro performed shows using the quilombo as a theme to discuss contemporary politics such as Arena conta Zumbi (1965) and Liberdade, Liberdade (1965). In the Arena Theater’s radical musical production Arena conta Zumbi, one song, “Zambi no Açoite,” was sung to the rhythm of a whip hitting, while the songs used to identify slaves were sambas or other popular forms of Brazilian music.81 Similarly to Diegues’s Ganga Zumba, Arena conta Zumbi portrayed the quilombolos as heroes who were noble, strong, and violent in contrast to the Portuguese masters, who were por­ trayed as a grotesque caricatures who were old, senile, and lazy.82 To clarify the connection between the past and the present, the play used clips of recent speeches of the first military president Humberto Castello Branco when the Portuguese masters spoke.83 Unlike Ganga Zumba, the style of the play, based on the theater of Augusto Boal and Bertolt Brecht, meant that any and every character assumed all the roles, making blackness only apparent in the music used to depict the characters on stage. In this chapter, I have illustrated how race and racisms informed the political and cultural struggles in Northeastern Brazil in the 1950s and 1960s. By exposing the debates over the meanings of the themes of slavery, abolition and quilombos, I have shown how advocates for agrarian reform challenged the dominant national narrative of racial democracy by recog­ nizing the violence of the Brazilian slave system. Yet, most of the appro­ priations of the historical narrative chose to focus on creating solidarity across classes to support agrarian reform, portraying nordestinos as victimslaves instead of rebel-slaves and appealing to the moral and economic ne­ cessity of legal reforms to make structural changes. Appropriations of the metaphor of slavery also reflected the Cold War context with debates over

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the power of communism and capitalism to enslave the Third World. The Ligas used the language of slavery to connect the struggle for agrarian re­ form to other independence and revolutionary struggles including the US civil rights movement, the Cuban Revolution, and the Angolan indepen­ dence movement. Although none of the rural social movements explicitly organized on racial lines, race and racism were addressed in depictions of large landowners as white and rural workers as black or nonwhite, sug­ gesting a challenge at some level to the idea that Brazil was a racial para­ dise. Conservatives did not manage to mobilize a competing discourse to challenge the arguments comparing agrarian reform to abolition. The next chapter, on religious symbols and metaphors used in the 1950s and 1960s, shows how Conservatives effectively mobilized discourses associated with the trope of o Nordeste to question the tactics and intentions of the Ligas Camponesas and other rural social movements.

5 Religion as a Political Tool Resurrecting Canudos and Revolutionizing Jesus

The perseverance of symbols of Northeastern tragedy—composed of hunger and hope—still make a profound impression. Journalistic stories about the sertão reproduce the ancient framework of Euclides da Cunha’s account of Canudos [1903] . . . more than a century later. . . . The fact is we remain imprisoned by the ghosts of Pedra Bonita and Canudos. —“Tudo como dantes,” Jornal do Commercio, August 2, 2003

of o Nordeste is that nordestinos are particularly prone to deviant religious practices and beliefs. The trope of o Nordeste portrays nordestinos as people whose poverty, illiteracy, and isolation from modern society has left them vulnerable to messianic leaders. The national duty—repeatedly performed by the Brazilian Armed Forces—is to control outbreaks of fanaticism through the use of force (state violence), subduing the brainwashed nordestino masses into their “normal” state of passivity. This dominant discourse has long served to delegitimize Northeastern rural political struggles by portraying rural resistance as fanaticism and associating fanaticism with backwardness, antinationalism, violence, and criminal activities. During the Cold War, “deviant” religious beliefs were readily employed in Brazil and in the United States to label undesirable groups as “subversives.” Combining Cold War discourse with entrenched beliefs about fanaticism in o Nordeste, Conservatives effectively mobilized such fears to vilify the Ligas Camponesas and the radical priests involved in organizing Church-led rural unions. Conservatives attacked the Ligas as Another enduring stereotype

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deviant fanatics because the Ligas used the Bible effectively and radicalized religious doctrine to gain support for agrarian reform, particularly among rural workers in the countryside. By portraying Jesus as a rebel and the Bible as a handbook for organizing rural workers, the Ligas developed a powerful language to challenge traditional power relations in the Northeast. The Ligas were joined by radical Catholics following the encyclicals of Pope John XXIII (1958–1963) that urged the Church to side with the rural poor in the broader campaign to focus on underdeveloped countries through education and agrarian reforms. Before turning to the debates in the 1950s and 1960s over religious discourse and fanaticism, it is necessary to briefly discuss why religious fanaticism is a core component of the trope of o Nordeste. Although religious practices and beliefs are important to many people in Northeastern Brazil, just as they are important to peoples throughout the world, the difference is that Northeasterners are often portrayed as fanatics. As this book has shown through examples of the cangaceiro, the coronel and the rural poor, and discourses of slavery and abolition, and as Edward Said argues in Orientalism, “It needs to made clear about cultural discourse and exchange within a culture that what is commonly circulated . . . is not ‘truth’ but representations.”1 Similar to o Nordeste, discourse created “the Orient” as a fictitious place and the repetition of certain discourses about the Orient established the truths outsiders believed about it. Similar to Said’s argument about the truths associated with the discursive constructions of the Orient, circulating representations of Northeastern Brazil also inform people’s ideas about o Nordeste, reinforcing fiction as “fact.” The dominant narratives reinforce such assumptions, creating o Nordeste as an imagined place of religious fanatics and messianic movements. This chapter interrogates why and how such assumptions hold power and how such notions have been used historically to delegitimize rural social activism. One of the key texts that established o Nordeste as a land of religious fanaticism was Euclides da Cunha’s famous Brazilian epic, Os sertões (Rebellion in the Backlands; 1902). Da Cunha’s Os sertões reconstructs a war between the messianic community known as Canudos against the Brazilian Armed Forces in the sertão in Belo Monte, Bahia from 1896 to 1897. Da Cunha’s positivist account described how topography and miscegenation had created a backward population prone to fanaticism. Following an itinerant preacher known as Antônio Conselheiro, the community of poor Northeasterners settled in the area of Belo Monte in the 1890s. As the

184  O Nordeste in the Cold War

community grew, it was labeled messianic and a threat to the Republic. State militias and federal troops launched three attacks on the community before overtaking it on the fourth attempt, which ended in the deaths of the leader, an estimated 25,000 community members, and 5,000 troops. An immediate classic, versions of this story have been retold in folktales, novels, theater, film carnival performances and even soap operas, which have collectively constructed a mythical identity of o Nordeste and nordestinos. Elite novels in the 1930s and 1940s reinforced a particular strand of da Cunha’s story—the nordestino as a barbaric, immiserated pathogen who threatened the civilizing nation. Other interpretations of da Cunha’s account emphasized Northeastern resistance, referring to da Cunha’s descriptions of the sertanejo as a brave, resilient warrior who almost defeated the Brazilian military troops. More recently, cultural and political discourse criticizing the Brazilian dictatorship used the narrative of Canudos as a tragic example of the state’s use of violence against its own people.2 Much of the scholarship produced on Northeastern Brazil focuses on Canudos and messianic movements, reinforcing the commonly held assumption that o Nordeste is a land of religious fanaticism. Scholars have studied Canudos from multiple perspectives and disciplinary approaches, engendering a wealth of debates about the war, the community, and its place in Brazilian national history. For example, scholars have examined Canudos and da Cunha’s Os sertões to debate the significance of Canudos to national identity and modernity.3 Historians have tried to investigate the war of Canudos as a separate event from da Cunha’s narrative, reconstructing the life of o Conselheiro, the community, and the war itself.4 Literary and cultural studies scholars have examined the cultural production of Canudos in film, literature, song, and popular poetry.5 Marxist scholars have compared Canudos to cangaceirismo as a form of primitive social rebellion based on class struggle, and some have argued that Canudos was an early attempt at agrarian reform in Brazil.6 Others have evaluated Canudos as a case study of millenarianism, debating whether Canudos was a global phenomenon or a peculiar feature of Northeastern society.7 More recent scholarship has examined how ideas of popular millenarianism have changed over time in the Northeast, analyzing which voices about Canudos have been silenced throughout the years because of the popularity of da Cunha’s version.8 My intention is not to further contribute to the debates about da Cunha’s Os sertões or the war of Canudos as a historical

Religion as a Political Tool  185

event. Instead, I ask why the narrative holds such a fascination for scholars, artists, politicians, and social movement leaders by examining how representations of Canudos and religious fanaticism function to continually reinforce the trope of o Nordeste. The chapter focuses on how rural social movements, popular poets, and filmmakers appropriated symbols of fanaticism and nordestino religiosity—how they resurrected Canudos and revolutionized the Bible—in the era of the Cuban Revolution to gain support for competing political projects. It also shows how Conservatives associated fanaticism with the rural social movements to position the movements as devious and antinational. Although the representations of religiosity in Northeastern Brazil drew from the trope of o Nordeste and enduring notions about Canudos, the vilification of deviant religiosity formed part of the broader Cold War discourse. In the United States, Cold War containment discourse drew connections between communism, political/social/cultural difference, and the metaphor of germ and disease.9 In a study on US media representations of “fringe” religious groups, Sean McCloud argues that the Cold War introduced new perceptions of nonmainstream religious groups in the United States. In the 1950s and 1960s, fringe religious groups were portrayed as “fanatical true believers in mass movements” instead of as individuals.10 The US media upheld a vision of American values—defined as capitalistic and democratic—as being incompatible with marginalized religious groups, who were often identified with certain regions within the United States.11 McCloud claims that Cold War tactics distinguishing the national “us” from the subversive “them” centered on associating the concept of brainwashing with non-mainstream religious groups and labeling oppositional groups such as the Nation of Islam as enemies of the nation.12 Similarly to the condemnations of fringe religious groups in the United States, the dominant representations of Northeastern rural social movements in the Brazilian mainstream media characterized them as deviant and pathological and enemies of the modern Brazilian nation. To exemplify the mainstream media characterizations of rural Northeasterners as religiously deviant, the chapter first analyzes representations of religiosity in Brazilian mainstream and political films in the 1950s and 1960s. Regardless of the filmmakers’ political persuasions, filmic representations remained consistent in depicting nordestinos as brainwashed romeiros (brainwashed pilgrims) fallen victim to dangerous and subversive leaders.

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Representations of Deviant Northeastern Religiosity in Brazilian Cinema With few exceptions, Brazilian films on the Northeast incorporate the image of folk religions, messianic movements, and romeiros (pilgrims) traversing the dry backlands of the sertão,13 as exemplified by the romeiros (see Figure 5.1) in Coimbra’s A morte comanda o cangaço (The End of the Cangaceiros; 1960). Even if a messianic movement is not the main theme, at some point in the film, the lead characters will encounter a group of romeiros who appear on the screen chanting or singing. The ragged group typically holds a large cross and may have a few gourds filled with water hanging from their well-worn clothing. As with the cangaceiros in Nordesterns, the presence of romeiros immediately identifies the location as o Nordeste. Films often portray the religious movements as violent, emphasizing a narrative premised on the idea of the passivity of the followers who are duped by a charismatic leader. Characters who follow folk cults are doomed to either a precarious existence or death by annihilation. The repetition of messianic images in films about o Nordeste have bolstered certain ideas about the type of religious activity associated with the region, particularly in films produced in the Cold War era. As film

Figure 5.1

A morte comanda o cangaço (1960).

Source: Centro de Documentação e Informação da FUNARTE, Rio de Janeiro.

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critic Jean-Claude Bernandet claimed about Brazilian cinema in the late 1950s and early 1960s: Fanaticism congregates more people than cangaceirismo, but they both have the same origin. Unsatisfied peasants follow the beato (holy man) whose prophecies speak of a world of abundance and justice instead of suffering on earth. It is also about disorganized rebellion. The peasants do not have a consciousness about why they are rebelling nor do they propose to change anything. The solution for their unconscious revolt is in the violence or hysteric mysticism that always represents an alternative for the life of the semi-enslaved peasant.14

The representation of romeiros in films reinforced the trope of o Nordeste, and specifically the notion that such religious practices and beliefs were a natural part of the landscape. During the Cold War, these representations complemented the political discourse that labeled rural social movements as fanatical and violent, helping legitimize the perception that state repression was the best solution to the rural social movements. As with the representations of cangaceiros in Brazilian films, representations of messianic cults or folk religions remained remarkably similar in both political and commercial films. In the opening scenes of Glauber Rocha’s Deus e o diabo na terra do sol, cowhand Manuel comes across a backlands religious leader, Sebastião, interpreted by Lídio Silva. Dressed in dark robes and carrying a large wooden cross, Sebastião leads a group of romeiros, who follow along chanting, singing, and dropping to their knees to pray periodically without interacting with Manuel, who circles around them on horseback (see Figure 5.2). After the initial establishing shot of the cracked, dry, earth and a bleached cow skull, the scene with the romeiros and their religious leader immediately codes the film as o Nordeste. But, unlike films that use romeiros simply as a coding device, Rocha further developed an interpretation of Northeastern messianism in Deus e o diabo by returning to Sebastião and his cult of followers in Monte Santo and incorporating them as a central theme in the film. Rocha claimed to have drawn from literary accounts of religious fanaticism in Northeastern Brazil, such as Euclides da Cunha’s Os sertões and José Lins do Rego’s Pedra Bonita (1938). After rural workers Manuel and his wife Rosa flee their home following a conflict with the landowner, they find refuge in the cult of Monte Santo led by Sebastião, a character based on the fusion of Lourenço of Caldeirão, Ceará, and Sebastião of Pedro Bonita, Pernambuco.15 Manuel

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Figure 5.2

Deus e o diabo na terra do sol (1964).

Source: Acervo Cinemateca Brasileira/SAv/MinC, São Paulo. Courtesy of Glauber Rocha’s heirs— Copyrights Consultoria Ltda.

recites a prophecy attributed to Antônio Conselheiro to a group of his followers: “The backlands will turn into the sea and the sea into the backlands.” He preaches that the rivers in the valleys will flow with milk when the prophecy comes true, providing food for the hungry. Although Rosa is skeptical of the cult, Manuel seems easily brainwashed in his desire to gain Sebastião’s approval and become a cult leader. Employing his aesthetic of violence, Rocha shows Sebastião’s followers attacking the local town, shooting those who resist and sacking the stores. Rocha filmed the professional actors (Geraldo del Rey, Yoná Magalhães) among local people (nonactors) and used multiple, extended shots of the community screaming and praying on a barren hill. The camera focuses on people who fulfill the stereotypes of a nordestino, particularly those who have gaunt, weathered faces and women wearing head scarves. By depicting Northeasterners as desperate, screaming masses who are willing to accept the prophesies of a demented leader, Rocha emphasized their lack of agency and their vulnerability to brainwashing. Furthering this notion, the main protagonists are in conflict with one another, as Manuel

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unquestioningly follows any order issued by Sebastião, refusing to listen to the rational pleas of his wife. To become inducted into the cult, Manuel must carry a large rock up the mountain to Sebastião’s church. The camera focuses on Manuel struggling up the hill, continually falling under the heavy burden and the difficulty of the climb. Sebastião walks by Manuel’s side throughout the ascent, encouraging him to continue. By the time they reach the altar of the church, Manuel appears to be completely brainwashed. To further establish Sebastião as violent and demented, Rocha depicts him performing what appears to be a baptism. Instead of baptizing the infant, the messianic leader sacrifices the human baby with a long knife. With the blood from the sacrifice, Sebastião paints a cross on Rosa’s forehead. Manuel seems incapable of action, mumbling about the “innocent’s blood,” while Rosa attacks and kills Sebastião with the same sacrificial knife. At the same dramatic moment, the rest of the cult followers are attacked by gunfire outside the church, screaming and falling as they are annihilated. As mentioned in the introduction and Chapter 2, the film has been interpreted as the stages of violence and alienation the peasant has experienced through forms of rebellion.16 Once Antonio das Mortes has eliminated the fanatic and the cangaciero, the peasant is finally liberated and can pursue a form of revolutionary change. Rocha depicts this freedom in the final sequence of the film as Manuel and Rosa run across the sertão toward the sea, away from the religious fanatic and the cangaceiro, and on to a place where they can make their own destiny.17 Rocha’s Deus e o diabo reinforced popular interpretations of religious cults in o Nordeste, affirming such images and narratives as “real” because he drew upon the enduring stereotypes of religious fanaticism in o Nordeste. In other words, the film was applauded as “real” and “realistic” because it upheld the preconceived notions about o Nordeste portrayed in other films, media, and popular and political discourse. Another political film of the Cinema Novo foundational trilogy, Ruy Guerra’s Os fuzis (The Guns, 1964) also relied on scenes of messianism and romeiros to code o Nordeste as impoverished and fanatical. Part of the plot tracks a group of romeiros following a beato (holy man) whom Guerra portrays as similar to popular images of Antônio Conselheiro of Canudos and Beato Lourenço of Caldeirão, Ceará.18 Throughout the film, the long-haired gaunt beato in long robes leads the group through the dry terrain of the sertão, following a boi (steer) that they worship to the point of

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c­ onsidering the animal’s dung holy (see Figure 5.3). In this scene, romeiros lay palm fronds on the ground so the holy boi’s feet do not touch the dirt when he walks. Later, when the romeiros converge on the town, where the other plot line is occurring, they gather on boulders that emphasize the starkness of the landscape and the precariousness of their existence. (See Figure 5.3.) What is most impressive in Guerra’s depiction of the romeiros is their complete lack of agency. The romeiros stand or sit motionless on the large boulders, not interacting with each other or anyone else. Either Guerra cast small people or the camera angle dwarfed them in comparison to the professional actors, who talk, interact, and move around the romeiros. Toward the end of the film, the holy steer dies and the beato instructs his followers, “What are you waiting for? Eat!” The masses dive in, noisily carving up sections of the boi. Although this may be a very human response of hungry people, the chaos, noise, and attacking movements have a dehumanizing effect, likening the romeiros to vultures or stray dogs rather than humans.

Figure 5.3

Os Fuzis (1964).

Source: Cinemateca do MAM Rio de Janeiro.

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Although the themes, aesthetics, and politics of Cinema Novo films differed from those of commercial films, depictions of deviant religiosity remained remarkably similar. As in Os fuzis, many commercial films created a beato in the popular image of Antônio Conselheiro, emphasizing the leader’s sexual deviancy and sadism, as well as the followers’ victimhood. Fernando de Barros’s Riacho do sangue (Creek of Blood, 1967) is one of the best examples of the commercial depictions of religious fanaticism. Alberto Ruschel, the gaucho hero of Lima Barreto’s O cangaciero (The Bandit, 1953), interpreted a Northeastern cowboy who confronts the stereotypical characters associated with o Nordeste: coronéis, cangaceiros, and religious fanatics. Riacho do sangue is peppered with love scenes and violent scenes, often portraying Ruschel riding horseback through the sertão accompanied by triumphant music. The second half of the film focuses on a religious community in the sertão. Ruschel and a group of cangaceiros gather arms to protect the beato and his followers from an attack by the Brazilian military, interpreted by the Cavalry Squad of the Pernambucan Military Police. Newspaper reviews of the film emphasized how the film focused on fanaticism, presented as a common problem in the Northeast. As director Fernando de Barros explained, “The nordestino’s struggle for survival by holding to fanaticism is the backdrop of the film.”19 Leonildo Martins interpreted the role of Beato Primo, a long-haired, tall, and gaunt man dressed in black robes (see Figure 5.4). In one particularly violent scene, shown in Figure 5.4, Beato Primo inducts a young woman into his church. He asks her to strip, then ties her to a wall and starts whipping her back. His face and body language suggest that this is a sexualized encounter. The scene links sexual perversity to Northeastern messianic movements, emphasizing the deviant and dangerous nature of religious leaders and the passivity of their followers. In another scene, Beato Primo examines his bird collection, kept in cages, a metaphoric reference to the followers he traps and imprisons in his religious cult. The final scene in Riacho do sangue is a bloody battle between the military and the townspeople that ends in the complete annihilation of the town and all its people, with the exception of protagonist Ruschel and one crying infant. Beato Primo’s prophecy has been fulfilled: “God says the land must be washed with the blood of the innocent.” In both commercial and political films about o Nordeste, the depictions of romeiros and beatos create the idea that wandering groups of religious fanatics are a regular presence in Northeastern Brazil. The ­messianic

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Figure 5.4

Riacho de sangue (1967).

Source: Centro de Documentação e Informação da FUNARTE, Rio de Janeiro.

leaders are always deviant and dangerous, and their followers appear passive and impoverished. Such scenes and plots help reinforce the idea of o Nordeste as a violent, nonmodern place. Popular representations of religious fanaticism reinforced the dominant narratives of o Nordeste that Conservatives also drew on to legitimize their attacks on the rural social movements during the Cold War. The next section analyzes how Conservatives, the Ligas and the PCB appropriated the symbol of Canudos as a tool to gain support for competing political projects.

Canudos: A Symbol with Contested Meanings In Cangaceiros e fanáticos (1965), PCB militant Rui Facó argued that messianic movements emerged as a way for the poor to fight against their misery and exploitation and recognized Canudos as the first stage of social revolution. Participants were neither criminals nor particularly “backward.” Instead, they were the victims of national underdevelopment, soldiers in the revolution for social liberation sweeping across Brazil in the 1950s and 1960s. As Facó claimed, “In all of the cases focused on in this

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study—Canudos, Contestado, Caldeirão—it seems to be a natural tendency of the deprived rural masses under certain conditions to create their own religion that functions as an instrument in their struggle for social liberation.”20 Facó interviewed ex-participants in Canudos and Juazeiro and examined how the media had depicted the movements. In his analysis of Canudos, Facó made a direct connection to the rural social movements of the 1950s and 1960s: Canudos was one of the first culminating moments in the rural poor’s struggle for liberation. Their indomitable resistance shows the formidable revolutionary potential that exists in the soul of the sertanejo population and the enormous importance of the peasant movement in Brazil who still constitute the largest labor force in the country. The period of Canudos will remain in our history as a patrimony of the rural masses and a glorious moment in the revolutionary movement for freedom.21

By rewriting the war of Canudos as a revolutionary precedent for social liberation, Facó’s arguments about religious fanaticism reflected the interpretation of the historical messianic movements of Ligas and the PCB and the belief that the participants and leaders of such movements were heroes (warriors and revolutionaries). Although the Ligas and the PCB both portrayed Canudos as a precursor to the rural struggles in Northeastern Brazil, the two movements differed in their perceptions of what could be learned from Canudos in contemporary struggles for land and labor rights. The PCB emphasized the idea that unity among the poor created effective resistance; the Ligas used Canudos as an example of historical successes of guerilla warfare in Brazil. The PCB recognized that Os sertões had turned regional problems into national problems by detailing the differences between the urban Southeast and the rural Northeast.22 Articles in Novos Rumos interpreted Canudos and Os sertões as showing the solidarity of the poor, nomadic nordestinos and the power they had when they formed a community of resistance. In contrast to Conservative arguments that described the Brazilian Armed Forces as the weaker of the two, the PCB claimed that the Brazilian Armed Forces had used brutality to win the war.23 The Ligas also portrayed the Brazilian Armed Forces as having more advanced technology and weapons, but the Ligas diverged from the PCB in the latter’s attempt to connect the war of Canudos to the Cuban Revolution. Articles in LIGA described Canudos as a guerrilla war, a term that was probably most closely associated with the 26th of July movement in Cuba at this time. According to the Ligas accounts, Antônio Conselheiro and his followers were expelled

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everywhere they went because they thought differently than the government and the priests, so the government and priests labeled Conselheiro an “anti-Christ.”24 The Ligas argued that the peasants of Canudos won battles because of the landscape and Antônio Conselheiro’s use of guerrilla warfare. Ligas supporters also compared Francisco Julião to their own version of Antônio Conselheiro and other historic religious leaders such as Jesus Christ. In Who Is Francisco Julião, the author describes Julião: With his slender build, he reminds us of images of Christ to whom he is similar in his mentality. He is a sensitive being whose master trait is charity. . . . This man lacks the strength of a legislator, of a man who plans, establishes rules and punishes rebels. He is more an Antônio Conselheiro who preached a new faith to his followers. . . . He does not define himself as a leader, like Moses who brought his people from Egypt to the Promised Land, or as a Paul who organized the Catholic Church. He defines himself as a social agitator, as were Jesus Christ, Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Anthony, or Padre Vieira and Abraham Lincoln.25

As the passage suggests, Ligas supporters compared Julião to religious leaders who they understood as fighting for radical changes. Accounts of Julião describe rural women rushing to try to touch him when he passed by sprinkling his head with flower petals. Ligas supporters embraced such comparisons with historical religious leaders to legitimize their revolutionary interpretations of the Bible to stimulate commitment to the social movement. Besides the symbol of Canudos and o Conselheiro, the relationship of PCB and the Ligas to religiosity also differed. The PCB focused on class struggle and creating alliances to push for unionization and labor rights and seem to remain skeptical of engaging with religion. The PCB leaders recognized that Julião’s power to invoke the Bible was powerful, and claimed he had a “mystic temperament,” but they also criticized him for taking this approach.26 For example, PCB leader Paulo Cavalcanti described Julião as a Marxist mystic—Antônio Conselheiro mixed with Lenin—speaking a dramatic language of “o sertão vai virar mar e o mar virar sertão” (The land will turn into the sea and the sea into land).27 The Ligas used ­evangelical language and recognized the importance of religion in rural households. Julião’s popularity forced the Catholic Church to engage with his messages and tactics, radicalizing the Church leaders involved in projects in the countryside. Before turning to the topic of radicalizing religion, it is

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necessary to explain how Conservatives engaged with the symbol of Canudos as a tool to oppose the rural social movements. Conservatives emphasized the need to control messianism in Northeastern Brazil, such as one incident that occurred in Canudos, with support from the Brazilian military. Dante de Mello’s books on Canudos published by the Armed Forces Library in 1958 and 1961 challenged da Cunha’s argument that the rebels of Canudos were famished and underprepared for the attack by the Brazilian military.28 By looking at other sources, Mello argued that the jagunços of Canudos were more dangerous and well prepared than commonly portrayed, and should not be perceived as “oppressed people.” He put the number of Canudos rebels at five thousand well-armed and robust men, and argued that the style of guerrilla warfare and innovative weaponry favored the rebels in the war against the Brazilian military.29 Local people, who operated under the “camouflage” of Brazilian nationality, supposedly served as spies for the Canudos forces.30 Mello’s arguments reflect the era of the Cuban Revolution in his use of terms such as guerrilla warfare, illustrating how perceptions of history engaged with contemporary political issues. At the same time, Mello’s account of Canudos fully embraced earlier notions of racial hierarchies and scientific racism. He argued that the “racial type” of Canudos “fanatics” came from the violent history of the quilombo of Palmares, the Sebastianists of Pedra Bonita, and indigenous tribes of the Northeast. Mello referred to the Canudos followers as “voracious and savage animals,” whose physical features reflected the hereditary “format of the most nonconformist blacks and the most ferocious Indians.”31 The women of Canudos had “short, obstructed noses with nasal holes that look like the mouths of brick ovens. Inexpressive eyes, smoky and congested; red, savage eyes, glutinous mouths, terrifying teeth.”32 Through such depictions of historic nordestino rebels, Conservatives legitimized their arguments about the need for the Brazilian military to seize control of the rural social movements, comparing the Canudos fanatics to the “savage” rural social movements. Another Conservative tactic focused on depicting rural social movement leaders as deviant and dangerous messianic leaders. Conservative landowners, Brazilian and US journalists and government officials, and the Brazilian police referred to the fanatical tactics of “Communist” social movement leaders who brainwashed the ignorant rural population. One of the most powerful tools Conservatives used to fight against the rural social

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movements was to compare Francisco Julião to Antônio Conselheiro or other messianic leaders and the Ligas Camponesas to Canudos by employing terms such as “fanatics.” For instance, a letter written by the police chief of Vítôria de Santo Antão described the SAPPP as having “300 members, of which at least 50 percent are true fanatics.”33 Criticism of Julião and the Ligas drew on dominant representations of messianic movements in Northeastern Brazil, emphasizing the fanaticism and lack of agency of the participants, the charisma and violence of the leaders, and their nonBrazilian or antinational tendencies. Reports in O Diário de Pernambuco frequently claimed that the Ligas were implanting a “regime of terror” throughout the Northeast in which violent leaders demanded that the victimized rural population follow their orders.34 For example, in an exclusive interview published in O Diário de Pernambuco in 1961, the owner of the Engenho Pindobal, José Aymar, claimed that communists and agitators were invading his property and causing unrest.35 According to Aymar, the “ignorance of the rural man” allowed the communists to manipulate the peasants for their own political projects without real concern for the interests of the peasantry. Aymar described the rural workers as “honest rural men” who were being sacrificed by a leader who does not want a solution to the national agrarian problem.36 Another report described the need to support the Colonization Project because most of the creatures have no moral or religious education and they are generally completely illiterate men. This is an advantage for the exploiters of the situation like Francisco Julião and others who take advantage of the ignorance and inexperience of the poor peasant, preaching false promises, and indoctrinating the spirit of revolt against the state of despair.37

Many of the large landowners’ testimonies in the DOPS-PE files emphasized the issue of foreign agitators coming to their properties to stir up trouble with the “ignorant” rural workers, placing the blame for the protests and land invasions entirely on the social movement leaders.38 For example, a letter written by the owner of the Engenho Cananduba in Jaboatão claimed that Julião was using these “illiterate and ignorant beings, deceiving them because of their ignorance to increase disorder, anarchy and to subvert our current regime.”39 Such reports drew from the assumption that the rural population had no agency, being lured by Julião to rebel. In criticizing the Ligas, Conservatives and other opponents often referred to Julião’s mysticism to depict him as devious and dangerous. Politi-

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cal opponents on all sides of the political spectrum commented on Julião’s “exceptional” ability to communicate with the rural population, portraying this as “mystical.” The general secretary of Socialist Action (Ação Socialista), Rodrigo Duque Estrada, claimed, during a 1960 broadcast of the television program Face to Face, that Julião was a “communist” and was training the peasants to be extremists. O Diário de Pernambuco quoted Duque Estrada as saying Julião was “charismatic” and that he often portrayed himself as a martyr, physically and morally. Duque Estrada warned, “With his mysticism, he is an opportunist for the communists.”40 The US media also portrayed Julião as a fanatic, describing him as having “an unruly mass of hair and an intense, rather wistful air that evidently appeals to crowds”41 and as being a “self-styled Marxist messiah.”42 US consular reports on Francisco Julião and the Ligas adopted a language of fanaticism and victimhood to describe what they saw as a quasireligious cult surrounding Julião. Vice consul Edward Walters visited the Engenho Galiléia in September 1960, and described Julião as a clever and cocky person, born and educated in Pernambuco, Julião has assiduously maintained his reputation as a man of the soil and a man of humble origins. . . . Many of Julião’s adversaries describe him as a demagogic, uncouth person, extremely ambitious and extremely dangerous. . . . They respect his ability as an inspiring leader of the illiterate and underprivileged rural masses.43

Walters believed the peasants followed Julião because of their ignorance and impoverished conditions. Similar to Conservative large landowners in Pernambuco, Walters declared that the Ligas were “taking advantage of the ignorance and misery of the rural worker to foment rebellious movements.” Walters described the Galileus as being brainwashed by the powerful leader: When allowed to speak, they [Galileus] responded in tones that did not reflect great enthusiasm for their present or future situation. This vanguard of the rural revolution responded with shrugs and smiles as the State officials described their misguided past and their glorious future. It was obvious that whatever recent doubt may have been planted in their minds regarding this man and his schemes, Julião is still a demigod.44

Walters’s skepticism about Julião’s motives and tactics and the rural people’s limited role in the direction of rural social movement suggested the Ligas fostered a type of cult following. Conservatives opposing the Ligas and agrarian reform effectively mobilized a discourse of deviant religiosity harkening back to Canudos

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to question the legitimacy of Julião and the Ligas Camponesas. Repeated references to Julião and the Ligas as Marxist or communist created connections between Conservative fears and Cold War themes of deviancy, fanaticism and communism. The attacks were almost entirely directed toward Julião and the Ligas, suggesting that Conservatives found Julião and the Ligas were more of a serious threat than the PCB rural unions or Church Federations of Rural Workers. A Ligas supporter described this process as the mythification of Julião: They have exported “Julianismo” throughout Brazil and abroad and he has turned into a foreign symbol. This [myth] is his [Julião’s] conscious creation supported in the reactionary media. Out of dialectic necessity, reactionaries need to create a mythical enemy who opposes law, democracy, property and order. In Julião they found such an enemy, turning him into a demon, bandit, and cangaceiro. Now the myth carries the man.45

This myth held power because it was reinforced in the media and popular culture, with depictions of Canudos overlapping with depictions of the Ligas. The next section analyzes how Ligas and the Church Federations of Rural Workers used religious narratives and symbols to gain support for radical agrarian reform and legal changes to rural labor laws.

Radicalizing Religion Francisco Julião argued that the Bible was one of the key tools the Ligas used to gain support in the countryside. As Regina Reyes Novaes argues in her study on the construction of a religious identity in the struggle for land, Julião did not “dispose” of old religious symbols but imbued them with new meanings.46 Julião appropriated biblical passages to argue that the struggle of Jesus Christ was one of class warfare. He also referred to recent papal encyclicals to strengthen the legitimacy of the struggle for land in Northeastern Brazil. When Pope John XXIII died, the Ligas newspaper declared him the Pope of Peace, noting that he had advocated agrarian reform and fought against colonialism and imperialism.47 In speeches, Julião often declared, “The Church preaches resignation. But Christ was a rebel.”48 Julião’s radical interpretations of the Bible coincided with shifts within the Vatican during these years and the incipient strands of what would later be labeled as the Liberation Theology movement. An example of the Ligas’s radicalization of the Bible appeared in a 1963 article, “Christ Fought for the Poor and Was Crucified by the Rich,” which explains that Jesus came to earth to fight for the poor while express-

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ing the long trajectory of “evil” large landowners. The LIGA article referred to the Gospel of Matthew as evidence, concluding that Jesus was crucified by Roman imperialism, accused of subverting order and blasphemy. . . . But His blood fertilized new fruits and today the majority of humans are Christian. It’s a shame that yesterday’s imperialists, the Roman Yankees of today, the Pharisees, traders of the temple, the large landowners who crucified Jesus, and the elitist Cardinals became the owners of Christ’s words.49

By providing new interpretations of the Bible and Christian history, the Ligas challenged the power of the landowning elite and the traditional Church in Northeastern Brazil. In doing so, the Ligas aligned the social movement with the true path of Jesus Christ, legitimizing the Ligas while attacking the Conservatives. The Ligas further solidified a connection between radical Christianity and the struggle for land reform by turning to Catholic priests and Protestant ministers to become Ligas leaders. One of the most radical leaders of the Ligas was a Catholic priest, Father Alípio de Freitas, whose interpretations of the Bible included advocating for class warfare. Alípio was a regular contributor to the Ligas newspaper and the saga of his arrests and imprisonments were frequently major headlines in LIGA. Alípio was born in Portugal and moved to Brazil during the Salazar dictatorship, serving as a priest and a professor at the University of Maranhão in 1958.50 After attending the World Conference for Disarmament and Peace in Moscow, the Archdiocese of Rio de Janeiro punished Alípio for his “revolutionary” activities by suspending him.51 Alípio claimed to have always been on the side of the humble and the oppressed and declared that his role as a priest was to struggle for peasants’ freedom and rights. LIGA reported that Alípio knew, felt, and shared the “nordestino soul” defined as “indomitable and liberated” because of his remarkable ability to share the pain and suffering of his “peasant brothers.”52 In speeches, Alípio was a powerful orator advocating for agrarian reform and revolution. For example, in a speech to the Dock Workers Union, Alípio provoked the audience with a radical interpretation of the Bible: Christ did not die so that so much misery could exist or else his sacrifice would not have happened. If God had wanted this misery, He would be worse than any large landowner and an accomplice in the genocide that happens here today in which a half million Brazilians die of hunger each year.53

Alípio criticized large landowners for using religion to justify their “disgusting” privileges. He argued that the only legitimate title of land ownership

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was the callus on the workers’ hands. Alípio understood that revolutionary change was taking place throughout the Northeast and rural men and women were becoming conscious, or agents, in the fight for agrarian reform. As he preached, “Hunger was no longer felt just in the stomach but also in the head,” and today the peasant knows “that his children don’t die of hunger because God wants more little angels in Heaven. This is the Evangelical of slaves. And Heaven is for free men and not for slaves.”54 LIGA described Father Alípio as having strong connection with rural men and women because of rural religious culture and Alípio’s ability to communicate. In an article about the lack of freedom of speech in the countryside, peasants were described as mystical and Alípio as having a particular power: The peasant is a mystic. Growing up with the fear of God rooted in his mind, the peasant respects and admires the priest, seeing him as sent by God whose acts and words cannot be judged by any man on earth. For the peasant, Father Alípio represents the flag of liberation, respected for being the wearer of a cassock similar to many other priests the peasant has known. But, Alípio speaks in a completely different language. The people’s priest shows them the path taught by Jesus Christ, which is the path of equality and justice. He advocates a world without rich or poor, a world where everyone is equal and fighting for the shared ideas of peace and brotherhood.55

According to the article, peasants could not believe that a priest would talk like Alípio who worried about their lives on Earth, their suffering, and their struggles. Alípio claimed that the peasants understood freedom of speech as a myth and not a right due to the fascist conditions of the latifúndio. Alípio also aligned himself and the struggle for agrarian reform in Northeastern Brazil with the Cuban Revolution. He frequently declared that “revolution” would come from the peasants’ empty pans to create a new Brazil, free of inequalities. He claimed that “the path of Cuba is the path of all Latin American countries” in 1963 and regularly advocated for Cuban and European socialism.56 As did other Ligas leaders who believed in the hope exemplified by the Cuban Revolution, Alípio believed that a similar revolution could occur in Brazil. As he warned, “We should remind those who seem not to believe that our mountains could transform into another Sierra Maestra, that the Cuban flag is the only flag that will represent true freedom.”57 Using the discourse of imperialism, Alípio frequently criticized organizations such as IBAD, the Alliance for Progress,

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and the Peace Corps, which he described as false assistance programs that only wanted to “dominate the Brazilian people.”58 His public declarations led to his arrest and imprisonment on a number of occasions. By arresting Alípio, the Brazilian government suggested the priest’s tactics were fanatical and antinational, an argument similar to the reasons given to invade Canudos at the end of the nineteenth century. The fact that Alípio was arrested and imprisoned multiple times reflects that power the priest held or was perceived to hold in undermining the dominant regime. For example, in late 1962, Father Alípio was arrested and confined to the Fort of Cinco Pontes in Recife for writing the “Peasant’s Evangelical,” which offered a radical interpretation of the Bible.59 The Brazilian Armed Forces claimed he was arrested for writing a new Evangelical message, but Alípio denied this by claiming the Evangelical was not “new or different than the evangelical message that Christ preached in the countryside, the mountains, the lakes, the cities, and to the population of Judéia and Galiléia.” Alípio argued that if Christ had been on the side of the rich then He would have chosen the wealthy and educated as His Apostles and Disciples, and this was not the case: Christ was born with the poor. As a “Priest of Christ,” Alípio defined his purpose as helping the peasants in their struggle for freedom. He argued that Christ was present in Brazil for another time of Galiléia, a reference, which connected the first expropriated engenho in Northeastern Brazil with the Biblical Galilee region. After leading a protest to mark the one-year commemoration of the assassination of Ligas leader João Pedro Teixeira, in April 1963, F ­ ather Alípio was arrested and imprisoned again, held incommunicado by the Fourth Army on orders from the defense minister General Amaury Kruel.60 Reports in LIGA denounced the arrest, claiming he had been kidnapped and held because the military believed him to be a “false priest, communist, and Portuguese” who, as a “foreign agitator” was a danger to national security.61 In prison, Alípio was beaten and tortured, and Julião denounced his imprisonment and treatment publicly to push for his release.62 In a letter to the minister of justice, João Mangabeira, Francisco Julião questioned why Father Alípio, “remains in complete solitary, broken with whippings as denounced by families of the sergeants and soldiers who worked in the 15 RI jail in João Pessoa.”63 The Ligas demanded his release, claiming that he was being unjustly held because of state elections and Alípio’s strong support for Pernambucan gubernatorial candidate Miguel Arraes.64 A number of placards from protest groups demanding the release of Father

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Alípio were reprinted in LIGA, pointing out the irony of the defense minster’s name (Kruel), such as “state workers demand the liberation of padre alípio, cruelly (kruelmente) imprisioned [sic].”65 According to the arrest report filed May 2, 1963, Alípio was held in prison as a preventative measure because he was a “nomad” without a fixed address, and because he had violated the Law of National Security. He was sentenced to expulsion from Brazil for his subversive political activities and alleged connections to the Communist Party.66 The police report found he violated Article 141 of the Federal Constitution since he “openly preached propaganda calling for violence in markets, meetings, and conferences to subvert political and social order.” The proof of violating Article 141 came from statements the priest had made at political rallies and gatherings. For example, “Those who aren’t with me are against me and will be executed,” “the Armed Forces are a den of traitors,” and “the glorious National Army is nothing more than modern slave hunters. When the revolution begins, they will be the ones wearing uniforms of traitors.”67 The police report also alleged that Father Alípio “used Communist techniques” to criticize the justice and legislative systems, making comments such as “The Judicial maintains corrupt and crooked justice,” and “the legislative powers will not pass any base reforms as long as they are controlled by economic interest groups. They only legislate against the interests of the people and the nation.”68 According to the report, since such statements were “prefabricated” conferences heard throughout Brazil to subvert the Brazilian people, Alípio had violated the Law of National Security. The Ligas insisted that the accusations against Alípio were unfounded and revealed the repressive plans of some sectors of the Brazilian Armed Forces, since Alípio had done nothing “illegal.” In an appeal for Father Alípio’s release, his lawyer referred to the case of Olga Benário, the pregnant partner of Luís Carlos Prestes (PCB) who had been deported to Nazi Germany to die in a concentration camp, as proof of the “undemocratic” and “inhumane” consequences of the use of the Law of National Security.69 Julião argued that it was a dangerous precedent to deport the priest because outsiders could perceive the ruling as meaning that “those who become Brazilian citizens could be expelled for political motives, making the Brazilian government the same as a dictatorship.”70 The Ligas listed the fight to revoke the Law of National Security as one of their key objectives in 1963.71 Although invoking the Law of National Security may seem like a drastic measure, it can be understood within the context of the media cul-

