Understanding Brazil A Reader S Guide
Understanding Brazil A Reader S Guide
A READER'S GUIDE
MINISTRY OF EXTERNAL RELATIONS
International Relations
Research Institute
The Alexandre de Gusmão Foundation, instituted in 1971, is a public foundation linked to the
Ministry of External Relations and has the purpose of bringing to civil society information about
the international scene and about subjects on the Brazilian diplomatic agenda.
Brasília, 2009
Copyright ©, Fundação Alexandre de Gusmão
Cover credit:
"Duarte Coelho traz os Primeiros Cavalos"
Juca (Ovídio de Andrade Melo)
46 x 35 cm
International Museum of Brazilian Naïve Art
Acrylic on canvas and card - Brazil, 1990
Technical team:
Eliane Miranda Paiva
Maria Marta Cezar Lopes
Cíntia Rejane Sousa Araújo Gonçalves
Translator:
Susan Casement Moreira
68p.
ISBN 978-85-7631-151-5
Introduction, 13
Translator's note
4 - History of Brazil, 18
Heinrich Handelmann
11 - National Organization, 25
Alberto Torres
15 - Roots of Brazil, 29
Sérgio Buarque de Holanda
23 - The Partners of Rio Bonito – a study on the peasant in São Paulo state
and the transformation of his way of life, 37
Antônio Cândido
24 - Colonels, hoes and votes: the municipality and the representative regime in
Brazil, 38
Victor Nunes Leal
26 - Tristes Tropiques, 40
Claude Lévi-Strauss
37 - Geopolitics of Brazil, 51
Golbery do Couto e Silva
44 - Political Development, 58
Helio Jaguaribe
45 - Colonial Slavery, 59
Jacob Gorender
46 - Combat in the Darkness. The Brazilian Left: from illusions to armed
struggle, 60
Jacob Gorender
*Translator’s Note
Where editions of the books exist in English, these are listed by their English title in the contents
list. Within the text, the title is followed by an asterisk, followed by place and date of publication
in English. Otherwise, translation of titles is unofficial, and provided only to guide the reader.
11
1 - History of Brazil 1500-1627
Frei Vicente do Salvador (1564-1639)
1st Edition: 1627 / Current edition: Ed. Itatiaia, 1982
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
João Antônio or Giovanni Antonio Andreoni, who adopted the name André João
Antonil, was an Italian Jesuit. He entered the Society of Jesus aged eighteen, in
Rome, graduated in Civil Law from the University of Perugia and went to Brazil in
1681, where he became Rector of the College and Provincial of Salvador. Despite
his friendship with Father Antonio Vieira, he held different opinions on the
enslavement of indigenous people, the Jews and the new Christians (he translated
an anti-semitic Italian work). He was against the favoring of Portuguese members
of the Society of Jesus. Although publication of Culture and Opulence of Brazil
was completely licensed, the book was confiscated by order of the king; its tales
of drugs and mines, with various curious notes about how to make sugar, plant
and refine tobacco, how to extract gold from mines and discover silver; of the vast
rewards that this conquest in America was giving to the kingdom of Portugal,
thanks to these products and others, as well as royal contracts, meant that it was
considered harmful to State interests, due to its detailed description of Brazil’s
riches.
“The work of André João Antonil, alias João Antonio Andreoni, was published
for the first time in Lisbon in 1711. With its circulation banned by the government
of El-Rei Dom João V, it became extremely rare until it was reprinted in 1837, in
Rio de Janeiro. It is certainly the most complete known description of economic
life in Brazil in Colonial times, which makes it indispensable for historians (...).
Although it was written and published in the 18th century, the conditions it describes
can be almost completely applied to the 1600s, especially with regard to sugarcane,
tobacco plantations and livestock”. (Alice Canabrava and Rubens Borba de
Morais).
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“Varnhagen stands out (...) particularly for his General History, which created a
form and a model for the description of the national trajectory. After Vicente do
Salvador in the 17th century, Rocha Pita in the 18th and Robert Southey in the
early 19th, Varnhagen is the first to attempt a systematic work that aims to synthesize
(...) Varnhagen has a mastery of sources that were until then unknown. (...) He
was capable of creating a work and a vision of the whole, although he lacked a
theory that would have enriched him as an interpreter”. (Francisco Iglésias)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
4 - History of Brazil
Heinrich Handelmann (1827-1891)
1st Edition: 1860 / Current edition: 4th, Ed. Edusp/Itatiaia, 1982
“In the period considered here (1838-1931) there is the appearance of another
significant foreigner devoted to our issues. Not British like Southey or Armitage,
but German like Martius. This was Gottfried Heinrich Handelmann, who
published his History of Brazil, a work of overall synthesis, in 1860, shortly
after Varnhagen. It is interesting how a German, who had never been to Brazil,
was able to accumulate such a body of knowledge. (...) Handelmann wrote a
wide-ranging book, dealing with politics and administration, society and
economy. (...) Handelmann has a special place among Brazilianists, since his
History of Brazil is a milestone in the sense of its overview”. (Francisco Iglésias)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“At the moment, the task is to proceed towards a survey of the history of the
book that is basic to all Brazilian historical-political bibliography. So much
has already been written about the Statesman, since the first articles of José
Veríssimo, that it seems unnecessary, pretentious, to try to make new criticisms
and interpretations of this work. On the other hand, as far as I know, no one
has thought of making a longer study of the making of this book. I modestly
intend to fill this gap in the pages that follow”. (Afonso Arinos de Melo Franco).