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ture and Conservative political discourse that framed the Ligas as fanatical and a threat to the Brazilian nation. The repetition of such ideas expressed in political discourse and popular culture created a common perception of Northeastern religion as fanatical, violent, and dangerous. Alípio radicalized readings of Catholic doctrine in a style commonly associated with “Liberation Theology” or Vatican II. In prison, he allied himself with Pope John XXIII. He claimed he had been imprisoned because he was a pioneering religious leader who sided with the poor in the struggle for their freedom.72 He identified himself with nineteenthcentury priests who had been imprisoned in the Northeast for their roles as leaders of the 1817 Revolution, a battle inspired by independence movements, such as Father José Inácio Ribeiro de Abreu Lima (Father Roma), who was shot by a firing squad in Bahia in 1817; Father Pedro de Sousa Tenório, hanged in Recife in 1917; and, Frei Caneca, executed in 1825.73 Alípio also allied himself with Jesus Christ, stating that Christ had been subjected to the same types of imprisonment and execution as the historic Pernambucan priests and himself. He did not associate himself with Antônio Conselheiro, locating his predecessors within the official Catholic cannon. Although Alípio was certainly a radical priest and leader of the Ligas who became even more radical during the dictatorship (1964–85), he was but one of many priests and lay people who followed a revolutionary interpretation of the Bible in line with changes inspired by the Vatican in the early 1960s.74 Many Catholic priests in the Northeast acquired a more radical interpretation of the Bible in the 1960s and grew increasingly political in their sermons and pastoral work. The “radical” wing associated with Dom Helder Câmera (Pernambuco) and Dom Eugénio Sales (Natal) believed that the Church needed to ally itself with the working classes, the peasants, and the urban poor.75 Unlike bishops in Southeastern Brazil, the Northeastern bishops did not take a strong anticommunist stance and blamed the Brazilian elite and foreign imperialists for the problems Brazil faced.76 A US consular report in 1961 listed a number of priests as “potential political threats” because of their views and activism advocating agrarian reform and “socialism.”77 During the dictatorship, Brazilian military officials described Northeastern priests as a threat to the nation because of their support for agrarian reform and “revolution.” Many priests faced the same type of repression (arrest, imprisonment, torture and execution) during the military regime as other “subversives” associated with the Ligas or the

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PCB. What is strikingly different is that before the coup, many of the priests involved in rural labor organizing and development projects received praise and support from the Brazilian state and the United States because they were considered a “safer” alternative to the Ligas and the PCB.78 At the same time, it is necessary to remember that while changes were happening from the level of the Vatican to the local parishes, this does not mean that all priests supported the more radicalized positions of the Church. Many Northeastern priests continued to support the landowning elite and Conservative positions during the Cold War. For example, Ligas leader Elizabeth Teixeira claimed, “With the exception of a few priests, the Church was against us. Ave Maria! When you spoke about Ligas Camponesas to the Church it was as if you were a bogeyman, a communist who ate people.”79 The Encontros dos Bispos do Nordeste in 1959 and 1960 illustrate the changing political position of the Catholic Church as it became increasingly involved in development projects in the Northeast.80 The meetings focused on rural poverty and emigration connecting the Church to developmental programs for the Northeast—namely, OPENO and SUDENE. The Church supported state-led development projects that had long-term goals for eradicating hunger and misery.81 In line with the direction of the Vatican in the 1960s, the Northeastern Church promoted the development of agriculture and mechanization, colonization programs, drought-relief programs, radio education programs for rural areas and rural labor leader training programs.82 In May 1963, the Central Committee of the National Brazilian Bishops Conference made a declaration in favor of agrarian reform and other “basic reforms,” citing the papal encyclical Mater et Magistra as the motivation.83 I briefly described two of the most outspoken and controversial priests, Father Antonio Melo and Father Paulo Crespo, in Chapter 1. Here, I want to further examine their projects for social reforms. As leaders of Church-led rural social movements in municipalities with strong Ligas and PCB movements (Jaboatão and Cabo), both priests were arguably very successful in combating the Ligas and PCB.84 Some estimates suggest Melo’s unions had over 60,000 rural workers as members.85 Even though Crespo was allegedly associated with the C.I.A, Conservatives considered him more radical than Melo, who was financed by Instituto Brasileiro de Ação Democrática and occupied a greater presence in the Northeastern media as a spokesman for the Church Federations.86 To show how the

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priests differed when they were both serving as leaders of the Church Federations, I examine them separately in this section, starting with Father Paulo Crespo. Crespo often quoted Pope John XXIII and the encyclical Mater et Magistra to bolster his position advocating agrarian reform and rural unions, allying Crespo with the more radical wing of the Catholic Church. As he explained in 1962, “The Northeast is a problem area in this hemisphere . . . because its people have become aware of their misery and no longer wish to remain impoverished. But for now, they still do not know the proper path to their own liberation.”87 Crespo believed that rural unionization was the “proper path” to liberation and to the social unrest afflicting the Northeast, but that the rural union movement needed to be led by the Church and not by the Ligas or the PCB because “if the movement fell into the hands of the communists, there would be a derailment of democracy.”88 Crespo actively advocated rural unionization and agrarian reform, going to the police on a number of occasions to support rural men and women involved in the Church Federations or to denounce violent acts incited by landowners. For example, Crespo raised an official complaint against landowner Miguel Paisinho of Glória de Goitá, who destroyed the house of a peasant in a violent attempt to expel the man and his family from the fazenda for joining a rural union.89 He opposed “unjust” large landowners, labeling them “slave masters” who used their money to put politicians in power who supported the landowners’ political projects.90 Crespo’s opposition to some rural elites earned him the title of a “radical” as exemplified by a letter, published in O Diário de Pernambuco in late 1963, by a judge in Bom Conselho to the Archbishop.91 Judge Orlando Cavalcanti de Albuquerque denounced Father Crespo for inciting violence in Bom Conselho during the inauguration of a rural union, illustrating Conservatives’ growing skepticism of the Catholic rural union movement. The judge’s evidence against Crespo included pamphlets distributed during the ceremony calling for rural workers to unite in the fight against the latifundiários, and statements overheard in Crespo’s speeches encouraging rural workers to take up arms against the large landowners to demand fair wages. The judge claimed that as a Catholic himself he found the acts of Father Crespo deplorable because in his opinion, priests should not be involved in political agitation. Likewise, by preaching “armed aggression” and “fratricidal battles,” Crespo supposedly strayed from the Catholic mission of love, compassion and mercy. In Judge Cavalcanti’s opinion, ­Crespo’s

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­ olitical activism allied the priest with communists and the “enemies” of p the nation, straying from what should have been the priest’s concern of preserving the historical patrimony of the town. Such denouncements show how Conservatives started questioning the involvement of Catholic priests in rural social activism in the 1960s. Although the priests were not yet labeled “reds” or “communists,” as they would be during the dictatorship, Conservatives claimed that the priests’ misguided actions in opposing the rural elites had the potential to fuel communists’ objectives. Although Crespo’s political positions toward the rural elite and the rural union movement provoked Conservatives to question the increasingly political role of the Church in the rural Northeast, Conservatives considered Father Melo’s approach to advocating social reforms as less radical and less political. Melo held a larger voice in the mainstream newspapers than Crespo, advocating for rural unions and agrarian reform from a perspective more aligned with Conservatives. Melo’s objectives elided with Conservatives, as he opted to support state-led, gradual reforms rather than the land seizure tactics of the Ligas. Unlike Crespo, Father Melo did not turn the large landowner into the enemy. He argued that many landowners were truly concerned about the misery in the countryside and the solution was “to stimulate agricultural production, modernize it and demand just legislation.”92 Landowner Antonio Campeiro de Aragão of Petrolina described Melo as “a man who lives the lives of peasants, fighting for them without any political interests of his own.”93 Similar to Conservatives’ arguments about peasants as victims of communist brainwashing, Father Melo made frequent declarations downplaying the threat of communism in the Northeast. This may have been a tactic to consolidate his own power in the countryside and promote his argument that he held greater control than the PCB or Ligas. For instance, commenting on a protest march by the Ligas in Brasília in early 1962, Melo claimed that such marches gave an erroneous view of the peasants as communists, when hunger was the only motivation for their protests.94 Testifying for the Congressional Investigative Commission, Melo explained that communism was not a threat because the Northeast Communists were bourgeois politicians incapable of “leaving their armchairs” to start a revolution.95 In the testimony, the priest emphasized the need for agrarian reform because of the peasant suffering from “physical hunger, cultural hunger, and the lack of civilization and justice.”96 These statements illustrate how Melo effectively positioned himself as a leader of the rural move-

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ment in the Northeast while also drawing from the dominant narrative of o Nordeste as a tragic place ruled by hunger and misery. As illustrated by the cases of Crespo, Melo, and Alípio, the Northeastern Church radicalized in the era of the Cuban Revolution, developing out of conferences on rural development in the 1950s and linked to the social welfare projects pushed by the Vatican during these years. Priests and lay people took up projects for social reform including rural unionization, colonization, agrarian reform, and rural education. The Catholic Church Federations were portrayed as the “safer” alternative to the Ligas and the PCB. After the 1964 coup, the political landscape shifted. With the arrest, imprisonment, exile and murder of Ligas and PCB leaders and participants and the labor organizations declared illegal, the Church Federations remained the only alternative for rural labor organizing. Catholic priests working in the rural Northeast soon realized that Conservatives opposed any form of rural organizing that limited the rural elite’s and military’s rule in the countryside, including the social movements led by the Catholic Church. Previous Conservative support for the Church Federations and the Conservative’s use of Catholic discourse to legitimize military rule made it difficult for them to label the Church’s rural movements illegal. During the dictatorship, Conservatives turned to the discourse of nordestino fanaticism to delegitimize Church leaders who were denouncing the human rights violations of the military and defending political prisoners.

The Northeastern Church After the Military Coup In the wake of repressive measures taken against Leftist politicians, filmmakers, popular poets, and rural social movements following the April 1, 1964 coup, the voices engaged in struggle for power in Northeastern Brazil significantly changed. The silencing of oppositional voices led to an absence of historical sources that could be analyzed to demonstrate the wide-ranging dialogues over the best directions for the Northeast. This does not mean groups and individuals passively accepted the military rule without protest or resistance. The evidence showing such resistance appears largely in oral histories recorded in the final years of the dictatorship (1979–85), when the political context made criticizing the military and Northeastern rural elites less risky (see Chapter 6). The rest of this chapter examines the group that remained active in the debates over the political projects for Northeastern Brazil after the coup: the Catholic Church.

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Discursively, Conservatives continued to support reform projects led by the Catholic Church for the Northeast after the coup including agrarian reform, the need for rural cooperatives, and the development of professional labor associations. In an editorial in O Diário de Pernambuco, in May 1964, on rural unionization, Costo Porto argued that the “flag of rural unionization until recently had been in the wrong hands, those of subversives” but now the flag had returned to the “right hands, those of the Church as clearly stated in Mater et Magistra.”97 Porto cited the Pope’s advocacy for such reforms and urged large landowners to support rural unionization because if they did not, it could lead to “the threat of tumult in the life of the peasant. Disorder, insecurity, agitation, workers’ rebellions, and all else that was present during the dark and unfortunate days of the mysticism and turbulence of Arrais [sic].”98 He concluded the editorial urging widespread support for the new military government in the fight for democracy. And yet at the same time, the military was also persecuting Catholic priests who they considered to be too radical, questioning priests and searching their residences. Informationes Catholiques Internationales published a report on May 1, 1964, stating, “Catholic leaders have been tortured, priests imprisoned and bishops threatened.”99 In the period of the military coup, the Church made changes to the Northeastern Church’s leadership. Two weeks prior to the coup, Dom Helder Câmara was instated as the Archbishop of the Diocese of Olinda and Dom José Maria Pires (Dom Pelé) was appointed Archbishop of Paraíba in 1966. Although not recognized as a radical before his appointment as archbishop, almost immediately Dom Helder Câmara had to directly confront the military regime about the arrests and torture that occurred in the Northeast in the weeks after the coup. As PCB leader Gregório Bezerra recalled, “I always held an immense admiration for Dom Helder Câmara. I know that he was systematically anticommunist, anti-Soviet, but I recognize that he had a fundamental role in the history of the PCB. He denounced the crimes, the torture, the kidnappings and his voice seemed to make a difference.”100 As Dom Helder’s position against the military regime solidified, stories about him being a “red” or “communist” Bishop increased. By December 1964, Dom Helder had started to make public international denouncements of the military regime, presenting the argument that communism was not a threat in the Northeast. Dom Helder argued that “consciousness-raising” of the impoverished masses was seen as a threat, causing large landowners to declare such projects “communist.”101

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Father Melo and Father Crespo remained involved in rural unionization and cooperative projects, but after the coup they also faced challenges to their leadership. Father Crespo was held as a “suspect” by the military, which resulted in Father Melo being put in charge of rural unions and SORPE.102 A 1964 interview with Crespo in O Diário de Pernambuco suggests he faced attacks from the military for being “subversive” due to his defensive statements about being staunchly anti-communist. In the interview, he claimed he always collaborated with the military, denouncing “subversive activities” and “agitators” in his work with workers and peasants. Crespo incorporated the nationalistic discourse of the military along with Catholicism to defend himself as an ally: “I have a clear conscience that I have given my contribution to my country and my Church, helping others build a better Brazil without the malevolent privileges of revolutionary misery, from a climate of justice, supporting a foundation of progress, order and peace.”103 But, as the dictatorship continued, Crespo grew increasingly outspoken against it while Melo claimed to take an antipolitical stance, working on development projects during the dictatorship without criticizing the military.104 As the dictatorship continued and grew increasingly repressive after AI-5 or the Fifth Institutional Act enacted on December 13, 1968, the Northeastern Church became a more focused target of repressive acts such as arrests, threats, murders, and the occasional spraying of bullets on the Archdiocesan buildings.105 One of Dom Helder’s assistants, Antonio Henrique da Silva Neto, was found dead on a Recife street in May 1969, bearing signs of physical torture.106 Two American priests, Darrell Rupiper and Peter Grams, both members of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate Order in St. Paul, Minnesota, were arrested in Recife in December 1968 on charges of being “serious subversives.”107 Dom Helder’s opposition to the dictatorship intensified with the increased state violence. In a 1972 letter, he said that the authorities were focusing more attention on the Northeast, especially in Fortaleza and Recife.108 The disappearances, kidnappings and imprisonments—especially among urban workers and students—were multiplying and he claimed that not even the draconian laws of AI-5 were being followed by the military leaders. Families of the disappeared went on pilgrimages to the various police and military locations, often not finding their sons, daughters, husbands or wives. “The assumption is that it is a matter of terrorism and that those arrested do not deserve any consideration otherwise.”109 In a 1970 speech in Paris, Dom Helder described the

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torture of priests in Brazil including graphic descriptions of electric shock and other abuses.110 As Dom Helder’s criticisms grew stronger and louder internationally, military leaders attempted to censor him, forbidding him access to the media and labeling him a communist.111 The military raided his living quarters and his offices on a regular basis searching for communist materials and the military also censored his sermons.112 On the one hand, Dom Helder was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970; on the other hand, the US and Brazilian media claimed he was a “red” bishop, depicting him as a “fanatic” and a threat to democracy rather than a legitimate voice denouncing the human rights abuses. The governor of São Paulo called Dom Helder a “Fidel Castro in a cassock” and accused the priest of accepting money from communist sources.113 Testifying before the US Congress in 1974, American Methodist minister Fred Morris described being tortured by the military in Recife and said that his captors wanted him to denounce Dom Helder for having ties with the Brazilian Communist Party.114 As exemplified by the case of Dom Helder, opposition to the dictatorship was repressed through state violence, such as arrest, torture, and murder; or, when the stakes were too great to persecute a person, the Brazilian Armed Forces tried a Cold War smear campaign to label the person a communist. The strategy drew from the trope of o Nordeste in its designation of Northeastern religion as “fanatical” and “deviant.” Representations of the Church as “deviant” and “fanatical,” were repeated in popular films at the time with depictions of dangerous messianic leaders fighting against the state and exacerbating violence in the Northeast as seen in Fernando de Barros’s Riacho de Sangue (Creek of Blood, 1967) and Sérgio Ricardo’s A noite do espantalho (The Night of the Scarecrow, 1974). The repetition and circulation of such ideas about Northeastern religiosity and fanaticism legitimized the military’s attack on high-ranking Catholic officials, such as Dom Helder, during the dictatorship as a way to protect the Brazilian nation. This chapter has examined how rural social movements, filmmakers, and Conservatives appropriated the symbol of Canudos and religious discourse during the Cold War. Commonly held beliefs composing the trope of o Nordeste about the “devious” religiosity of nordestinos and their proneness to messianism were effectively mobilized by Conservatives and supported in the media and popular culture. Unable to challenge these rep-

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resentations in the mainstream media, Ligas leaders and Catholic priests nonetheless gained support for agrarian reform in rural communities by offering radical interpretations of the Bible and Jesus. The Ligas’s radicalization of the Bible was met by Catholic priests organizing rural workers in Catholic unions and cooperatives, who were inspired to challenge the Ligas and PCB unions and to embrace the new mandates coming from the Vatican about the role of the Church in underdeveloped countries. Catholic priests became even more radicalized and politically outspoken after the 1964 coup, as one of the few legal voices remaining that could denounce the human rights abuses and other crimes perpetrated by the military government. In the final chapters of Revolution in the Terra do Sol, I leap forward to the period of the abertura or political opening (1979–85) and to 2005 to analyze how the Ligas Camponesas have been remembered in oral histories, memoirs, documentary films, and museums.

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6 Survival and Resistance Remembering the Ligas Camponesas in the 1980s

The 1964 movement took place without much recognition in many parts of the country. . . . In the Northeast, the region in the country with the greatest social backwardness, the consequences of the coup were more serious. The repression put an end to everything. The Ligas Camponesas, SUDENE, the Catholic Church all pointed in another direction and all this was destroyed.1 —Celso Furtado, 2004 On March 31 and April 1, 1964 , the Brazilian Armed Forces deposed democratically elected officials, including Brazilian president João Goulart and Pernambucan governor Miguel Arraes, in a military coup. In the Northeast, where armed resistance by rural social movements had been expected, the military used violence to take control of government offices and buildings and arrested leaders and participants considered “subversive,” particularly those involved with the PCB rural unions and the Ligas Camponesas. Aside from isolated individual attempts to confront the military, the rural social movements did not take up arms and engage the Brazilian Armed Forces in battle. Following the coup, Brazil’s General Marshal Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco was appointed by Congress to serve out Goulart’s term as president of Brazil (1964–67). After the coup was declared a success, the Brazilian Armed Forces and the US government labeled it the “Revolution of 1964.” US government officials and journalists described it as a revolution without “bloodshed,” despite reports from Recife from as early as April 7, 1964, documenting over eighty cases of torture after the coup.2

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The coup ushered in a twenty-one-year military dictatorship that is often divided into three periods: the linha branda, “soft line,” from 1964 to 1967; the linha-dura, “hard line,” also known as the anos de chumbo, or “leaden years,” from 1968 to the end of General Médici’s rule in 1974; and the abertura, “political opening,” or redemocratization period, from 1974 to 1985. Basing their plan for governance on the “Doctrine of National Security and Development,” the Brazilian Armed Forces as an institution restricted or denied democratic processes such as habeas corpus and promoted large-scale public works projects, including the construction of dams and highways. Development projects often were referred to as “economic miracles,” legitimizing the Brazilian Armed Forces as an institution capable of national leadership. The Brazilian Armed Forces also created new state institutions and passed laws to address agrarian reform such as the Land Statute passed in November 1964 and two new institutes, the Brazilian Institute of Agrarian Reform and the National Institute of Agrarian Development, which in 1970 merged to become the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform. Although the new laws and institutions failed to empower rural workers as Brazilian citizens or drastically change the structure of landholdings in the Northeast, the rural Northeast underwent a transformation of labor relations. During this period at increasing rates, resident rural workers lost stable access to land becoming itinerant day wage laborers.3 During the dictatorship, arrests, imprisonments, torture, exile, and murder/disappearances led to a general silencing about the Ligas Camponesas. Stories about the Ligas Camponesas only resurfaced with the return of political exiles after the Amnesty Bill of 1979, and the increased demand for a return to democracy. Since the military had originally justified the coup because of the threat of communism and the disorder posed by the rural social movements, in the 1980s, scholars and activists began to investigate the “reality” of such threats, asking what had happened in the Northeast before and after the coup. Oral histories, memoirs, and documentary films challenged the official history of the Ligas Camponesas produced during the dictatorship, allowing silenced political voices and censored topics to resurface. The memories of Ligas Camponesas recorded during the abertura period have influenced the collective memory and the historical narrative of the Cold War in Brazil. Versions portraying the struggles of the Ligas as tragedy not only served to protest against the dictatorship but also reinforced certain strands within the trope of o Nordeste

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that told of short-lived rural rebellion violently repressed by the state in the name of order and progress, as in the case of Canudos. In this chapter, I analyze oral histories, memoirs and documentaries to reveal how the Ligas Camponesas were transformed into a historical symbol that has become a part of the trope of o Nordeste.

Resisting Atrocities: The Role of Memory Studies In Brazil and in Latin America, oral history and testimonial projects flourished in the 1980s as a form of resistance to military regimes. Such projects challenged the historical narratives created under authoritarian rule and supported the advocacy work human rights commissions and organizations were compiling to resist the dictatorships and eventually put military officers on trials for crimes against humanity.4 Two major oral history projects led by researchers associated with Getúlio Vargas Foundation (Fundação Getúlio Vargas, FGV) in Rio and the Joaquim Nabuco Foundation (Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, FUNDAJ) in Recife resulted in the transcription of hundreds of lengthy interviews with Northeastern political activists.5 In addition to these projects, documentary filmmaker Eduardo Coutinho returned to the Engenho Galiléia with original film footage shot on the cusp of the coup to interview former Ligas participants and leaders to produce a groundbreaking film, Cabra marcado para morrer (Marked for Death, 1984). I evaluate how people remembered the Ligas and why certain versions gained popular support, informing a revised historical narrative. Like any historical document, oral histories and memoirs require questioning and prodding to make sense of their broader significance. Although they offer individual perspectives about historical events, people, and situations, they also reflect the context in which they were created. Oral histories and memoirs created in the 1980s reflect the experiences of the military coup and dictatorship, as well as the politics of the transitional abertura period. As scholars analyzing oral histories with Ligas Camponesas participants in Paraíba explain, “When we remember it is because the situation in the present allows us to remember. To remember is not to relive; present-day images and ideas allow us to remake, reconstruct, rethink the experiences of the past.”6 Similarly, Steve Stern has said that he is interested in oral history as a way to “understand what social truths or processes led people to tell their stories the way they do.”7

218  Recollecting the Ligas Camponesas

The abertura is often described as a time with an increase in new social movements throughout Brazil, with a push for the return to democracy as exiles returned and many of the restrictive political acts of the dictatorship loosened. Although change seemed imminent, it was a period of uncertainty about the present and future of Brazil. Throughout these years, the military was still in power and influenced discussions of amnesty, emphasizing reconciliation in the form of “institutionalized forgetting” as a way to impede truth commissions and public trials.8 Although pro-amnesty groups campaigned for a “broad, general and unconditional” amnesty, the Amnesty Law of 1979 focused on granting amnesty to the military and police for any alleged crimes against humanity during the dictatorship.9 The context of debates over amnesty and the transition to democracy with the military still in power must be taken into account when analyzing how people recalled and narrated their experiences. In 1984, a popular and powerful historical account about the Ligas and the Northeast during the dictatorship was released, Eduardo Coutinho’s Cabra marcado para morrer. Expressing many of the political concerns of the era and using “reality effects” including stereotypes associated with the trope of o Nordeste, the film challenged the military’s official history of the Ligas as criminal, suggested the impossibility of “healing,” and provided a new framework to organize people’s memories. Before turning to an analysis of the documentary, I examine oral histories with Francisco Julião and other Northeastern political actors in the late 1970s and 1980s. Interviews tended to focus on understanding the Ligas’s affiliations with Cuba and Communist Parties, the relationship between the different social movements and politicians in the 1950s and 1960s, the degree of rural people’s participation in rural social movements, and stories about the coup and dictatorship.

Francisco Julião’s Account: Motivations, Objectives, Successes, and Failures When the Brazilian Armed Forces seized control of the state in April 1964, Ligas leader and elected federal representative Francisco Julião was in Brasília. After the military declared the First Institutional Act, on April 9, 1964, the Armed Forces surrounded Congress to arrest the “enemies of Brazilian democracy” including Francisco Julião. He went into hiding by blending in with Brasília’s candangos (construction workers and settlers,

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many of whom were nordestino) and taking a bus to Belo Horizonte where he stayed in hiding for two months. Julião then went to Goiás where someone denounced him and the military arrested him. He was first imprisoned in Brasília then transferred to Rio, where he was held in isolation in a cell with precarious conditions. Julião was imprisoned eighteen months, and as he described: “I was violently beaten by a sergeant. . . . I suffered threats of execution, of being sent to the firing wall, soldiers with machine guns in their hands and a dark cell, diminished, sub-human.”10 After his release from prison with his political rights banished for ten years, he sought exile in multiple embassies and was granted political asylum in Mexico, where he resided for fifteen years. In exile, Julião published a number of books, including Until Wednesday, Isabela (Até quarta, Isabela, 1965) and Cambão: The Hidden Face of Brazil (1968). Two different researchers interviewed Julião during the abertura period about his life history and political trajectory with the Ligas Camponesas, first in Mexico in 1977 and later in Recife, in 1983.11 The transcribed interviews were remarkably similar—or perhaps scripted—in Julião’s recollections of the Ligas Camponesas. This section analyzes Julião’s perceptions of the reasons for the emergence of the Ligas, the strengths and weaknesses of the rural social movement, the connections between the Ligas and revolutionary Cuba and the changes that occurred in Northeastern Brazil after the coup. In both interviews, Julião repeatedly declared his dedication to the fight for rural workers’ rights while insisting he had never been an official leader of the Ligas. His testimonies demonstrate the distance and reflection that occurred between 1964 and the 1980s, particularly in his evaluation of the Ligas’s connections with Cuba. Julião recalled his travels to Cuba in the early 1960s and the enthusiasm and hope that Cuba generated in Latin America for the possibility of “radical transformation of rural labor relations.”12 But, in retrospect, he seemed to think that affiliations between the Ligas and Cuba were a mistake. He argued that the Ligas suffered because of the influence of the Cuban Revolution because it became impossible to take a more moderate position.13 The Cuban Revolution had accelerated the peasant movement in Northeastern Brazil, and also provoked staunch opposition to the Ligas since North American “imperialism” had intentionally constructed the idea of a new Cuba in the Northeast, suggesting that the Ligas ­intended to start a violent revolution.14 Distancing himself and the Ligas from Cuba, Julião argued that national, regional, and local factors held greater ­influence on

220  Recollecting the Ligas Camponesas

the development of the rural social movement than international factors. As he explained in the 1983 interview, The Cuban Revolution had absolutely no great influence on the expansion of the Ligas Camponesas. . . . In 1955, when the Ligas arose in Pernambuco, Fidel Castro did not exist. Fidel Castro came to exist in 1960 with the victory of the Cuban Revolution.15

Julião pointed to the developmentalist policies of the Juscelino Kubitschek (JK) administration (1956–61) as an instigating factor for the Ligas. Following JK’s incentives for national industrialization, politicians began looking at how to increase the potential market for commercial products, leading them to look into agrarian reform as a potential solution for raising the standard of living.16 Julião referred to other historical “roots” preceding and motivating the Ligas, such as abolitionists José Bonafácio and Joaquim Nabuco. According to Julião, Northeastern traditions of social struggle such as beatos, cangaceiros, and nineteenth-century rebellions such as the Cabanada preceded the struggles of the Ligas. Julião emphasized the importance of the Ligas being an authentically Northeastern rural social movement, drawing from regionalist notions to highlight the idea of the Northeast as a rebellious region where revolutionary change started. As he stated, Pernambuco is a state where the most serious movements for the liberation of our people have always begun, not only in the case of politics but also in terms of social and cultural change. Pernambuco has given us lessons about freedom and hope. It is a pioneering state in this field. The Ligas projected themselves outward from the borders of Pernambuco, and the Northeast influenced the creation of a national consciousness in favor of agrarian reform.17

In suggesting how the Northeast was at the forefront of historic revolutionary change, Julião drew from a certain strand of the trope of o Nordeste, which also allowed him to recall the Ligas as successful in provoking revolutionary change. He repeatedly insisted on the autonomy of the Ligas as a peasant movement in the interviews, a social movement that grew from an authentic Northeastern base and was not co-opted by larger institutions, such as the Catholic Church, or political parties, such as the PCB. Julião explained that the goals of the Ligas were to raise rural people’s consciousness about the illegality of labor systems that were legacies of colonialism and slavery, such as the cambão, to do away with the latifúndio, and to grant rural people stable access to the land they worked through agrarian

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reform. Julião reinforced the idea that the main objective of the Ligas was agrarian reform and granting the peasant access to land.18 As he remembered, “We used to say ‘yes, wages are good but land is better.’ Those who have land have more security than those who have wages.”19 Through the issue of the Ligas’s autonomy, Julião reflected on one of the most investigated questions in the scholarship on the rural social movements—namely, the relationship between the Ligas, the Catholic Federations, and the PCB Syndicates. Julião claimed that the Ligas were the strongest movement because of their autonomy and focus on getting rural workers access to land. But, he also said that the Ligas were not exclusive, allowing leaders and members to be affiliated with the PCB, the PC do B (Partido Comunista do Brasil, or Communist Party of Brazil), the Trotskyists, and the Catholic Church. He recalled working with Catholic priests and Protestant ministers in organizing rural workers, although he criticized Father Antonio Melo of the Church Federations for collaborating with the police.20 Although he recalled productive collaborations with the PCB Rural Syndicates, Julião also felt that the PCB hindered the development of rural unions because of the Party’s official emphasis on urban labor and the fear of communism in the countryside. He said that for the peasants, “communism was the image of the Devil, of Satan, because these men had worked for generations not only with the reactionary Catholic Church but also with the large landowners who told them that communism was something to fear.”21 Julião claimed that the Ligas’s potential for expansion would have been in creating solid alliances with students and the urban working classes and in creating a political party specifically focused on agrarian reform and peasants’ political rights, the National Agrarian Party (Partido Agrário Nacional), but neither came to fruition before the coup.22 Another highly debated topic about the Ligas following the 1964 coup was the idea that the Ligas had instigated the coup through violent and chaotic actions of protests and land invasions. In the interviews, Julião repeatedly insisted on being against all forms of violence in the countryside, regardless of whether episodes were initiated by the police, the large landowners, or the rural workers.23 He argued that the Ligas remained within the boundaries of the law, using the Civil Code and the Constitution to push for change. When asked specifically about the Ligas involvement in organizing guerrilla focos (training camps), Julião distanced himself from such organizations, claiming that some Ligas leaders had been affiliated

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with the PCB, the PC do B, and the Trotskyists and these individuals had attempted armed struggle. Julião recalled that armed struggle was in fashion in the era of the Cuban Revolution and focos were attempted unsuccessfully in various states throughout Brazil. “These focos had absolutely no resonance in the countryside because there were full democratic freedoms in Brazil at this time. There were no political prisoners and no repressive dictatorship and for these reasons, I was against the focos.”24 The perceived failures of the Cuban Revolution in the 1980s must be taken into account when analyzing Julião’s post-1980s recollections of the Ligas. In his recollections, Julião described himself as a leader dedicated to peasants’ struggle for land rights who worked within the legal democratic system. A story Julião told about a conversation with Pernambucan governor Miguel Arraes in prison served as a way to counter the dominant perception that the Ligas had caused the 1964 coup. Both men were in the same cell, and Arraes told Julião, “I’m here because of you.” Julião corrected him: No, Miguel, you are not here because of my cause. We are here because we wanted to defend workers’ rights. We wanted Brazil to be a country free from the tutelage of North American imperialism. The true cause of our imprisonment is something else. We have to recognize that this counter-revolution, this coup, was instigated from the outside to within Brazil and today we have no doubt about who it was.25

Shifting the blame from the local or national to international factors, Julião clarified that neither the Ligas Camponesas nor the rural social movements were responsible for the coup, but that US corporate interests in Brazil (IBAD, IPES) had created the coup to oppose any greater “democratization” of the Brazilian economy.26 By placing the blame on foreign imperialism, Julião created a narrative of reconciliation, allowing past conflicts to heal by portraying all Northeasterners united against a common external enemy. During the dictatorship, Julião recognized that the hope of the 1960s had diminished and turned into desperation, which he considered a violent regression.27 “Today there is no more hope because the factories have been closing throughout Brazil, the unemployment rates grow at a dizzying pace,” with inflation and the inability for national companies to compete with foreign capital.28 He felt that in the 1980s Brazil experienced a terrible regression in terms of malnutrition, social illnesses, inflation, illiteracy, prostitution—“all of the social indicators are negative.”29 Responding to

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Eliane Moury Fernandes’ question about whether Julião had been able to track the political, economic and social developments that had occurred in Brazil while he was in exile, Julião referred to a comment made by economist Francisco Oliveira, “ ‘Brazil today is nordestinizado.’ This says it all.”30 Julião’s testimonies reveal his reflections on the Ligas’s struggles during his exile in Mexico. His statements counter dominant perceptions of the Ligas as violent, illegal instigators of the coup, and emphasize the Ligas’ autonomy while minimizing his own role in the formation and expansion of certain sectors of the movement. His version of what happened after the coup in terms of his choice to go into hiding, his arrest and imprisonment, and his experience seeking asylum and going into exile counter the silences that pervaded the military’s position on the matter. He also challenged the economic “miracle” of the dictatorship, referring to the poverty in a way that conforms to the trope of o Nordeste. Julião was cordial when speaking about numerous political leaders and other social movements, perhaps seeking to reconcile past wounds and re-establish political connections for his own election campaign. He returned to Brazil after facing hardships as an exile in Mexico to a very different political landscape, and he lost the election for federal representative in 1986. After the election he returned to Mexico, living his final years in poverty, renting a small apartment above a grocery store near Tepozlán without running water and isolated from Brazilian politics.31

Remembering the Ligas, Julião, and the Cuban Revolution People’s memories of the 1950s and 1960s vary tremendously along with their perceptions of the dictatorship. Some, such as Conservative Maria do Carmo Barreto Campello Melo, founder of the Pernambuco Women’s Democratic Crusade (Cruzada Democrática Feminina de Pernambuco) and leader of the Pernambucan March of the Family with God in 1964, described the 1960s as a time when “there was an inversion of social values. I felt that the values we believed in were being attacked, perhaps to the point of destruction. There was an air of disquiet. It was an era of generalized anguish.”32 Others recognized the period as “revolutionary,” with the potential for real change in the region and nation. Similar to the political and cultural debates in the 1950s and 1960s, the memories challenge the idea of a homogeneous Nordeste. The contradictions in the

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accounts further illustrate the hegemonic struggles that occurred before the coup, demonstrating that no one particular group held legitimacy to construct a dominant narrative. This section evaluates some of the common threads in the oral histories about the Ligas, such as visions of the relative strength of the Ligas, perceptions of Julião as a radical or reformist, relations between the Ligas and Cuba, and perceptions of the dictatorship in the Northeast. Rural social movement leaders associated with the Catholic Church, the Communist Party, and the Ligas all claimed that their own movement had the most power and popular support in the rural Northeast. For example, Paulo Crespo, leader of the Church Federation of Rural Workers, claimed that the Church’s broader labor organization of rural unions was more effective than the Ligas because the Church unions focused on an array of issues including wage increases and working conditions, not exclusively agrarian reform. He recalled the Church leading the majority of rural unions in the countryside, and that peasants themselves were “authentic” leaders of most of these unions. Crespo also remembered that Julião encouraged rural workers to join the Church-led unions. In contrast, Paulo Cavalcanti (PCB) argued that the PCB rural unions were the strongest rural social movement in the Northeast and held support from the majority of rural workers and peasants. Cavalcanti argued that the Communist Party placed a stronger emphasis on fostering “authentic” leadership from the peasantry in contrast to the other rural social movements. Communist Party leader Gregório Bezerra confirmed such statements, remembering that many Ligas members joined the PCB rural unions because the unions sought a broader platform, fighting for workers’ rights and not only agrarian reform.33 Countering Crespo, Cavalcanti, and Bezerra’s perspectives, journalist Clovis Melo remembered the Ligas as having “complete hegemony in the countryside from 1955 to 1964. There were a few Ligas that didn’t follow Julião’s command, but about 70 to 80 percent obeyed his command and were not connected to the PCB and even fought against the PCB.”34 Even after twenty years, the rural social movements continued to battle over who held more power in the rural Northeast. Although some recalled the Ligas as a radical organization, others claimed it was more “legalistic” than revolutionary and described Julião as a “reformer” instead of a radical. For example, Paulo Crespo claimed that Julião led the Ligas by favoring a position of agrarian reform through

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agrarian legislation.35 Helio Mariano da Silva, Pernambucan secretary of state under Arraes, referred to the legalistic position of Julião in giving legal counsel to the rural worker to defend themselves against the violence of the countryside. As he stated, “Julião, a respectable figure . . . was the man who laid the first brick to benefit the rural worker in Pernambuco.”36 Mariano da Silva explained that some Ligas and rural unions were radical and others were not, illustrating the significance of the localized context in the 1950s and 1960s. Ligas lawyer Joaquim Ferreiro Filho described the social movement as legalistic, organizing from within existing laws in the civil code to push for broader democratic freedoms for rural workers.37 But, at the same time, Ferreiro also recalled Julião as an unorganized leader who was spontaneous and undisciplined.38 The revolutionary aspect of the movement was more of a discourse than an objective, especially since the Ligas focused mostly on legal issues rather than revolutionary training and preparation.39 He claimed that Julião’s break with the Left was due to Julião’s insistence on not being incorporated into party politics, which left him totally isolated.40 Those who defined Julião as a radical described his tactics in organizing the Ligas and frequently made mention of his connection with Cuba. Ivã Figueiredo, Ligas leader in Sapé, compared Julião to Paraíban representative Assis Lemos, claiming that Julião was more radical whereas Assis Lemos was a reformer and tried to avoid conflicts. Figueiredo remembered that when Julião spoke in Sapé, he rallied rural workers, leaving people with the taste of blood in their mouths.41 Assis Lemos claimed that Julião’s Ligas constituted a radical movement that wanted land reform “by law or by force” and looked to train guerrillas.42 Paulo Cavalcanti described Julião as “promoting himself as an incontestable national leader . . . which led into an array of uncontrollable radicalism—radical reforms—of all sorts,” in his campaigns for social revolution.43 He explained Julião’s ideas as being “connected to the theses Regis Debray would later develop . . . as if it were possible to arrive at a revolution without a revolutionary theory and without an instrument to apply theory such as the Marxist Party.”44 Other subjects interviewed claimed that Julião’s radicalism was based on his Maoist orientation.45 Some tactics, such as raising a flag on the Engenho Serra with the label, “the independent republic of Serra” and leading protest marches against Arraes, were seen as anarchist and as endangering the democratically elected government.46

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In the 1980s, researchers conducting interviews about the Northeast before the coup sought to find out if affiliations had actually existed between Cuban revolutionaries and the Ligas Camponesas. Cuba had been synonymous with revolution and radicalism, making Cuba a discursive tactic for police repression in the 1950s and 1960s, which complicates attempts to decipher what connections actually existed. For example, Sapé Ligas leader Ivã Figueiredo referred to a favela created during the dictatorship that was named “Nova Cuba” because people considered the favela’s inhabitants to be communists.47 Hango Trench told a story about how the police under Arraes had to house some rural workers in the military barracks for a night who were in transit to state-owned lands after a conflict on the Engenho Serra. The following day, the newspapers published stories with headlines reading, “‘Peasants Armed in the Barracks of Recife,’ bringing to mind the problem in Cuba, comparing the situation to that of Cuban peasants. . . . People began believing that Pernambuco was in a state of armed insurrection.”48 Conservatives rarely mentioned Cuba in their testimonies in the 1980s, which also illustrates the likely exaggeration of Cuba’s connection with the Ligas. The absence of Cuba as a reference point might also be explained by the Ligas’s failure to create a Cuban-style revolution, and the perceived failings of the Cuban Revolution in Cuba in the 1980s. Julião himself seemed to distance himself from Cuba in the 1980s, claiming that the revolution had created an uncontainable excitement and push for social revolution in the Northeast. Although the PCB officially supported Cuba throughout this period, PCB rural union leaders in the Northeast described relations with Cuba as one of the main distinctions between the Ligas and the PCB rural unions. According to PCB leader Gregorio Bezerra, the Ligas diverged from the PCB when Julião sought affiliations with Cuba.49 PCB leader Paulo Cavalcanti emphasized this separation between the Ligas and PCB in his memoirs, arguing that the PCB had suffered because of Julião and other extremists, who were misguided in seeking an alliance with Cuba.50 He claimed that Julião and Clodomir Morais prepared focos in Goiás, even though the Cuban revolutionaries who were supposed to train the activists never appeared in Brazil.51 Cavalcanti recalled how the PCB tried to “bring Julião to reality” and to recognize the differences between Brazil and Cuba, such as the fact that Cuba had been under a dictatorship at the time of the revolution.52 But “the Cuban Revolution took hold of his spirit confusing him [Julião].”53 Gregorio Bezerra shared similar recollections about

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the continual contact between the Ligas and Cuban revolutionaries. He claimed that Julião believed Brazil was ready for a Cuban-style revolution and that the Ligas leaders and participants constantly made trips to Cuba in the early 1960s.54 Ligas leader Ivã Figueiredo of Sapé went on one of these trips and described it in his interview. About fifty Brazilians went to Cuba for thirty days, and the Cubans took them on tours of revolutionary sites, such as the Sierra Maestra. But Figueiredo claimed that no revolutionary training took place in Cuba and that he went there because he was offered a free trip and wanted to see a foreign country.55 Others believed that Cuba was only a discursive tool employed by the Ligas to manipulate the peasants who did not know where Cuba was on the map. Yara Brayner, for example, claimed that Cuba could have never exported a revolution at this time because it was still consolidating the revolution within Cuba. “The order of the day at that time was ‘Cuba Yes, Yankee No,’ but the poor peasant did not know where Cuba was or what was a Yankee.”56 Brayner’s perspective reflects many of the arguments surrounding the 1964 coup about the ignorance of the peasants and their manipulation by Ligas “agitators,” but as Figueiredo’s testimony reveals, Cuba may not have been such an exotic idea for Northeastern rural workers in the early 1960s. Ligas leader and lawyer Joaquim Ferreira Filho described Julião as monopolizing the banner of the Cuban Revolution by affiliating with Cuban revolutionaries and positioning himself as being connected to the Cuban experience. But Ferreira Filho also believed that for Julião, this affiliation was romantic or poetic, and more of a dream than a reality.57 At the same time, Ferreira Filho recalled that some of the leaders within the Ligas had established strong connections with Cuba, such as Clodomir Morais. One of the interesting parts of Ferreira Filho’s testimony was his description of Goiás. Many testimonies and memoirs that were published later described Goiás and Dianópolis as guerrilla training centers, but Ferreira Filho claimed that he had spent time there in the early 1960s and said that the Ligas established in Goiás were not clandestine organizations. He remembered them as being similar to the Ligas in Pernambuco and Paraíba in the sense that they focused on legal issues of land ownership and against systems of unpaid labor such as the cambão.58 Perhaps because the Brazilian Armed Forces still ruled in the early 1980s, those interviewed told few explicit stories about guerrilla training camps and preparations for armed struggle. Another reason that might

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explain the lack of reference may have been that such tactics were relatively minor occurrences within the rural social movements. More recent testimonies and memoirs of Ligas participants and leaders provide greater details about guerrilla training camps in Brazil and in Cuba. For example, in a 2004 interview, Julião’s first wife, Alexina Crespo, recalled her involvement in the Ligas as a militant involved in armed struggle. In the early 1960s, she participated in guerrilla training in Cuba, learning how to use all different types of weapons (bazooka, mortar, machine gun) and received a clandestine name (nom de guerre), “Maria.” She recalled going undercover in Brazil in 1963 to bring money to the guerrilla training camps in Goiás and she worked with Clodomir de Morais to make bombs. Another guerrilla activist associated with the Ligas, Aybirê Ferreira de Sá, claimed in his published memoirs, in 2007, that one faction of the Ligas—the Movimento Revolucionário Tiradentes (MRT)—pursued guerrilla strategies, but he described the MRT as being “artificially supported by mostly students and intellectuals,” unlike the Ligas that was a mass movement.59 The Cuban Revolution motivated the formation of the MRT, but he described it as being precariously supported and eventually dissolving. People’s memories of the effects of the coup and the resulting military dictatorship in Brazil can be divided as what João Roberto Martins Filho calls a “War of Memory” in which two camps—Conservatives and Leftists, or the military and militants—are clearly divided in their interpretations of the past either speaking triumphantly about the military dictatorship or recalling the coup and dictatorship as tragic.60 On the one hand, many rural social movement activists and Leftist politicians were arrested and imprisoned after the coup; many faced torture, and some recalled friends who had been disappeared after the coup. Such testimonies often provide graphic details of the types of tortures used, the prison conditions, and the general state of fear. Leftists strongly criticized the policies the military had practiced in the Northeast during the dictatorship, claiming that the impoverished conditions in the Northeast had worsened during the dictatorship despite technological advancements.61 Bezerra, for instance, said that the military government spoke only of agrarian reform, but in reality, the projects instated only led to an intensification of landholdings controlled by multinational corporations. For peasants, the Northeast turned into a “true hell,” as they were increasingly displaced from their lands. Similar to other testimonies, Bezerra used the rise of prostitution as a way of denouncing the degradation of social conditions throughout the

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dictatorship. Such a description carries metaphoric weight when employed along with language describing degradation and suffering. The Northeast as prostitute to the dictatorship alludes to how the military used and disrespected the region. On the other hand, Conservatives often recalled the coup as providing relief from the chaos and fear that they had felt before 1964. The military provided order and stability in the Northeast, which also allowed for legal social reforms to improve the social conditions. Conservatives claimed that rural standards of living had improved during the dictatorship. João Cleofas believed that rural wages were higher in Pernambuco than in Rio and were much higher than they had been before 1964.62 Large landowner Sabiano do Rego Maio described the situation in the countryside as improving after the coup. Not only were property rights restored, but new rural social services also became available such as medical assistance, credit financing and agricultural workers’ cards.63 Albelardo Jurema also vowed that the situation in the Northeast had improved during the dictatorship because of the implementation of laws that even allowed for rural workers’ retirement benefits. Conservatives also argued that the military had passed agrarian reform laws that the democratic government had not been able to pass, allowing for the improvement of rural conditions.64 What, if anything, would define the stories and testimonies recorded in the abertura period as particularly Northeastern? Most of the subjects interviewed were from the Northeast, although many had spent years in exile abroad or internally. Transcribed interviews and memoirs do not indicate a different dialect, and photographs do not identify those interviewed as a particular ­nordestino physical type. None of the subjects appeared to revel in violence in a c­angaceiro-esque fashion, nor did they speak in any way resembling religious fanaticism. Instead, the interviews provide a broad variety of perspectives and recollections of the political and cultural struggles in Northeastern Brazil during the Cold War. In the 1980s, people’s perspectives still lacked the shape of a dominant narrative or a concise answer about what had happened in the Northeast in the 1950s and 1960s. As this book has demonstrated, o Nordeste is a set of ideas, narratives, and images that bind the region together in the imaginary realm as a cohesive place and people.65 In the 1950s and 1960s, multiple social and cultural actors drew on regional symbols, often imbuing them with new meanings to gain public support for their political projects, competing and debating for hegemony. In the testimonies of the 1980s, subjects refer

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to such examples to a lesser extent, reflecting the passage of time and the changed historical context. Although the other symbols mobilized in the 1950s and 1960s—­ slavery and abolition, backlands banditry, religious fanaticism, rural poverty, and modernizing coronéis, such as Delmiro Gouveia—remained relatively absent from the testimonies, other nordestino themes arose. One such theme draws upon Euclides da Cunha’s claim that “beyond all else, the sertanejo is strong.” Although the stories are not particular to the Northeast per se, the stories narrated in the oral histories are of survival and persistence rather than victimization. Returned exiles tell stories about their commitment to the problems of the Northeast while abroad and state their desire to return. Those who did not seek exile spoke of their continued presence in Brazil as a badge of courage and as proof of their strength and commitment to solving the problems in the Northeast. A number of activists described their imprisonment and torture as motivating their continued activism during the dictatorship. For example, for Padre Alípio de Freitas, a Portuguese Catholic priest who became a Ligas leader in the 1960s, the Ligas Camponesas served as a point of departure for his political militancy during the dictatorship. He dedicated his memoirs, Resistir é preciso (Resisting is Necessary) to the memory of assassinated Ligas leaders, who “gave their lives for the struggle for freedom of the Brazilian people.”66 After the 1964 coup, Alípio went into exile in Mexico and then Cuba, before returning to Brazil to partake in the guerrilla resistance movement through Popular Action (Acão Popular, AP) and the Revolutionary Worker’s Party (Partido Revolucionário dos Trabalhadores, RTP). He had been organizing a rural resistance movement outside Brasília when he was arrested in May 1970 in Juscelino Kubitschek, a favela of Rio de Janeiro. Resistir é preciso focuses on describing the facilities where he was imprisoned, the military and police he encountered, and the torture and interrogation he endured from 1970 to 1979, including electric shock, drowning simulations, and the pau-de-arara (parrot’s perch). Since Alípio was imprisoned and tortured before 1964, he saw the human rights violations during the dictatorship as part of a longer history of how the Brazilian state functioned to uphold the rights of imperialist powers and the elites through the use of force. His memoirs are a political manifesto against the military and the Brazilian government, denouncing the use of torture and political imprisonment and confirming his commitment to fighting for workers’ rights.67

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Re-presenting o Nordeste in Cabra Marcado para Morrer Even though Cabra marcado para morrer was a documentary film, a genre that usually fails to generate a popular following, an estimated 500,000 people saw the film in the first five years after its release.68 According to EMBRAFILME data, at least 195,730 people saw the film in Brazilian theaters between its release in November 1984 to May 1985.69 The documentary’s popularity begs the question of why a story centered on the experiences of one Northeastern rural family resonated with such a broad audience. What did middle-class cariocas (people from Rio de Janeiro) see in Cabra marcado para morrer that drew them to the theaters? In this section, I show how the filmmaker’s use of different “reality effects” created a believable narrative about the history of the Ligas Camponesas that had been silenced during the military dictatorship. The film challenged dominant assumptions about Northeastern women in its portrayal of Elizabeth Teixeira, creating a broader narrative of suffering and resilience caused by the dictatorship. The film’s arguments also further developed certain narratives and political movements circulating throughout Brazil during the abertura period about the possibilities for reconciliation. As Rebecca Atencio argues in her analysis of Fernando Gabeira’s testimony about armed struggle, O que é isso, companheiro? (What’s Going on Here, Comrade?, 1979), his account turned “reconciliation by memory” into a dominant theme in the 1980s. Amnesty for political exiles meant both resistance to the dictatorship and a reconciliation of the national family, or a selective remembering to find reconciliation.70 She argues that through its use of humor and by not explicitly denouncing military officials who committed torture as criminals, Companheiro did not threaten the military’s call for impunity for torturers. I find Atencio’s arguments particularly useful when analyzing the documentary Cabra marcado para morrer. Similar to Gabeira’s Companheiro, Coutinho’s Cabra marcado was also produced for mass public consumption, recounting a version of the history of the Ligas Camponesas as a form of resistance to the dictatorship while approaching the theme of reconciliation through its reforming of the Galileus community and the Teixeira family. But in contrast to Atencio’s reading of Companheiro, Coutinho’s Cabra marcado is a tragic story that suggests the impossibility of the national family completely healing from the crimes committed during the dictatorship. It also creates a gendered

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narrative about women during the dictatorship as suffering yet resilient mothers. Cabra marcado has become a reference for other Ligas participants and leaders to frame their memories of the Ligas, the coup, and the dictatorship. I believe that in this way, Coutinho’s Cabra Marcado’s has shaped the history of the Ligas Camponesas, becoming what Steve Stern has called in his work on Chile a form of “emblematic memory.” Stern’s idea of “emblematic memory” contributes to the definition of collective memory by arguing that certain events, people, or productions provide a “framework for collective remembrance . . . based on experiences directly lived by an individual or [revealed in] . . . lore told by relatives, friends, comrades.”71 Emblematic memory relies on some type of public domain such as mass media reports that help individuals to connect their personal memories (what he calls “loose memories”) to broader narratives about the past. Emblematic memories are often not shared by the entire society, but used selectively by rival groups who may each claim to have their own collective truth about the society’s past. Stern argues that when certain versions are seen or held as “the most essential collective truth,” then they become central in the nation’s “memory box,” or hegemonic version of the past.72 Through Coutinho’s “reality effect” techniques, Cabra marcado created a powerful narrative about the history of the Ligas and the consequences of the coup and dictatorship in the Northeast. After describing the plot and production of Cabra marcado, the rest of this chapter analyzes Coutinho’s techniques to suggest how they have held power to narrate the history of the Ligas, while also analyzing how themes of family and motherhood described a process of resistance and reconciliation. Twenty years after the 1964 coup, the story of the Ligas Camponesas returned to the public view in Cabra marcado para morrer. Coutinho originally began filming a feature film about the assassination of Ligas leader João Pedro Teixeira in early 1964 on the Engenho Galiléia. The original film was shot in the realistic style associated with Cinema Novo, employing nonprofessional actors, including João Pedro’s wife and children and Ligas participants and leaders. The military coup disrupted the filming process and the Brazilian Armed Forces invaded the Engenho Galiléia. The film crew and local actors/participants fled the location. Some escaped to Recife while others were arrested and their film equipment was confiscated. Although the film was not finished, around nine reels had already been shipped to Rio for processing, allowing some footage to be

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preserved.73 ­Records in the DOPS-PE archives suggest the Armed Forces were interested in Cabra marcada because of its “subversive” themes and ­connection to “communism.” A DOPS investigation found administrators of the Northeastern Railroad Company guilty of “subversive action” because the Railway administration had loaned the filmmakers a truck and two drivers free of charge, assisting the “subversive” filmmakers affiliated with the Communist Party.74 Besides the railway administrator, the military arrested and imprisoned some members of the Galileus community who had been actors in the film because of their participation in the Ligas. During the confusion of the coup, the original script of Cabra marcado was thrown into the cane fields and found by a military official who decided to keep it instead of handing it over as evidence. After fleeing Galiléia on April 1, 1964, Elizabeth Teixeira went into hiding with the assistance of filmmaker Vladimir de Carvalho. She then decided to turn herself in to the police so that she would be able to return to her children. She was imprisoned for three months and twenty-four days and interrogated about her trip to Cuba.75 She told them she had traveled to Cuba at the invitation of the Cuban government to visit her son, who was studying there. Upon her release, she went to her parents’ house in Sapé, Paraíba. Armed large landowners and the police surrounded the house, demanding that Elizabeth come out. Her children had been sent to the homes of family members in the area, and the police had already threatened to burn down the Teixeira house. Still sick and weak from the months in prison, she managed to escape in a car the next day, bringing her youngest son with her to João Pessoa. The Army invaded her parents’ house the following day looking for her. Other leaders of the Sapé Liga were disappeared. Elizabeth decided to go into hiding, working at first as a rural laborer on a bean farm then working as a domestic maid in the small town of São Rafeal, taking the name of Marta Maria da Costa. Her young son sold candies on the street, and she washed clothes in the river for additional money. As she got to know the community better, she started working as a teacher.76 As she explained, “Encircled by children, I only thought of my children. I spent restless days and nights, only thinking of my children. I couldn’t open up to anyone, I couldn’t speak to anyone about my life, nor could my son. . . . Although the time passed by, I never lost the hope of one day finding my children again.”77 While Elizabeth survived clandestinely in a small town in Rio Grande do Norte, Eduardo Coutinho directed other films, worked as a screen-

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writer, and was part of the crew of TV Globo’s Globo Repórter. Former Ligas lawyer and leader Ophélia Amorim gave the script of Cabra marcado to Eduardo Coutinho in 1968, after she had received it from a military official.78 More than ten years later, Coutinho attended a public parade in João Pessoa, Paraíba, to welcome Pernambucan ex-governor Miguel Arraes back from exile, and there he met one of Elizabeth Teixeira’s sons.79 He returned to his unfinished film in 1981, conducting interviews with the rural men and women who had appeared in the film in 1964. He filmed their reactions to a public screening of the 1964 footage, and conducted research in newspaper archives. He contacted Elizabeth, and later located and interviewed her familial diaspora. This resulted in Cabra marcado para morrer, a documentary that ties together past, present (1980s), and multiple stories about struggle, loss, exile, and perseverance. The film released in 1984 depicts the changes that occurred in people’s lives during the dictatorship through three overlapping themes or topics: the Engenho Galiléia, Elizabeth Teixeira, and the Teixeira familial diaspora. As Alcides Freire Ramos describes, the 1984 film is based on fragments of memories of the rural people involved in the 1964 film used to oppose the official history written by the Brazilian Armed Forces.80 One theme describes Coutinho’s return to the Engenho Galiléia in 1982. He interviews surviving community members about their role in the film and what happened in their lives in the past twenty years. This part of the film uses newspaper clippings and still photographs from 1964 to return to the historical context of the coup and the original filming process. Similar to the original 1964 script, the film’s main subject is the Teixeira family. Using clips from the original film about João Pedro Teixeira to shift the story to the Teixeira family, Cabra marcado uncovers what happened to Elizabeth Teixeira after the coup, providing glimpses of the clandestine life that separated her from eight of her nine children and recording her memories of the 1950s and 1960s. Coutinho then tracks down her surviving children in an attempt to reunite the family. The film came to emblemize the period of the abertura, or the political opening of the dictatorship (1979–85), uncovering silences about the violence of the dictatorship in the Northeast and at the same time suggesting the impossibility of a national healing or reunification of the national family. The reunions in Cabra marcado are uncomfortable and tragic, offering a glimpse of people’s suffering during the dictatorship. Framed as a family torn apart, stories of deaths and displacements reveal the precariousness of the reconciliation project, chal-

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lenging the military’s Amnesty Law. I turn now to a discussion of the “reality effects” Coutinho employed followed by an analysis of Coutinho’s story about Elizabeth Teixeira. Part of the documentary’s power comes from its “reality effect,” or the techniques Coutinho used to create a perception of historical reality. By using archival footage, newspaper clippings, historical photographs, and voice-overs often assuming a testimonial narrator’s voice in the 1984 film, Coutinho presents his version of history as the true history of what happened to the Ligas Camponesas in 1964.81 For example, Coutinho uses photographs from newspaper archives as evidence illustrating the violence between rural workers and landowners in the 1960s. Besides images of João Pedro Teixeira’s bloody corpse, Coutinho uses visual evidence from rural conflicts in the form of still photographs of protest marches and contorted corpses of policemen and rural workers that are not the same conflicts as the one described by the voiceover. Although the original 1964 film was based on a true story, it was in fact a script that Coutinho created, as Ramos explains, “with typified characters and dialogues that were distanced from the peasant culture that he wanted to portray.”82 The “archival” film footage from 1964 must be read as related to the political project of the CPC da UNE filmmakers and intellectuals, which is different from the actual story of the Ligas Camponesas. The 1984 film must also be recognized as Coutinho’s argument that the 1964 coup and dictatorship were a tragedy for Brazil, even though it has come to emblemize a much broader story about the Ligas, the coup, and the dictatorship. An example of Coutinho’s use of “reality effect” techniques to blend film time with real time to support his argument can be seen in the final 1964 scene in the 1984 film. In the original scene, Elizabeth looks out the window and announces to a group of men inside the house, “Tem gente lá afora” (There’s someone outside), in a tone expressing fear or urgency. Perhaps it is the landowner’s thugs or the police? Although the audience does not know the situation or who was outside, Coutinho allows this phrase to acquire a dual meaning, not only signifying someone outside her house within the script from 1964 but also signifying the invasion of the Brazilian Armed Forces at the start of the 1964 coup. He does this by filming the former Ligas Camponesas militants repeating the phrase Elizabeth had said in the original film, “There’s someone outside,” twenty years later. Numerous rural people repeat the same phrase for emphasis. To provide the new meaning of the statement about the looming invasion of

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the Brazilian Armed Forces, Coutinho shifts the narrative to describe what happened to the film crew after the coup on the Engenho Galiléia with a voice-over describing how the film crew fled in groups of three into the forest and took separate buses to Recife to avoid arrest. The conflation between the two films, eliding real time with film time, creates a reality effect, “obscuring the fact that every image is constructed, organized, arranged, and rearranged by someone.”83 As argued in other chapters about representations of o Nordeste in films, the power of the “reality effect” is reinforced through Coutinho’s use of stereotypes of Northeastern Brazil and its people, coding the region as o Nordeste. Establishing scenes in both the 1964 film and the 1984 film employ images that locate the film in o Nordeste. For example, the opening scene of the 1984 film portrays an impoverished neighborhood situated along the banks of a river. Barefoot children and livestock walk through a neighborhood of wooden shacks constructed over water and mud of an estuary, identifying the Northeast as an impoverished “Third World.” The camera then focuses on children collecting crabs, alluding to Josué de Castro’s characterization of nordestinos as “crab people,” society’s bottom feeders who precariously survive by consuming the small crabs inhabiting the estuaries. Many of the 1964 images emphasize the impoverished conditions that often represent the Northeast, depicting mud houses, agricultural production with rustic tools, and men working in the fields. Although I am not contesting the possibility that such things actually happened, many of the scenes were in fact produced and stylized to portray Coutinho’s vision of the Ligas and o Nordeste. As the film moves to 1984, it shifts from black and white to color, but many of the establishing scenes remain the same. For example, the camera provides images of São Rafeal as o Nordeste through shots of children running barefoot through unpaved streets and a donkey, carrying long dry sticks, that is reminiscent of the donkey in Aruanda. Cabra marcado’s “reality effect” is accentuated by Coutinho’s employment of images that draw from common stereotypes associated with the trope of o Nordeste. The audience may be willing to accept the footage as real precisely because such images conform to dominant perceptions of o Nordeste. Coutinho’s depictions of Elizabeth Teixeira portray her as having suffered tremendously in her separation from her children and community, a common theme in gendered representations of dictatorships. As Elizabeth Jelin argues about social memories of Southern Cone dictatorships, men often represent the repression, and women portray the pain and suffering of the repression.84 Elizabeth Teixeira’s memories of survival after the coup

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are connected to her identity as a mother who suffers because she has to leave her children so that all may survive. In the film, she explains that she took the name Marta because she felt it best described her situation of a suffering martyr. Other militant women involved in radical political movements in the 1950s and 1960s described their suffering due to repression in similar ways. For example, Leftist leaders such as Naíde Regueira Teodósio who worked for the Arraes government and led the PCB’s Brazilian Women’s Federation and Dr. Yara Lúcia Brayner Mattos, also affiliated with the PCB and leader of the Adult Literacy Project in Palmares in the 1960s, referred to their families in their recollections of arrest and torture. Teodósio described being arrested along with her husband in front of her children and taken to DOPS. She feared that she would not leave DOPS alive, and was regularly subjected to false executions and interrogations. She claimed her imprisonment gave her a new sense of strength in that she did not want to give herself like a sheep to the military, to be killed like they kill sheep in the interior.85 Teodósio’s two sons participated in the resistance against the dictatorship, and both were arrested in 1973, imprisoned, and subjected to torture. This led Teodósio to contact newspapers throughout the world, and a French paper published an account of the torture of her son. Brayner also faced torture and mock executions while in prison, claiming that she was released from prison with help from her father, whom she described as a reactionary.86 She recalled that after her husband had died in the early years of the dictatorship, she resumed her political activism by working with the Church in the countryside and was later arrested, in 1969. Although the women narrate a story of resilience and commitment, they also refer to their families in their testimonies, showing the intimate familial connections that influenced their political activism. The family is an important metaphor in Cabra marcado that Coutinho uses to express the atrocities of the dictatorship. The historical footage of Elizabeth portrays her as being first and foremost a “traditional” mother. In most of the 1964 footage, she is surrounded by her children, engaged in typical maternal activities, although a few scenes show her speaking at political rallies, alluding to her role as a political militant and Ligas leader. In the 1984 film, we see her living alone in exile in a small town in Rio Grande do Norte under the assumed name of Dona Marta. Figures 6.1 and  6.2 show her in scenes from the documentary, portraying her working with school children, surrounded by her female friends, and washing clothes in the river, marking Elizabeth as part of the feminine Northeastern world.

Figure 6.1

Norte.

Elizabeth Teixeira in Cabra marcado para morrer in exile in Rio Grande do

Source: Acervo Cinemateca Brasileira/SAv/MinC, São Paulo. Courtesy of Mapa Filmes.

Figure 6.2

Norte.

Elizabeth Teixeira in Cabra marcado para morrer in exile in Rio Grande do

Source: Acervo Cinemateca Brasileira/SAv/MinC, São Paulo. Courtesy of Mapa Filmes.

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Similarly, in a 2004 interview with Julião’s first wife, Alexina Crespo described herself as a “traditional” and “simple” mother and wife, who worked as Julião’s assistant, taking notes when peasants arrived at the house to discuss their reasons for seeking legal assistance.87 She also gave medical care to those who “could not go to the hospital,” even though she was not a doctor or a nurse. She described herself as having always been politically conscious and involved, but she said that she was not a “Maria Quitéria, Anita Garbaldi. I was and am a very simple woman. I don’t consider myself extraordinary at all.”88 At the same time, Alexina trained and fought as a guerrilla in Brazil in the early 1960s. Similar to Daniel James’s analysis of María Roldón in Doña María’s Story,89 Alexina validates her political activism first and foremost as a wife and mother, and describes herself as a “simple woman.” Further illustrating the gendered aspects of how memories are narrated, Alexina did not emphasize her more radical positions, but chose to define herself and her actions according to a more traditional view of a woman’s role. Although Northeastern women described suffering during the dictatorship as related to family separations and their stories are tragic, they also depict themselves as resilient and strong. As Consuelo Lins argues, Elizabeth’s transformation within the 1984 film itself helps challenge the notion of nordestino victimization and tragedy. When Elizabeth first appears in the 1984 film, she is prompted by her son, Abraão, to give thanks to Brazilian (military) president Figueiredo for the liberalization policies of the abertura that have allowed for exiles to reunite with their families and return to their homeland. When Elizabeth appears next in the film, she is not accompanied by her son, and reflects that she was unhappy with her initial interview because she felt that she did not properly express what she wanted to say. At this point, she smiles and looks more relaxed, telling stories about the 1950s and 1960s centered around her family, marriage, and the Ligas Camponesas. Lins argues that through Elizabeth the film shows that “narrating is an active and productive practice.”90 As the film continues, Elizabeth reveals her past identity as a Ligas leader to her community and discloses her real name.91 In the final scene with Elizabeth, we see her speaking as a political militant, claiming that “the fight cannot stop as long as people are hungry and have miserable wages, people have to fight. . . . I have suffered, I have to fight and I believe this regime must be changed. We must fight this so-called democracy, because we have democracy without freedom.” Film critics have recognized Elizabeth’s transformation from

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a “timid nordestina” to an empowered militant who remains committed to social struggle as a central motif of the film.92 The contrast between the 1964 footage of Elizabeth and the scenes of Dona Marta in Rio Grande do Norte emphasizes the tragedy of the family being torn apart as one of being dismembered by the military dictatorship. The coup forced her into hiding, and to protect herself and her children, she had to abandon them. Groups fighting for amnesty in Brazil in the 1970s before the military’s Amnesty Law was signed in 1979, such as the Women’s Amnesty Movement (Movimento Feminino pela Anistia, MFPA), also depicted Brazil as a family torn apart.93 The film masterfully depicts the metaphor through the “real-life” experiences of Elizabeth ­Teixiera and her children. To relocate her children, Coutinho shows a 1964 still of the family, zooming in on each face then explaining what has happened in their lives in the past twenty years. Coutinho starts by discussing the deaths of two of the children, one who was beaten to death and one who committed suicide. Her youngest son, who stayed with her in São Rafeal, knows only one of his siblings. Other than Elizabeth’s two sons, who had been studying elsewhere (Cuba and Maceió) and escaped the coup, most of the other Teixeira children have no memories of their parents. Coutinho uses these scenes with her children emphasize the “forgetting” that has taken place and the military’s historical narrative of the Ligas as criminals and communists. One of the daughters, who had moved to Rio de Janeiro, cries when Coutinho shows her photographs of her mother and siblings, as she remembers that her mother had left her with her maternal grandparents— “given her away”—but she did not know why her mother abandoned her children. Coutinho plays the voice recording of Elizabeth, saying that now that she has been found and can come out of hiding, she wants to get to know her children, a statement that makes her daughter cover her face and cry. By tracking down her children and interviewing them about their memories and experiences, Coutinho emphasizes a tragic story of suffering, displacement, and loss. The interviews with the Teixeira children illustrate the Brazilian military’s attempt to erase the story of the Ligas from Brazil’s history. Most of the children had no idea that their parents had been Ligas leaders in the 1950s and 1960s. Most have their own children and live in impoverished conditions in marginalized areas of cities or in rural shacks. Through such representations in the 1984 documentary of the continued poverty, the film challenges the military government’s versions of the dicta-

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torship as an economic miracle. It also protests the military’s use of the idea of protecting and preserving the family and nation as reasons legitimizing military rule. The idea of telling the story of a family’s dismemberment to illustrate the suffering caused by the military also forms the framework for the memories of Anatailde de Paula Crêspo, daughter of Francisco Julião and Alexina Crespo. From infancy to adolescence, Anatailde claimed all her memories were related to the political actions of her parents. As a child in Recife, she recalled her mother serving refreshments to peasants and treating wounds they got in attacks by large landowners, while her father worked with the peasants on legal matters. She recalled her father being captured by the police and her mother rushing to rescue him. Later, when she and her siblings received death threats, the children were sent to Cuba to study, suffering their first separation from their parents. Anatailde said that the military had branded the soul of her family. She spent eighteen years in exile, living in Cuba, Chile, and Sweden.94 Like other descriptions of the tragedy of the dictatorship, Anatailde Crespo’s testimony serves as a metaphor for how the military dictatorship in Brazil dismembered the family. She expressed this as a “familial diaspora” that made it impossible to see her father and sister for ten years during the dictatorship.95 Her testimony reiterates the Northeastern narrative of years of suffering and survival, concluding with a quote from a letter she had received from Julião after being released from the National Stadium in Chile in 1973: “The important thing is to survive with dignity.” She concludes the testimony with one word: “sobrevivi”—I survived.96 By analyzing oral histories, memoirs and documentaries produced in the abertura period and beyond, this chapter has detailed the multiplicity of memories about the Ligas, the coup and the dictatorship as experienced by people from Northeastern Brazil. In the 1980s, the Ligas turned into a narrative of the trope of o Nordeste as a form of resistance to the dictatorship. Many of the stories about the Ligas were told as tragedy related to the social movement’s dismemberment after the coup and the continuance of regional poverty during the dictatorship. Such stories further reinforced the strand of the trope that depicts o Nordeste as trapped in an enduring cycle of resistance, repression and impoverishment. At the same time, stories such as Elizabeth Teixeira’s challenged stereotypes of nordestinos as passive victims by emphasizing how Northeasterners fought to survive and remained committed to social and political struggle.

7 Zito de Galiléia Preserving a Past and Envisioning a Future for the Engenho Galiléia and o Nordeste

Why should we perpetuate this Nordeste that means drought, misery, ­social injustice, violence, fanaticism, folklore and social and cultural ­backwardness? —Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Júnior, A invenção do Nordeste e outras artes, 1999 In The Invention of the Northeast , Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Júnior examines the elite and intellectual creation of o Nordeste as a discourse that separated the region of Northeastern Brazil from the Brazilian nation. In his attempt to “attack” the idea of o Nordeste, he questions regionalist representations and the “discursive prison” of o Nordeste. My study also has sought to question the stereotypes and assumptions composing the trope of o Nordeste. Instead of intending to destroy the idea of o Nordeste, Revolution in the Terra do Sol asks if it is possible to trans-code o Nordeste, displacing derogatory and elitist versions of regionalist representations with new meanings that will be useful in constructing identities of resistance. By showing how people drew from the trope of o Nordeste and modified it to gain popular support for their political projects, the book engages with the question about why regional inequalities exist in Brazil. It has demonstrated how groups I label Conservatives have held power in Brazilian society and legitimized their right to rule by using discriminatory language and ideas to disempower other groups in society. And, it has also shown how people have reinvented and subverted the trope of o Nordeste as a form of empowerment.

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Employing cultural studies methodologies to examine the contestations over representations in popular culture and political struggles, I have aimed to demonstrate the debates and struggles to create the meanings attached to the key symbols composing the trope o Nordeste. Stuart Hall’s work on representations calls for the need to evaluate the meanings and debates over cultural symbols in a given historical context as part of the project of transcoding, or giving new meanings to existing stereotypes. Revolution in the Terra do Sol has shown how a myriad of political and cultural actors—rural social movement leaders and participants, foreign and local politicians, intellectuals, journalists, large landowners, military officials, filmmakers, and popular poets—tried to gain support for their own political projects for the Northeast by appropriating the meanings of regional symbols and myths associated with the trope of o Nordeste during the Cold War. In doing so, the book has analyzed the power relations that constructed o Nordeste in the 1950s and 1960s as the Other, interrogating why people hold certain assumptions about the region and its people. Through the analysis of symbols such as the cangaceiro, the mystic or religious fanatic, the slave, the miserably poor and the coronel, the book also shows how gender, race/ethnicity, social class and religion have been part of the dialectical process of identity formation and reformation. For instance, representations of rural poor Northeastern men faced significant challenges in the 1950s and 1960s. Although notions of rural men as passive, ignorant, and victimized continued to exist, through political struggle and in popular culture new ideas about rural nordestino men emerged. The struggle for agrarian reform offered rural men roles as social movement leaders and participants who fought against large landowners for the right to property, the right to defend their wives and children and the right to be considered equal citizens in the Brazilian nation. While such a revolutionizing of identities occurred during the particular historical context of the 1950s and 1960s, such ideas did not entirely disappear with the military coup in 1964. Issues of agrarian reform, rural workers’ rights, and a visible distrust of the landowning elite continue today in new social movements, films and music produced in and about Northeastern Brazil. This book also demonstrates the difficulties involved in the process of transcoding, seeking to question the process of making stereotypes and assumptions unthinkable within Brazilian society. When and how do dominant discourses and derogatory assumptions of the nordestino as Other, or a “lesser” human species, become unimaginable? Instead of belaboring the

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stereotype of the nordestino as passive victim, Coutinho’s portrayal of Elizabeth Teixeira’s resilience and commitment to social struggle in Cabra marcado para morrer suggests another possible narrative for people from the Northeast. Similiarly, the election of nordestino Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as president of Brazil (2002–11) may have reflected a change in dominant perceptions of nordestinos but did not entirely displace such assumptions. Those who opposed Lula often referred to his uneducated background and roots as a rural Northeastern man to criticize his policies. Upon Dilma Rousseff’s victory in the presidential elections of 2010, a student in São Paulo posted a message on Twitter inciting racist violence against all nordestinos based on assumptions that Northeasterners are less qualified voters than the “educated” and “modern” voters in the Southeast.1 While the São Paulo Federal Justice court sentenced the student to prison (reduced to community service and a fine) for the crime of discrimination, reflecting a shift in legal attitudes about public discrimination, the case also shows that such derogatory assumptions about nordestinos have still not become unimaginable in Brazilian society. As a history book, Revolution in the Terra do Sol not only strives to engage with the historiographies on regionalism and rural social activism, but also with perceptions of Cold War history. Northeastern Brazil attracted international and national attention in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when US government officials and journalists portrayed the region as the “next Cuba” or the “next Vietnam.” Recife housed the largest US AID office in the world in the early 1960s and prominent government officials and intellectuals, including senator Edward Kennedy and Jean-Paul Sartre, met with rural social movement participants. But, Northeastern Brazil disappeared from ­international and national prominence as the military dictatorship became more entrenched. Because of national discourses of economic miracles and progress during the dictatorship, regional poverty was swept off the national political agenda. The dominant discourse labeled the Ligas and other rural social movements as criminal, instigated by “foreign” communist agitators who took advantage of rural nordestinos to create chaos and violence, requiring the military to seize control to protect the nation. My approach to the Cold War engaged with recent attempts to focus on the margins of Cold War struggles. Conservatives constructed dominant narratives about ­Northeastern Brazil in the 1950s and 1960s drawing from the trope of o Nordeste and Cold War discourses about deviancy and communism. Local populations became political ­actors in global struggles over capitalism versus communism, the meanings of freedom, and the possibilities for “Third World” development.

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Revolution in the Terra do Sol illustrates why the so-called margins are crucial to understanding the Cold War’s winners and losers. Another consequence of the military coup and dictatorship has been an erasure of the history of Ligas Camponesas and the social struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, not only as a global Cold War story, but also locally. As shown by the case of Elizabeth Teixeira and other former Ligas and PCB militants, the repression that rural men and women experienced after the coup led many to go into hiding, silencing their involvement in rural social movements. When I was conducting research in the sertão about the rural social movements in 2005, I went to the town of Buíque, often cited as one of only towns in the sertão that was a stronghold of the PCB Rural Syndicates. After not finding anything in the local museum and having similar results when trying to track down a few potential names of union members, I approached the Rural Workers’ Union of Buíque headquarters. I was led in to the president’s office, joined by a large crowd of interested onlookers. After introducing myself and talking about my research project, we started talking about the history of rural social activism in Buíque. The union president told me that there had never been Ligas or any other social movement in the area in the 1950s and 1960s. Pushing the question further, I mentioned that many books claimed that Buíque was a stronghold of the PCB rural unions. Defensively, the president stood up from his desk and repeated again and again that rural unions were not communist, nor had they ever been communist, in Buíque. In front of the gathered crowd that murmured their approval of his statement, he emphatically explained that there was no history of communism or communists in the town. Perhaps this is another example of how the dictatorship and Conservatives have erased the history of rural activism in the 1950s and 1960s. I conclude with an update on the process of historicization or memorializing of the Ligas Camponesas twenty years after the end of military dictatorship. The ethnographic sketch of Zito de Galiléia—a Ligas participant residing on the Engenho Galiléia—provides an example of how the Ligas Camponesas are remembered in Brazil as a part of Cold War and Northeastern history. Zito’s story also shows the lasting effects of the political struggles and popular culture on an individual life. The importance Zito places on historical narratives and on preserving history in forms of popular culture such as film and literatura de cordel are connected to his life experiences and the ongoing process of revolutionizing his identities. A third goal of including Zito’s story in the concluding chapter of the book is my intention to unsettle the trope of o Nordeste as tragedy. As a h ­ istorical

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narrative, the story of the Ligas Camponesas often is seen as ending in 1964 with the military coup. The arrests, imprisonments, torture, exile, and murders following the 1964 coup were undeniably tragic; yet the legacies of the Ligas Camponesas and other political struggles in the Northeast in the 1950s and 1960s cannot be collapsed into the “typical” tragedy of o Nordeste regularly recounted, as in historical examples of the cangaceiros, Canudos, and other rebellions quelled by state-sanctioned violence. Zito’s story is a narrative of resistance and empowerment, exemplifying how a former Ligas participant continues to challenge dominant historical narratives and to participate in the process of reshaping what it means to be nordestino.

Memorializing the Ligas Camponesas Pierre Nora’s arguments about the “upsurge in memory” offer explanations for the reasons why memorials and archives have begun to appear in the Northeast. He posits that the “explosion of minority memories” is the outcome of processes of international, domestic and ideological decolonization. For minority groups, the reclaiming of history through memory “has acquired all the new privileges and prestige of a protest movement,” and such efforts strengthen the connection between social identity and memory.2 I evaluate the individual efforts of ex-Ligas participant, Zito de Galiléia, the grandson of leader “Zezé da Galiléia,” to memorialize the Ligas on the Engenho Galiléia. While conducting research for the book, I interviewed Zito at the Engenho Galiléia. I spent two days talking with him, examining his museum collection and contributing documents from my own archival work, including copies of documents located in the DOPS-PE files on the Ligas Camponesas. Zito, as an autodidactic historian and archivist, fits into what Pierra Nora offers as one of the effects of “new memory” as minority groups “deprive the historian of the monopoly he traditionally enjoyed in interpreting the past.”3 José Joaquim da Silva, or Zito da Galiléia, was born on the Engenho Galiléia in 1947, son of Joaquim Virgílio and Lourdes José Souza, the second born in a family of seven.4 Zito participated in the Ligas as a teenager but after the 1964 coup, he fled to Recife to escape the military’s search for Ligas participants. A short time later, he recognized military undercover agents near his residence in Recife, and so he fled to São Paulo. He worked as a bus driver in São Paulo and participated in the general strikes against the dictatorship. He recalled, “While I was there, my mind kept spinning about how to work to preserve the history of the Ligas Camponesas in

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Pernambuco.” He returned to the Engenho Galiléia in 2001 and continues to organize commemorations of the Ligas and protests against the military dictatorship throughout Pernambuco. He built a small museum on his property, where he installed the generator that Edward “Ted” Kennedy donated to the Ligas in 1961. He keeps collections of boxes filled with Ligas passbooks, photographs, and other materials preserved from the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to materials for exhibition, Zito also writes popular poetry about the Ligas and the dictatorship; he has a small collection of books about the Ligas Camponesas, and he has recorded interviews with Francisco Julião conducted during one of Julião’s visits to Brazil. In 2005, the museum was best described as a shack, prominently displaying the old generator in the center, repainted green and labeled “Generator donated to the peasants of Galiléia by the U.S. Minister of Justice Robert Kened in 30 July 1961” (see Figure 7.1). Although Robert Kennedy also officially visited the region in 1966, the generator was a­ ctually a gift

Figure 7.1 The generator Edward Kennedy donated to the Ligas. Description on the wall incorrectly states “­Robert Kened” ­donated the generator. Source: Photo taken by author in 2005.

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from Edward Kennedy during his August 1961 visit, when he met with the Galileus. The relatively bare walls display a few framed images of Ligas leaders including Zezé da Galiléia and João Pedro Teixeira along with a campaign poster of Governor Miguel Arraes. Zito opened a weathered tin box holding relics of the Ligas Camponesas, such as passbooks, as well as a sizeable cockroach. On one of my visits with Zito, we walked to the simple cement memorial to the Ligas erected by the city government of Vitória de Santo Antão. The monument had been placed at the site to commemorate the forty-seventh anniversary of the expropriation of the Engenho Galiléia. Although Zito depicted the municipal government as being against officially recognizing the Ligas as a part of Pernambucan history, the monument suggests some degree of interest in historical pre­ servation. That interest may have been connected to “outsider’s interest” in the Ligas, and the presence of TV Globo at the forty-seventh anniversary celebration (see Figure 7.2).