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
Os Sertões (1902);
O relatório sobre o Alto Puros [The report on Alto Puros] (1906);
Contrastes e Confrontos [Contrasts and Confrontations] (1907);
Peru Versus Bolívia (1907);
À Margem da História [On the Edges of History] (1909).
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“Whoever reads the work of Manoel Bonfim, especially this O Brasil Nação, Realidade
da Soberania Brasileira [Nation Brazil: Reality of Brazilian Sovereignty] – published in
1931 and since then forgotten – will not only find the best analysis of development (or
the lack of development) of the Brazilian nation until the 1920s, but will also discover
that unfortunately almost nothing has changed since then. Read today, the book is still
modern: the portrait that Bonfim painted more than 60 years ago reveals the same
image of Brazil at the end of the 20th century, with its social, economic and political
problems”. (Luiz Paulino Bonfim)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“If one had to choose one great merit of the book, only one, I would say that it
simply moved the focus of the history of Brazil and rethought the object itself.
For if the history of colonial Brazil had been until then, since Varnhagen, the
history of Portuguese colonization, the Capítulos made the colony – the colonial
society – into the protagonist of the story. A multiple and diverse society, with its
contrasts and tensions. Fernando Novais was right, then (...) to say that the
Capítulos was a bridge between the first Brazilian historiography (that of the
Brazilian Historical and Geographical Institute, 19th century and monarchist)
and the third generation, expressed by Gilberto Freyre, Sérgio Buarque de
Holanda and Caio Prado Júnior; it is indeed, this most analytical and free of
institutional benchmarks”. (Ronaldo Vainfas)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
11 - National Organization
Alberto Torres (1865-1917)
1st Edition: 1914 / Current edition: 3rd Ed. Nacional, Editora Universidade
de Brasília, 1982
“The most vivid and characteristic sign of much that Alberto Torres wrote is
the sense of objectivity, the denouncement of alienation, of mimesis of strange
forms, of indiscriminate importation of an ideological arsenal elaborated
elsewhere and with no link to reality. He insisted on this, showing the need to
organize the country in function of its own physiognomy, to avoid disorder
and other damage. He developed a way of thinking, almost self-taught, since
he only did one course (...) His thinking was formed in activism, in the campaign
for abolition and for the republic”. (Francisco Iglésias).
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“In 1920, aged 37, Oliveira Viana published his first book, Populações Meridionais
do Brasil, now reissued by the Federal Senate, a work in which he distinguished
three types in the formation of our country, going against the tradition of considering
the Brazilian people as a homogeneous mass. He started from three different societies:
the scrubby backlands, the forests and the savannahs. He described the backlander,
the forester and the gaucho. (...) He was the original creator of a new phase in the
interpretation of Brazilian studies”.
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“Oliveira Viana wrote O ocaso do Império em 1925, when the capital of the Republic
was mired in a huge controversy resulting from the celebration of the centenary of
Dom Pedro II’s birth, which threw monarchists and disillusioned republicans against
the old republicans. There is no nostalgia for the Empire in this book, except perhaps
in its admiration for the figure of the Emperor, but nor is there a negative evaluation.
Its promise, of a non-partisan analysis, was fulfilled. The author maintains the positive
evaluation of the civilizing role played by the regime, which he proposed in Populações
Meridionais, which is now invading the country as a result of the draining of any hope
of change after the latest elections and of the corrosion of republican values linked to
respect for the public machine, which gives the 80-year-old text of Oliveira Viana
unexpected relevance”. (José Murilo de Carvalho).