Figure 7.2 Monument to the SAPPP—Ligas Camponesas on the Engenho Galiléia (2005). Source: Photo taken by the author in 2005.

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Zito and I walked to the top of one of the hills on the engenho, where he pointed out the locations where Coutinho had filmed parts of Cabra marcado. We stood at the top of the small hill as a strong wind rustled the cane fields, and Zito recalled that a Cuban film crew had also been at the site at the time the coup and also had to flee from the military. Upon returning to his house, we drank the bright green freshly pressed caldo de cana (sugarcane juice). Zito showed me his collection of literatura de cordel, his book collection, and we listened to the taped interview Zito made with Julião shortly before Julião’s death. I brought him copies of the documents in the DOPS-PE folder on the Ligas Camponesas, and he thumbed through them, focusing on a hand-drawn map of the Engenho Galiléia. The map provides sketches of all the houses on the engenho, including Zezé da Galiléia’s house. It depicts the casa-grande, the old sugar factory, and the church, and it also details certain geographical indicators, such as large palm trees and the creek running through the property. Arrows show the directions to the entrance into Galiléia along with distance in meters between roads and landmarks. While I had expected him to be surprised by the degree of detail in the map, he examined it closely and told me that the map was “all wrong.” He proceeded to point out the flaws of the map, showing me that certain houses were in the wrong places, indicating his position of authority as a Galiléus resident in contrast to the views espoused by the Brazilian military. I asked Zito about his impressions of Francisco Julião and paid attention to when and how Cuba entered into his recollections. Zito described Julião as “a true instrument of God. At that time, things were more difficult and no one appeared to defend the peasant. . . . He did not start the Ligas, but he entered into the story to defend the people who were here and were about to be expelled from the land. . . . Many people find it strange that he was the son of a latifundiário and an elected state representative and yet he had an enormous incentive in his heart, determined to defend the miserable and hungry people.” He claimed that everyone trusted Julião, and saw him as a great leader. “He wasn’t an idol, but to us, he was a Joaquim Nabuco [Northeastern abolitionist].” As for the connection to Cuba, he mentioned that the military searched for evidence of Ligas connections to Cuba following the coup and that his uncle, João Virgílio, had been the only Ligas member from the Engenho Galiléia to visit Cuba for forty-eight days. Other than this, Zito did not refer to the Cuban Revolution or any type of guerrilla training camps in Brazil associated with the Ligas.

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Zito had read many accounts of the Ligas Camponesas, and because he was a teenager in the late 1950s and early 1960s, they had probably entered into his own versions of the story of the Ligas. According to Zito, the Ligas began as a mutual-aid society, organized by José Prazeres, a worker who had come to Galiléia from a neighboring engenho. The society intended to buy coffins, bring dentists, support mothers and infants, and create an agrarian cooperative. José Prazeres registered the Sociedade Agrícola e Pecuária dos Plantadores de Pernambuco (SAPPP) and Julião only entered into the story when the landowner threatened to throw the workers off his lands. The conservative media labeled the mutual-aid society as the Ligas Camponesas to compare it to the historic PCB Liga Camponesa in Utinga (near Recife), and in doing so, advocated for its extinction by the police. Zito said that he had read various accounts written by Clodomir Morais and Fernando Azevedo which motivated him to write his own history of the Ligas, entitled, “SAPPP, a Liga que ligou o Nordeste” (SAPPP, the League that turned on/joined together the Northeast) fully aware of the double meaning of ligou as both turned on and joined together. As an autodidatic historian, Zito challenges the work of professional scholars by telling his own version of the history of the Ligas and legitimizing his version as “authentic.” In our conversation, Zito described the difficulties of the struggle and how Julião and other Ligas leaders often were arrested. The land­ owner’s armed thugs often came at night to kill or torture the peasants, and Julião helped devise a strategy to lessen the violent attacks with a warning signal. Zito recalled that when the thugs came, they would set off fireworks and “within ten minutes, seventy people armed with hoes appeared and the thugs had to run away.” As state representative, Julião also directly confronted the police when they attempted to arrest the camponesas for holding meetings in Vitória de Santo Antão. The challenge to the rural elite’s power often led to violent confrontations. For instance, Zito recalled that Julião and Arraes went to towns in the sertão, Pesqueira and Caruaru, to campaign for elections in 1958. As they began speaking on stage, landowners arrived with trucks full of armed thugs and ­threatened to shoot everyone at the rally. Julião decided to return later with a busload of Ligas participants armed with hoes. But, no one came to the political rally, fearing the landowner’s use of force. As Zito explained, the press was not present and so the story of the rally did not appear in any of the books written about the Ligas Camponesas. Zito’s explanation shows how he recognizes

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the power of the media to shape the story of the Ligas while also questions the versions of the Ligas’s history based mostly on newspaper accounts. His explanation suggests that alternative histories that are not available in the books or in the media may exist among participants. Zito offered numerous examples of the oppressive conditions that existed in the countryside and led people to fight for justice. The landowner of the neighboring Engenho Serra used to kill peasants and throw them in the dam; a hungry boy of ten years old was whipped for eating a chuchu (chayote squash), and others were stripped naked, whipped, and then coated in molasses and tied up for the cows to lick clean. Another form of punishment was a trap filled with iron poles hidden beneath a plank. The rural worker was forced to run across the plank, falling down into the trap with iron stakes, serving as a jailhouse on the engenho. Zito claimed that the violence diminished during the years when Arraes was governor, but even then, when rural workers went on strike, they often came up against the military’s machine guns. The recognition of collective action and collaboration flows throughout Zito’s memories of the Ligas Camponesas. He recalled collaborating with the Railworkers Union in Jaboatão when they went on strike, bringing the railway workers food from their fields. He also told of a rural worker who fell ill and, unable to plant his fields, faced expulsion from the property by the landowner. To solve the problem, Zito’s grandfather brought a hundred people to the field, which they proceeded to plant in two hours, protecting the man and his six young children from expulsion. “The Ligas always worked like this,” he explained. “Collaborating always in favor of other companheiros from other places.” Zito also recognized Galiléia as a key site for peasant struggle and collaboration in the 1950s and 1960s. Since the Galileus were known to have a lawyer, many rural workers from other locations came to the Engenho Galiléia to denounce crimes such as rape, beatings and murder. According to Zito, although many changes have occurred on the Engenho Galiléia and in the rural Northeast since the 1960s, some political and social problems have remained the same. While the types of physical violence incited by large landowners no longer afflict the population, Zito described the community as existing in isolation from state politics and as being the target of aggression from the municipal government.5 He described social services as precarious on the engenho, with the health clinic and school filled with bats, impassible roads, and denied petitions

252  Recollecting the Ligas Camponesas

for a public phone. Only one other ex-Ligas leader, Zito’s elderly uncle, continues to live on the engenho, with most current residents coming from other places. He claimed that none of the current inhabitants are interested in the history of the Ligas Camponesas, “as if it were a thunderstorm that passed away and remains only a distant memory.” The community remained uninterested because “they don’t see any monetary advantage in such a project . . . culture and history don’t exist for them.” He claimed that he received no support whatsoever for his attempts at historical pre­ servation of the Ligas even though he is regularly interviewed by researchers and asked to speak at conferences sponsored by the federal university. Zito felt that most of the people who were interested in the history of the Ligas were not from the Northeast. Zito occupies a position in the current community as both an insider and an outsider. His grandfather was one of the main leaders of the Ligas Camponesas, and Zito also participated in the movement. While an internal exile in São Paulo, he recognized the significance of his role and his family’s role in shaping regional and national politics, and he now takes pride in identifying as a nordestino and as a participant in the Ligas Camponesas movement: Earlier, the nordestino was embarrassed to arrive in the South and say that he was a nordestino. Today it is an honor to say that one is a nordestino. . . . Today we have a President of the Republic who is nordestino. The Peasant Movement that developed Brazilian history also was born in the Northeast.

Zito told me a story that illuminates his personal trajectory as a nordestino in São Paulo and explains how he became inspired to preserve the history of the Ligas on the Engenho Galiléia. In São Paulo, Zito faced difficulties enrolling his daughter in one of the best schools. After being refused at the central administration office, Zito happened to mention something about Galiléia under his breath. The administrators overheard, and invited him into their office. He spoke with four school administrators about Galiléia and the Ligas Camponesas for three hours, and when he got up to leave, they told him that they would find an open spot for his daughter at the school because “she has much to teach her own generation.” The story reflects the privilege and power Zito recognized he held while in São Paulo through his personal connection to the Ligas, which perhaps inspired his current memorialization project.

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Since Zito had written popular poetry about Lampião, I asked him if he felt any historical solidarity between the Ligas and the cangaceiros. Zito replied that Lampião had been led to the cangaço by misery, hunger and the latifúndio, but he did not see any connection between the Ligas and Lampião. On the other hand, he felt that the history of Canudos was related to the history of agrarian reform. Zito also used the metaphor of slavery and abolition in narrating his memories of the Ligas, reflecting that before the Ligas, people had been slaves and the Ligas brought abolition, freeing them from the cambão and the tyranny of the latifúndio. Confirming the perspective of the Ligas Camponesas as a predominantly male struggle, Zito claimed that women “helped out” in the struggle. He gave a gendered example from planting a field in that men lead the work task, going first and preparing the ground, while the women follow behind, planting the seeds. At the end of our second interview, I asked Zito about his hopes for the future. He wished that “we could alert people to come here so we have the possibility to speak.” He stated his desire for constructing a community library, but he needed external support for such a project. He also thought it would be interesting for a filmmaker to come to the Engenho Galiléia and make a documentary. There is proof and people from that time who would give their testimonies about the Ligas. And if we could make a documentary film only about Galiléia, tell its story, then many things could change around here. . . . So that the history remains alive, since today there are only two people who can testify to this history, our life story. Now is the time for someone to take advantage of this when there is still someone who can talk about it.

Constructing a Historical Counternarrative from the Margins While conversing with Zito and looking through his private museum collection, I thought about many of the small museums I had visited throughout the Northeast. Most community museums are either stateowned or privately run and supported by elite families. In such museums, walls are covered with antiquated photographs and artifacts from elite families, usually taking the space of one to two small rooms. Many community museums narrate histories of Lampião and other cangaceiros and other “famous” individuals, often depicting images of “progress” and

254  Recollecting the Ligas Camponesas

development in the local area. Although visitors are scarce, the local museums construct a dominant narrative of the history of the locality, a space most often reserved for elite narratives. Upon Zito’s return to the Engenho Galiléia from São Paulo, he chose to construct a museum and start a historical collection to preserve the history of the Ligas on the Engenho Galiléia, but the question remains of why he remained committed to a project with such uncertain support. As he stated in the interview, his motivation for historical preservation comes from feelings of pride in his own experience as a Ligas participant and his family’s role as Ligas leaders. Zito is also an activist, and his memorializing provides him with a means to challenge the dominant history of the military dictatorship and to contribute his voice to scholarly versions of the history. This reflects Pierre Nora’s arguments about how “new memory” is used as a political tool similar to a protest movement, placing the power to narrate history in the hands of “minority” groups. As Joanne Rappaport argues about the stories told by a local Nasa historian about the conquest in Colombia, the privileges of historical interpretation and narration also relate to political experience and the recognition of the importance of local history in a global context.6 While Zito’s strategies reflect his desire to provide a counternarrative of the Ligas’s history, the forms he has selected in which to preserve his memories also reflect his understanding of how history becomes official in the Northeast and his recognition of the power associated with being an “authentic” holder of that history. In other words, although Zito may at first glance appear to be a stereotypical nordestino living in an impoverished rural area, he is in dialogue with the dominant ideas of how one constructs official history, and he recognizes his power as a former Ligas participant to legitimize his version of the past. While he claims not to be the “owner of Galiléia,” he is also the only person still connected to the Ligas on Galiléia who can speak about the Ligas. His background experiences grant him such power, legitimizing Zito’s narrative while also allowing him to recognize the significance of historical preservation. Such recognition comes from his life experience in São Paulo and his continued ability to interact with Brazilians and foreigners interested in the topic of the Ligas Camponesas. Zito’s power within the community and particularly in external circuits of scholars and activists comes from his memories and identification as a former Ligas participant and grandson of leader Zezé de Galiléia.

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Zito’s frequent reference to Coutinho’s Cabra marcado and his interest in being the subject of a documentary film about the Engenho Galiléia suggests his recognition of the power of film to construct official historical narratives. For Zito, the film serves as an “emblematic memory,” framing the way that he weaves together his personal memories. His popular poetry collection is also a form of communication and dissemination of ideas, particularly focused on denouncing the crimes of the military. When I asked what motivated him to write poetry, he told me he had always enjoyed listening to the troubadours as a child. As an activist who continues to denounce the crimes committed by the military, Zito may also view his poetry as a tool to organize the struggle, similar to Julião’s intentions in using literatura de cordel in the 1950s and 1960s. But, based on Zito’s familiarity with the scholarship produced about the Ligas that repeatedly mentions the importance of literatura de cordel as a tool for organizing the Ligas, it is also possible that Zito creates the poetry to further legitimize himself as the holder of the true history of the Ligas. In Zito’s oral history, it is impossible to separate which narratives are memorized or performed and which stem from his own memories and experiences. Scholars such as Yael Zerubavel have used Toni Morrison’s concept of “rememory” from her novel Beloved to illustrate how certain pasts are invented and validated in the construction of identities.7 As with any oral history, the audience also influences the stories told. Portions of Zito’s story seemed well-rehearsed or frequently told, such as the denouncements of violent actions against rural workers by the military and the land­owners, the collaborative activism of the Ligas Camponesas, and the role of Francisco Julião in the Ligas. On other topics, such as the role of women in the Ligas, Zito provided noticeably shorter responses. Zito appears to be engaged in a type of subaltern memory project about the Ligas Camponesas in his creation of popular poetry, his foundation of a small shack as a museum, and his location on a rural property in the Northeast. By working from within the framework of stereotypes of nordestinos, he gains a certain authority of the historical narrative while also challenging stereotypes of rural nordestinos as ignorant, isolated, and easily manipulated. In a way that is similar to Ligas leaders’ attempts to trans-code stereotypes of o Nordeste and its people during the Cold War, Zito recognizes the power of identifying from within the stereotype to actively transgress its meanings while obtaining a political voice.

256  Recollecting the Ligas Camponesas

Afterward In 2008, Zito directed his own documentary, A liga que ligou o Nordeste, and the Fundação Joaquim Nabuco released a documentary film on Zito, A história na mão: Uma biografia de Zito da Galiléia (2011). In the years since I met with Zito, he has been able to build a library, the Biblioteca Comunitária José Aires dos Prazeres, with pledged support from the director of CREED (Centro de Reeducação da Policia Militar) to digitize the archival collection.8 He has added new sculptures to his collection, including a piece by Northeastern artist Abelardo da Hora depicting a starving rural family.9 Interviews with Zito have appeared in Northeastern media on the radio, in newspapers, and on blogs. He continues his work as an activist, denouncing the crimes of the military and working with the Commission of Amnesty of the Justice Ministry in Pernambuco to establish a truth commission, inaugurated in June 2012 (Commisão Estadual da Memória e Verdade Dom Helder Câmara). The Paraíban state government also began officially recognizing the Ligas Camponesas, presenting Julião’s family with a medal as part of the national project of remembering those who resisted the military dictatorship (Resgate e Memória para a História do País). Seminars have taken place, focusing on recovering rural memories of the Ligas Camponesas in Paraíba along with oral history projects.10 In March 2012, the state government commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of João Pedro Teixeira by donating the Teixeira’s house in Sapé to the NGO Memorial of the Ligas Camponesas, supporting the creation of the Historical Museum of the Peasant Struggles in the Northeast. At the inauguration, Paraíban governor Ricardo Coutinho spoke, along with Elizabeth Teixeira, about the state’s goal to create an archive in Sapé encompassing rural social movements in the Northeast, agrarian reform, and social justice.11 As of 2017, the Memorial das Ligas Camponesas website (http://www.ligas camponesas.org.br) offers an expanding digital archive with photographs, testimonies, published books and articles, and digitized archival documents, such as the DOPS files on Ligas leaders. The Memorial das Ligas Camponesas is not only about historical preservation; its stated objectives also include supporting contemporary rural laborers and groups organizing for agrarian reform.12 Such forms of “new memory” are transforming the dominant historical narrative, providing space for the Ligas and other rural social movements to be recognized in Brazilian history. Along with acquiring a place in Brazilian history, common assumptions about rural

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nordestinos may also be transcended through such projects, challenging the trope of o Nordeste and its classification of nordestinos as ignorant, violent fanatics who are victims of misery and poverty, portrayed as “subhuman.” As a form of continued protest against violence by landowners, the police, and the military against rural men and women, memory projects may also serve to document historical violations and to hold perpetrators accountable for crimes of rape, assault, seizure of property, torture, and murder.

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Notes

Introduction 1.  Scholarly criticism of Rocha’s Deus e o diabo is prolific and includes Ismail Xavier, Sertão Mar (Glauber Rocha e a Estética da Fome) (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1983); Randal Johnson and Robert Stam, eds., Brazilian Cinema (New York: Columbia ­University Press, 1995); and Lúcia Nagib, Brazil on Screen: Cinema Novo, New Cinema, Utopia (­London: I.B. Tauris, 2007). 2.  Ely Azeredo, “Semana é de ‘Deus e Diabo,’” A Tribuna, June 6–7, 1964; Claudio de Mello e Souza, “A ideologia do sol,” Jornal do Brasil, March 29, 1964; F. F. “Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol,” O Globo, March 6, 1964; “Arte Popular Nasce no Cinema do Brazil com Deus e o Diabo,” Diario de Notícias, March 25, 1964, folder: Deus e o diabo na terra do sol,” Centro de Documentação e Informação (CEDOC), Fundação Nacional das Artes/ National Foundation of Arts (FUNARTE), Rio de Janeiro. 3.  Raimundo Ramos Freire, “Glauber, Deus e o diabo na terra do sol,” Pamela de Aguiar, “Deus e o diabo na terra do sol,” in the V Jornada Nacional de Cineclubes (Salvador, Bahia, February 6–13, 1965), Associação de Críticos Cinematograficos do Ceará, Clube de Cinema de Fortaleza, Federação Norte-Nordeste de Cineclubes, folder “Deus e o diabo na terra do sol,” CEDOC, FUNARTE, Rio de Janeiro. 4. Foucault’s definition of a “regime of truth.” Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language (New York: Vintage, 1982). 5.  United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, World Illiteracy at Mid-Century (Paris: United Nations, 1957), 32, 38, 50–52. 6.  Ana Cláudia Caputo and Hildete Pereira de Melo, “A industrialização brasileira nos anos de 1950: Uma análise da instrução 113 da SUMOC,” Estudos Econômicos 39, no. 3 (2009): 513–538. 7.  James Holston, The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasília (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

260  Notes to Introduction

8.  Rubens Rodrigues dos Santos, “A SUDENE e a revolução nordestina,” special edition of O Estado de São Paulo, April 28 to May 7, 1963, 5. 9.  Josué de Castro, Sete palmos de terra e um caixão (São Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1965), 38; Josué de Castro, Of Men and Crabs (New York: Vanguard, 1970); Rubens Rodrigues dos Santos, “A SUDENE e a revolução nordestina,” special edition of O Estado de São Paulo, April 28 to May 7, 1963, 4. 10.  The quotation is from front flap of book jacket. See Joseph Page, The Revolution That Never Was: Northeast Brazil, 1944–1964 (New York: Grossman, 1972). 11.  I use the term “Conservatives” to refer to groups that generally opposed the leftist politicians and rural social movements. This was not a term used by the groups themselves or by others during the Cold War. 12.  Márcio Moreira Alves reported on cases of torture in the Northeast for Rio’s Correio da manhã. Moreira Alves, A Grain of Mustard Seed: The Awakening of the Brazilian Revolution (New York: Anchor, 1973). Dom Helder Camara also regularly informed international audiences about the political arrests, imprisonments, and torture following the 1964 coup in the Northeast. 13.  João Roberto Martins Filho, O Palácio e a Caserna: A dinâmica military das crises políticas na ditadura (1964–1969) (São Carlos, São Paulo: Editora da UFSCar, 1995); James N. Green, We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 56–58. 14.  Francisco Julião, Cambão—the Yoke: The Hidden Face of Brazil (New York: Penguin, 1972), 11. 15.  F. Novaes Sodre, Quem é Francisco Julião? Retrato de um movimento popular (São Paulo: Redenção Nacional, 1963); Irving Louis Horowitz, Revolution in Brazil: Politics and Society in a Developing Nation (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1964); Antônio Callado, Os industriais da sêca e os ‘Galileus’ de Pernambuco: Aspectos da luta pela reforma agrária no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1960); Antônio Callado, Tempo de Arraes: Padres e comunistas na revolução em violência (Rio de Janeiro: José Alvaro, 1964); Page, Revolution. Some scholars argued that the rural social movements functioned within the established norms of patronage politics with opportunistic leaders who manipulated the rural nordestinos as clients in order to further their own political objectives. Anthony Leeds, “Brazil and the Myth of Francisco Julião,” in Politics of Change in Latin America, ed. Joseph Maier and Richard W. Weatherhead (New York: Prager, 1964), 190–204. Other scholars praised Julião profusely for leading the “revolution” for agrarian reform in the Northeast. Lêda Barreto, Julião-Nordeste-Revolução (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Civilização Brasileira, 1963). 16.  Some argued that peasants were the most radical labor force, with the greatest revolutionary potential. Gerrit Huizer, The Revolutionary Potential of Peasants in Latin America (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1972); Clodomir Moraes, “Peasant Leagues in Brazil,” in Agrarian Problems and Peasant Movements in Latin America, ed. Rodolfo Stavenhagen (New York: Doubleday, 1970), 453–501. Caio Prado Júnior and Márcio Moreira Alves argued that the cane workers, as rural proletarians, held the greatest revolutionary potential in the Northeast. Caio Prado Júnior, A revolução brasileira (São Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1966); Márcio Moreira Alves, Grain, 101–104.

Notes to Introduction  261

17.  Florencia Mallon, “Peasants and Rural Laborers in Pernambuco, 1955–1964,” Latin American Perspectives 5, no. 4 (1978): 49–70; Aspásia Alcantara de Camargo, “Brésil nordest: Mouvements paysans et crise populiste” (PhD diss., University of Paris, 1973). 18.  Fernando Antônio Azevedo, As Ligas Camponesas (São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 1982); Elide de Rugai Bastos, As Ligas Camponesas (Petropolis: Editora Vozes, 1984). Other studies on the rural social movements similar to the works of Azevedo and Bastos include Bernadete Wrubleski Aued, A vítória dos vencidos: Partido Comunista Brasileiro e as Ligas Camponesas, 1955–1964 (Florianópolis: Editora da UFSC, 1985); Luciana de Barros Jaccoud, Movimentos sociais e crise política em Pernambuco, 1955–1968 (Recife: Editora Massangana, 1990); Clodomir Santos de Morais, História das Ligas Camponesas do Brasil (Brasília: Iattermund, 1997); Regina Reyes Novaes, De Corpo e Alma: Catolicismo, classes sociais e conflitos no campo (Rio de Janeiro: Graphia, 1997). 19.  Lúcia Gaspar, Peasant Leagues (Ligas Camponesas), Pesquisa Escolar online, Joaquim Nabuco Foundation, Recife. Available at http://basilio.fundaj.gov.br/pesquisaescolar/. 20.  Rubens Rodrigues dos Santos, “A SUDENE e a revolução nordestina,” special issue of O Estado de São Paulo, April 28, 1963–May 7,1963, 7, 10. 21.  Cited in O Comunismo no Brasil: Inquérito Policial Militar 709 (Rio de Janeiro: Biblioteca do Exército, 1967), 380–381. 22.  For example, Peter H. Smith, Talons of the Eagle: Dynamics of U.S.–Latin American Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Ariel Dorfman and Armando Mattelhart, How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic (New York: International General, 1991); Lars Schoultz, Beneath the United States: A History of U.S. Policy toward Latin America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). 23.  Alan McPherson, Yankee No! Anti-Americanism in U.S.-Latin American Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); Tanya Harmer, Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American War (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2011); Hal Brands, Latin America’s Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, Fórmula para o caos: A derrubada de Salvador Allende, 1970–1973 (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2008); John Dinges, The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents (New York: New Press, 2005); Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Greg Grandin, “The Narcissism of Violent Differences,” in Anti-Americanism, ed. Andrew Ross and Kristen Ross (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 17–31. 24. Grandin, Last Colonial Massacre, 10. 25. McPherson, Yankee No!; Harmer, Allende’s Chile; Brands, Latin America’s Cold War; Moniz Bandeira, Fórmula para o caos; Dinges, Condor Years; Grandin, Last Colonial Massacre. 26.  Gilbert Joseph, “What We Now Know and Should Know: Bringing Latin America More Meaningfully into Cold War Studies,” in In from the Cold: Latin America’s New Encounter with the Cold War, ed. Gilbert Joseph and Daniela Spenser (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008). 27.  Nathan A. Haverstock, “Brazil’s Hungry Millions,” Saturday Evening Post, July 28, 1962, 75.

262  Notes to Introduction

28.  Bahia was formally included a part of the Northeastern region in 1970 even though much of the state was culturally considered Northeastern earlier because of the sertão. 29. The sertão is often synonymous with the Northeast because of the extensive cultural production that has long connected it to Northeastern Brazil. The dry backlands region stretches through most of the Northeastern States and into non-Northeastern states such as Minas Gerais. The idea of “sertão” generally means a place without agricultural production. Many communities located geographically in the sertão, define themselves as agreste if they have agricultural production. 30.  Benedict Anderson’s widely accepted definition of the nation as an “imagined community” provides the platform for asking questions about inclusions and exclusions as well as why and how national communities are imagined and how these ideas change. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006). 31.  Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Júnior, A invenção do Nordeste e outras artes (Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Editora Massangana; São Paulo: Cortez Editora, 1999), 311. 32. Bernadete Beserra, “Introduction,” and Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Júnior, “Weaving Tradition: The Invention of the Brazilian Northeast,” Latin American Perspectives 31, no. 2 (March 2004): 3–15; 42–61. 33.  The regionalist movement, known as the “1930 Generation” included novels, poetry essays and scholarship by Rachel de Queiroz, José Lins do Rego, Graciliano Ramos, João Cabral de Melo Neto, José Américo de Almeida, Gilberto Freyre, and Jorge Amado. Artists Cícero Dias and Lula Cardoso Ayres painted scenes of plantation society and Northeastern folklore, Di Cavalcanti, and Carybé portrayed life in Bahia and Cândido Portinari depicted scenes of misery and drought refugees. 34.  Ana María Alonso, Thread of Blood: Colonialism, Revolution, and Gender on Mexico’s Northern Frontier (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995); Nancy Appelbaum, Muddied Waters: Race, Region and Local History in Columbia, 1846–1948 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); Marisol de la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru, 1919–1991 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000); Mary Roldán, Blood and Fire: “La violencia” in Antioquia, Colombia, 1946–1953 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002). 35. Nancy P. Appelbaum, Anne S. Macpherson, and Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt, “­Introduction: Racial Nations,” Race and Nation in Modern Latin America, ed. Nancy P. Appelbaum, Anne S. Macpherson, and Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 10. 36.  Beserra, “Introduction,” Latin American Perspectives 31, no. 2 (2004): 6. See also, Francisco de Oliveira, Elegia para uma re(li)gião: Sudene, Nordeste Planejamento e Conflitos de Classes (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1977); Barbara Weinstein, “Brazilian Regionalism,” Latin American Research Review 17, no. 2 (1982): 262–276. 37.  Stanley Blake, The Vigorous Core of Our Nationality: Race and Regional Identity in Northeastern Brazil (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011). 38.  Pierre Bourdieu, “Identity and Representation: Elements for a Critical Reflection on the Idea of Region,” in Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 221.

Notes to Chapter 1  263

39.  Bourdieu, “Identity and Representation,” 226. 40.  Stuart Hall, “New Ethnicities” in Black Film/British Cinema, ed. Kobena Mercer (London: Institute of Contemporary Art, 1988). 41. Hall, Representation. 42.  The traditional definition of trope is a “figure of speech, such as metaphor or metonymy, or a usage that diverges from the norm.” Joseph Childers and Gary Hentzi, eds., The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 309. Cultural studies scholars have been developing the definition of trope to include reoccurring themes or devices, similar to a convention of a genre. Barbara Tomilson defines trope as “a convention, a plot trick, a setup, a narrative structure, a character type. Its incessant repetition constitutes part of the cultural training program that makes antifeminism and misogyny a routine element in everyday speech and written argument.” Tomilson, Feminism and Affect at the Scene of Argument: Beyond the Trope of Angry Feminist (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010), 1. 43.  Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). 44.  Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language (New York: Vintage, 1982). 45.  Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multicutluralism and the Media (London: Routledge, 1994), 137. 46. The idea of mulheres bravas is also associated with the story of Northeastern women who fought against the Dutch in favor of the Portuguese in the battle of Tejucupapo (1646). Claudio Bezerra, ed., Tejucupapo: História, Teatro, Cinema (Recife: Edições Bagaço, 2004). 47.  “I Encontro estadual de mulheres camponesas,” LIGA, November 13, 1963, 5; “Preliminar do encontro das mulheres camponesas,” LIGA, December 18, 1963, in Francisco Julião, ed., Ligas Camponesas Outubro 1962–Abril 1964, Cidoc Cuadernos 27 (Cuernavaca, Mexico: CIDOC, 1969): 404, 447. 48.  Stuart Hall, Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London: Sage, 1997), 232–234. 49.  Elizabeth Jelin, Los trabajos de la memoria (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno de España, 2002); Steve Stern, Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: On the Eve of London 1998 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004); Rebecca J. Atencio, Memory’s Turn: Reckoning with Dictatorship in Brazil (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014). 50.  Dominick LaCapra, History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 57.

Chapter 1 1. Azevedo, Ligas Camponesas, 37–41. 2.  Azevedo claims most militants and authors in the 1960s corroborated this version. Ibid., 59–60. 3.  This refers to Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Júnior’s use of the term nordestinizado, defined as the process by which the Northeast has been Othered within the nation as an

264  Notes to Chapter 1

imagined area of violence, rebellion, folklore, and misery. Albuquerque Júnior, A Invenção do Nordeste. 4.  For example, Nancy Scheper-Hughes argues in Death Without Weeping that parents often feel blissful when their infant children die so the children do not have to endure the torture of living impoverished. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). João Cabral de Melo Neto’s poem Morte e vida Severina (Death and Life of Severino; 1955) describes the omnipresence of death for poor Northeasterners, who die of “old age at 30, from ambush by 20” or “from hunger every day.” In a well-known musical adaptation, Chico Buarque sang a section of the poem about a Northeastern funeral procession in which the “hole in the ground” is wider and deeper than the Northeastern man’s stunted carcass (1966). 5.  In June 1959, Rio de Janeiro’s Correio da Manhã published a series on the Ligas Camponesas never mentioning the coffin story. But in September, Antônio Callado’s series on the Northeast connected the emergence of the Ligas to regional poverty and themes related to the trope of o Nordeste, including the coffin story. 6.  César Tacito Lopes Costa, “Agora eles têm um caixão, . . .” O Estado de São Paulo, August 8, 1961, 7. 7. Ibid. 8.  The argument about raising foro costs is also cited in Thomas Bruneau, The Political Transformation of the Catholic Church in Brazil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 88. 9.  The DOPS-PE files contain meeting notes from a meeting of the SAPPP on June 12, 1955, listing the people who participated in the meeting, including landowner Oscar Beltrão. The notes indicate plans to start construction of a school on June 20, 1955. “Liga Camponesa de Vitória de Santo Antão,” Prontuário Funcionário, from 1949, 55, 60, 59, 61, 64, . . . Secretária da Segurança Pública—Pernambuco., No. 29.709. (No. 57 and 58), DOPS-PE, Recife. 10.  José Joaquim da Silva, or Zito de Galiléia, (former Ligas Camponesas participant) in discussion with the author, Engenho Galiléia, Pernambuco, November 2005. 11.  Mallon, “Peasants,” 53–54; Jaccoud, Movimentos sociais. Both draw from an account by Clodomir Santos de Moraes (PCB). 12.  In September 1959, Antônio Callado published a series on the Ligas Camponesas in Correio da Manhã. He referred to Galiléia as a revolution. September 23, 1959, 7. 13.  “Cangaceirismo no Engenho COEPE,” O Diário de Pernambuco, January 26, 1955, 5. 14.  José Joaquim da Silva, interview. This incident probably took place in 1956 when Julião was arrested. Bastos, As Ligas Camponesas, 75. Also cited in Gondim Fonseca, Assim Falou Julião (São Paulo: Editora Fulgor, 1962). 15.  “Comendo 5 bois, festejaram a posse da terra,” Novos Rumos, March 11–17, 1960, 1. 16.  Ubirajara Cruz, “Ligas Camponesas: O grande hiato social,” Revista do Nordeste, Ano II, no. 21 (December 1959): 27. 17. Jaccoud, Movimentos sociais, 35. 18.  Around eighty marches took place in Pernambuco between 1957 and 1959. Vandeck Santiago, Francisco Julião, as Ligas Camponesas, e o golpe militar de 64 (Recife: Comunigraf Editora, 2004).

Notes to Chapter 1  265

19.  Thiago Moreira Melo e Silva, “A presença das Ligas Camponesas na região nordeste,” (master’s thesis, Pontifícia Universidade Católica, São Paulo, 2009), 12. 20.  Interview with Francisco Julião, Jornal O Pasquim, December 1, 1979. http://www.peaz.com.br/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1448:fran ciscojuliao&catid=122:pernambucanos-letra-f&Itemid=142. 21.  Vandeck Santiago, Francisco Julião: Luta, paixão e morte de um agitador. Perfil Parlamentar Século XX (Recife: Assembléia Legislativa do Estado de Pernambuco, 2001), 59–61. 22.  Francisco Julião, interview by Aspásia Camargo, December 1977, Yxcatepec, Morelos, Mexico, transcript, CPDOC, FGV, Rio de Janeiro, 71. 23.  Ibid., 71–72. 24.  The following were listed as “subversive” titles: “The Peasant’s Guide,” “The Peasant’s ABC Reader,” “My . . . to the Peasant,” “Foreiro de Pernambuco,” “A guia do camponês,” “O ABC do camponês,” and “Meu recado ao camponês.” “Dep. Julião Desmente o Carater Subversivo das Ligas Camponesas,” O Diário de Pernambuco, May 16, 1959, 12. 25. Julião, Que são as Ligas Camponesas?, 38. 26.  Ibid., 39. 27.  Ibid., 41. 28.  “Os Dez Acontecimentos Mais Importantes em Pernambuco,” O Diário de Pernambuco, January 1, 1960, 1. 29.  The guests included João Monteiro de Melo Filho, state secretary, who represented governor Cid Sampaio; Antônio Carlos Cintra, chair of Recife’s city council; Artur Lima Cavalcanti, vice-mayor of Recife; Murilo Costa Rêgo, chair of the Legislative Assembly of Pernambuco; state legislator Inácio de Lemos; former state legislator Clodomir Morais; journalist David Capistrano (PCB). “Comendo 5 bois, festejaram a posse da terra,” Novos Rumos, March 11–17, 1960, 1. 30. Ibid. 31.  As Julião later wrote, “The Engenho Galiléia, bearing the name of the ancient province of Palestine, is strongly and intimately linked to the life of Christ.” Julião, “Ligas Camponesas,” 17. 32. Santiago, Francisco Julião, as Ligas, 32. 33.  Ronald Chilcote, The Brazilian Communist Party: Conflict and Integration, 1922– 1972 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 6. 34.  Ibid., 192. 35. Ibid., 131. 36. Cliff Welch, “Camponeses: Brazil’s Peasant Movement in Historical Perspective (1946–2004),” Latin American Perspectives 36, no. 4 (2009): 129. 37.  Paulo Cavalcanti, O caso eu conto como o caso foi: Memórias, vol. 4 (Recife: Editora Guararapes, 1985), 126. 38. Cliff Welch, “Keeping Communism Down on the Farm: The Brazilian Labor Movement During the Cold War,” Latin American Perspectives 33, no. 3 (2006): 31. 39.  Ibid., 30. 40. Ibid. 41. Daniel Aarão Reis Filho, “Entre reforma e revolução: A trajectória do Partido ­Comunista do Brazil entre 1943 e 1964,” Historia do Marxismo no Brasil V: Partidos e

266  Notes to Chapter 1

o­ rganizações dos anos 20 aos 60, ed., Marcelo Ridenti and Daniel Aarão Reis Filho (Campinas: UNICAMP, 2002), 79. 42. Morais, História das Ligas, 15; Cliff Welch, The Seed Was Planted: The Roots of Brazil’s Rural Labor Movement, 1924–1964 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 121–126. 43.  Leonilde Servolo de Medeiros, “Luta por terra e organização dos trabalhadores rurais: A esquerda no campos nos anos 50/60,” História do Marximo no Brasil: Visões do Brasil, vol. 4, ed., João Quartim de Moraes and Marcos del Roio (Campinas: UNICAMP, 2000), 217. 44.  Maria Michol Pinho de Carvalho, Matriarcas do Maranhão: Dona Noca, a senhora do sertão (Rio de Janeiro: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 1990); and Morais, História das Ligas, 15–16. 45. Renato Dias de Souza, “Aspectos do debate historiográfico sobre Trombas e ­Formosa—GO” (master’s thesis, Universidade Federal do Goiás, 2009): 1–29; Hélio Brito, Cadê Profiro?, directed by Hélio Brito (2004); Leon Martins Carriconde Azevedo, “A revolta camponesa de Trombas e Formosa e a contribuição da teoria anarquista” (master’s thesis, Universidade de Brasília, 2015): 69–89; Paulo Ribeiro da Cunha, Aconteceu longe demais: A luta pela terra dos posseiros em Formosa e Trombas e a Revolução Brasileira (1950–1964) (São Paulo: Editora UNESP, 2007). 46. Cavalcanti, O caso eu conto, 122–123. 47. Jaccoud, Movimentos sociais, 35. 48. Welch, Seed, 196–206. Welch’s work on the rural union movement in São Paulo provides stories on individual leaders and describes the trajectory of this influential movement. 49.  Ibid., 222. 50.  Reis Filho, “Entre reforma,” 83–84. 51. Emir Sader, “Cuba no Brasil: Influências da Revolução Cubana na esquerda brasileira,” História do Marxismo no Brazil: O impacto da revoluções, vol. 1, ed., Daniel Aarão Reis Filho, Emir Sader, Evaristo de Moraes Filho et al. (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1991), 174–175. 52.  Reis Filho, “Entre reforma,” 85–86. 53.  Ibid., 88. 54. Azevedo, Ligas Camponesas, 89–90. 55. Welch, Seed, 297–300. 56.  Octavio Ianni, O ciclo da revolução burguesa (Petrópolis: Vozes, 1984), 89. 57.  Welch, “Camponeses,” 134. 58.  Antonio Torres Montenegro, “As Ligas Camponesas e os conflictos no campo,” Saeculum: Revista de História 18 (January/June 2008): 26. 59.  Antonio Montenegro, “Labirintos do medo: O comunismo (1950–1964),” CLIO: Revista de Pesquisa Histórica 22 (2004): 215–235. 60.  David Mutchler, “Roman Catholicism in Brazil,” Studies in International Development 1, no. 8 (1965): 104. 61. Alves, Grain, 144. 62.  Ibid., 159.

Notes to Chapter 1  267

63.  Eul-Soo Pang, “The Changing Roles of Priests in the Politics of Northeastern Brazil, 1889–1964,” Americas 30, no. 3 (1974): 365. 64. Alves, Grain, 106–107. 65.  “Instala-se hoje o encontro de Bispos,” O Estado de São Paulo, May 24, 1959, 5; Thomas Bruneau, The Political Transformation of the Brazilian Catholic Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 78. According to Câmara, SAR formed the basis of SUDENE, the national project for regional development. Alves, Grain, 108. 66.  Anibal Teixeira de Souza, Os bispos do Nordeste e as migrações internas (Rio: Instituto Nacional de Imigração e Colonização, Departamento de Estudos e Planejamentos, 1961), 34. 67.  Paulo Crespo, interview by Aspásia Camargo and Dulce Pandolfi, April 14–15, 1978, Recife, transcript, CPDOC, FGV, Rio. 68. Ibid. 69.  Father Antônio Melo, interview by Aspásia Camargo and Dulce Pandolfi, April, 1978, Cabo, Pernambuco, transcript, CPDOC, FGV, Rio, 7. 70.  Ibid., 16. 71.  Robert Alexander, Juscelino Kubitschek and the Development of Brazil (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1991), 163–167. 72.  Jefferson José Queler, “Jânio Quadros, o pai dos pobres: Tradição e paternalismo na projeção do líder (1959–1960),” Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais 29, no. 84 (2014): 119–133. 73.  Felipe Pereira Loureiro, “The Alliance for or Against Progress? US-Brazilian Financial Relations in the Early 1960s,” Journal of Latin American Studies 46 (2014): 323–351. 74.  Warren Bryan Martin, “Jânio Quadros and His Conscience,” Ethics 73, no. 1 (1962), 42–46. 75.  Loureiro, “Alliance,” 338–339. 76.  Luiz Adolfo Pinheiro, JK, Jânio, Jango: Três Jotas que abalaram o Brasil (Brasília: Letrativa, 2001), 192. 77.  Andrew Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and the Politics of Literacy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 19. 78.  In Sampaio’s term as governor (1959–63), he initiated projects such as COPERBO (rubber made from sugarcane alcohol) to develop industry in the state. Page, Revolution, 53–56. 79.  Ibid., 62. 80.  Thomas Rogers, The Deepest Wounds: A Labor and Environmental History of Sugar in Northeastern Brazil (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 140. 81.  Ibid., 140–141. 82. Alves, Grain, 76. 83. Kirkendall, Paulo Freire, 36. 84.  Andrew Kirkendall, “Entering History: Paulo Freire and the Politics of the Brazilian Northeast, 1958–1964,” Luso-Brazilian Review 41, no. 1 (2004): 174. 85. Ibid.

268  Notes to Chapter 1

86. U.S. Congressional House Committee on Agriculture. Extend Public Law 480. Hearings before the House Committee on Agriculture. H.R. 1673–1, 85th Cong., 2d sess., 1958: 281–82. 87.  30 anos do Instituto Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais (Recife: Editora Massangana, 1981). 88.  Mauro Mota, Cara e C’roa: Uma fase do Instituto Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais (Recife: [s.n.], 1974), 15. 89.  Ministerio de Educação e Cultura: Paulo Frederico Maciel, “Um informe sobre alugns problemas do Nordeste” (Recife: Instituto IJNPS, 1956), 51. 90.  Ibid., 52. 91.  Ibid., 58. 92.  Among others, see Paulo Fontes, “‘With a Cardboard Suitcase in My Hand and a Pannier on My Back’: Workers and Northeastern Migrations in the 1950s in São Paulo, Brazil,” Social History 36, no. 1 (2001): 1–21. 93.  Mário Lacerda do Melo, “Sobre a industrialização do Nordeste,” O Diário de Pernambuco 6 February 1959, 4. 94.  Rosa Freire d’Aguiar Furtado, “A batalha da SUDENE,” in O Nordeste e a saga da SUDENE, 1958–1964 (Rio de Janeiro: Contraponto, 2009), 13. 95.  A. F. K. Organski, The Stages of Political Development (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), 7, cited in in Riordan Roett, The Politics of Foreign Aid in the Brazilian Northeast (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1972), 4. 96. Roberto de Oliveira Campos, “A crise econômica brasileira,” Alguns Problemas Brasileiros, vol. 1, Confederação Nacional de Comercio (Rio de Janeiro: [s.n.] 1955), 63–65, cited in Stefan H. Robock, Brazil’s Developing Northeast: A Study of Regional Planning and Foreign Aid (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1963), 111. 97.  Celso Furtado, Seminário para o Desenvolvimento do Nordeste, 1959-Anais-vol. 2, Confederação Nacional da Indústria (Rio de Janeiro, 1959), 226, cited in Robock, Brazil’s Developing Northeast, 107. 98.  Ibid., 108. 99.  Ibid., 114–115. 100.  Ibid., 115–116. 101. Roett, Politics of Foreign Aid, 92. 102.  For example, in a Foreign Service dispatch about a meeting with Celso Furtado, US consular officials stated a concern that Furtado was “open” to trade with the Soviet Union. Secret Telegram from Recife July 27, 1961, Reference “CONDES 32 re: Soviet interest in Northeast” and dispatch 31 and 35 “re: comments on Furtado visit,” folder 320: BrazilUSSR 1959–61, box 122, RG 84, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, NARA-CP. DOPS-PE files also contained multiple inquiries into Celso Furtado’s supposed communist affiliations. Furtado, “A batalha,” 16–17. 103.  Lincoln Gordon, interview by John E. Rielly, May 30, 1964, transcript, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program, JFK Presidential Library, Boston, 38–40. 104.  Tad Szulc, “Northeast Brazil Poverty Breeds Threat of a Revolt,” New York Times, October 31, 1960, 1, 4.

Notes to Chapter 1  269

105.  Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 42–44. 106.  Tad Szulc, “Marxists Are Organizing Peasants in Brazil: Leftist League Aims at a Political Army 40 Million Strong,” New York Times, November 1, 1960, 3. 107. Ibid. 108.  Szulc, “Northeast Brazil Poverty,” 4. 109.  Ibid., 1. The same theme is raised in the second article. 110.  Ibid., 4. 111.  Szulc, “Marxists Are Organizing,” 3. 112.  Szulc, “Northeast Brazil Poverty,” 4. 113.  The funds were slated for developing “Brazil’s perennially depressed and politically unstable Northeast section” and the United States contributed $131,000,000 and Brazil $145,000,000. “Brazil Signs Pact for Alliance Aid,” New York Times, April 14, 1962. 114. Page, Revolution, 126. 115.  Ibid., 126–129. 116. Congress, Joint Economic Committee, Economic Developments in South America: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Inter-American Economic Relationships of the Joint ­Economic Committee Congress of the United States, 87th Cong., 2nd sess., 10–11 May, 1962, 58–59. 117.  A number of scholars published studies countering the US government’s perceptions about the Northeast as a key area of concern. “Relatório on Brazilian Communists, July 15, 1951,” folder: “Relatorios, Brazil, 1951,” box 24, Anthony Leeds Papers—Cacau Zone of Brazil, National Anthropological Archives, Suitland, MD. Similar argument in Ruth Leacock, Requiem for Revolution: The United States and Brazil, 1961–1969 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1990), 64–65. 118.  “The ‘Fidelistas’ of Brazil,” New York Times, November 1, 1960, 38. 119.  Memorandum to Minister Saccio from Herbert K. May, confidential, June 28, 1961, “A suggested program for US Economic Activities in the Brazilian Northeast,” box 122, 350.30.16, RG 84, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, NARA-CP. 120.  Report by Edward T. Walters, American vice counsel, September 12, 1960, “The Brazilian Northeast: The Necessity for a U.S. decision” (p. 3), folder 430.3, “Military Bases and Posts 1959–61,” Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, NARA-CP. 121. Ibid. 122.  The report states, “In the long run education would do more than any other single thing to promote the development of the Northeast. It must include mass primary education, technical and industrial training for labor, agricultural extension for the farms, advanced technical and industrial training for managers and supervisors, and professional training for teachers, scientists, and other consultants.” Amconsul Recife to Dept of State, CERP section D IV A. May 19, 1959, “Developing NE Brazil: Agrarain Reform and redistribution of income” (p. 5) box 122, 350.30.16 03-05, RG 84, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, NARA-CP.

270  Notes to Chapter 1

123. Ibid. 124.  The Sociedade Auxiliadora da Agricultura de Pernambuco may have been connected to other national groups of planters and merchants established in the nineteenth century to promote the modernization of agriculture, commerce, and industry. Eul-Soo Pang, “Modernization and Slavocracy in Nineteenth-Century Brazil,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 9, no. 4 (1979): 671. 125.  “Ligas Camponesas: O grande Hiato social,” Revista do Nordeste Ano II, no. 21 (December, 1959): 27 126.  While this changed most significantly after the election of Miguel Arraes as governor in 1962, many divisions of the armed forces and police continued to be cited for abusing their power and using excessive violence against the rural population. 127.  Sabiniano Alves do Rego Maia, interview by Maria Antonia Alonso de Andrade and Humberto Mello, March 16–19, 1981, João Pessoa, transcript, CPDOC, FGV, Rio, 74–76. 128.  “ ‘Liga Camponesa’ ameaça paralisar a produção açucareira do Goiana,” O Diário de Pernambuco, March 22, 1959, 8. The rural elite claimed that the main goal of the Ligas was to “implement terror in the agricultural areas.” Lindalvo Lins, “Agita-se a ‘Liga Camponesa’ em Vitória de Santo Antão,” O Diário de Pernambuco, May 13, 1959, 5. 129.  “Alarmados com a atuação dos membros da ‘Liga Camponesa,’” O Diário de Pernambuco, May 12, 1959, 5; “As Ligas Camponesas Continuaram Ameaçando no interior do Estado,” O Diário de Pernambuco, May 23, 1959, 5. 130. “Liga Camponesa de Vitória de Santo Antão,” Prontuário Funcionário, from 1949, 55, 60, 59, 61, 64, . . . No. 29.709 (No. 57 and 58), Secretária de Segurança Pública, ­DOPS-PE, Recife. On November 26, 1959, the Capitan Delegacia de Polícia of Vitória de Santo Antão filed a letter to the Secretária de Segurança Pública, stating that the police confiscated the following from the camponeses of Galiléia, who were trying to organize a “Moscovita” march in Vitória: one national flag, three belts, and seven identity cards. Letter to the Secretária de Segurança Pública from the Capitan Delegacia de Polícia of Vitória de Santo Antão, November 26, 1959, Prontuário Funcionario, no. 359 (no. 52), Secretária de Segurança Pública, DOPS-PE, Recife. 131.  “130 Agricultores residentes no Engenho Galiléia são comunistas,” O Diário de Pernambuco, July 16, 1959, 5. 132.  “Julião vai fazer comicios em Vitória: Banho de Sangue,” O Diário de Pernambuco, October 30, 1959, 7. 133.  For a brief period in 1959 and early 1960, the Diário published editorials arguing for the need for agrarian reform and provided space for Francisco Julião to publish articles and letters. 134.  Benjamin Cowan, “Sex and Security: Gender, Sexuality and ‘Subversion’ at Brazil’s Escola Superior de Guerra, 1964–1985,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 16, no. 3 (2007): 461. 135.  Cowan, “Sex and Security State,” 461; Alves, Grain, 62–63. 136.  Nilo Dias de Oliveira, “Os primórdios da Doutrina de Segurança Nacional: A Escola Superior de Guerra,” História (São Paulo) 29, no. 2 (2010): 135–157. 137.  Carlito Lima, Confessões de um capitão (Rio de Janeiro: Garamond, 2001), 76, 138.  Ibid., 77.

Notes to Chapter 2  271

139.  For more on Nordesterns, see Sarah Sarzynski, “The Popular, the Political and the Ugly: Brazilian Nordesterns in a Comparative Cold War Context, 1960–1976,” in Rethinking Third Cinema: The Role of Anti-colonial Media and Aesthetics in Postmodernity, ed. Frieda Ekotto and Adeline Koh (Berlin: LIT-Verlag, 2009), 81–105. 140.  Lima Barreto, “Trilogia do cangaço,” Correio da Manhã, June 25, 1964, sec. 2, p. 1. 141.  Randal Johnson, “Brazilian Cinema Novo,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 5, no. 2 (1984): 95–106. 142.  Rocha claimed that Italian neorealist films, such as Visconti’s Rocco e i suoi fratelli (1962) and Rosi’s Salvatore Guiliano (1962), that portray stereotypes of Southern Italians influenced him in creating Deus e o diabo. “Glauber Rocha, Walter Lima Jr., David Neves, and Leon Hirszman: Deus e o diabo na terra do sol, 1964,” in Alex Viany, O processo de Cinema Novo (Rio de Janeiro: Aeroplano, 1999), 69–71. 143.  Sarah Sarzynski, “Documenting the Social Reality of Brazil: Roberto Rossellini, the Paraíban Documentary School and the Cinemanovistas,” in Global Neorealism, 1930– 1970. The Transnational History of a Film Style, ed. Saverio Giovacchini and Robert Sklar (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011): 209–225. 144.  Wills Leal, O discurso cinematográfico dos Paraibanos ou a história do cinema da/na Paraíba (João Pessoa: A União Editora, 1989), 106–107. 145.  Linduarte Noronha, interview by José Marinho de Oliveira, s.d., transcript, Collection: Depoimentos Cinema Brasileiro, tema Nordeste, D22417, Cinemateca Brasileira, São Paulo. 146.  Rucker Vieira, interview by José Marinho de Oliveira, s.d., transcript, Collection: Depoimentos Cinema Brasileiro, tema Nordeste, D22415, Cinemateca Brasileira, São Paulo, 15. 147.  Candace Slater, Stories on a String: The Brazilian “Literatura de Cordel” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 1–30. 148.  The actual folheto consists of 8, 16, or 32 pages printed on both sides of large sheets of newsprint paper then folded in four sections. 149. Slater, Stories on a String, 4. 150.  Mark Dinneen, Listening to the People’s Voice: Erudite and Popular Literature in North East Brazil (London: Kegan Paul, 1996), 30–31. 151.  As Mark Dinneen has argued, literatura de cordel became an important arena of ideological conflict, created by “the constant tension between the intervention of dominant class values and popular resistance to such intervention.” Dinneen, Listening to the People’s Voice, 51–52. 152.  Szulc, “Marxists,” 3.

Chapter 2 1.  Juan Pablo Dabove, Bandit Narratives in Latin America: From Villa to Chávez (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017), 214, 262. 2.  For an excellent discussion on the historiography of the “social bandit” that stemmed from Hobsbawm’s work, see Gilbert Joseph, “On the Trail of Latin American Bandits: A reexamination of Peasant Resistance,” Latin American Research Review 25, no. 3 (1990): 7–53.

272  Notes to Chapter 2

3.  Linda Lewin, “Oral Tradition and Elite Myth: The Legend of Antônio Silvino in Brazilian Popular Culture,” Journal of Latin American Lore 5, no. 2 (1979): 157–204. In addition to Lewin, a number of scholars have studied the relationship between the cangaciero and popular pamphlet poetry, literatura de cordel. See Gustavo Barroso, Terra de sol (Rio de Janeiro, n.p., 1956); Augustus Young, Lampion and His Bandits: The Literatura de Cordel of Brazil (London: Menard Press, 1994). 4.  Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz, O messianismo no Brasil e no mundo (São Paulo: Dominus, 1965). 5.  Stanley Blake makes a similar point about the heightened recognition of the Nordestino during the Vargas years. See Blake, Vigorous Core. 6.  Marcos Edilson de Araújo Clemente, “Lampiões acesos: A associação folclórico e comunitária dos ‘Cangaceiros de Paulo Afonso’—BA e os processos de constituição da memoria coletiva do cangaço (1956–1988)” (master’s thesis, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2003). 7.  As Dabove states, “Bandits thrive at elusive crossroads: the crossroads of languages, of domains, of sovereignties.” See Dabove, Bandit Narratives, 275. 8.  Nordestern films produced between 1955 and 1964 include Gianni Pons, Três garimpeiros (1955); Antoninho Hossri, A lei do sertão (1956); Alberto Severi, O Capanga (1957); Carlos Coimbra, Dioguinho (1958); José Mojica Marins, A sina do aventureiro (1958); Walter Hugo Khouri, Fronteiras do inferno (1959); Carlos Coimbra, A morte comanda o cangaço (1959); Aurelio Teixeira, Os tres cabras de Lampião (1962); José Carlos Burle Terra sem Deus (1963); and Glauco Mirko Laurelli, O Lamparina (1963); 9. Rocha, Deus e o diabo. Author’s translation. 10. Ibid. 11.  This style of ending has often been interpreted as the revolutionary style; it forces the audience to decide, and thus provokes political consciousness. Francisco Clodomir Rocha Girão in “V Jornada Nacional de Cineclubes,” Salvador, Bahia, 6 a 13 de fevereiro de 1965, Associação de Críticos Cinematograficos do Ceará, Clube de Cinema de Fortaleza, Federação Norte-Nordeste de Cineclubes, folder: “Deus e o diabo na terra do sol,” CEDOC, FUNARTE, Rio de Janeiro. 12.  Other film scholars have argued that the final “refrain corrida” reinforces the idea of a glimpsed future and the “certainty of radical transformation” along with a “happy life in the future” for Rosa and Manuel. Ismail Xavier, Allegories of Underdevelopment: Aesthetics and Politics in Modern Brazilian Cinema (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 32–33. 13.  Xavier argues that Rosa proposes to have a son with Manuel, but this is not so clear in the film. In the final dialogue between Rosa and Manuel, he asks her if she wishes to stay with the cangaceiros or leave. Rosa states that she wants to live. Manuel then says that he wants to live with her and have a child. Rosa looks into the distance and says she will have a child. The dreamy nature of Rosa’s reaction could allude to her dream of having a child with Manuel, or her recognition of the possibility of having Corisco’s child based on earlier sexual liaisons. Xavier, Allegories of Underdevelopment, 48. 14.  Coimbra is best known for his films of the cangaço; he is often defined as a politically conservative filmmaker who chose to make films that supported the dictatorship, such as Independência ou morte (Freedom or Death, 1972).

Notes to Chapter 2  273

15.  In an interview, Glauber Rocha stated that he had originally wanted to make a film on the cangaço, but when he proposed the film, he was told to leave films about the cangaço to the expert: Carlos Coimbra. 16.  Milton Ribeiro often interpreted the cangaceiro as an antagonist, as can be seen in O Cangaceiro, Entre o Amor e o Cangaço, O Cabeleira, Três Cabras de Lampião, and A Lei do Sertão. As Lucila Ribeiro Bernardet and Francisco Ramalho Jr. claim, the characters interpreted by Milton Ribeiro are never explained, they are simply a given. “Cangaço—Da vontade de se sentir enquadrado,” in Cangaço: O Nordestern no cinema brasileiro, ed. Maria do Rosário Caetano (Brasília: Avatar, 2005), 34. 17.  Ibid., 33. 18.  Ibid., 47. 19.  The Vera Cruz studio went bankrupt and shut down in 1954, ending the cycle of film studio productions in Brazil. Maria Rita Galvão, “Vera Cruz: A Brazilian Hollywood,” in Brazilian Cinema, ed. Randal Johnson and Robert Stam (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 276. 20.  Ignacio Ramonet claims, “Extreme realism of bodies (hairy, greasy, foul-smelling, clothes of objects including a mania for weapons) in Italian films is above all intended to compensate for the complete fraud of the space and origins. The green pastures, farms and cattle of American Westerns are replaced by large, deserted canyons (located in southern Italy or Spain).” Ignacio Ramonet, “Italian Westerns as Political Parables,” Cineáste 15, no. 1 (1986): 32. 21.  Bernardo Carvalho, “Sertão,” Folha de São Paulo, October 16, 1994, folder: Deus e o Diabo, MAM, Rio de Janeiro. 22.  “Glauber Rocha, Walter Lima Jr., David Neves, and Leon Hirszman: Deus e o diabo na terra do sol,” in Alex Viany: O processo de cinema novo, ed. José Carlos Avellar (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Aeroplano, 1999): 76–77. 23.  In film reviews of Deus e o diabo na terra do sol, Rocha commented on how an older woman from Milagreiros thought that Othon Bastos was the spitting image of Corisco. Paulo Gil Soares said that one of the older residents believed the actor who played Sebastião was really a religious beato (blessed or holy man). Bernardo Carvalho, “Sertão,” Folha de São Paulo, October 16, 1994, folder: Deus e o diabo, MAM, Rio de Janeiro. 24.  Salvyano Cavalcanti de Paiva, “A morte comanda o cangaço,” June 1961, no. 27, folder: A morte comanda o cangaço, MAM, Rio de Janeiro. 25.  Miriam Alencar, “Cinema Novo, última safra (II): Memorias de um Bahiano,” Jornal do Brasil, January 12, 1966. 26.  Wills Leal, O Nordeste no cinema (João Pessoa: Editora Universitária; Salvador: Universidade Federal da Bahia, 1982): 89. 27. Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes, “O universo fílmico do cangaço, anotações para aulas,” Doc: PE/PI.0486, Arquivo Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes, Cinemateca Brasileira, São Paulo. 28.  Celia Aparecida Ferreira Tolentino, O rural no cinema brasileiro (Sao Paulo: Editora UNESP, 2000): 94. 29.  Severino Barbosa, “Família de Lampião reclama a sua cabeça,” O Diário de Pernambuco, April 12, 1959, 10.

274  Notes to Chapter 2

30.  Severino Barbosa, “Colecionar cabeças humanas é crime!,” O Diário de Pernambuco, April 19, 1959, 14. 31.  Élise Grunspan-Jasmin, Lampião: Senhor do Sertão, vidas e mortes de um cangaceiro, trans. Maria Celeste Franco Faria Marcondes and Antonio de Pádua Danesi (São Paulo: Editora USP, 2006), 341. 32.  Barbosa, “Família de Lampião,” 10. 33.  Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction (New York: Vintage, 1990): 139–143. 34.  Eileen Hooper Greenhill, Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1992), 168. 35.  Barbosa, “Colecionar cabeças,” 14. 36.  Mary Ann Tétreault, “The Sexual Politics of Abu Ghraib: Hegemony, Spectacle, and the Global War on Terror,” NWSA Journal 18, no. 3 (2006): 33–50. 37.  Severino Barbosa, “Pelo amor de Deus, sepultem a cabeça de meus pais!,” O Diário de Pernambuco, May 3, 1959, 22. 38. Ibid. 39.  Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz argued that in the postwar period the cangaceiro meant, “We are poor and the victims of injustice but we are also honest and good.” Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz, “Notas sociológicos sobre o cangaço,” Ciência e Cultura 27, no. 5 (1975): 514. 40.  For more on how people lacking social status engaged with the concept of honor to argue for their rights, see Marta S. Santos, “On the Importance of Being Honorable: Masculinity, Survival and Conflict in the Backlands of Northeastern Brazil, Ceará, 1840s–1890,” Americas 64, no.1 (2007): 35–57; Lyman Johnson and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, eds., The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame and Violence in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998). 41.  Barbosa, “Colecionar cabeças.” 42.  Severino Barbosa, “Lampião e Maria Bonita foram envenenados,” O Diário de Pernambuco, April 25, 1959. 43.  Barbosa, “Pelo amor de Deus.” 44.  He refused to speak much about his past, preferring not to remember that time in his life. Sosthenes Jambo, “É ‘Barnabé,’ em Alagoas, um ex ‘cabra’ do grupo de Lampião,” O Diário de Pernambuco, May 10, 1959, sec. 2, p. 6. 45. Ibid. 46.  Severino Barbosa, “Durante vinte anos perseguí Lampião,” O Diário de Pernambuco, May 24, 1959, 3. 47.  “‘Ligas Camponesas’ nascem do abandono,” O Diário de Pernambuco, April 19, 1959. 48.  Severino Barbosa, “Parlamento Pernambucano exige o sepultamento da cabeça de Lampião,” O Diário de Pernambuco, May 17, 1959, 8. 49.  “Brasil por dentro: Os Cangaceiro,” LIGA, September 11, 1963, 5. 50.  Santos, “On the Importance,” 35–57. 51.  Heidi Tinsman’s study on the agrarian reform movement during the Popular Unity government in Chile also shows how the struggle for land strengthened rural men’s dominance in their household over their wife and children. Heidi Tinsman, Partners in Conflict:

Notes to Chapter 2  275

The Politics of Gender, Sexuality and Labor in the Chilean Agrarian Reform, 1950–1973 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002). 52.  Francisco Julião, Cambão—the Yoke: The Hidden Face of Brazil (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin): 144–145. 53.  “Volta Sêca: Um Guerreiro em reposo. Entrevista com Jorge Brandão (Exclusiva para “Liga”),” LIGA, November 20, 1962, 5. 54.  José Pacheco, “A chegada de Lampeão no inferno,” LIGA, March 20, 1963, 2. 55.  “Volta Sêca: Um Guerreiro em reposo,” 5. 56.  The article lists these as cerco e aniqüilamento and minueto. 57.  Brazilian military officer Luís Carlos Prestes led a 25,000-km march through the backlands in 1924. 58.  “Volta Sêca: Um Guerreiro,” 5. 59.  “Latifúndiários e governo contra os camponeses,” A Hora, January 19–26, 1963, 1. 60.  Upon his death, Facó was described by Julião as a “friend” of the Ligas. 61.  Rui Facó, Cangaceiros e fanáticos: Gênese e lutas (1963; Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileiro, 1976), 186–187. 62.  Carlos Alberto Dória, “O Nordeste: ‘Problema nacional’ para a esquerda,” História do Marximo no Brasil: Visões do Brasil, vol. 4, ed., João Quartim de Moraes and Marcos del Roio (Campinas: UNICAMP, 2000), 259. 63.  Rui Facó, “Reparos a um prefácio de livro brasileiro na URSS,” Novos Rumos, October 14–20, 1960, sec. 2, p. 5. 64.  Rui Facó, “Os velhos cantam nas feiras os jovens querem Moscou,” Novos Rumos, October 7–13, 1960, sec. 2, p. 1. 65.  Rui Facó, “Julião: Eu não inventei as Ligas. Elas são a flor que se abre no lôdo.” Novos Rumos, January 27–February 2, 1961, sec. 2, p. 1. 66. Facó, Cangaceiros e fanáticos, 216. 67.  “130 Agricultores residentes no Engenho Galiléia são communistas,” O Diário de Pernambuco, July 15, 1959, 5. 68.  Letter from Cap. José Gonçalves Lopes, Delegado de Polícia to the Secretário de Segurança Pública, no. 132–134, Prontuário Funcionário: Ligas Camponesas s/n, no. 29796, January 1956, Secretário de Segurança Pública, DOPS-PE, Recife. 69.  “Retalhado por membro da ‘Liga Camponesa’ a peixeira e enxada,” O Diário de Pernambuco, May 19, 1960, 7. 70.  “Vingança, movel provável da carnificina de Mamanguape: 40 camponseses na emboscada,” O Diário de Pernambuco, March 17, 1962, 5. 71.  One article published photographs of documents held by a Ligas leader that allegedly provided details about land invasions and the distribution of weapons to peasants. “Plano das ‘Ligas’ para subverter estado: 7a RM com os documentos,” O Diário de Pernambuco, August 9, 1962, 3. 72.  “Polícia detém agitadores Paulistas entre camponeses armados: Caruaru,” O Diário de Pernambuco, October 3, 1962, 7. 73.  “Aviões desaparecidos trasportariam armas para as ‘Ligas’ do Nordeste,” O Diário de Pernambuco, December 22, 1962, 1; “Polícia apreende em São Paulo Material Bélico das ‘Ligas,’” O Diário de Pernambuco, December 29, 1962, 1.

276  Notes to Chapter 2

74.  The cane fires as rumor are addressed in Thomas Rogers, The Deepest Wounds: A Labor and Environmental History of Sugar in Northeastern Brazil (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010): 71–98; and, Antonio Torres Montenegro, História, metodologia e memória (São Paulo: Contexto, 2010). 75. “Relatório sobre observação, 30 September 1962,” Prontuário Funcionário: Engenho Camaçari (Cabo), 10, no. 8098, 1961, Secretário de Segurança Pública, DOPS-PE, Recife. Also: “Relatório,” no. 55-60, Prontuário Funcionário: Ligas Camponesas Engenho Malemba (Paudalho), 29 no. 29343, 1959–1960, Secretária da Segurança Pública, D ­ OPS-PE, Recife. 76. Ibid. 77. Ibid. 78.  Relatório by 2nd Tenente Severinio Raimondo Oliveira to the Secretária de Segurança Pública, Recife, June 15, 1961, no. 118–119, Prontuário Funcionário: Ligas Camponesas s/numero, January 1956 (no. 29.796), Secretária da Segurança Pública, DOPS-PE, Recife. 79.  Notes on stationary of the Secretária da Segurança Pública, no. 6, p. 5, Prontuário Funcionário: Ligas Camponesas Engenho Malemba, 1959–1960, no. 29343 (Paudaulho, no. 28), Secretária da Segurança Pública, DOPS-PE, Recife. 80.  “Ambiente em Mari, onde ocorreu chacina entre camponesas e soldados, continua tenso,” O Diário de Pernambuco, January 19, 1964, 7. 81. “‘Louco do Nordeste’ chora na cadeia de També: Juiz negou ‘habeas-corpus,’” O Diário de Pernambuco, January 24, 1963, 7. 82.  Among other examples, José Maria de Carvalho of the Fazenda Imaculada in Sapé, Paraíba, appealed to the local police and Paraíban military claiming he did not have the means to protect his family and lands from the Ligas. “Fazendeiro paraibano, ameaçado pelas “Ligas,” reclama ao quarto exército,” O Diário de Pernambuco, January 5, 1962, 9. Maria Ester Pessoa de Queiroz, wrote to the secretary of public security on May 31, 1960, to ask for protection from the Ligas. Letter from Maria Ester Pessoa de Queiroz to the Secretária de Segurança Pública, May 3, 1960, no. 47–50, Prontuário Funcionário: Ligas Camponesas Engenho Malemba, 1959–1960, no. 29343, Secretária da Segurança Pública, DOPS-PE, Recife. 83.  “Fazendeiro travou luta com os camponeses em Sape, na Paraíba: 2 mortos e vários feridos,” O Diário de Pernambuco, April 2, 1961, 5. 84.  “‘Ligas’ provocam na Paraíba tiroteio: Há mortos e feridos,” O Diário de Pernambuco, March 16, 1962, 1. 85.  “Fornecedores de cana dizem que vão receber comunistas à bala,” O Diário de Pernambuco, June 7, 1961, 7. 86.  “A tragédia da ‘Estreliana,’” O Diário de Pernambuco, January 9, 1963, 1. 87.  “Subversão em marcha,” O Diário de Pernambuco, January 9, 1963, 4. 88.  “Para Pernambuco, 1963 foi ano da agitação,” O Diário de Pernambuco, January 1, 1964, 3; “1963 foi ano violento: Polícia não soube desvendar crimes,” O Diário de Pernambuco, January 1, 1964, 7. 89.  “Administrador de engenho foi truiciado por 400 Camponeses,” O Diário de Pernambuco, August 20, 1963, 7.

Notes to Chapter 3  277

90.  “Prefeito responsabiliza Miguel Arraes pelos acontecimentos de Barreiros: Clima de terror,” O Diário de Pernambuco, October 6, 1963, 9. Also, “Vermelhos preparam r­ evolução no estado com apôio do Governo,” O Diário de Pernambuco, September 11, 1963, 5. 91.  “Administrador de engenho foi truiciado.” 92. “Camponesas invadem a propriedade, arrombam açude e sacrificam o gado,” O Diário de Pernambuco, January 1, 1964, 7. 93. Testimony, no. 92–93, Prontuário Funcionário: Ligas Camponesas s/numero., no. 29.796, January 1956, Secretária da Segurança Publica, DOPS-PE, Recife. 94.  “Prefeito responsabiliza Miguel Arraes pelos acontecimentos de Barreiros: Clima de terror,” O Diário de Pernambuco, October 6, 1963, 9. 95.  “Para Pernambuco, 1963.” 96.  “14 Mortos numa luta feroz entre camponesas e soldados na Paraíba,” O Diário de Pernambuco, January 16, 1964, 1. 97.  “Os primeiros frutos,” O Diário de Pernambuco, January 17, 1964, 4. 98.  “Cresce a agitação camponesa,” O Diário de Pernambuco, February 28, 1964, 7. 99.  “Com bandeira vermelha, hasteada, camponesas do ‘Serra’ dispostos a enfrentar qualquer fôrça,” O Diário de Pernambuco, February 28, 1964, 7. 100.  “Proprietário não crê na polícia: Totalmente omissa,” O Diário de Pernambuco, March 3, 1964, 5. 101.  “Ligas preparam greve geral e distribuem revolveres e balas,” O Diário de Pernambuco, March 10, 1964, 5. 102.  Oscar Tosta, “Coronel João Bezerra, um homem marcado: Ainda hoje recebe ameaças de vida por ter matado Lampeão e seu banda,” O Diário de Pernambuco, February 2, 1964, 11. 103.  Estácio de Lima, O mundo estranho dos cangaceiros (ensaio bio-socioglogico) (Salvador: Editora Itapoã Ltda, 1965). 104.  Semira Adler Vainsencher, “Lampião (Virgulino Ferreira da Silva),” http://www .fundaj.gov.br:8080/notitia/servlet/newstorm.ns.presentation.NavigationServlet?publication Code=16&pageCode=308&textCode=976&date=currentDate. 105. Grunspan-Jasmin, Lampião, 347. 106.  Ibid., 348. 107.  “Tempo destrói cabeças dos cangaceiros expostas na Bahia,” O Diário de Pernambuco November 5, 1967, 3. 108.  “Professora acredita que Lampião esteja vivo e vai procurá-lo na Bahia,” O Diário de Pernambuco, September 5, 1974, 10.

Chapter 3 1.  Carlos Garcia, O que é o Nordeste Brasileiro (São Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1999), 8. 2.  “Brazil: 2 Billion Dollars from US, and Yet. . . .” U.S. News & World Report, April 1, 1963, 44–47. 3. Joseph L. Love, “Political Participation in Brazil, 1881–1969,” Luso-Brazilian Review 7, no. 2 (December 1970): 3–24; Manuel Domingos and Laurence Hallewell, “The

278  Notes to Chapter 3

Powerful in the Outback of the Brazilian Northeast,” Latin American Perspectives 31, no. 2 (2004): 94–111. 4.  On Paulista coronelismo, see James Woodard, “Coronelismo in Theory and Practice: Evidence, Analysis and Argument from São Paulo,” Luso-Brazilian Review 42, no. 1 (2005): 99–117. Love, “Political Participation,” 18. 5.  Domingos and Haswell, “Powerful,” 95. 6.  José Murilho de Carvalho, “Mandonismo, coronelismo, clintelismo: uma discussão conceitual,” in Pontos e bordados: Escritos de história e política (Belo Horizonte: Editora da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, 1998); Love, “Political Participation,” 18–19; Domingos and Haswell, “Powerful.” 7.  The novels, plays, essays, and poetry of Rachel de Queiroz, José Lins do Rego, Graciliano Ramos, João Cabral de Melo Neto, José Américo de Almeida, Gilberto Freyre, and Jorge Amado composed the regionalist movement, known as the “1930 Generation.” Artists, such as Cícero Dias and Lula Cardoso Ayres, painted scenes of plantation society and Northeastern folklore; Di Cavalcanti and Carybé portrayed life in Bahia, and Cândido Portinari portrayed scenes of misery and drought refugees. 8.  Nathan A. Haverstock, “Brazil’s Hungry Millions,” Saturday Evening Post, July 28, 1962, 75. 9.  “Brazil’s Goulart: Power for the Sake of What?,” Newsweek, March 11, 1963, 55. Barbara Weinstein has shown that the exaggerated statistics about syphilis in São Paulo reinforced the ideas of women workers as “dishonorable” and, as a result, of the “moral failing” in the factories. Barbara Weinstein, “Unskilled Worker, Skilled Housewife: Constructing the Working-Class Woman in São Paulo, Brazil,” in The Gendered Worlds of Latin American Women Workers: From Household and Factory to the Union Hall and Ballot Box, ed. John D. French and Daniel James (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 88–89. 10.  “Brazil: The Dry Whip,” Time, 26 May, 1958. 11.  “Brazil: The Hungry Land,” Time, May 18, 1962, 31–32. 12.  Robert H. Estabrook, “Brazil Misery Stuns Visitors,” Washington Post, February 20, 1961, 6. 13.  Haverstock, “Brazil’s Hungry Millions,” 75. 14.  Documentário do Nordeste (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1937); Geografia da fome (Rio: O Cruzeiro, 1946); Geopolítica da fome (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Casa do estudante do Brasil, 1951); O livro negro da fome (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1960); Sete palmos de terra e um caixão (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1965); Homens e caranguejos (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1967). 15.  Josué de Castro, Sete palmos de terra e um caixão (São Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1965), 38. 16.  Francisco Silva, “Recife é ‘Veneza’ só em cartão postal: 300 mil pessoas têm sede,” O Diário de Pernambuco, April 22, 1962, 11. 17. Castro, Sete palmos, 92–93. 18.  Ibid., 94. 19.  “Região de contrastes,” O Diário de Pernambuco, July 3, 1962, 4; Mario Kroeff, “Nosso Nordeste: Seco, pobre, doentio e cobiçado,” O Diário de Pernambuco, February 21, 1962, 4. 20.  Kroeff, “Nosso Nordeste.”

Notes to Chapter 3  279

21.  Osmar de Melo, “Mortalidade infante no Brasil é calamidade pior que a Guerra,” LIGA, April 24, 1963, 6. 22. Ibid. 23. “Padre Alípio no Rio Grande: As panelas vazias dos lares são tambores da revolução,” LIGA, March 27, 1963, 2. 24.  Jean-Claude Bernardet, Brasil em tempo de cinema: Ensaio sobre o cinema brasileiro de 1958 a 1966 (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1967), 45. 25.  Nelson Xavier, Augusto Boal, Hamilton Trevisan, Modesto Carene, and Benedito Araújo, Julgamento em Novo Sol, also known as Mutirão em Novo Sol, presented in 1961 at the First Meeting of Rural Workers, Belo Horizonte. For more on the play, see Rafeal Litvin Villas Bôas, “MST Narrates Boal: From the Dialogue of the Ligas Camponesas with the Arena Theater to the Partnership of Theater of the Oppressed Center with the MST (­Landless Movement),” Revista do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros 57 (December 2013): 277–298. 26.  “Arte Para o Povo: MCP traz para o palco drama do camponês,” LIGA, March 6, 1963, 5. 27. Ibid. 28.  “Julgamento em Novo Sol,” Jornal do Bancário 2nd Quinzena de Maio, 1962, 5. 29.  “‘Julgamento em Novo Sol’ visto pelo crítico Henrique Oscar: Ruim como peça e como espetáculo,” O Diário de Pernambuco, April 11, 1963, sec. 2, p. 2. 30.  “Julgamento em Novo Sol,” Jornal do Bancário, 2nd Quinzena de Maio, 1962, 5. 31.  “Movimento cultural do Nordeste propõe se a iniciar uma nova era no teatro em toda a região,” O Diário de Pernambuco, April 24, 1963, 3. 32. Ibid. 33.  “Teatrologó Meira Pires define posição da peça ‘João Farrapo,’” O Diário de Pernambuco, September 13, 1963, sec. 2, p. 3. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36.  Ely Azevedo, “Vidas Sêcas,” Tribuna da Imprensa (Rio de Janeiro) August 24–25, 1965, folder: “Vidas Secas,” MAM, Rio de Janeiro; Ely Azevedo, “Vidas Sêcas(II),” Tribuna da Imprensa (Rio de Janeiro) August 27, 1965, folder: “Vidas Secas,” MAM, Rio de Janeiro; Cláudio Mello de Souza, “Cinema em noite de gala,” Estado de Minas, October 20, 1969, folder: “Vidas Secas,” FUNARTE, Rio de Janeiro. 37.  Souza, “Cinema em noite.” 38. Ibid. 39.  “Vidas Secas (I),” LIGA, September 11, 1963, 5; “Vidas Secas,” LIGA, September 21, 1963, 7. 40.  Helen Jean Rogers, dir., Brazil: The Troubled Land (documentary film, distributed by Carlsbad, CA: McGraw-Hill, 1961). 41.  Los Angeles Times, June 11, 1961, D23. 42.  “Celso trouxe filme proíbido sôbre Nordeste: Constâncio e Julião, ‘atores’ principais,” O Diário de Pernambuco, July 26, 1961, 3; John P. Shanley, “Troubled Land Seen,” New York Times, June 15, 1961, 87. 43.  Shanley, “Troubled Land Seen,” 87.

280  Notes to Chapter 3

44.  Peter Nehemkis Jr. argued, in a 1962 US Congressional hearing, that current attempts to bring in the symbols of modernity, such as drinking fountains in town squares, were not the best form of fighting communism. What the Northeast needed were massive literacy campaigns and programs of land redistribution similar to those of the Tennessee Valley Authority. But, as Nehemkis argued, a land redistribution program like the Tennessee Valley Authority requires a great deal of money and resources that were largely inaccessible to the majority of Latin American countries. 45.  “Brazil’s Goulart,” 55. 46.  Kathleen Walker Seeger, “Brazil’s Big Dust Bowl,” Reader’s Digest, July 1963, 215. 47.  Ibid., 212. 48.  Ibid., 218. 49.  “Volta Sêca: Um Guerreiro em reposo: Entrevista com Jorge Brandão (Exclusiva para “Liga”),” LIGA, November 20, 1962, 5. 50.  Fragmon Carlos Borga, “João Pedro: Soldado da Reforma Agrária,” Novos Rumos, April 13–18, 1962, 8. 51.  Givaldo Rios, “A vida no Engenho Serra,” Jornal dos Bancários, March 6, 1964, 2. 52.  “Padre denuncia fazendeiro que destruiu a casa de um camponês,” O Diário de Pernambuco, May 6, 1962, 5. 53.  “Brazil: The Hungry Land,” 31–32. 54.  “Relatório,” no. 55–60, Prontuário Funcionário: Ligas Camponesas Engenho Malemba (Paudalho), 28 no. 29343, 1959–1960, Secretária da Segurança Pública, DOPS-PE, Recife. 55.  “Proverbios camponeses,” LIGA, June 11, 1962, 4. 56.  “Versos camponeses,” LIGA, May 8, 1963, 4. 57.  Porfírio Hus, “O regime como ele é: Romance do dia a dia,” LIGA (images by Jaime), May 29, 1963, 4; June 5, 1963, 4; June 12, 1963, 2; June 19, 1963, 4; July 27, 1963, 4; and August 7, 1963, 4. 58.  “Camponeses da Paraíba exigem reforma em passeata pacífica,” O Diário de Pernambuco, May 3, 1962, 5. 59.  “Soldado acusado de matar camponês foi expulso da polícia mas protesta inocência,” O Diário de Pernambuco, April 13, 1962, 7. 60.  Fragmon Carlos Borga, “João Pedro: Soldado da reforma agrária,” Novos Rumos, April 13–18, 1962, 8. 61. Ibid. 62.  Juan de Onis, “Brazil Studying the Rise of Peasant Leagues as Concern Is Aroused Over Violence in Northeast Region,” New York Times, April 10, 1962, 17. 63.  Ibid. The same statement was also appeared in “Brazil: The Hungry Land,” 31–32. 64.  “Elizabeth conduzida à presidência da Liga Camponesa do Estado da Paraíba,” LIGA, December 4, 1962, 3. 65.  “Paraíba: Latifundiários querem a língua de Elizabeth Teixeira,” LIGA, January 23, 1963, 6. 66. Ibid. 67. Ibid. 68.  Examples of reports on violence: “Fazendeiro travou luta com os camponeses em Sapé, na Paraíba: 2 mortos e vários feridos,” O Diário de Pernambuco, April 21, 1961, 5; “Ag-

Notes to Chapter 3  281

ricultor amarrado ao mourão, foi seviciado por soldados, em Nazaré,” O Diário de Pernambuco, July 18, 1961, 7; “Agricultor foi emboscado em Jaboatão e a polícia silenciou: Viuva na SSP,” O Diário de Pernambuco, October 31, 1961, 7; “Queixas de camponeses contra donos de terras, na polícia,” O Diário de Pernambuco, December 28, 1962, 7; “Camponês recusou ser pistoleiro e está sobe ameaça de ter sua casa queimada,” O Diário de Pernambuco, July 20, 1962, 7. Reports downplaying violence: “Fornecedores de cana dizem que vão receber comunistas à bala,” O Diário de Pernambuco, June 7, 1961; “Senhor de Engenho defende sindicato rural e combate ação vermelho nos campos,” O Diário de Pernambuco, February 10, 1963, 13. 69.  “É de desespero situação dos proprietários de engenho,” O Diário de Pernambuco, March 6, 1963, 3. 70.  T. Rogers, Deepest Wounds, 128–129, 143–153. 71.  Aníbal Fernandes, “Pequenas propriedades, pequenas culturas,” O Diário de Pernambuco, December 1, 1959, 4. 72.  Jair Meireles, “Plano de Colonização Japonesa em PE,” Boletim Semanal do Rotary Club do Recife. Ano XXVI, no. 28, Recife (22 Jan 1959), 156–159. 73.  Percy de F. Warner, American Consul, Official use Only, to Donald Edgar, Esquire, Supervisory consul General, Consular Section, American Embassy, April 17, 1956, folder 120.2, Letters to the Supervisory Consul General, RG 84, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Recife Consulate, Brazil, NARA-CP; Oracy Nogueira, “O imigrante japonês e o desenvolvimento de São Paulo” and commentaries by Antônio Jordão Netto and José Pastore, in O japonês em São Paulo e no Brasil, (São Paulo: Centro de Estudos Nipo-Brasileiros, 1971), 194–199. 74.  Percy de F. Warner to Donald Edgar, Esquire, NARA-CP. 75. Ibid. 76.  “Será instalada em Gameleira uma colonia agricola para o abastecimento da zona da mata e do Recife,” O Diário de Pernambuco, March 24, 1955. 77.  Carlos Doria, “Os Niponicos virão. . . .” A Defesa: Jornal de Orientação Católica (Caruaru) May 10, 1958. 78.  “Núcleo de Imigração Japonesas será instalada na fazenda Caruaru,” O Diário de Pernambuco, April 4, 1959, 10; “36 Japonesas para colonização no interior,” O Diário de Pernambuco, June 20, 1959, 8; “O japonês: Na batalha do abastecimento regional,” Revista do Nordeste, August 1959, 33; “Encaminhadas ao núcleo de Rio Bonito cinco familias de colonos japoneses,” O Diário de Pernambuco, January 13, 1959, 3. 79.  Emigração Japonesa no Brasil (São Paulo: Consulado Geral do Japão, 1973) 4–5. 80.  “Escola rural doméstica de Vitória de Santo Antão,” O Diário de Pernambuco, January 6, 1955, 3. 81. Gilberto Freyre, Estevão Pinto, Renato Campos, Francisco Julião, Pe. Antonio Melo, Cana e Reforma Agrária (Recife: Instituto Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais, 1970), 59. 82.  Herman Lundgren, owner of another industrial Pernambucan city, was comparable to Delmiro Gouviea, but Lundgren was of Swiss origins. José Sergio Leite Lopes, A tecelagem dos conflitos de classe na cidade das chaminés (Brasília: Editora Marco Zero; Editora Universidade de Brasília; MCT/CNPq, 1988), 97.

282  Notes to Chapter 3

83.  J. Machado de Sousa, Vida de Delmiro Gouveia (Recife: n.p., 1964), 97. 84. Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Júnior, Nordestino: Uma invenção do falo. Uma história do gênero masculine (Nordeste—1929/1949) (Maceió: Edições Catavento, 2003), 25. 85.  Mary Kay Vaughan, “Modernizing Patriarchy: State Policies, Rural Households, and Women in Mexico, 1930–1940,” in Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America, ed. Elizabeth Dore and Maxine Molyneux (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 194–214. 86.  Among others, see Victoria de Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women in Italy, 1922–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); B. Weinstein, “Unskilled Worker, Skilled Housewife,” in The Gendered Worlds, 72–99. 87.  F. Magalhães Martins, Delmiro Gouveia: Pioneiro e nacionalista (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Civilização Brasileira, 1963), 42–47. 88.  Tadeu Rocha, Delmiro Gouveia: Pioneiro de Paulo Afonso (Maceió: Departamento Estadual de Cultura, 1953; 2nd ed., Recife, 1963), 32–35. 89.  Felix Lima Júnior, Delmiro Gouveia: O Mauá do sertão Alagoano (Maceió: Departamento Estadual de Cultura, 1963), 51. 90. Rocha, Delmiro Gouveia, 18–22. 91. Ibid., 103, 95. 92.  Lima Júnior, Delmiro Gouveia: O Mauá, 62–64. 93.  Olympio de Menezes, Itinerário de Delmiro Gouveia (Recife: Instituto Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais, 1963), 53. 94.  Ibid., 38. 95.  J. C. Alencar Araripe, A glória de um pioneiro: A vida de Delmiro Gouveia (Rio de Janeiro: Edições O Cruzeiro, 1965), 42. 96. Araripe, A glória de um pioneiro, 42–43; Rocha, Delmiro Gouveia, 55–56. 97.  Lima Júnior, Delmiro Gouveia: O Mauá, 196. 98. Rocha, Delmiro Gouveia, 98. 99. Araripe, A glória de um pioneiro, 64–65. 100.  Lima Júnior, Delmiro Gouveia: O Mauá, 201. 101. Martins, Delmiro Gouveia: Pioneiro e nacionalista, 107–109. 102.  Lima Júnior, Delmiro Gouveia: O Mauá, 197. 103.  According to Martins, those who spit or threw a banana peel on the ground received a fine of 500–2,000 réis. Martins, Delmiro Gouveia: Pioneiro e nacionalista, 146. 104.  Ibid, 110. 105. Menezes, Itinerário de Delmiro Gouveia, 142. 106.  Lima Júnior, Delmiro Gouveia: O Mauá, 220. 107. Martins, Delmiro Gouveia: Pioneiro e nacionalista, 117. 108. Ibid. 109. Ibid. 110.  Jorge Oliveira, Eu não matei Delmiro Gouveia (Maior erro judiciário do B ­ rasil) (Mac­ éio: Sergasa, 1984). 111.  Lima Júnior, Delmiro Gouveia: O Mauá, 214. 112.  Ibid., 193.

Notes to Chapter 4  283

113. Mota, Quem foi Delmiro Gouveia?, 55–56. 114. Wánia Filizola, “Delmiro Gouveia: Pioneiro e nacionalista,” LIGA, August 14, 1963, 5. 115.  Lima Júnior, Delmiro Gouveia: O Mauá, 275–276. 116.  “Centenário do pioneiro Delmiro Gouveia,” A Hora, June 8–14, 1963, 3. 117. Emir Sader, “Cuba no Brasil: Influências da Revolução Cubana na esquerda brasileira,” História do Marxismo no Brazil: O impacto da revoluções, vol. 1, ed. Daniel Aarão Reis Filho, Emir Sader, Evaristo de Moraes Filho, João Quartim de Moraes, Michel Zaidán, and Raimundo Santos (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1991), 174–175. 118.  Lima Júnior, Delmiro Gouveia: O Mauá, 293. 119.  Statement by Maria Gouveia in 1955, quoted ibid., 293.

Chapter 4 1.  Freyre does not use the term racial democracy in the book, preferring to call the process social democracy. 2.  Marcos Chor Maio, “UNESCO and the Study of Race Relations in Brazil: Regional or National Issue?,” Latin American Research Review 36, no. 2 (2001): 131–134. 3.  Jerry Dávila, Hotel Trópico: Brazil and the Challenges of African Decolonization, 1950– 1980 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). 4. Memo from Recife Consulate to the American Embassy, November 16, 1960, “CODEL: Projected visit of 2 congressmen to Recife,” folder 030, box 10, RG84, ­Records  of  the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Recife Consulate, NARA-CP. 5.  Gilberto Freyre, O estado de Pernambuco e sua expressão no poder nacional: Aspectos de um assunto complexo (Recife: Imprensa Universitária, 1964). 6.  Keith Botsford, “Conversation in Brazil with Gilberto Freyre,” Encounter 19, no. 5 (1962): 33–41. 7. Stuart Hall, “Racist Ideologies and the Media,” in Media Studies: A Reader, ed. P. Marris and S. Thornham (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 273. 8.  Jan Nederveen Pieterse, “White Negroes,” in Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Textual Reader, ed. Gail Dines and Jean M. Humez (London: Sage, 2003), 113–114. 9. Azevedo, As Ligas. 10.  Paulina Alberto, Terms of Inclusion: Black Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century Brazil (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011). 11.  “Escravos, não,” A Hora, January 27–February 3, 1962, 3. 12.  “Racismo no EUA,” LIGA, May 22, 1963, 4; “Tres religiões defendem a integração racial,” LIGA, August 28, 1963, 4; Ayrton Alencar, “200 mil negros ocuparam Washington: Por liberdade e por democracia a ‘Marcha de Vergonha,’” LIGA, September 4, 1963, 6; “Morre W. E. Burghardt DuBois, ideologo negro,” LIGA, September 21, 1963, 2; “Africanos contra o racismo,” LIGA, September 21, 1963, 3. 13. “Consciência Revolucionária: Democracia, liberdade, sargentos,” LIGA, May 15, 1963, 2; Eulália Vieira, “Consciência Revolucionária,” LIGA, May 22, 1963, 2.

284  Notes to Chapter 4

14.  “Negro norte-americanos lutam: Mensagem de Mao Tse Tung,” LIGA, September 21, 1963, 3; “A proclamação de emancipação dos Afro-Americanos, de Mao Tse Tung,” LIGA, September 21, 1963, 3. 15.  Ibid., 3. 16. “Imprensa Popular,” LIGA, November 20, 1962, 5; “Massacre em Angola Não Tem Fim,” LIGA, November 27, 1962, 6; Heliodoro Albuquerque, “Do Ponto de Vista Operário, Lumumba,” LIGA, March 13, 1963, 2; “Argélia: Exemplo de revolução nacionalista,” LIGA, March 13, 1963, 5; “Voz da África: África 1962,” LIGA, May 22, 1963, 4; “Congo dará ajuda aos nacionalistas angolanos,” LIGA, August 14, 1963, 4; “Nacionalistas angolanos em conferência,” LIGA, August 14, 1963, 4; Andrade Lima, “Manobras do colonialismo português,” LIGA, September 4,1963, 4; “Nkrumah, Selasissié e Win manifestamse sobre a conferência de chefes de estado,” LIGA, October 15, 1963, 2. 17.  “Influência camponês na revolução Angolana,” LIGA, January 23, 1963, 3. 18.  Andrade Lima and Kamoço, “Poeta angolanos lutam pela independência,” LIGA, November 6, 1963, 3. 19.  Christina Klein, Cold War Imperialism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–61 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). 20.  Joaquim Batista de Sena, or Poeta Seny, História da Reforma Agrária e o Comunismo no Brasil (Fortaleza, Ceará: n.p., n.d.). 21.  “Tráfico de Nordestinos e intervenção federal,” O Diário de Pernambuco, November 15, 1959, 1. 22. “Escravagismo,” A Hora (São Lourenço, Pernambuco), December 6, 1959. 23. Waldemar Valente, “Paisagem das secas,” O Diário de Pernambuco, August 17, 1958, 1; “Tráfico de Nordestinos e intervenção federal,” O Diário de Pernambuco, November 15, 1959, 1. 24.  Ana Montenegro, “Venda dos Nordestinos,” Novos Rumos, March 1959, 11. 25. “Cr.$3.500,00 por cabeça e dois anos de escravidão,” Novos Rumos, March 27– April 2, 1959, 10. 26.  Caboclo refers to a nordestino and alludes to mixed-race descent. 27.  Zê Praxedi, “Carta do Sertão,” Novos Rumos, March 1959, 11. 28.  Carlos Dôrria, “O éxodo rural,” A Defesa: Jornal de Orientação Católica (Caruaru, Pernambuco), May 25, 1957, 3. 29.  Oliveira Vianna, Evolução do povo brasileiro (São Paulo: Livraria José Olympio Editora, 1956); Lopes de Andrade, Forma e efeito das migrações do Nordeste (Paraíba: A União Editora, 1952). 30. Vianna, Evolução, 191–192. 31. Francisco Julião, “Peasant’s Hymn,” music by Geraldo Menucci. http://obser vatiorioagreste.blogspot.com/2012/03/memorial-das-ligas-camponesas.html. Vice consul Edwards Walters also documented this hymn, in a dispatch in 1960, after meeting with Ligas members on the Engenho Galiléia. Foreign Service dispatch, September 7, 1960, from AmConsul Recife to Department of State, Subject: The Ligas Camponesas of Pernambuco, Confidential, folder 500: Northeast 1961, box 128, RG 84, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, U.S. Embassy, Brazil, NARA-CP.

Notes to Chapter 4  285

32. Julião, Cambão; “Contracto de Arrendamento só favorece ao fazendeiro,” LIGA, December 18, 1962, 1; “Uma carta do dept. Francisco Julião,” O Diário de Pernambuco, January 31, 1961, 6. 33. Julião, Cambão, 11. 34. “Padre Crespo vê na sindicalização rural a última esperança do trabalhador do campo,” O Diário de Pernambuco, August 17, 1962, 11. 35.  Copy of a letter to Julião from Xisto Lourenço Freitas, no.125, Prontuário Funcionário: Ligas Camponesas s/numero, no. 29.796, January 1956, Secretária de Segurança Pública, DOPS-PE, Recife. 36.  DENIS, “Pompilio Inferno,” LIGA, December 18, 1963 in Francisco Julião, ed., Ligas Camponesas: Outubro 1962–Abril 1964 CIDOC Cuadernos no. 27 (Cuernavaca, Mex.: Centro Intercultural de Documentación, 1969), 454. 37.  Ivan Targino, Emilia Moreira, and Marilda Menezes, “As Ligas Camponesas na Paraíba: Um relato a partir da memória dos seus protagonistas,” Rurais 5, no. 1 (2011): 90. 38.  “Trabalhadores rurais ganham salários de morte,” LIGA, November 13, 1962, 3. 39.  “Latifúndio comete novo crime,” A Hora, February 22–28, 1964, 1. 40.  Lauro Goes, “A tragédia do Engenho Serra,” A Hora, March 14–20, 1964, 3. 41.  Francisco Julião, “Desafio do deputado socialista ao jornalista Zilde Maranhão para um debate sobre reforma agrária,” O Diário de Pernambuco, July 15, 1959, 8. 42. Ibid. 43.  Francisco Julião, “Pernambuco na vanguarda,” LIGA, December 4, 1963, 1. 44.  “Mossoró: A primeira cidade brasileira a extripar a escravatura—comemorou festivamente o 30 de setembro,” LIGA, October 23, 1963, 5. 45.  Sócrates Times de Carvalho, “Ontem Nabuco, hoje Julião,” LIGA, January 9, 1963, 4. 46.  Renato Carneiro Campos, Igreja, política e região (Recife: IJNPS—M.E.C., 1967), 33. 47. Barreto, Julião Nordeste, 68–69. 48.  Testimony of Antonio Callado, Diário do Congresso Nacional (seção 1), December 3, 1959, 9220–9222. A copy of this case in located in the DOPS-PE files; Callado’s testimony is circled in red. No 29309 (24–25), Prontuário Funcionário: Ligas Camponesas: Caiçara, Engenho Barra, Engenho Caehaira, Victória de Santo Antão, March 1951–June 1969, Secretária de Segurança Pública, DOPS-PE, Recife. 49. Ibid. 50.  Zê Taveira, “Conversa de camponês,” Gazeta de Patos: Orgão Livre e Rebelde a Serviço do Sertão Paraíbano, December 31, 1962, 6. 51.  “Abolição da escravatura faz (amanhã) aniversário,” A Hora, May 11–17, 1963, 7. 52.  “Abolição: Reforma de base conquistada no século XIX,” Novos Rumos, May 17–23, 1963, 8. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55.  “Arraes—Ano I,” Novos Rumos, February 7–13, 1964, 5. 56.  “Jango presidiu entrega de terras aos camponeses da cooperativa de Tiriri,” O Diário de Pernambuco, July 31, 1963, 3. 57.  “A cooperativa de Tiriri,” O Diário de Pernambuco, July 31, 1963.

286  Notes to Chapter 4

58.  “Jango presidiu entrega de terras aos camponeses da cooperativa de Tiriri,” O Diário de Pernambuco, July 31, 1963. 59.  Ibid. The plaque was probably taken down during the dictatorship. The Engenho Massangana is now a museum, and exhibits images from the newspaper article cited here as evidence of the Tiriri cooperative and commemoration in 1963. 60.  “Latifundiários em desespêro fazem sua ‘Reforma Agraria,’” LIGA, June 12, 1963, 4. 61.  O Diário de Pernambuco, advertisement, May 24, 1963, p.7. 62.  Letter from Linduarte Noronha to Maurice Capovilla, folder: Aruanda, ­FUNARTE, Rio de Janeiro. 63.  Linduarte Noronha a Elísio Valverde, “Desfeita a utopia na Paraíba,” Revista de Cultura Cinematográfica 4, no. 24 (1961): 38–42. 64.  Linduarte Noronha, interview by José Marinho de Oliveira, s.d., transcript, Collection: Depoimentos Cinema Brasileiro, tema Nordeste, D22417, Cinemateca Brasileira, São Paulo, 8. 65.  Cipriana is interpreted by Lea Garcia of Black Orpheus, who was also a black activist in the Black Experimental Theater. 66. “Carlos Diegues fala sobre Ganga Zumba,” Diário de Notícias, folder: Ganga Zumba, MAM, Rio de Janeiro. 67.  Robert Stam, Tropical Multiculturalism: A Comparative History of Race in Brazilian Cinema and Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 228. See also, E. Bradford Burns, “History in the Brazilian Cinema,” Luso-Brazilian Review 14, no. 1 (1977): 49–59. 68.  Linduarte Noronha interview, 14. 69.  Ibid., 42. 70. Elísio Valverde, “Um documentário importante: Aruanda,” Revista de Cultura Cienamtográfica 4, no. 21 (1961): 51–54. 71. Leal, O discurso cinematográfico, 105. 72.  Glauber Rocha, A revolução da Cinema Novo, quoted in Marilia Franco, “Liberdaruanda,” Communicação e Artes, São Paulo, 17: 85–90, MAM, Rio de Janeiro. 73.  Paulo Perdigão, “Ganga Zumba, Rei dos Palmares,” Diário de Notícias, March 10, 1964, folder: Ganga Zumba, MAM, Rio de Janeiro. 74.  Claudio Mello e Souza, “Ganga Zumba: O problema é a Guerra,” Jornal do Brasil, March 12, 1964, folder: Ganga Zumba, MAM, Rio de Janeiro. 75.  Luiz Alberto, “Ganga Zumba,” Jornal do Comercio (Rio) March 20, 1964, folder: Ganga Zumba, MAM, Rio de Janeiro. 76.  Ely Azeredo, “Ganga Zumba é promessa para março,” Tribuna de Imprensa February 22, 1964, folder: Ganga Zumba, MAM, Rio de Janeiro. 77.  Tati Morães, “‘Ganga Zumba’ quer dizer Zumbi (dos Palmares) e liberdade,” Ultima Hora, August 29, 1963, folder: Ganga Zumba., MAM, Rio de Janeiro. 78. Celina Luz, “Ganga Zumba conquista Paris,” January 4, 1968, folder: Ganga Zumba, MAM, Rio de Janeiro. 79.  “Ganga Zumba: A rei do Palmares,” pamphlet, folder: Ganga Zumba, MAM, Rio de Janeiro. 80.  Davarian L. Baldwin, “‘Culture Is a Weapon in Our Struggle for Liberation’: The Black Panther Party and the Cultural Politics of Decolonization,” in In Search of the Black

Notes to Chapter 5  287

Panther Party: New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement, ed. Jama Lezerow and Yohuru Williams (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 289–305; and Tim Lake, “The Arm(ing) of the Vanguard, Signify(ing), and Performing the Revolution: The Black Panther Party and Pedagogical Strategies for Interpreting a Revolutionary Life,” in Lezerow and Williams, In Search of the Black Panther Party, 306–323. On Barnet, see Matt Childs, “Expanding Perspectives on Race, Culture and Nation in Cuban History,” Latin American Research Review 39, no. 1 (2004): 295; Gerard Aching, “On the Creation of Unsung National Heroes: Barnet’s Esteban Monejo and Armas’s Julian del Casal,” Latin American Literary Review 24, no. 43 (1994), 31–50. 81.  Iani del Rosario Moreno, “El teatro musical de Arena e Opinião: Popular, histórico y auténticamente brasileño,” Latin American Theater Review 49, no. 1 (2015): 135–136. 82.  Ibid., 136. 83.  Ibid., 137.

Chapter 5 1.  Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979), 21. 2.  For example, Patrick Campbell, “Subjetividade processual pós-colonial em Os sertões do Oficina,” Repertório: Teatro & Dança 14 (2016): 70–93. 3.  Regina Abreu, O enigma de Os Sertões (Rio de Janeiro: Rocco/FUNARTE, 1998); Adriana M. C. Johnson, “Subalternizing Canudos,” MLN 20 (2005): 355–382; Walnice Nogueira Galvão, No calor da hora: A Guerra de Canudos nos jornais, 4a expedicão (São Paulo: Atica, 1974); Frederic Amory, “Historical Source and Biographical Context in the Interpretation of Euclides da Cunha’s Os Sertões,” Journal of Latin American Studies 28, no. 3 (1996): 667–685; Maria Zilda Ferreira Cury, “Os Sertões, de Euclides da Cunha: Espaços,” Luso-Brazilian Review 41, no. 1 (2004): 71–79. 4.  Robert Levine, Vale of Tears: Revisiting the Massacre in Northeastern Brazil, 1893–1897 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Ralph Della Cava, “Brazilian Messianism and National Institutions: A Reappraisal of Canudos and Joaseiro,” Hispanic American Historical Review 48, no. 3 (1968): 402–420. 5.  Paulo Emílio Matos Martins, A reinventação do sertão (Rio de Janeiro: FGV Editora, 2001); Candace Slater, “Messianism and the Padre Cícero Stories,” Luso-Brazilian Review 28, no. 1 (1991): 117–127. 6. Facó, Cangaceiros e fanáticos; Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels; Edmundo Moniz, Canudos: A luta pela terra (São Paulo: Global Editora, 1997); Renato Mocellin, Canudos: Fanatismo ou a luta pela terra? (São Paulo: Editora do Brasil, 1989). 7.  Sylvia L. Thrupp, ed., Millennial Dreams in Action (The Hague: Mouton, 1962); Sue Anderson Gross, “Religious Sectarianism in the ‘Sertão’ of Northeastern Brazil,” Journal of Interamerican Studies 10, no. 3 (1968): 11–27; Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz, O messianismo no Brasil e no mundo (São Paulo: Dominus, 1965); Shepard Forman, The Brazilian Peasantry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975); Jacqueline Hermann, “Religião e política no alvorecer da República: Os movimentos de Juazeiro, Canudos, e Contestado,” in O Brasil Republicano: O tempo do liberalismo excludente da Proclamação da República à Revolução de 1930, ed., Jorge Ferreira and Lucilia de Almeida Neves Delgado, vol. 1 of 4 vols.(Rio

288  Notes to Chapter 5

de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2003), 121–160; Patricia Pessar, “Revolution, Salvation, Extermination: The Future of Millenarianism in Brazil,” in Predicting Social Change, ed. Susan Abbott and John van Willigen (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980): 95–114. 8.  Patricia Pessar, From Fanatics to Folk: Brazilian Millenarianism and Popular Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004); José Maria de Oliveira Silva, “Rever Canudos: Historiocidade e Religiosidade Popular (1940–1995)” (PhD diss., Universidade de São Paulo, 1996); Adriana Michéle Campos Johnson, Sentencing Canudos: Subalternity in the Backlands of Brazil (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010). 9.  Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Age of the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). 10.  Sean McCloud, Making the American Religious Fringe: Exotics, Subversives and Journalists, 1955–1993 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 3. 11.  Ibid., 33. 12.  Ibid., 52–68. 13.  Versions of Euclides da Cunha’s narrative have been retold in films, such as Wilson Silva, Nordeste Sangrento (Bloody Northeast; 1962,); Glauber Rocha, Deus e o diabo na terra do sol (Black God, White Devil, 1963,); Ruy Guerra, Os Fuzís (The Guns, 1964); Fernando de Barros, Riacho de Sangue (Creek of Blood, 1967); Sérgio Ricardo, A noite do espantalho (The Night of the Scarecrow, 1974); Ipojuca Pontes, Canudos (1976); Jorge Furtado, A matadeira (The Killing Machine, 1994); Sérgio Rezende, A Guerra de Canudos (The War of Canudos, 1997). Images of Northeastern “folk” religion also appear in Anselmo Duarte’s O pagador de promessas (The Given Word, 1962), Glauber Rocha’s Barravento (The Turning Wind, 1962), João Ramiro Mello and Vladimir Carvalho’s documentary Romeiros da Guia (Pilgrims of the Church, 1962); Paulo Gil Soares’s Frei Damião (Father Damian, 1969); and Geraldo Sarno’s Viva Cariri (Long Live Cariri, 1969). 14. Bernardet, Brasil em tempo, 40. 15.  José Carlos Avellar, Deus e o diabo na terra do sol: A linha reta, o melaço de cana e o retrato do artista quando jovem (Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1995), 87. 16.  “Glauber Rocha, Walter Lima Jr.,” O processo, 83. 17. Bernardet, Brasil em tempo, 72–73. 18. Facó, Cangaceiros e fanáticos, 199, 205, 211. 19. “Fernando de Barros filma em Pernambuco,” folder: “Fernando de Barros,” ­FUNARTE, Rio de Janeiro. 20. Facó, Cangaceiros e fanáticos, 42. 21.  Ibid., 118. 22.  Rui Facó, “A permanência de Euclides da Cunha,” Novos Rumos, August 14–20, 1959. Another article focused on the reception of da Cunha’s Os sertões in the Soviet Union and China. “O jubileu de Euclides da Cunha em Moscou,” Novos Rumos, November 6–11, 1959; “Euclides em Pequim,” Novos Rumos, November 20–26, 1959. 23.  Romero Pinheiro, “Euclides da Cunha Escritor Revolucionário,” Novos Rumos, August 5–11, 1960, 5. 24.  “Guerra de guerrilhas no Nordeste uma opinião de Euclides da Cunha,” LIGA, May 1, 1963, 4.

Notes to Chapter 5  289

25.  F. Novaes Sodre, Quem é Francisco Julião? Retrato de um movimento popular (São Paulo: Redenção Nacional, 1963), 27–28. 26.  Clóvis Ribeiro do Rego Melo, interview by Eliane Moury Fernandes and Jorge Zaveruch, November 16, 1984, transcript, CEHIBRA, Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Recife, 40. 27.  Paulo de Figueiredo Cavalcanti, interview by Eliane Moury Fernandes, April 22, 1982, transcript, CEHIBRA, Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Recife, 86. 28.  Dante de Mello, A verdade sobre ‘Os sertıes’ (Análise reivindicatória da campanha de Canudos) (Rio de Janeiro: Biblioteca do Exército—Editora, 1958), 11. 29.  Ibid., 53–54. 30.  Ibid., 79–90. 31.  Ibid., 140–142. 32. Ibid. 33.  Delegado de Polícia, Vitória de Santo Antão, to the Secretária da Segurança Pública, Prontuário Funcionário, s/numero, no. 29.796 (no. 132-134), “Ligas Camponesas,” January 1956, Secretária da Segurança Pública, DOPS-PE, Recife. 34.  “Agita-se a ‘Liga Camponesa’ em Vitória de Santo Antão,” O Diário de Pernambuco, May 13, 1959, 5. 35.  “Senhor de Engenho defende-se e acusa ‘Ligas Camponesas,’” O Diário de Pernambuco, January 26, 1961. 36. Ibid. 37.  “Relátorio das Ligas Camponesas” Delegacia Auxiliar, no. 179–180, Prontuário Funcionário: Ligas Camponesas s/numero, January 1956 (no. 29.796), Secretária da Segurança Pública, DOPS-PE, Recife. 38.  Notes on stationary of the Secretária da Segurança Pública, no. 6, p. 5, Prontuário Funcionário: Ligas Camponesas Engenho Malemba, 1959–1960, no. 29343 (Paudaulho, no.  28), Secretária da Segurança Pública, DOPS-PE, Recife; Relatório by 2nd Tenente Severinio Raimondo Oliveira to the Secretária de Segurança Pública, Recife, June 15, 1961, no.  118–119, Prontuário Funcionário: Ligas Camponesas s/numero, January 1956 (no. 29.796), Secretária da Segurança Pública, DOPS-PE, Recife. 39.  Letter from Odette Periera Carneiro, “Residência efectiva ‘Grania Pedacinho de Céu,’ Sucupira” to the Secretária de Segurança Pública do Estado de Pernambuco, June 2, 1960, no. 38, Prontuário Funcionário: Ligas Camponesas Engenho Malemba, 1959–1960, no. 29343 (Paudaulho, no. 28, 1959–1960), Secretária da Segurança Publica, DOPS-PE, Recife. 40. “Duque Estrada acusou Julião de iludir os camponeses e trair o socialismo,” O Diário de Pernambuco, September 24, 1960, 5. 41. “Leftist in Brazil Warns of Revolt: Peasants’ Chief Says Land Redistribution is Vital,” New York Times, November 18, 1961, 9. 42.  “Brazil: The Hungry Land,” Newsweek, May 18, 1962, 31–32. 43.  Foreign Service Dispatch from AmConsul Recife to Dept of State Confidential: Subject: The Ligas Camponesas of Pernambuco, September 7, 1960, folder 500 Northeast 1961 Brazil, box 128, RG 84, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, NARA-CP. 44. Ibid.

290  Notes to Chapter 5

45. Sodre, Quem é, 30. 46.  Regina Reyes Novaes, De Corpo e Alma: Catolicismo, classes sociais e conflitos no campo (Rio de Janeiro: Graphia, 1997), 169. 47.  “Morreu João XXIII, o Papa-camponês,” LIGA, June 5, 1963, 1. 48.  Mutchler, “Roman Catholicism,” 116. 49.  “Cristo lutou pelos humildes e foi crucificado pelos ricos,” LIGA, April 10, 1963, 5. 50.  “Padre Alípio à imprensa: ‘Estou com os pobres hoje é sempre,’” LIGA, June 12, 1963, 1. 51. Manoel Cardozo, “The Brazilian Church and the New Left,” Journal of Inter-­ American Studies 6, no. 3 (1964): 318. 52.  “Mensagem dos maçons ao Padre Alípio,” LIGA, June 19, 1963, 2. 53.  “Deus não deseja essa miséria,” LIGA, August 7, 1963, 2. 54. Ibid. 55.  “Do ponto de vista camponês: A bandeira do padre Alípio,” LIGA, June 5, 1963, 3. 56.  “Pe. Alípio: Não seremos mais escravos de ninguém,” LIGA, April 3, 1963, 4. 57. Ibid. 58.  “Só a revolução vo Brasileiro,” LIGA, September 29, 1963, 1. 59.  Padre Alípio de Freitas, “O evangelho do camponês,” LIGA, November 20, 1962, 4. 60.  “Padre Alípio seqüestrado por ordens de Kruel,” LIGA, April 10, 1963, 2. 61.  “Padre Alípio prêso pelo IV Exército por Ordem de Kruel,” LIGA, April 10, 1963, 1. 62.  “Padre Alípio espancado na prisão pelo cunhado de Veloso Borges,” LIGA, May 1, 1963, 3. 63.  “Julião ao Ministro da Justiça: Padre Alípio foi torturado pelos ‘gorilas,’” LIGA, May 8, 1963, 4. 64.  “Padre Alípio seqüestrado,” LIGA. 65. “Public workers demand the freedom of Padre Alípio, cruelly imprisoned.” “Operário de GB exigiram nas ruas libertação do padre Alípio,” LIGA, May 29, 1963, 2. 66.  He violated Art. 11 (to make propaganda public: a. of violent processes to subvert the political or social order), Art. 12 (to directly incite violence and deliberately encourage violent social class struggles), and Art. 17 (to publically instigate collective disobedience under abidance of the law of public order) of the Constitution. This meant that he could be expelled according to Art. 33 because he had not been born in Brazil: “The foreigner found in violation of this law will be expelled from the national territory,” according to Art. 143 of the Federal Constitution. “Qualificação do indicado Padre Alípio Cristiano de Freitas,” May 2, 1963, no. 3477, vol. 8, Delegacia Especializada de Ordem Política—São Paulo, Arquivo do Estado de São Paulo. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid. 69.  “Porque mantém o Padre Alípio prêso e incomunicável?” LIGA, June 5, 1963, 6. 70. “Kruel quer mesmo expulsar Pe. Alípio: nacionalistas reagem,” LIGA, May 29, 1963, 1. 71.  “Porque mantém Alípio”; “Pe. Alípio em faculdades,” LIGA, August 28, 1963, 2. 72.  “Padre Alípio à imprensa: ‘Estou com os pobres hoje e sempre,’” LIGA, June 12, 1963, 1.

Notes to Chapter 5  291

73.  “Mensagem dos maçons ao Padre Alípio,” LIGA, June 19, 1963, 2. 74.  Cardozo, “Brazilian Church and the New Left,” 313–321. 75.  Other notable priests in the Northeast included Monsenhor Ruy Barreira Vieira (Padre Ruy) of Souza, Paraíba; Aloísio Guerra of Campina Grande, Paraíba; Dom Antônio Fragoso of Crateús, Paraíba; Juarez Benício of Paraíba; Dom José Tavora, Archbishop of Sergipe; Antonio Campeiro de Aragão of Petrolina, Pernambuco; Guilherme Andrade of Pesqueira, Pernambuco; Dom Eugenio Sales, Archbishop of Rio Grande do Norte; and, Antonio Melo and Paulo Crespo of Pernambuco. 76.  Mutchler, “Roman Catholicism in Brazil,” 104–105. 77.  Priests included including Padre Bruno Archimedes (Ceará); Padre Helio (Ceará); and Bishop Eugenio Salles (Rio Grande do Norte). “The Brazilian Northeast: A status report on Politico-Economic Conditions,” special report on Northeast prepared for Ambassador Merwin L. Bohan, head of the Special NE Study Team by Consul Edward T Walters of the American Consulate General, Recife, for the Ambassador Philip Raine, Counselor of Embassy for Political Affairs, December 19, 1961, Foreign Service Dispatch from American Embassy in Rio to Department of State, Confidential, folder 500 Northeast 1961, box 128, RG 84, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, NARA-CP. 78.  “Padre Melo prega a reforma agrária: É anti-Marxista,” O Diário de Pernambuco, May 15, 1963, 3. 79.  Eu marcharei na tua luta! A vida de Elizabeth Teixeira, ed., Lourdes Maria Bandeira, Neide Miele, and Rosa Maria Godoy Silveira (João Pessoa: Editora Universitária/Manufactura, 1997), 97. 80.  Robin Nagle, Claiming the Virgin: The Broken Promise of Liberation Theology in Brazil (New York: Routledge, 1997), 41. 81.  Padre Antônio Melo, at a speech at the conference “O Problema Agrária na zona canaviera de Pernambuco” at the Instituto Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais (Recife: Imprensa Universitária, 1965), 118. 82.  II Encontro dos Bispos do Nordeste: Convênios (Natal; Rio de Janeiro: Serviço de Informação Agrícola, Ministério da Agricultura, 1960). 83.  “A Igreja e as reformas,” O Diário de Pernambuco, May 19, 1963, 8. 84.  Pang, “Changing Roles,” 341–372, 368. 85. Ibid. 86.  According to O Diário de Pernambuco, the Pernambucan police had invaded the Cabo post of IBAD, and held the director at gunpoint, demanding a statement that proved Padre Melo was financed by IBAD. “Padre Melo adverte Governador: Resistirá a novas violencias,” O Diário de Pernambuco, September 6, 1963, 3. Crespo discussed the involvement with the CIA in a later interview. Ennes Paulo Crespo, interview by Eliane Moury Fernandes and Jorge Zeverucha, July 10, 1985, transcript, CEHIBRA, Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Recife, 11–12. 87. “Padre Crespo vê na sindicalização rural a última esperança do trabalhador do campo,” O Diário de Pernambuco, August 17, 1962, 11. 88. Ibid. 89.  “Padre denuncia fazendeiro que destruiu a casa de um camponês,” O Diário de Pernambuco, May 6, 1962, 5.

292  Notes to Chapter 5

90. Ibid. 91.  “Juiz denunciou ao bispo auxiliar orientação subversiva do sindicato rural de Bom Conselho,” O Diário de Pernambuco, December 14, 1963, 5. 92.  “Padre Melo: Não há comunismo no NE, mas insatisfação,” O Estado de São Paulo, May 5, 1962. 93.  “Bispo inicia movimento de defesa do Nordestino,” O Diário de Pernambuco, January 21, 1962, 3. 94.  “O Nordestino não é comunista; apenas luta contra a miséria—declara o padre Melo,” O Diario de Pernambuco, January 27, 1962, 5. 95.  “Padre Melo Depôs: Reforma agrária ou então convulsão social,” O Diário de Pernambuco, May 6, 1962, 1. 96. Ibid. 97.  Costa Porto, “Sindicalização rural,” O Diário de Pernambuco, May 15, 1964, 4. 98. Ibid. 99.  Mutchler, “Roman Catholicism in Brazil,” 103–117. 100.  Gregório Bezerra, interview by Eliane Moury Fernandes, May 28, 1982, transcript, CEHIBRA, Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Recife, 169. 101.  Helder Camara, “Conscious and Anti-Communism,” Commonweal, December 18, 1964, 407–408. 102.  Ennes Paulo Crespo, interview, 22. 103.  “Esclarecimentos do Padre Crespo,” O Diario de Pernambuco, June 21, 1964, 9. 104.  Antônio Melo interview. 105.  Joseph Page, “The Little Priest Who Stands Up to Brazil’s Generals,” New York Times, May 23, 1971, SM26. 106.  Bruce Handler, “Brazil Probing 1969 Slaying of Liberal Priest,” Washington Post, July 6, 1974, A10. 107.  “2 American Priests Arrested in Brazil,” Washington Post, December 19, 1968, A23. 108.  Helder Camara, “Aos prezados Irmãos no Episcopadao e ao querido Povo de Deus da Arquidioce de Olinda e Recife,” A1, 4 (3)–32. Letter. Recife. 1 May 1972. CEDEM (Centro de documentação e memória da UNESP) Archive, São Paulo. 109. Ibid. 110.  Page, “Little Priest Who Stands Up,” SM26. 111.  Walter Arnold, “Revolution Through Peace,” New York Times, August 22, 1971, BR6. 112.  Bruce Handler, “Brazil Probing 1969 Slaying of Liberal Priest,” Washington Post, July 6, 1974, A10. 113.  Page, “Little Priest Who Stands Up,” SM26. 114.  “Tortured in Brazil, U.S. Missionary Says,” Washington Post, December 12, 1974, A31.

Chapter 6 1.  Celso Furtado, Entrevista a Reali Júnior, Estado de São Paulo, April 4, 2004, cited in Rosa d’Aguiar Furtado, “A batalha do Sudene,” 19. 2. Green, We Cannot Remain Silent, 38–42.

Notes to Chapter 6  293

3.  For more on this topic, see Anthony Pereira, The End of the Peasantry: The Rural Labor Movement in Northeastern Brazil, 1961–1988 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997); Rogers, Deepest Wounds; Biorn Maybury-Lewis, The Politics of the Possible: The Brazilian Rural Workers’ Trade Union Movement, 1964–1985 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994). 4. Stern, Remembering Pinochet’s Chile; José Carlos Sebe Bom Meihy, “Oral History in Brazil: Developments and Challenges,” Oral History Review 26, no. 2 (1999): 127–136; Elizabeth F. Xavier Ferreira, “Oral History and the Social Identity of Brazilian Women under Military Rule,” Oral History Review 24, no. 2 (1997): 1–2. 5.  One oral history project came from researchers’ initiatives at the Centro de P ­ esquisas e Documentação (CP-DOC) at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV), in Rio de Janeiro, with Aspásia Alcântara de Camargo, Eduardo Vasconcelos Raposo, Dulce Chaves Pandolfi, and Maria Beatriz do Nascimento. The Fundação Joaquim Nabuco’s (Fundaj) ­Coordenação-Geral de Estudos da História Brasileira Melo Franco de Andrade (Cehibra) conducted another oral history project organized by Eliane Moury Fernandes and Manuel Correia de Andrade. Eliane Moury Fernandes, ed., O movimento político-militar de 1964 no Nordeste (Recife: Editora Massangana, 2004): 11. 6.  Targino et.al., “As Ligas Camponesas na Paraíba,” 84. 7. Stern, Remembering Pinochet’s Chile, xxviii. 8. Atencio, Memory’s Turn, 123. 9.  Ibid., 10–11. 10. Eliane Moury Fernandes, “Entrevista: Francisco Julião,” Vencedores e vencidos: O movimento de 1964 em Pernambuco, eds. Manuel Correia de Andrade and Eliane Moury Fernandes (Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Editora Massangana, 2004), 107–108. 11.  Aspásia Camargo interviewed Julião in Mexico in 1977, and Eliane Moury Fernandes interviewed him in Recife in 1983. 12.  Fernandes, “Entrevista: Julião,” 78. 13.  Ibid., 79. 14. Francisco Julião, interview by Aspásia Camargo, transcript, December 1977, ­Yxcatepec, Morelos, Mexico, CPDOC, FGV, Rio de Janeiro, 153–154. 15.  Fernandes, “Entrevista: Julião,” 78. 16.  Ibid.; Julião interview by Carmargo, 122 17.  Fernandes, “Entrevista: Julião,” 93. 18.  Ibid., 82. 19. Ibid. 20.  Fernandes, “Entrevista: Julião,” 90; Julião interview by Camargo, 85–86. 21.  Fernandes, “Entrevista: Julião,” 79; Julião interview by Camargo, 117. 22.  Fernandes, “Entrevista: Julião,” 84, 89; Julião interview by Camargo, 71. 23.  Julião interview by Camargo, 108, 113. 24.  Fernandes, “Entrevista: Julião,” 85; Julião interview by Camargo, 112. 25.  Fernandes, “Entrevista: Julião,” 92. 26. Ibid. 27.  Ibid., 111.

294  Notes to Chapter 6

28.  Ibid., 100. 29.  Ibid., 111. 30.  Ibid., 112. 31. Santiago, Perfil Parlamentar, 183. 32.  “Entrevista: Maria do Carmo Barreto Campello de Melo,” Vencedores e vencidos: O movimento de 1964 em Pernambuco, ed. Manuel Correia de Andrade and Eliane Moury Fernandes (Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Editora Massangana, 2004), 35. 33.  Gregório Bezerra, interview by Eliane Moury Fernandes, May 28, 1982, transcript, CEHIBRA, Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Recife, 108. 34.  Clóvis Ribeiro do Rego Melo, interview by Eliane Moury Fernandes and Jorge Zaveruch, November 16, 1984, transcript, CEHIBRA, Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Recife, 21. 35.  Enes Paulo Crespo interview, 16, 32. 36.  Hélio Mariano da Silva, interview by Eliane Moury Fernandes, October 1983, transcript, CEHIBRA, Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Recife, 122. 37.  Joaquim Ferreira Filho, interview by Eduardo Raposo, June 21, 1977, transcript, CPDOC, FGV, Rio de Janeiro, 10. 38.  Ibid., 12. 39.  Ibid., 16, 18. 40.  Ibid., 43. 41.  Ivã Figueiredo, interview by Eduardo Raposo and José Otávio, Sapé, PB, February 1978 and January 1979, transcript, CPDOC, FGV, Rio de Janeiro, 24. 42.  Francisco Assis Lemos de Souza, interview by Eduardo Raposo, January 1978, transcript, CPDOC, FGV, Rio de Janeiro, 87, 201. 43. Cavalcanti, O caso, 111, 119. 44.  Ibid., 113. 45. Yara Lúcia Brayner Mattos, interview by Eliane Moury Fernandes, São Paulo, ­October 27, 1986, transcript, CEHIBRA, Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Recife, 12. Clovis Melo, 41. 46.  Hango Trench, interview by Eliane Moury Fernandes, May 28, 1986, transcript, CEHIBRA, Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Recife, 7. 47.  Ivã Figueiredo, interview by Eduardo Raposo and José Otávio, Sapé, Paraíba, February 1978 and January 1979, CPDOC, FGV, Rio de Janeiro, 64. 48.  Trench interview by Fernandes, 14. 49.  Bezerra interview by Fernandes, 107. 50.  Paulo Cavalcanti, O caso eu conto, como o caso foi (da coluna Prestes à queda de Arraes, Memórias) (São Paulo: Editora Alfa-Omega, 1978), 98, 103–106. 51.  Ibid., 93. 52.  Ibid., 109. 53.  Ibid., 110. 54.  Bezerra interview by Fernandes, 107. Clovis Melo also recalled that Julião developed a theory during these years of the “Cubanization of Brazil.” Melo interview by Fernandes and Zaveruch, 23 55.  Figuereido interview by Raposo and Otávio, 25–26. 56.  Brayner interview by Fernandes, 12.

Notes to Chapter 6  295

57.  Ferreira Filho interview by Eduardo Raposo, 25. 58.  Ibid., 37–38. 59.  Aybirê Ferreira de Sá, Das Ligas Camponesas à anistia: Memórias de um militante trotskista (Recife: Prefeitura do Recife/Secretaria de Cultura/Fundação de Cultura Cidade do Recife, 2007), 29. 60.  João Roberto Martins Filho, “The War of Memory: The Brazilian Military Dictatorship according to Militants and Military Men,” Latin American Perspectives 36, no. 5 (2009): 99. 61.  Trench interview by Fernandes, 33–34. 62.  João Cleofas, interview by Aspásia Camargo, Eduardo Raposo, Dulce Pandolfi, and Maria Cristina Guido, Rio de Janeiro, April 1979–March 1983, transcript, CPDOC, FGV, Rio de Janeiro, 298. 63.  Sabiniano Alves do Rego Maio, interview by Maria Antonia Alonso de Andrade and Humberto Mello, João Pessoa, March 16–19, 1981, transcript, CPDOC, FGV, Rio de Janeiro, 85. 64.  Mário Pessoa de Oliveira, interview by Eliane Moury Fernandes, January 17, 1983, transcript, CEHIBRA, Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Recife, 61. 65.  Albuquerque Júnior, A invenção. 66.  Alípio de Freitas, Resistir é preciso: Memória do tempo da morte civil do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record, 1981). 67.  Ibid., 279. 68.  Maria do R. Caetano, “Uma tragédia com a marca da terra,” Correio Brasiliense, September 29, 1988, 14. 69. Embrafilme, “Arrecadação e Espectadores por Unidade da Federação do Filme Cabra marcado para morrer,” November 1984–May 1985, folder: Cabra marcado para morrer, FUNARTE, Rio de Janeiro. 70. Atencio, Memory’s Turn, 28–41. 71. Stern, Remembering Pinochet’s Chile, 104–107. 72. Ibid. 73.  Eduardo Coutinho, interview by José Marinho de Oliveira, s.d., transcript, D22418, Collection: Depoimentos Cinema Brasileiro, tema Nordeste, Cinemateca Brasileira, São Paulo. 74.  Relatorio, “Rêde Ferroviária Federal S/A. Subcomissão de processo sumário de investigações,” No.0278B, 97, Prontuário Funcionário: Rêde Ferroviária do Nordeste, no. 448, Secretária da Segurança Pública, DOPS-PE, Recife. 75. Teixeira, Eu marcharei, 101–106. 76.  Ibid., 107–116. 77.  Ibid., 117–118. 78.  “Comentários do filme Cabra marcado para morrer, Ligas Camponesas, Série Lutas Populares no Brasil, 1924–1964 (Campinas: Centro de Defesa dos Direitos Humanos/­ Assesoria e Educação Popular, 1989), 3. 79.  “O real sem aspas: Uma conversa do cineasta Eduardo Coutinho com Ana Maria Galano, Aspásia Camargo, Zuenir Ventura e Claudio Bojunga,” Revista Filme Cultura 47 (April–August 1984).

296  Notes to Chapter 6

80.  Alcides Freire Ramos, “A historicidade de Cabra marcado para morrer (1964–84, Eduardo Coutinho),” January 28, 2006, http://nuevomundo.revues.org/1520. 81.  Menezes, “A questão do herói-sujeito em cabra marcado para morrer, filme de Eduardo Coutinho,” Tempo Social 6, no. 1–2 (1995): 113–114. 82.  Ramos, “A historicidade,” 4. 83.  Menezes, “A questão do herói-sujeito,” 113. 84. Jelin, Los trabajos de la memoria. 85.  Naíde Regueira Teodósio, interview by Dulce Chaves Pandolfi, July 1–5, 1991, recording, CPDOC, FGV, Rio de Janeiro. 86.  Brayner interview by Fernandes, 28. 87.  “Entrevista: Alexina Crespo,” Na trilha do golpe: 1964 revisitado, ed. Túlio Velho Barreto and Laurindo Ferreira (Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Editora Massangana, 2004), 162–163. 88.  Ibid., 164–165. 89.  Daniel James, Doña María’s Story: Life History, Memory and Political Identity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001). 90.  Consuelo Lins, O documentário de Eduardo Coutinho: Televisão, cinema e video (Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Editor, 2004), 47. 91.  Ibid., 48. 92.  Joana de Conti Dorea and Sônia Weidner Maluf, “A dona da história: Trajetória de Elizabeth no filme Cabra marcado para morrer,” in Antropologia em primeira mão (Florianopolis: UFSC, 2010), 5–15; Consuelo Lins, O documentário de Eduardo Coutinho: Televisão, cinema e video (Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Editor, 2004). 93. Atencio, Memory’s Turn, 30. 94.  “Depoimento: Anatailde de Paula Crespo,” Na trilha do golpe: 1964 revisitado, ed. Túlio Velho Barreto and Laurindo Ferreira (Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Editora Massangana, 2004), 98. 95. Ibid. 96.  Ibid., 99.

Chapter 7 1.  Her tweet read, “Nordestinos are not people. Do São Paulo a favor: Kill a Nordestino by drowning.” 2.  Pierre Nora, “Reasons for the Current Upsurge in Memory,” Transit, April 19, 2002, http://www.eurozine.com/reasons-for-the-current-upsurge-in-memory. 3.  Nora, “Reasons.” 4.  José Joaquim da Silva, or Zito de Galiléia, in discussion with the author, Engenho Galiléia, Pernambuco, November 2005. 5.  Zito blamed the city government for the lack of support, claiming that it believed that “to benefit Galiléia is bad for the municipal government. They were always against the Ligas movement . . . and the family in power currently is the same family that fought strongly against the Ligas in Galiléia [in the 1950s and 1960s].”

Notes to Chapter 7  297

6.  Joanne Rappaport, The Politics of Memory: Native Historical Interpretation in the Colombian Andes (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 195. 7.  Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 6. 8.  Reconstruindoacidadania, “CREED preserva história da Ligas Camponesas,” Programa Reconstruindo a Cidadania, February 19, 2010, http://programareconstruindoacida dania.blogspot.de/2010/02/creed-preserva-historia-das-ligas.html. 9.  Lissandro Nascimento, “Memorias do Engenho Galiléia,” A Voz da Vitória, September 9, 2010, http://www.avozdavitoria.com/noticias/memorias-do-engenho-galileia/. 10.  Targino, et.al., “As Ligas Camponesas na Paraíba,” 83–116. 11. Prefeitura Municipal de Sapé, “Estado participa de construção de acervo para Museu das Ligas Camponesas em Sapé,” March 28, 2012, http://prefeiturasape.blogspot .de/2012/03/estado-participa-de-construcao-de.html. 12.  “Areas de atuação,” Memorial da Ligas Camponesas, 2017, http://www.ligascampone sas.org.br/.

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“Entrevista: Maria do Carmo Barreto Campello de Melo.” Vencedores e vencidos: O movimento de 1964 em Pernambuco, edited by Manuel Correia de Andrade and Eliane Moury Fernandes. Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Editora Massangana, 2004. Emigração Japonesa no Brasil. São Paulo: Consulado Geral do Japão, 1973. Facó, Rui. Cangaceiros e Fanáticos: Gênese e lutas. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileiro, 1976. Freitas, Alípio de. Resistir é preciso: Memória do tempo da morte civil do Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record, 1981. Freyre, Gilberto, Estevão Pinto, Renato Campos, and Francisco Julião, Pe. Antonio Melo. Cana e Reforma Agrária. Recife: Instituto Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais, 1970. Freyre, Gilberto. Casa Grande e Senzala: Formação da família brasileira sob o regime da economia patriarchal. 26th ed. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record, 1989. Furtado, Celso. Desenvolvimento e subdesenvolvimento. Rio de Janeiro: Fundo de Cultura, 1961. “Glauber Rocha, Walter Lima Jr., David Neves, and Leon Hirszman: Deus e o diabo na terra do sol, 1964.” In O processo de Cinema Novo, by Alex Viany, 51–84. Rio de Janeiro: Aeroplano, 1999. Horowitz, Irving Louis. Revolution in Brazil: Politics and Society in a Developing Nation. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1964. Inkeles, Alex, and David H. Smith. Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Developing Countries. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974. Julião, Francisco. Até quarta, Isabela! Rio de Janeiro: Editora Civilização Brasileira, 1966. ———. Cambão—the Yoke: The Hidden Face of Brazil. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1975. Leacock, Ruth. Requiem for Revolution: The United States and Brazil, 1961–1969. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1990. Leeds, Anthony. “Brazil and the Myth of Francisco Julião.” Politics of Change in Latin America, edited by Joseph Maier and Richard W. Weatherhead, 190–204. New York: Prager, 1964. Lima, Carlito. Confessões de um capitão: Memórias. Rio de Janeiro: Garamond, 2001. Lima Júnior, Felix. Delmiro Gouveia: O Mauá do sertão Alagoano. Maceió: Departamento Estadual de Cultura, 1963. Martins, F. Magalhães. Delmiro Gouveia: Pioneiro e nacionalista. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Civilização Brasileira, 1963. Mello, Dante de. A verdade sobre ‘Os sertões’ (Análise reivindicatória da campanha de Canudos). Rio de Janeiro: Biblioteca do Exército—Editora, 1958. Melo, Antônio. “O Problema Agrária na zona canaviera de Pernambuco.” Speech at the Instituto Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais. Recife: Imprensa Universitária, 1965. Menezes, Olympio de. Itinerário de Delmiro Gouveia. Recife: Instituto Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais, 1963. Ministerio de Educação e Cultura: Paulo Frederico Maciel. “Um informe sobre alugns problemas do Nordeste.” Recife: Instituto Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais, 1956.

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Mota, Mauro. Cara e C’roa: Uma fase do Instituto Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais. Recife: [s.n.], 1974. ———. Quem foi Delmiro Gouveia? São Paulo: Empresa Grafica Carioca, 1967. Oliveira, Jorge. Eu não matei Delmiro Gouveia (Maior erro judiciário do Brasil). Maceió: Sergasa, 1984. Onis, Juan de. “Developing Latin America: Brazil’s Northeast Turn Toward Growth.” Currents, March 1967, 62. Ribeiro, René. “Brazilian Messianic Movements.” In Millenial Dreams in Action: Essays in Comparative Study, edited by Sylvia L. Thrupp, 55–69. The Hague: Moulton, 1962. Robock, Stefan H. “Northeast Brazil Revisited: Report on the Technical Mission of Stefan Robock.” Appointed by Department of Technical Cooperation, Organization of American States. July 1960. Econonic Development in Brazil’s Northeast [microform]: pamphlets. Princeton University Library. Rocha, Tadeu. Delmiro Gouveia: Pioneiro de Paulo Afonso. Maceió: Departamento Estadual de Cultura, 1953; 2nd ed. Recife, 1963. Sarno, Geraldo, and Orlando Senna. Coronel Delmiro Gouveia. Rio de Janeiro: Editor a ­CODECRI, 1979. Sodre, F. Novaes. Quem é Francisco Julião? Retrato de um movimento popular. São Paulo: Redenção Nacional, 1963. Sousa, J. Machado de. Vida de Delmiro Gouveia. Recife: n.p, 1964. Teixeira, Elizabeth. Eu marcharei na tua luta! A vida de Elizabeth Teixeira. Edited by Lourdes Maria Bandeira, Neide Miele, and Rosa Maria Godoy Silveira. João Pessoa: Editora Universitária/Manufactura, 1997. Valente, Waldemar. Misticismo e região (Aspectos do Sebastianismo Nordestino). Recife: Instituto Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais, 1963. Viana, Oliveira. Evolução do povo brasileiro, 4th ed. São Paulo: Livraria José Olympio Editora, 1956. Wiarda, Howard J. “Did the Alliance ‘Lose Its Way,’ or Were Its Assumptions All Wrong from the Beginning and Are Those Assumptions Still with Us?” In The Alliance for Pro­ gress: A Retrospective, edited by L. Ronald Scheman. New York: Praeger, 1988. U.S. Congress. Joint Economic Committee Congress of the United States. Economic Deve­ lopments in South America: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Inter-American Economic Relationships of the Joint Economic Committee Congress of the United States. 87th Cong., 2d sess. May 10–11, 1962. U.S. Congress, Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Communist Threat to the US through the Caribbean: Hearing before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary. 86th Cong., 1st sess. 1960. U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Agriculture. Extend Public Law 480. Hearings before the House Committee on Agriculture. 85th Cong., 2d sess., 1958. UNESCO. World Illiteracy at Mid-Century. Paris: United Nations, 1957.

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Unpublished Interviews CPDOC (Centro de Pesquisas e Documentação), Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV), Rio de Janeiro Francisco Julião Joaquim Ferreira Filho Antônio Augusto Macedo Francisco Assis Lemos de Souza Antônio Melo Enes Paulo Crespo Naíde Regueira Teodósio Sabiniano Alves do Rego Maia Ivã Figueiredo CEHIBRA (Centro de Estudos da História Brasileira), Fundação Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais (FUNDAJ), Recife Paulo de Figueiredo Cavalcanti Yara Lúcia Brayner Mattos Enes Paulo Crespo Gregório Bezerra Angela de Araújo Barreto Campello Clóvis Ribeiro do Rego Melo Manuel Correia de Oliveira Andrade Antônio C. Muncy Deolindo Moura Hango Trench Cinemateca Brasileira, São Paulo Linduarte Noronha Ipojuca Pontes João Raimundo Mello Rucker Vieira Vladimir Carvalho

Other João Circinato (Museu do Cangaço, Truinfo, Pernambuco). José Joaquim da Silva, or Zito de Galiléia (former Ligas Camponesas participant) Discussion with the author, Engenho Galiléia, Pernambuco, November 2005. Lincoln Gordon. Interview by John E. Rielly. May 30, 1964. Transcript. John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program, JFK Presidential Library, Boston.

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Films Gentil Roiz, Aítare de praia (1925) Tancredo Seabra, Filho sem mãe (1925) Jota Soares, A filha do advogado (1927) Chagas Ribeiro, Revezes (1927) Lampião, o Banditismo do Nordeste (1927) José Nelli, Lampião, a fera do Nordeste (1930) Benjamin Abrahão, Lampião, o rei do Cangaço (1936) Lima Barreto, O cangaceiro (1953) Alberto Cavalcanti, O canto do mar (1956) Linduarte Noronha, Aruanda (1959) Glauber Rocha, Barravento (1960) Carlos Coimbra, A morte comanda o cangaço (1960) Helen Jean Rogers, Brazil: The Troubled Land (1961) Roberto Pires, A grande feira (1961) Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Mandacaru vermelha (1962) Anselmo Duarte, O pagador de promessas (1962) João Ramiro Mello and Vladimir Carvalho, Romeiros da guia (1962) Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Vidas Secas (1962) Wilson Silva, Nordeste sangrento (1962) Carlos Coimbra, Lampião, rei do cangaço (1962) Ruy Guerra, Os Fuzis (1964) Glauber Rocha, Deus e o diabo na terra do sol (1964) Olney São Paulo, Grito da Terra (1964) Carlos Diegues, Ganga Zumbia: O rei de Palmares (1964) Leon Hirszman, Maioria Absoluta (1964) Alex Viany, Sol sobre a lama (1964) Paulo Gil Soares, Memória do cangaço (1965) Alberto d’Aversa, Seara vermelha (1965) Walter Lima Júnior, Menino de engenho (1965) Fernando de Barros, Riacho de sangue (1966) Otávio Ianni, A grande cidade (1967) George Jonas, A compadecida (1969) Ipojuca Pontes, Homens do caranguejo (1969) Carlos Coimbra, Corisco, o diabo loiro (1969) Geraldo Sarno, Viva Cariri! (1970) Paulo Gil Soares, O homem de couro (1970) Alex Viany, Os deuses e os mortes (1970) Eduardo Countinho and Leon Hirszman, Faustão (1971) Vladimir Carvalho, O país de São Saruê (1971/1979) Sergio Ricardo, A noite do espantalho (1974)

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Ipojuca Pontes, Canudos (1978) Geraldo Sarno, Coronel Delmiro Gouviéa (1979) Eduardo Coutinho, Cabra marcado para morrer (1984)

Books and Articles Abreu, Regina. O enigma de Os Sertões. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Rocco, Fundação Nacional de Arte, 1998. Aching, Gerard. “On the Creation of Unsung National Heroes: Barnet’s Esteban Monejo and Armas’s Julian del Casal.” Latin American Literary Review 24, no. 43 (1994): 31–50. Alberto, Paulina. Terms of Inclusion: Black Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century Brazil. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. Albuquerque Júnior, Durval Muniz de. A invenção do Nordeste e outras artes. Recife and São Paulo: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Editora Massangana and Cortez Editora, 1999. ———. Nordestino: Uma invenção do falo: Uma história do gênero masculine (Nordeste— 1920/194O). Maceió: Catavento, 2003. ———. “Weaving Tradition: The Invention of the Brazilian Northeast.” Latin American Perspectives 31, no. 2 (2004): 42–61. Alexander, Robert. Juscelino Kubitschek and the Development of Brazil. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1991. Alonso, Ana María. Thread of Blood: Colonialism, Revolution, and Gender on Mexico’s Northern Frontier. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995. Alves, Márcio Moreira. A Grain of Mustard Seed: The Awakening of the Brazilian Revolution. New York: Anchor, 1973. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 2006. Appelbaum, Nancy. Muddied Waters: Race, Region and Local History in Columbia, 1846– 1948. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. Appelbaum, Nancy P., Anne S. Macpherson, and Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt, eds. Race and Nation in Modern Latin America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Amado, Janaína. “Região, Sertão, Nação.” Estudos Históricos 8, no. 15 (1995): 145–151. Atencio, Rebecca J. Memory’s Turn: Reckoning with Dictatorship in Brazil. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014. Aued, Bernadete Wrubleski. A vitória dos vencidos: Partido Comunista Brasileiro e Ligas Camponesas, 1955–1964. Florianópolis: Editora da UFSC, 1985. Avellar, José Carlos. Deus e o diabo na terra do sol: A linha reta, o melaço de cana e o retrato do artista quando jovem. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1995. Azevedo, Antonio Antônio. As Ligas Camponesas. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1982. Barcellos, Jalusa. CPC da UNE: Uma história de paixão e consciencia. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nova Fronteira, 1994. Barroso, Gustavo. Terra de sol. Rio de Janeiro, n.p., 1956. Bastos, Elide Rugai. As Ligas Camponesas. Petrópolis: Vozes, 1984.

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Bernardet, Jean-Claude. Brasil em tempo de cinema. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1967. ———. Cineastas e imagens do povo. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2003. Beserra, Bernadete. “Introduction. Brazilian Northeast: Globalization, Labor and Poverty.” Latin American Perspectives 31, no. 2 (2004): 3–15. Berzerra, Cláudio, ed. Tejucupapo: História, Teatro, Cinema. Recife: Edições Bagaço, 2004. Blake, Stanley Earl. The Vigorous Core of Our Nationality: Race and Regional Identity in Northeastern Brazil. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011. Botsford, Keith. “Conversation in Brazil with Gilberto Freyre.” Encounter 19, no. 5 (1962): 33–41. Bourdieu, Pierre. “Identity and Representation: Elements for a Critical Reflection on the Idea of Region.” In Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. Brands, Hal. Latin America’s Cold War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Bruneau, Thomas. The Political Transformation of the Catholic Church in Brazil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974. Burns, E. Bradford. “History in the Brazilian Cinema.” Luso-Brazilian Review 14, no. 1 (1977): 49–59. Caetano, Maria do Rosário, ed. Cangaço: O Nordestern no Cinema Brasileiro. Brasília: Avathar Soluções Graficas, 2005. ———. “‘Nordestern’: Luz, câmera, cangaço.” Revista de História da Biblioteca Nactional 3 (September 2005): 27. Callado, Antônio. Os Industriais da seca e os “Galileus” de Pernambuco (Aspectos da luta pela reforma agária no Brasil). Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1960. ———. Tempo de Arraes: Padres e comunistas na revolução em violência Rio de Janeiro: José Alvaro, 1964. Camargo, Aspasia Alcantara de. “Brésil nord-est: Mouvements paysans et crise populiste.” PhD diss., Ècole pratique des hautes etudes, Centre d’etudes des mouvements sociaux, 1973. Campos, Marta. Colonialismo, cultura interno, o caso Nordeste. Fortaleza, n.p., Banco do Nordeste, 1986. Campos Johnson, Adriana Michéle. Sentencing Canudos: Subalternity in the Backlands of Brazil. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010. Caputo, Ana Cláudia, and Hildete Pereira de Melo. “A industrialização brasileira nos anos de 1950: Uma análise da instrução 113 da SUMOC.” Estudos Econômicos 39, no. 3 (2009): 513–538. Carvalho, José Murilho de. “Mandonismo, coronelismo, clintelismo: uma discussão conceitual.” In Pontos e bordados: Escritos de história e política. Belo Horizonte: Editora da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, 1998. Carvalho, Maria Michol Pinho de. Matriarcas do Maranhão: Dona Noca, a senhora do sertão. Rio de Janeiro: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 1990. Castellanos, Diana G. Hidalgo. “Um olhar na vida de exílio de Francisco Julião.” Master’s thesis. Universidade de São Paulo, 2002.

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Castro, Iná Elias de. O mito da necessidade: Discurso e prática do regionalismo nordestino. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil, 1992. Chilcote, Ronald. The Brazilian Communist Party: Conflict and Integration, 1922–1972. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972. Childers, Joseph, and Gary Hentzi, eds. The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. Childs, Matt. “Expanding Perspectives on Race, Culture and Nation in Cuban History.” Latin American Research Review 39, no. 1 (2004): 285–301. Clemente, Marcos Edilson de Araújo. “Lampiões acesos: A associação folclórico e comunitária dos ‘Cangaceiros de Paulo Afonso’—BA e os processos de constituição da memória coletiva do cangaço (1956-1988).” Master’s thesis. Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2003. Correia, Telma de Barros. Pedra: Plano e cotidiano operário no sertão. São Paulo: Papirus Editora, 1998. Costa Pinto, L. A., and Waldemiro Bazzanella. “Economic Development, Social Change, and Population Problems in Brazil.” In Revolution in Brazil: Politics and Society in a Developing Nation, edited by Irving Louis Horowitz. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1964. Cowan, Benjamin, “Sex and Security: Gender, Sexuality, and ‘Subversion’ at Brazil’s Escola Superior de Guerra, 1964–1985.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 16, no. 3 (2007): 459–481. Cowling, Mark, and James Martin, eds. Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire: (Post)modern Interpretations. London: Pluto, 2002. Cunha, Paulo Ribeiro da. Aconteceu longe demais: A luta pela terra dos posseiros em Formosa e Trombas e a Revolução Brasileira (1950–1964). São Paulo: Editora UNESP, 2007. Curran, Mark J. História do Brasil em cordel. São Paulo: Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 1988. Cury, Maria Zilda Ferreira. “Os Sertões, de Euclides da Cunha: Espaços.” Luso-Brazilian Review 41, no. 1 (2004): 71–79. Dabove, Juan Pablo. Bandit Narratives in Latin America: From Villa to Chávez. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017. de Grazia, Victoria. How Fascism Ruled Women in Italy, 1922–1945. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. de la Cadena, Marisol. Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru, 1919-1991. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000. Debs, Silvie. Cinema et littérature au Brésil: Les mythes du Sertào: émergence d’une identité nationale. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2002. Della Cava, Ralph. “Brazilian Messianism and National Institutions: A Reappraisal of Canudos and Joaseiro.” Hispanic American Historical Review 48, no. 3 (1968): 402–420. ———. Miracle at Joazeiro. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970. Dinneen, Mark. Listening to the People’s Voice: Erudite and Popular Literature in North East Brazil. London: Kegan Paul International, 1996. Domingos, Manuel, and Laurence Hallewell. “The Powerful in the Outback of the Brazilian Northeast.” Latin American Perspectives 31, no. 2 (2004): 94–111.

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Index

Page numbers followed by f indicate material in figures. abertura (“political opening”), 126, 216–218, 229, 231, 234, 239 abolition, 149; slave rebellions, 167; agrarian reform as, 160–163, 165–171, 253; comparisons to Bonafácio and Nabuco, 220, 249; nordestinos compared to slaves, 150–151 Abrahão, Benjamin, 72 “A Conservative’s Words” (Alves), 162 actors: cast for authenticity, 81, 119, 146, 147f, 273n23; imprisonment of, 233; race of, 70, 78; and trope of o Nordeste, 176–177; use of nonprofessionals, 69, 82, 177, 188, 190, 232. See also cultural actors A Defesa newspaper, 134 Africa/Africans: Brazilian discomfort with, 179; as initial protestors for abolition, 167; LIGA coverage of, 151–152; nordestinos as descendants of, 171–172, 174, 176, 179; use of agricultural methods from, 133, 135 African Americans in United States, 151 Agrarian Cooperative of Tirirí, 168 (168f) agrarian feudalism, 38, 92, 116, 131, 161 “agrarian peace,” 27 agrarian reform: as “abolition,” 160–161, 166–167, 169–170; building support for,

32, 166–167; Canudos as, 184; Catholic Church support for, 205–207; Conservatives and, 57, 133–136, 153; Goulart’s Basic Reform project, 47; increasing mechanization, 7; Kubitschek and, 220; land ­reform or, 133, 149, 163, 199, 225; ­landowner attempts to shape, 132–133; Lima Filho on, 90; during military rule, 216; more important than wages, 221; PCB supporting, 37–38; and quilombo issues, 171; universally advocated for, 27 agreste zone, 8, 14, 148 A história na mão: Uma biografia de Zito da Galiléia, 256 A Hora newspaper, 150 A ilha das cangaceiras virgens (Mauro), 110 Alagoas state, 13, 139–141, 143, 171 Albuquerque Júnior, Durval Muniz de, 14, 137, 242, 263n3 A liga que ligou o Nordeste (dir. Zito de Galiléia), 256 Alípio de Freitas (Padre Alípio), 117, 199–203, 207, 230 Alliance for Progress (US), 46, 55–56 Alves, Aluízio, 49, 119 Alves, Castro, 162, 163

320 Index

Alves, Márcio Moreira, 49 amnesty, 216, 231, 240 Amorim, Ophélia, 234 A morte comanda o cangaço (dir. ­Coimbra), 74–77 (75f, 77f), 81–82, 84f, 186 (186f) anarchism, 225 ANCAR (National Rural Extension Service), 50, 55, 134 Anderson, Benedict, 262n30 Andrade, Carlos Luiz de, 35 Angolan independence movement, 152 (152f) A noite do espantalho (dir. Ricardo), 210 anos de chumbo (leaden years), 7, 216 “Antão” (in Ganga Zumba), 174–176 (175f) anthropometry, 86, 147 anti-Americanism, 11, 48, 55 Antônio (cousin of Julião), 33 AP (Popular Action/Acão Popular), 230 Arena conta Zumbi (Arena Theater), 180 “Aroroba” (in Ganga Zumba), 174–176 Arraes, Miguel: as Recife mayor (1959), 48; as Pernambuco governor (1962), 40–41, 48–49, 57, 106, 168–169, 226; and 1964 coup, 7, 47, 169, 215; accused of procommunist agitation, 46, 60, 106; antiAmericanism of, 48; diminished violence under, 251; and Engenho Massangana, 169; and Julião, 222, 225, 250; opposed by O Diário de Pernambuco, 59, 104; relations with Ligas, 10, 106, 201, 248; use of language of abolition, 168 “Arrival of Lampião in Hell, The” (Pacheco), 93 arson accusations, 100–101 (101f) Article 141 violations, 202 Aruanda (dir. Noronha and Vieira), 62–63, 171–174 (173f), 176–178, 236 As cangaceiras eróticas (dir. Mauro), 110 As Ligas Camponesas (Azevedo), 9, 148 As Ligas Camponesas (Bastos), 9 Association of Rural Workers of Sapé, 33. See also Teixeira, João Pedro Atencio, Rebecca, 231 authenticity, 80–84 Autobiography of a Runaway Slave (Barnet), 180

Aymar, José, 196 Azevedo, Fernando Antônio, 9, 27, 148, 250, 263n2 Bahia state, 134, 172, 183 Bandits (Hobsbawm), 66 Bank of the Northeast, 134 Barbosa, Severino, 88 Barnet, Miguel, 180 Barravento (Rocha), 172 Barreto, Lima, 61, 74 (74f), 80, 172, 191 Barros, Fernando de, 191, 210 Bastide, Roger, 112 Bastos, Elide de Rugai, 9 Bastos, Othon, 69 (69f), 273n23 Bastos, Raimundo, 38 beato (holy man), 189–191 (192f), 220 Belarmino, Higino José, 90 “Bel-India,” Brazil as, 112 Belo Horizonte Congress, 40, 97 Belo Monte, Bahia, 183 Beloved (Morrison), 255 Beltrão, Oscar de Arruda, 28 Benário, Olga, 202 Bernardet, Jean-Claude, 118 Bezerra, Gregório, 37, 108, 208, 224, 226–228 Bezerra, João, 107–108 Bible, radicalization of the, 41, 183, 185, 194, 198–201, 203, 211 Bicycle Thief, The (dir. de Sica), 121 biopower, 86 “black magic,” 141–142 Black Panther Party, 180 Blake, Stanley, 15 Boal, Augusto, 118, 180 Boa Viagem, 55 Bonafácio, José, 220 “Bonnie and Clyde,” Brazilian, 65–66 “borrowed language,” 3 Bourdieu, Pierre, 16 brainwashing, 185, 186, 189–190 Brasil, terra de contrastes (Bastide), 112 Brasília, building of, 4 Brayner Mattos, Yara Lúcia, 227, 237 Brazil: as land of contrasts, 112–113; postWWII, 3–4; as two separate nations, 51

Index 321

Brazil Communist Party. See PCB Brazilian Armed Forces: and 1964 coup, 108, 215–216, 218, 232, 235; arrest of Father Alípio by, 201–202; creating official history, 234; opposing Goulart, 47; as part of “Conservatives,” 57, 59; smear campaigns by, 210; war against Canudos, 182–183, 193. See also military Brazilian Higher War College (ESG), 50, 59 Brazilian Penal Code, 85 Brazil: The Troubled Land (dir. Rogers), 122–126 (123f) Brecht, Bertolt, 180 British imperialism in Brazil, 142 Buarque, Chico, 264n4 Buíque, Brazil, 245 Bulhões, Silvino Hermano, 109 Cabanada rebellion 220 Cabra marcado para morrer (dir. Coutinho), 217, 238f; Elizabeth before and after coup, 237–244; as “emblematic memory,” 232; family metaphor in, 237; ­middle-class audience for, 231; on ­possibility of healing, 231; pre-coup filming, 232–234, 249; “reality effects” in, 218, 232, 235–236; resumption of filming, 234; seeking out Elizabeth’s children, 240; Zito on, 255. See also Coutinho, Eduardo; Teixeira, Elizabeth; Teixeira, João Pedro Callado, Antônio, 51, 163–164 Câmara, Joel, 103 Camargo, Aspásia, 9 cambão (day of unpaid labor), 8, 156–157, 159, 161, 220, 227, 253 Cambão: The Hidden Face of Brazil (Julião), 219 Câmera, Helder (Dom Helder), 42, 203, 208–210, 256, 260n12 Campeiro de Aragão, Antônio, 206 camponesas (peasants), 23, 34 cane, 48–49, 57–58, 95, 100–101, 135, 146, 157–158 (158f), 168 Caneca (Frei), 203 cangaceirismo/cangaceiros (banditry/bandits), 1–2, 220, 243; “authentic” portrayals

of, 66–68, 80–85; and Canudos, 184; as class struggle, 92; conflicting views of, 97; costume of, 68–69; in Deus e o diabo, 70–72; Facó on, 97–98; in film, 68–85; on horse versus on foot, 82; imagination versus reality in, 229; legendary figures of, 65–66; as masculine image, 18, 68; in A morte comanda, 76–77 (77f); and o Nordeste trope, 58, 66; PCB discourse on, 96–99; in popular culture, 66; portrayed as violent criminals, 99, 107–108; race and, 70, 75; recruiting from poor, 121; as remaining after death, 71; scholarship on, 66; severed heads of, 85; soldiers as worse than, 89; and struggle for agrarian reform, 6, 91–96; “true” history of, 110–111. See also Lampião Cangaceiros (Lins do Rego), 97 Cangaceiros de Lampião (dir. Coimbra), 110 Cangaceiros e fanáticos (Facó), 97, 192 Canudos, 14, 182–185, 192–198, 201, 253 capangas (hired thugs), 32–33 Capistrano, David, 37 Cardoso, Rui, 169 Carneiro, Paulino, 177 “Carta de Alforria,” 164 (164f) Caruaru, 250 Carvalho, José Maria de, 276n82 Carvalho, Vladimir de, 233 Casa-grande e senzala (Freyre), 145 Castelo Branco, Humberto de Alencar, 7, 215 Castro, Fidel, 54, 125–126, 164, 210, 220 Castro, Josué de, 36, 115–116, 236 Catholic Church, 5, 10; in the agreste, 148; as bought off by landowners, 118; Church Federations of Rural Workers, 10, 36, 41, 128, 156–157, 169, 204–207, 221, 224; and C.I.A., 41; claims of power and popular support, 224; and Conservatives, 205– 206; Encontros dos Bispos do Nordeste, 204; Federation of Rural Workers, 36, 128; Julião and, 165, 221; Liberation Theology, 198, 203; on migrants as “putrefying sores,” 156; in Northeast (1950–1964), 41–44; Padre Alípio, 117, 199–203, 207, 230; priest advocating violence, 129; radi-

322 Index

Catholic Church (continued ) calizing of, 194, 203–210; “red” bishops in, 210; and rural unions, 41, 182, 205, 208; Second Vatican Council, 42; and severed heads, 88; supporting both sides, 204. See also John XXIII Cavalcanti, Alarico Bezerra, 127 Cavalcanti, Paulo, 37, 60, 194, 224–226 Cavalcanti de Albuquerque, Orlando, 205 Ceará state, 134, 189 chattel slavery, 149, 150, 157 CHESF (San Francisco Hydroelectric Company), 136 Chicago World’s Fair, 138–139 China, 40, 53–54, 95, 151 C.I.A. (US), 41, 55, 204 ciclo de caranguejo (crab cycle), 116. See also crab people Cinema Novo: black Brazilians in, 172, 178; Cinco vezes favela, 172; nonprofessional actors in, 69; and radical culture movement, 60, 62; rejecting romanticism, 2, 6, 62; religiosity in, 191; style of, 176–178, 232 cinema-verité style, 81 “Cipriani” (in Ganga Zumba), 175 Circinato, João, 110 class strategy, 96 Clemente, Marcos Edilson de Araújo, 67 Cleofas, João, 48, 229 clinics and maternity centers, 42, 251–252 coalition politics in Northeast, 32–34, 40–41, 44, 46–48, 96 coffin story, 28–32, 250, 264n5. See also SAPPP Coimbra, Carlos, 68, 74, 76–82, 92, 110, 186, 272n14 Cold War, 10–12, 244–245; Armed Forces role during, 59; cangaceiros redefined during, 66; fear of “fringe” religion, 185; filmmakers promoting authenticity during, 80–82; Ligas framed as communist agitators, 58–59; as proxy for Northeast, 153; scholarship on Latin America during, 11–12; slavery as metaphor during, 150, 153; smear campaigns, 210 colonialism, 38, 116, 146, 151–152, 198, 220

colonização (land cooperatives), 133–134 Color of Modernity, The (Weinstein), 15 communism: and atheism, 153; Catholic Church accused of, 208; economic aid as answer to, 56; Father Alípio accused of, 202; filmmakers arrested as, 233; Galileus accused of, 30–31; Julião and, 165, 221; Ligas as “communist agitators,” 58–59; media warnings of, 126; military fears of, 59–60; rural workers and, 103, 153, 206; US fears of, 46, 52–56; in zona de mata, 148. See also PCB (Brazilian Communist Party) consciousness raising, 98 Conselheiro, Antônio (o Conselheiro alias Antônio Vicente Mendes Maciel), 183–184, 188–189, 191, 193–194, 196, 203 Conservatives, 242, 260n11; on agrarian reform, modernization, 57; and Canudos, 195–198; and Catholic Church, 205–206; conservatism defined, 57; on coup/dictatorship, 228–229; and Cuba, 226; declaring Ligas a threat, 6, 182–183; erasure of history by, 245; on indentured servitude, 156; labeling Ligas as religious fanatics, 182; makeup of, 59; portrayal of cangaceiros by, 98–103 CONTAG (Union of Farmers and Agricultural Workers), 39–41 “Conversa de camponês” (Taveira), 165–166 Corisco: actor’s resemblance to, 69f, 81, 273n23; beheading of, 73, 85, 109; conflicting views of, 97, 126; Corisco, o diabo loiro, 81, 110; Deus e o diabo, 66, 69–71 (69f), 73, 82, 83f. See also Dadá; severed heads coronel/coronelismo/coronéis (rural political boss/system), 17, 47, 68, 90–93,111, 113, 127, 133, 141, 144, 230. See also latifundiário Coronel Delmiro Gouveia (dir. Sarno), 140 Costa e Silva, Artur, 7 counternarrative, 253–254 coup (1964): Catholic Church support for, 42; during filming of Cabra marcada, 232–234; Goulart’s speech contributing to, 47; “War of Memory” over, 228–229 Coutinho, Eduardo: after 1964 coup,

Index 323

233–234; family as metaphor, 237; movies deviating from commercial style, 110; “reality effect” techniques of, 218, 232, 235–236; return to Engenho Galiléia, 234; searching out Teixeira children, 240; using pre-coup footage, 217. See also Cabra marcado para morrer Coutinho, Ricardo, 256 crab cycle (ciclo de caranguejo), 116 “crab people,” nordestinos as, 5, 236. See also ciclo de caranguejo Crespo, Alexina, 228, 239, 241 Crêspo, Anatailde de Paula, 241 Crespo, Paulo (Father Paulo), 41, 43–44, 128, 157, 204–207, 209, 224 “Criança morta” (Portinari), 113–114 (114f) Cuba: and agrarian reform, 3, 170, 200; “Ché” Guevara as hero, 46; comparisons with Northeastern Brazil, 1, 55, 93, 126; Conservatives and, 226; Crespo, Melo, Alípio and, 200, 206–207; Dante de Mello and, 195; Elizabeth Teixeira and, 233; Julião and, 219–220, 223, 226–227, 249; LIGA reports on, 152 (152f), 193, 200; Ligas and, 207, 219–220, 222, 226–228, 249; and PCB, 226; revolutionary tactics in, 95; and rural social movements, 5, 19, 22, 27, 36, 92; US concerns regarding, 52–53, 55, 116. See also Cuban Revolution Cuban Revolution, 1, 5, 19, 22, 27, 52–53, 55, 152, 170, 181, 193, 195, 200, 219–220, 222–230, 249; Brazilian media in era of, 61, 85, 118, 185; literatura de cordel in era of, 63. See also 26th of July movement cultural actors, 28, 60–64, 66, 91, 144, 229, 243 “cultural persuasion,” 146 cultural studies methodologies, 243, 263n42 Dabove, Juan Pablo, 65, 272n7 da Cunha, Euclides, 2, 14, 61, 117, 182–184, 187, 195, 230 Dadá (partner of Corisco), 70, 73, 81 “Dandara” (in Ganga Zumba), 175–176 “das Mortes, Antônio” (in Deus e o diabo), 70, 81, 189

Death Without Weeping (Scheper-Hughes), 264n4 Debray, Regis, 225 Déia, Maria. See Maria Bonita Del Rey, Geraldo, 70, 188 Derby Market, 138 Deus e o diabo na terra do sol (dir. Rocha), 1; advertising for, 82, 83f, 102; and agrarian reform movement, 20; cangaceiros in, 68–71 (69f ), 92; critical acclaim for, 2; emphasis on authenticity in, 81, 273n23; final scene of, 1–2, 71; messianism in, 1–2, 17, 187–189 (188f ); opening scene of, 72; plot and filming of, 187–189 (188f ); as revolutionary film, 62; Rocha’s statements on, 23, 81, 271n142, 273nn15; scripted sequence not filmed, 73; trope of o Nordeste in, 17. See also Rocha, Glauber Dianópolis, 227 Diegues, Carlos, 171, 174, 176, 178–180 Dinneen, Mark, 63, 271n151 disappearances, 209 “discursive prison,” 242 disease metaphor, 185 DNOCS (“National Department of Drought Relief Works”), 49–51 “docile bodies,” 86 Doctrine of National Security, 59, 216 “Dollar Curtain,” 151 Dom Eugenio (Eugenio de Araujo Sales), 42, 43, 203 Dom Helder (Helder Camara), 42, 203, 208–210, 256, 260n12 Dom Pelé (José Maria Pires), 208 Doña María’s Story (James), 239 Dona Nô (Ana Maria dos Santos), 65 Dona Noca, 38 DOPS (Department of Political and Social Order), 58–59, 233 dos Santos, Ana Maria, 65 dos Santos, Maria (Dona Nô), 65 dos Santos, Nelson Pereira, 62, 82, 120–122 (121f) dos Santos, Severino Francisco, 159 drought: depictions of, 121; government aid after, 49–50; migration due to, 45, 154;

324 Index

drought (continued ) press descriptions of, 115; refugees from (flagelados, retirantes), 113 Duarte, Anselmo, 61, 288n13 Duarte, Aurora, 76 Dumont, José, 146, 147f Duque Estrada, Rodrigo, 197 Eighteenth Brumaire of Napoleon Bonparte, The (Marx), 3 eito/eiteiros (“hired hands”), 165 “Emancipation Proclamation” (Mao), 151 “emblematic memory,” 232 empresário rural/agrícola (rural/agrarian businessman), 113 “encircle and destroy” tactics, 95 Encontros dos Bispos do Nordeste, 204 Engenho Cananduba, 196 Engenho Galiléia, 8; in Cabra marcado para morrer, 234, 236; current conditions around, 251–253; expropriation of, 28–29, 32–35, 57, 59, 91, 133; hand-drawn map of, 249; monument to Ligas on, 248 (248f); and PCB, 39, 96–97; as starting point for abolition, 163; and trope of o Nordeste, 8, 29, 32, 59; US officials’ visits to, 55; worker mutual aid society on, 28–31 (30f); workers portrayed as communists, 100; Zito and, 255. See also Cabra marcado para morrer Engenho Malemba, 129 Engenho Marí, 106–107 Engenho Massangana, 168–169, 286n59 Engenho Pindobal, 196 Engenho Serra, 127–128, 160, 225–226, 251 Escobar, Arturo, 53 ESG (Brazilian Higher War College), 50, 59 Estrela textile mill, 139, 142 Estreliana tragedy, 105f Ethnographic and Anthropological Museum Estácio de Lima, 85 expropriation, 28–29, 32–35, 57, 59, 91, 133 “Fabiano” (in Vidas secas), 121–122 “fables,” cangaceiro films as, 82 Facó, Rui, 97–98, 192–193 “familial diaspora,” 234, 241

Faria, Marcos, 110 Farias, Cordeiro de, 33 Father Alípio (Alípio de Freitas), 117, 199–203, 207, 230 Father Crespo, 41, 43–44, 128, 157, 204–207, 209, 224 Father Melo, 41, 43–44, 169, 204, 206–207, 209, 221, 291n86 Father Roma (José Ignácio Ribeiro de Abreu e Lima), 203 fazendas/fazendeiros (Southeastern estates/ farmers), 113, 154–155 Félix, Antônio, 141 Fernandes, Aníbal, 133 Fernandes, Eliane Moury, 223 Ferreira, Expedita, 88–89 Ferreira de Sá, Aybirê, 228 Ferreira Filho, Joaquim, 225, 227 feudalism, agrarian, 38, 92, 116, 131, 161 Figueirdo, Ivã, 225–227 film endings, 272n11–13 fires portrayed as arson, 100–101 Firmino, José, 39 First Republic (1889–1930), 113 “Florinda” (in A morte), 76 focos training camps, 221–222, 226 folheto (Pacheco), 71 folhetos (pamphlets), 22, 35, 64, 165–166. See also literatura de cordel Formoso as Socialist Republic, 38–39 Foucault, Michel, 17, 86–87 4-H clubs, 55 Francisco, João, 168–169 Francisco de Assis, 164 Francisco de Souza, José, 32, 100 Freire, Paulo, 6, 48, 60 Freyre, Gilberto, 50–51, 145, 149, 176 FUNDAJ, 19, 217, 256 Furtado, Celso, 6, 36, 46, 51–52, 55, 125, 169, 215 Gabeira, Fernando, 231 Galiléia, 20, 29–32, 33, 100, 160, 245–256, 246, 248–249, 251, 254, 296n5. See also Engenho Galiléia Ganga Zumba (dir. Diegues), 171–172, 174–176 (175f), 178–180

Index 325

Garcia, Carlos, 112 gender: in appeals to rural workers, 129; landowners fathering children with workers, 158; masculinity, 18, 68–70, 92, 98, 129, 137; mulher braba (bossy woman), 17–18; mulher brava (warrior woman), 17, 263n46; mulher macho (butch woman), 17–18; prostitution, 68, 79, 140, 222, 228–229; rural men’s dominance over women, 95, 274n51; in threats toward rural workers, 132; women in resistance, 231–232, 236–239, 253 germ metaphors, 185 Getúlio Vargas Foundation, 217 global South, 151–152 Goiás state, 38–39, 110, 219, 226–228 Gomes, Mariano Pedro, 129 Gomes, Paulo Emílio Salles, 83, 178 Gondim, Pedro, 49 Gordon, Lincoln, 52 Goulart, João: taking office after Quadros’ resignation, 46; resuming full powers, 47; policies under, 46; celebrating Engenho Massangana expropriation, 168; deposed in coup, 7, 47, 169, 215; Conservative objections to, 57, 59; first president to speak with a peasant, 169; supporting rural reforms, unions, 40, 169 Gouveia, Delmiro, 111, 136–144, 230 Grams, Peter, 209 Grandin, Greg, 11 Green, James, 7 grilheiros (hired thugs), 32 Grunspan-Jasmin, Élise, 109 GTDN (Working Group for Northeastern Development), 45, 51 Guerra, Ruy, 62, 189–190 (190f) guerra branca (invisible war), 116–117 guerrilla tactics, 180 Guevara, Ernesto “Ché,” 46, 95, 120 gun as “law,” 124 Hall, Stuart, 16, 84, 147, 243 hand-held camera, use of, 82 “Histories of the Cangaço Inspire Tourism,” 65 history, reclaiming of, 246

History of Agrarian Reform and Communism in Brazil, The (Sena), 153 Hobsbawm, Eric, 66 Holston, James, 4 honor killings, 141–142 Hora, Abelardo da, 256 IJNPS, 50, 63, 135, 145–146, 174 illiteracy/illiterates: folhetos informing, 35, 63, 166; LIGA on, 116; as politically aware, 49; portrayed in films, news, 72, 80, 124, 132, 176–178; prohibited from voting, 4, 48–49, 164; statistics on, 53, 115; as vulnerable to fanaticism, 182, 196–197 “imagined community,” nation as, 262n30 industrialization: import substitution, 44; “industrial time,” 50; Kubitschek’s support for, 45, 220; SUDENE infrastructure development, 51–52; US pessimism regarding, 56; Vargas’ support for, 44 infant mortality as genocide, 117 “inferential racism,” 147 In from the Cold (eds. Gilbert and Spenser), 11 “institutionalized forgetting,” 218 Instituto Médico Legal Nina Rodrigues, 72–73, 85–86, 109–110 Inter-American Development Bank, 56 internal colonialism, 116 Invention of the Northeast, The/A invenção do nordeste(Albuquerque Júnior), 242, 262, 264n31, 282n84, 295n65 Isabel (Princess), 166 Italian Westerns, 80 Jaboatão, 251 Japanese immigrants, 133–135 (134f) Jelin, Elizabeth, 236 Jesus Christ, 164, 183, 198–199, 201, 203 João Farrapo (Pires), 119–120, 126 Joaquim Nabuco Foundation (FUNDAJ), 19, 217, 256 Joaquim Nabuco Institute of Social Research (IJNPS), 50, 63, 135, 145–146, 174 John XXIII (pope), 42–43, 183, 198, 203–205, 208

326 Index

Jornal do Bancário, 118–119, 127 José (torture victim), 128 Joseph, Gilbert, 11 Juazeiro, 193 Julgamento em Novo Sol (dir. Boal), 118, 126 Julião, Francisco, 123f; accused of agitation, 107; arguing expropriation case, 28–29, 32, 34–36; arrest, imprisonment in 1950s, 33; arrest, imprisonment in 1964, 60, 218–219, 250; in Brazil: The Troubled Land, 123–125 (123f); called a Fidelista by Newsweek, 125; on the cambão, 157; and communism, 30–31, 96, 103, 125, 151, 165, 221; compared to Jesus Christ, Conselheiro, 194; and Cuba, 219, 225, 226, 249; denials of supporting violence, 221; denouncing arrest of Kruel, 201; as descendant of slaveholders, 162; disagreements with PCB, 40; “evolution” of, 98; favoring Communist Party over Church, 165; final years of, 223; on foreign instigators, 222; as head of Ligas Camponesas, 8–9, 39, 250; interviewed by Zito, 249; on Lampião, 91; letter to Zilde Maranhão from, 161–162; mythologizing of, 198; narrative of reconciliation, 222; others’ memories of, 224–225; on paths to democracy, 165; Peasant’s Manumission Letter by, 164–165; poets popularizing, 54, 93; police portrayals of, 103; posthumous government recognition of, 256; as state, federal representative, 8; supporting cooperatives, 165; use of Bible, 41; Zito’s impressions of, 249. See also Ligas Camponesas Jurema, Albelardo, 229 Kennedy, Edward, 55, 244, 247 (247f) Kennedy, John F., 6, 27, 46, 55 Khrushchev, Nikita, 39 Klein, Christina, 152 Kruel, Amaury, 201 Kubitschek, Juscelino, 4, 45–46, 220 Labor Relations Code (CLT), 8 labor unions, 40–42, 48, 97–98, 103, 182, 205, 208, 251

LaCapra, Dominick, 21 Lacerdo, Carlos, 47 Lampião (Virgulio Ferrerira Da Silva): Abrahão footage of, 72; annual play about, 67; as a cangaceiro, 35, 65; conflicting stories of death of, 90, 107–108, 110–111; conflicting views regarding, 65, 91, 97; Corisco and, 69; Estácio de Lima on, 109; as hero, 65, 137; invoked in Deus e o diabo, 69; Julião on, 91; and Ligas Camponesas, 91–94, 253; as “paramount Other,” 65; PCB on, 96–97; severed head of, 78, 85–89 (87f), 91, 109–110; as still alive, 71; “The Arrival of Lampião in Hell” poem, 93–94; warfare tactics/strategy of, 95. See also Maria Bonita Lampião, rei do cangaço (dir. Coimbra), 74, 77–81 (79f) land reform. See agrarian reform landowners/rural elites: aligned with foreign business interests, 118; as answer to unrest, 120; blamed for cangaceirismo, 90, 98; controlling local justice system, 32–33; fathering children with workers, 158; fazendeiro (large landowner in Southeast), 154; few people owning most land, 112–113; loss of power by, 27; masculinity associated with, 92; private police forces of, 131; promoting Japanese colonização, 133–134; use of violence by, 92, 103–106 (104f); working through associations, 58. See also coronel and latifundiário/s Land Statute (1964), 216 latifúndio (landholding system), 3; as antiquated, 135–136; Castro studying, 116; as chattel slavery, 149; coalition forming against, 126–127; expropriations sought against, 8, 37, 40, 91, 133; as feudal, 159– 161; IJNPS debate on, 135–136; Lampião, cangaceiros as warriors against, 91–92; Ligas opposing, 129–131 (130f, 131f), 220–221; modernization suggestions, 135; no freedom of speech under, 200; PCB opposing, 127; publicizing of atrocities under, 128, 159–161; race and, 149, 159;

Index 327

and sexual violations, 159; unionizing against, 96–98, 165; as violent, 159, 169 latifundiário/s 34, 98, 111, 113, 127, 129, 132, 144, 169, 205, 249. See also coronel and landowner/rural elite Law of National Security, 202 law of the whip (lei da chibata), 158f, 159 Lei Aurea (Golden Law), 162 Lemos, Assis, 225 Lewin, Linda, 66 Liberation Theology, 198, 203 “Liga,” meaning of, 8 LIGA newspaper, 8, 116; cangaceiros article, 91–93; on Father Alípio, 199; on malnutrition deaths, 116; movie reviews, 122; The Regime as It Is comic, 129, 130f, 131f; reinterpreting Bible and Christian history, 199; reports on landowner violence, 158–159; on threats to Elizabeth Teixeira, 132 Ligas Camponesas/SAPPP, 8–10; origin story of, 28–32 (30f), 89, 250; creating its political identity, 34–35; Engenho Galiléia case, 5, 34–35, 59; expansion of, 36; accused of communism, 58–59, 96; after 1964 coup, 215–216; agreste power base of, 148; autonomy of, 8; cangaceiro as hero for, 91–92, 98, 108; and Canudos, 193–194, 196, 197; Catholic Church and, 204; challenging image of coronel, 127; claims of power and popular support, 224; collaborating with unions, 251; Coutinho’s research on, 235–236; and Cuba, 219–220, 226; current views regarding, 252; declared a threat, 6, 34, 58; directly supporting rural workers, 251; Facó on evolution of, 98; guerrilla training camps, 227–228; historicization of, 245; history as form of resistance, 231; Julião’s account of, 220–223; Julião’s leadership of, 224–225; lack of current interest in, 252; leaders disappeared by Army, 233; local erasure of history of, 245; media coverage of, 33, 64, 124; memorializing of, 246–253 (247f, 248f); memorial website for, 256; official government recognition of, 256; “Peasant’s

Hymn” song of, 156–157; photographs of, 30f, 53–54; protesting Teixeira’s murder, 132; pushing for agrarian reform, 167; radicalization of religion by, 198–207; scholarship on, 9–10, 14–15; selective press coverage of, 250–251; size of, 10; strategies of, 8. See also Cabra marcado para morrer; SAPPP Ligas Femininas, 18 Lima, Carlito, 60 Lima, Estácio de, 72, 85, 109 Lima, Manuel, 152 Lima, Manuel Vicente de, 103 Lima de Oliveira, Algae, 111 Lima Filho, Andrade, 90 Lima Júnior, Felix, 138, 142, 143 linha branda (“soft line” dictatorship), 216 linha-dura (“hard line” dictatorship), 7, 216 Lins, Abraão, 239 Lins, Consuelo, 239 Lins do Rego, José, 97 literacy programs, 6, 42, 48 literatura de cordel (“chapbooks”), 22, 34–35; in Cold War era, 63–64; Dineen on, 271n151; Facó on, 98; in film, 80; historically, 63, 245; Julião’s use of, 64; pelejas, 153; Zito and, 255. See also folhetos Lombari, Armando, 42 “loose memories,” 232 Lourenço (Beato), 189–190 Luiz, Raimundo, 106 Lula da Silva, Luiz Inácio, 244 Lundgren, Herman, 281n82 Luzia-Homem (Olímpio), 18 Machine Cotton, 142 Maciel, Paulo Frederico, 50 Magalhães, Djacy, 33, 35 Magalhães, Yoná, 188 Maio, Sabiano do Rego, 229 male honor, 92, 98 Mallon, Florencia, 9 Mangabeira, João, 201 “Manuel/Satanás” (in Deus e o diabo), 1, 69–71, 188–189 Mao Tse-Tung, 95, 125, 151, 164, 225 Maranhão, Djalma, 49, 126

328 Index

Maranhão, Zilde, 57 “Maranhão, Constâncio” (in Deus e o diabo), 124 Maranhão “Revolution,” 38 Maria Bonita (Maria Déia): as mulher brava, 18; mutilation of corpse, 89; partner of Lampião, 65; as portrayed in Lampião, rei do cangaço, 77–80, 85–89 (87f); severed head of, 78, 85–88 (87f), 91, 109–110. See also Lampião Mariano, José, 163 Mariano da Silva, Helio, 224 Martins, Leonildo, 191 Martins Filho, João Roberto, 7, 228 Marx, Karl, 3 masculinity, 18, 68–70, 92, 98, 129, 137 Masters and the Slaves, The (Freyre), 145 mata zone, 13–14 Matos, José Alves de (Vinte e Cinco), 90 Mauro, Humberto, 174 Mauro, Roberto, 110 McCloud, Sean, 185 McGovern, George, 115 Meireles, Jair, 133 Mello, Dante de, 195 Melo, Antônio (Father Melo), 41, 43–44, 169, 204, 206–207, 209, 221, 291n86 Melo, Clovis, 224, 294n54 Melo, Maria do Carmo Barreto Campello, 223 Melo, Mário Lacerda de, 51 Melo Neto, João Cabral de, 122, 264n4 Memória do Cangaço (Soares), 71–73 (73f ), 81 Memorial das Ligas Camponesas, 256 memory projects, 21, 255–257 memory studies, 217–218; Cabra marcado para morrer film, 231–241 (238f); and cangaceiro symbol, 67; Francisco Julião’s account, 218–223; memories of 1950s, 1960s, 223–230 Menezes, Glória, 78 Menezes, Olympio de, 138, 141 messianism: in Canudos, 14, 182–185, 192–198, 201, 253; in Cinema Novo, 1–3; in Deus e o diabo, 1–2, 17, 69, 187–189 (188f); Facó on, 192–193; in A noite do espantalho, 210; as o Nordeste trope, 17,

77, 182–183, 186–187 (186f), 193; in O cangaciero, 61, 74 (74f), 80, 172, 191; in Os fuzis, 189–191 (190f); in Os sertões, 183; in Riacho de sangue, 191–192 (192f), 210; and sexual perversity, 191–192; and US portrayals of Julião, 197 Mexican modernization, 137 military: April 1964 coup, 207, 215, 218; coup encouraged by US media, 126; development projects by, 216; dictatorship, 6–7, 216; disagreement within, 59; Father Alípio denouncing, 202; Lima’s memoirs on, 60; money spent on horses versus on poor, 117; smear campaigns by, 210; soldiers as worse than cangaceiros, 89; as solution to Northeastern “primitivism,” 51; using force against religious “deviance,” 182; violent spectacles by, 108. See also Brazilian Armed Forces millenarianism, 184 Minas Gerais state, 154 minimum wage goal, 8 minority groups’ reclaiming of history, 246 miscegenation and backwardness, 183 MNU (Unified Black Movement), 149 modernization: of patriarchy, 137; projects, 4; theory, 11, 56, 133–135. See also Gouveia, Delmiro monocultural agriculture, 116 Montenegro, Ana, 154 Morais, Clodomir de, 226, 227, 228, 250 Morais, Róseia, 141 Morris, Fred, 210 Morrison, Toni, 255 “Mortes, Antônio das” (in Lampião, rei do cangaço), 70, 81, 189 Mota, Mauro, 142 Movimento Cultural do Nordeste (Northeastern Cultural Movement), 119 mulher braba (bossy woman), 17–18 mulher brava (warrior woman), 17, 263n46 mulher macho (butch woman), 17–18 museums in Northeast, 247–248 (247f), 253–254 Mutirão em Novo Sol (Uprising in the New Sun), 118

Index 329

mutual-aid society, 28–31, 250. See also Ligas Camponesas/SAPPP Nabuco, Joaquim, 36, 161–163, 168–169, 220 Nader, Ralph, 6 Natal, 42, 49, 126, 203 National Democratic Union (UDN), 45, 47–48 National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform, 216 Nation of Islam, 185 Nazi Germany, 117, 202 Nederveen Pieterse, Jan, 148 Negreiros, Emerson (Padre), 129 Nehemkis, Peter Jr., 55, 280n44 “neo-orientalism,” 15 neorealism, 80, 121 Neto, Agostinho, 152 “new memory,” 246 Newsweek, 125 Nina Rodrigues Institute, 72–73, 85–86, 109–110 Nora, Pierre, 246, 254 Nordestern genre: cangaceiros as portrayed in, 75, 92, 99; cinema-verité style of, 81; Coimbra as director of, 74, 77; film reviewers on, 84; Northeastern violence compared to, 102, 108; O Cangaceiro as, 61, 74; post-1964 coup, 110; scholarship on, 82–84; typical costumes in, 68–69; use of horses in, 82; violence in, 82 nordestinizado, 14, 29, 137, 142, 223, 263n3 nordestinos (Northeasterners): as lacking agency, 126, 143; Lula da Silva, 244; modernization plans for, 135; “Northeastern man,” 2, 136, 138, 146, 264n4; as a pathogen, 184; portrayed as slaves, 149; racial makeup of, 148–149, 171–172; stereotypes of, 3–5, 51, 116–119; as “subrace,” 15, 146; as trapped in time, 122; as victims versus as revolutionaries, 118. See also trope of o Nordeste Noronha, Linduarte, 62–63, 171–174, 176–178 Northeastern Brazil: conservative viewpoints on, 116; development and research institutions of, 49–52; employment in

Southeastern factories, 56; need for education, 56; rural justice system in, 32–33; rural social movements in, 148–149; stereotypes of, 3–5, 51, 116–119; traditional politics of, 47–49; US interest in, 52–56. See also trope of o Nordeste Northeastern Church Federations, 41, 44 Northeastern Cultural Movement (Movimento Cultural do Nordeste), 119 Northeastern Development Agency. See SUDENE “Northeastern man,” 2, 136, 138, 146, 264n4. See also nordestinos (Northeasterners) “Nova Cuba” favela, 226 novels, 184 Novos Rumos, 96–97, 127, 131, 154–155, 159, 167, 193 “Now, They Have a Coffin,” 29, 30f O cangaciero (Barreto), 61, 74 (74f), 80, 172, 191 o Conselheiro, 184, 194 O Cruzeiro, 173 O Diário de Pernambuco, 85–86, 89–91, 120, 133; ad with Abraham Lincoln, 170; on Catholic support for unionization, 208; declaring Father Crespo a radical, 205; declaring João Pedro Texeira a martyr, 116; defending landowners, 104–106 (105f), 131–132, 196; on Engenho expropriations, 35, 59, 133, 168; on Japanese colonists, 134f; on Julião, 161, 197; on Lampião’s death, 35, 107–108; on the peasant population, 101f, 104–106 (105f), 116, 119–120; portrayal of Recife by, 116; portraying Ligas as criminal, communists, 34, 99–100, 103; on severed heads, 85–86, 89–90, 109–110 O Jornal do Commércio, 59 Olímpio, Domingos, 18 Oliveira, Francisco, 223 o Nordeste. See trope of o Nordeste OPENO “Operation Northeast,” 42, 204 O que é isso, companheiro? (Gabeira), 231 O que é o Nordeste Brasileiro (Garcia), 112 O quinze (Queiroz), 113 oral history, 21, 217, 255, 256

330 Index

Orientalism (Said), 14, 183 “Orient” as construction, 183 Os fuzis (dir. Guerra), 189–191 (190f) Os sertões (da Cunha), 2, 14, 183–184, 193 Otaviano, Sargeant, 95 Other, nordestinos as, 86 Pacheco, José, 71, 93 Padre, Luis, 97 Padre Alípio (Alípio de Freitas), 117, 199–203, 207, 230 Page, Joseph, 5, 48 Paisinho, Miguel, 205 Palmares, (quilombo) 171–180, 195 Palmares, Pernambuco 39, 104, 237 Pang, Eul-Soo, 42 panoptic machine, 86 Paraíba state: assassination of João Pedro Teixeira, 129–130; Association of Rural Workers of Sapé, 33; disappearances in, 233; Dom Pelé as Archbishop of, 208; Engenho Marí, 106–107; Ivã ­Figueirdo, 225–227; Japanese immigrants to, 134; Julião in, 225; memorial museum in, 256; military searches of peasant homes, 127; Pedro Gondim as governor, 49 Partido Socialista Democrática (PSD), 44–45, 48–49 Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro (PTB), 44, 46–48 patriarchal modernization, 136–141 Paulo Afonso dam, 143 PCB (Brazilian Communist Party), 37–41; attacking rural feudalism, 38; Bezerra’s death, 108; Brazilian Women’s Federation, 237; in Buíque, 245; and the Church, 194, 204–207, 221; claims of power and popular support, 224; and Cuba, 226; on Delmiro Gouviea, 142; denouncing US imperialism, 150; and Dom Helder Câmara, 208; and Julião, 40, 221, 226–227; and Ligas, 33, 37, 39, 96–99, 221–222, 224, 250; meaning of Canudos to, 193–194; narrative of abolition from, 161, 166–167; promoting alliances, 143; publications by, 118, 127–128,

142, 154, 161; pushing for agrarian reform, 166–167; pushing for expropriations, 39; in Recife Front coalition, 47; revolutionary to reformist shift, 37, 39; and Rui Facó, 167–168, 193; Rural Syndicates, 10, 36, 39, 41, 156, 245; rural union movement, 40–41, 166, 215; Soviet-line reformism by, 167; supporting Goulart, 46–47; ULTAB/CONTAG, 39–41; use of cangaceiro symbolism by, 98; views of Canudos by, 192–193. See also Bezerra, Gregório; Cavalcanti, Paulo; communism; Prestes, Luís Carlos Peace Corps, 55 peasants. See rural workers/peasants “Peasant’s Evangelical” (Father Alípio), 201 Peasant’s Manumission Letter (Julião), 164–165 Peasants’ Proverbs, 129 Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire), 6 Pedra factory town, 139–141 Penna, Hermano, 110 Pereira dos Santos, Nelson, 62, 82 Pernambuco state: approving Engenho Galiléia expropriation, 133; Auxiliary Agricultural Society of, 57; conditions in Ponta de Pedras, 115; coup fears in, 60; Father Antônio Melo in, 43–44; “feudal” tools of punishment in, 159; Japanese immigrants in, 133–135 (134f); Julião on, 220; PCB in, 39; power of rural elite in, 58; rural workers’ march (1955), 33 “Personality Cult and Its Consequences, The” (Khrushchev speech), 39–40 Pesqueira, 250 Petrobrás, 44 Pia, José Inacio “Jacaré,” 141 Pires, José Maria (Dom Pelé), 208 Pires, Meira, 119 poetry of Zito de Galiléia, 255. See also literatura de cordel (“chapbooks”) police pages in newspapers, 34 police reports, 100–103 (101f), 202 political actors, 28, 64, 66, 91, 144, 243 Popular Action/Acão Popular (AP), 230 Popular Culture Movement, 48

Index 331

Popular Front coalition (PCB, PTB, PSB), 48 Porecatú, War of, 38 Porfírio, José (Zé), 39 Pornochanchadas, 110 Portinari, Cândido, 113–114 (114f) Porto, Costo, 208 Portuguese colonialism, 152 (152f) povo (the people): better to pray than fight, 120; bringing theater to, 118–119; and cangaceiro, 66, 70, 92; as cross-class alliance, 162 Praxedi, Zê, 155 Prazeres, José dos, 32, 39, 250 press, selective coverage by, 250 Prestes, Luís Carlos, 37, 40, 95, 202, 275n57 prostitution, 68, 79, 140, 222, 228–229 PSD (Partido Socialista Democrática), 44–45, 48–49 PTB (Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro), 44, 46–48 Quadros, Jânio, 45–46 Queiroz, Maria Isuara Pereira de, 66, 274n39 Queiroz, Rachel de, 113 quilombos (runaway slave communities), 149, 171–180 (173f, 175f) race, 148; in agricultural modernization project, 135; anthropometry and, 86, 147; black power through resistance, 179; as cause of cangaceirismo, 90; Cold War and US racism, 150–151; in films, 70, 75; “inferential racism,” 147; “racial democracy,” 145, 179; and regionalism, 15; scientific racism, 156; in sugarcane production, 157–158 (158f). See also nordestinos (Northeasterners) radio as means to reform nordestinos, 51 Railworkers Union in Jaboatão, 251 “Raimundo” (in A morte), 74–75 Ramalho, Francisco Jr., 273n16 Ramos, Alcides Freire, 234 Ramos, Graciliano, 113, 122 Ramos, Pedro, 131 Rappaport, Joanne, 254 realism versus authenticity, 80–84, 189

“reality effect” cinema, 82, 231–232, 235–236 Recife, 174; in 1960s, 244; democratic mayoral elections, 47–48; Derby Market, 138; Recife Front coalition, 47; troops expecting a coup, 60. “reconciliation by memory,” 231 redistribution demands, 125, 153, 166, 280n44 regionalism, 3, 14–15, 146, 262n33 “Regional Transformation and Ecological Science” (IJNPS), 135 Rego Maia, Sabiano A. do, 58 Reis Filho, Danial Aarão, 38, 40 religion: Ligas’s radicalization of, 198–207; Northeastern deviance, 186–192 (186f, 188f, 190f, 192f); as stifling revolution, 119–120. See also Catholic Church; messianism “rememory,” 255 representation: becoming truth, 16; of poverty, 117–126 (121f, 123f); versus reality, 16 Resgate e Memória para a História do País, 256 Resistir é preciso/Resisting Is Necessary (Padre Alípio de Freitas), 230 revolutionary symbols, 3, 5–6 Revolutionary Worker’s Party, 230 Revolution That Never Was, The (dir. Page), 5 Reyes Novaes, Regina, 198 Riacho do sangue (dir. de Barros), 191–192 (192f), 210 Ribeiro, Milton (in A morte comanda o cangaço), 75–76 (75f), 78 Ribeiro Bernadet, Lucila, 273n16 Ribeiro de Abreu Lima, José Inácio (Father Roma), 203 Ricardo, Sérgio, 210 Rio de Janeiro state, 134 Rio Grande do Norte state, 49, 134, 162–163 Rios, Givaldo, 127 Robin Hood image, 6, 66, 77–78, 107 Rocha, Glauber: showing black nordestinos in Barravento, 172; statements on Deus e o diabo, 23, 81, 271n142, 273nn15; “The Aesthetic of Hunger,” 82. See also Deus e o diabo na terra do sol Roett, Riordan, 51–52

332 Index

Rogers, Helen Jean, 122–126 (123f) Roldón, María, 239 Roque, Ângelo (in Memória do Cangaço), 73 “Rosa” (in Deus e o diabo), 1, 69–71, 189, 272n13 Rossellini, Roberto, 6 Rousseff, Dilma, 244 Rude Awakening, The (Sevareid), 27 Rufino, José or Zé (in Memória do Cangaço), 72, 81 Rupiper, Darrell, 209 Rural Assistance Service (SAR), 42 rural elites. See landowners/rural elites Rural Extension Service, 134 Rural Laborer Statute (ETR, Estatuto de Trabalhador Rural), 41 rural social movements: declared illegal by military, 169; landowner violence against, 103–106 (104f); portrayed as violent criminals, 99, 107–108; and race, 135, 148; and religion, 192–193; seeking cross-class solidarity, 160, 162; slavery ­accusations by, 150, 159; threats by, against, 104 rural unions: Catholic Church and, 41, 182, 205, 208; PCB and, 40–41, 97–98 Rural Women’s Congresses, 18 rural workers/peasants, 23; as “African,” 135; as beasts driven by agitators, 107; becoming itinerant day laborers, 216; composition of, 113; consciousness raising, organization of, 98; during coup/ dictatorship, 228–229; gendered appeals to, 129; gendered threats toward, 132; illiteracy of, 127; as “mystics,” 200; “Peasant’s Evangelical” (Father Alípio), 201; Peasant’s Manumission Letter (Julião), 164–165; Peasants’ Proverbs, 129; “peasant weapons,” 100; radicalness of, 260n16; in Russia, 60, 153 Rural Workers’ Union of Buíque, 245 Ruschel, Alberto, 74, 76, 77f, 191 Said, Edward, 14, 183 Sales, Eugênio de Araujo (Dom Eugênio), 42, 43, 203 Sampaio, Cid Feijó, 32, 47–48, 59, 267n78

San Francisco Hydroelectric Company (CHESF), 136 Santana, Joaquim Camilo de, 101, 102f Santos, Manoel da Costa, 154 Santos, Maria Francisca, 154 Santos, Marta, 92 Santos, Severino Francisco dos, 159 SAPPP (Sociedade Agrícola e Pecuária dos Plantadores de Pernambuco), 28–34 (30f). See also Ligas Camponesas/SAPPP “SAPPP, a Liga que ligou o Nordeste” (Zito), 250 SAR (Rural Assistance Service), 42 Sarno, Geraldo, 140 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 6, 244 Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, 264n4 Schlesinger, Arthur, 55, 115 scholarship: on cangaceiro, 66; on Canudos and messianism, 184; on Cold War Latin America, 11–12; on race in Northeast, 148 Sena, Joaquim Batista de, 153 senhor de engenho (plantation owner), 113 sertanejo (person from the sertão) as “other,” 84; abandoned by the state, 72; in Aruanda, 171–172; and cangaceiros, 66, 92; as capable of change, 51; and Chicago World’s Fair, 139; Facó on, 193; as hungry and needy, 119; interviews with, 81; and revolt of Dona Noca, 38; as strong, brave, resilient, 184, 193, 230; in Vidas secas, 122 sertão (dry hinterlands) zone, 14, 63, 262n29 Seu Gregório (in Memória do Cangaço), 72, 73f Sevareid, Eric, 27 severed heads, disposition of, 78, 85–88 (87f), 90–91, 109–110 “Severino” (in Brazil: The Troubled Land), 123f, 124–125 sexuality in films, 70, 76, 78–79, 191–192 (192f) Sica, Vittorio de, 121 Silva, Alexandre da, 131 Silva, Álzira Lourdes da, 128 Silva, José Joaquim da (Zito de Galiléia), 20, 33, 160, 245–256, 296n5 Silva, Marcos Martins da, 159

Index 333

Silva, Virgulio Ferrerira da. See Lampião Silva Neto, Antonio Henrique da, 209 Silveira, Pelópidas, 47 “Silvero” (in A morte), 75–76 Silvino, Antônio, 35, 92, 97 slavery: as Cold War metaphor, 150, 153; Freyre on, 145–146; indentured servitude, 153–154; nordestinos as slaves, 150–160 (158f); slaves as lacking agency, 171 Soares, Maria, 107 Soares, Paulo Gil, 68, 71–73, 81 Soldado Amarelo (in Vidas secas), 121–122 (121f) source material, 19 Souza, Cláudio Mello de, 122 Souza, José Francisco da (Zezé da Galiléia), 29–32, 100, 246, 248–249, 254 Souza, Ruth de, 75 Soviet Union, 21, 39–40, 98, 150, 268n102. See also Cold War spectacles of violence by state, 86–87 Spenser, Daniela, 11 Stalin, Joseph, 39–40 Stam, Robert, 176 state police, 48 stereotypes of nordestinos, 14, 146. See also trope of o Nordeste Stern, Steve, 217, 232 “subversives” label, 182 SUDENE (Northeastern Development Agency): accused of agitation, 107; in Brazil: The Troubled Land, 125; and Catholic Church, 204; creation of, 6, 42–45, 50; development plans of, 55, 116; financing Tirirí pilot project, 44, 168; goals of, 51; GTDN report on, 51 sugarcane production, 48–49, 57–58, 95, 100–101, 135, 146, 157–158 (158f), 168 SUMOC 113 law, 4 syphilis, 278n9 Szulc, Tad, 52–55, 115 Taveira, Zê, 165–166 Teixeira, Elizabeth or “Marta”, 18, 132, 231, 233–240 (238f), 244–245, 256. See also Cabra marcado para morrer

Teixeira, João Pedro, 33; assassination of, 129–131, 235; fiftieth anniversary of assassination, 256; museum picture of, 248; one-year commemoration of assassination, 201; pictures of corpse, 235. See also Cabra marcado para morrer Teixeira family diaspora, 234, 240 Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), 280n44 Tenório, Pedro de Sousa, 203 Teodósio, Naíde Regueira, 237 terra assassina (assassinating land), 122 TFP (Tradition, Family and Property), 42 “The Aesthetic of Hunger” (Rocha), 82 Third World, 66, 178 Tinsman, Heidi, 274n51 Tirirí Cooperative, 44, 168–169 (168f), 286n59 Tomilson, Barbara, 263n42 torture: connected with 1964 coup, 215–216, 228, 246; Dom Helder denouncing, 208, 260n12; memory projects, 257; of militant women, 237; military call for impunity in, 231; on plantations, 93, 127–128, 250–251; by police, military, 7, 109, 208–210, 230–231; portrayed in films, 70, 78, 82; of priests and ministers, 201, 203, 208–210, 230; reactions to, 230 transcoding, 243 Trench, Hango, 226 Triângulo, Luiz de, 110 Trombas as Socialist Republic, 38–39 trope, 16–17, 263n42 trope of o Nordeste, 13–18 (18f), 229–230, 242; in Aruanda, 177; backwardness, 51, 56; blackness, 172; and cangaceiros, 66; Canudos and, 185; Cold War fears feeding, 12, 17, 54, 243; death in, 29; dehumanizing effects of, 53; Delmiro Gouveia and, 137, 143; distortions of rural social movement, 216–217; documentary edited to fit, 63; Engenho Galiléia and, 8, 29, 32, 59; “frenetic” music, 50; futility of education, 56; hammocks, violent sports, 50; imperviousness to change, 27, 56, 141, 177; as invention of landowning elite, 14, 58; Julião and, 220, 223; “land of contrasts,” 123; poverty in, 115–117; region as

334 Index

trope of o Nordeste (continued ) “bloated paunch,” 115; religious deviance, 182–183, 185; subhumans without agency, 150; time as “convenient pleasure,” 50; as tragedy, 245–246; urban dwellers as “crab people,” 54. See also Ligas Camponesas/ SAPPP; memory studies Troubled Land, The, 122–126 (123f) “truth regime,” 14 tweet inciting racial violence, 244, 296n1 26th of July movement, 193. See also Cuban Revolution UDN (National Democratic Union), 45, 47–48 ULTAB/CONTAG (Union of Farmers and Agricultural Workers), 39–41 Unified Black Movement (MNU), 149 United Nations: Children’s Fund, 56; UNESCO, 145 United States: anti-communist propaganda by, 152, 170; attacked for slavery, “false democracy,” 150–151; concerned about Catholic priests, 203; concerned about communism, 52; declaring coup “Revolution of 1964,” 215; Edward Kennedy, 55, 244, 247 (247f); false premises regarding Latin America, 55–56; John F. Kennedy, 6, 27, 46, 55; media coverage of Brazil, 131; need for aid, doubts of effectiveness, 125; Northeast as “next Cuba,” 52–53; US AID, 6, 52, 55; US Food for Peace, 56 unthinkability, 243 “upsurge in memory,” 246 usineiro (sugar-mill owner), 113 Vargas, Getúlio, 3–4, 44 Vaughan, Mary Kay, 137

Vidas Secas film (dos Santos), 82, 120–122 (121f), 126 Vidas Secas novel (Ramos), 113, 122 Vieira, Rucker, 62–63, 173, 176 Vinha Varela, José, 106 Virgilio, João, 249 Viriato da Cruz Makèzú, 152 Vitória de Santo Antão, 100, 106, 196, 248, 250. See also Engenho Galiléia; Engenho Serra voice-overs in films, 81 Volta Sêca, 93–95 voting requirements, 4 Walters, Edward, 197 War of Canudos, 14 “War of Memory” over coup, 228–229 Weinstein, Barbara, 15, 278n9 Welch, Cliff, 37–38 White, Hayden, 16 women: treatment of in film, 76, 94; Volta Sêca on rapes of, 94–95; Women’s Amnesty Movement (MFPA), 240; Women’s Democratic Crusade, 223. See also gender Working Group for Northeastern Development (GTDN), 45, 51 Xavier, Ismail, 13, 272nn12 “Zambi no Açoite” (song), 180 “Zé Bento” (in Aruanda), 172, 177 “Zeca” (in “Conversa de camponês”), 165–166 Zerubavel, Yael, 255 Zezé da Galiléia (José Francisco de Sousa), 29–32, 100, 246, 248–249, 251, 254 Zito da Galiléia (José Joaquim da Silva), 20, 33, 160, 245–256, 296n5