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“Casa Grande e Senzala is the greatest of Brazilian books and the most Brazilian of
the essays we have written (...) Gilberto Freyre, in some ways, founded – or at least
mirrored – Brazil on the cultural plane, like Cervantes did for Spain, Camões for
Lusitania, Tolstoy for Russia, Sartre for France. It is certain that in our case, as in the
others, there were other gestures of this kind; a few came before, like Aleijadinho;
others came later – today the Brasilia of Oscar Niemeyer – but it is certain that
among them is Gilberto”. (Darcy Ribeiro)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
15 - Roots of Brazil
Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (1902-1982)
1st Edition: 1936 / Current edition: 27th, Companhia das Letras, 2006
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“His second text is the most important that he produced - Formação do Brasil
Contemporâneo, of 1942 – and one of the key works of our historiography. (...) It
was enormously successful, and was reissued several times. His influence is huge,
taking into account the whole national scene, not just one area; the whole picture of
production, not just the successes of the exporter economy; the people in their
entirety, needing to produce to survive (...) It is already not a study based on race or
climate, on national characteristics established by the subjective viewpoint of the
author, but rather rich understanding of the whole, in its social dynamic, delicately
and deeply grasped. The historian gains force and the ability to explicate, until now
ignored, (...) It is the most important work on the Colony even today”.(Francisco
Iglésias)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“The aim of the author in this work was to carry out an analysis of Brazilian culture, in
the sense of showing that even though Brazil has faced severe problems of a political,
economic, social and cultural nature, and especially in education, both in the colonial
years and later (Independence, the 1st and 2nd reigns and in the separate Republican
periods), it has accumulated a cultural, scientific, technological and educational heritage
of extreme relevance in building a democratically representative model of culture and
scientific thought”. (Geraldo M. Prado)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“This book [Os Parceiros do Rio Bonito] originated with the desire to analyze
the relationship between literature and society; it was born out of research into
popular poetry, as manifested in the Cururu – a sung dance from the Paulista
countryside – whose basis is an improvisation on an immense variety of themes,
in constantly rhyming verse, which changes after each round (...) This research
sharpened in the researcher the sense of those problems that afflict the peasant
in this transition phase. Wishing to understand the basic aspects needed to
understand him, I came to economic problems and took, as a kind of crutch,
the elementary problem of subsistence. And that is how the work, having departed
from literary theory and folklore, threw out a branch towards the sociology of
ways of life; and when that was complete, it ended with the wish to take up a
position in the face of the conditions described”. (Antonio Cândido)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“This book by Victor Nunes Leal has, since its appearance, become valued as a classic
inourpoliticalliterature.Itisnotanagglomerationofpersonalimpressions,butaprofound
analysis of realities, which have their roots in agrarian organization, as a spontaneous
productofvastruralproperties.HisstudytookintoaccountthepresenceoftheMunicipality,
as well as the relationship with other public powers in the country, the state and federal
ones. The power base comes, if not from property, then from wealth. (...) Victor Nunes
Leal is right when he observes that “Coronelismo” is one stage in the evolution of our
people. (...) The pyramid of transitory ties arising from political interests is still with us. (...)
And so “Coronelismo”, under new auspices, continues in a natural evolution… and to
follow this evolution we need Victor Nunes Leal’s excellent book, as an indispensable
parallel”. (Barbosa Lima Sobrinho)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“In Bandeirantes e pioneiros, the great work of his mature years, a courageously
controversial book, the author studies the ethnic, geographical, religious,
economic and social issues that are most responsible for the differences
between Brazilian and North-American civilization. Putting them in opposition,
he not only shows up the essential contrasts, but also investigates the reasons
why the United States progressed in a “geometric rhythm of progress, while
Brazil is still in an arithmetical rhythm of progress”. These six magnificent
chapters could stand as autonomous essays without endangering the unity of
the book. This notable book resulted from the long period that Vianna Moog
spent in the United States, where he held several posts at the UN and at the
OAS. Bandeirantes e pioneiros has often, and with reason, been compared
to Casa Grande e Senzala, by Gilberto Freyre”. (Moacyr Scliar).
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
26 - Tristes Tropiques
Claude Lévi-Strauss (b. 1908)
1st Edition (in French): Tristes tropiques, 1955 / *English translation known
as Tristes Tropiques or A World on the Wane: New York, Atheneum, 1963/
Brazilian edition: Companhia das Letras, 1996
“Despite being well known in academic circles, it was only in 1955 that Lévi-Strauss
became one of the best known French intellectuals when he published Tristes
Trópicos, the autobiographical book about his exile in the 1930s. “However, I sense
more personal reasons for the rapid aversion that distanced me from philosophy and
tied me to ethnography as to a lifebelt. After spending a happy year in the lycée of
Mont-de-Marsan preparing my course and teaching, I was horrified to discover at
the start of the next term in Laon, where I had been sent, that the rest of my life would
be spent repeating it. (...) Today, I sometimes wonder if ethnography didn’t attract
me, unsuspectingly, due to an affinity of structure between the civilizations that it
studies and that of my own thought.” (Claude Lévi-Strauss)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“Despite the considerable volume and importance of the material that has become
available in the last fifty years, there is still no adequate description in English of
this colonial episode. The present work is a an attempt to fill this gap. (...) What
kind of reader is it for? First, for all those who are interested in the impenetrable
paths (or the dead-ends) of colonial history. But it may also deserve the attention
of those who are interested in broader subjects, like the struggles between
races and religions, or the influence of maritime power on colonial war”. (Charles
Ralph Boxer)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“The aim of Boxer in this book is to create a panorama of real Brazil between
1700 and 1750, from North to South. He records that in this period the Colony
was divided between two “states” and their respective captaincies, the State of
Brazil and the State of Maranhão, the latter covering much of the current Amazon
region. The timeframe was very well chosen. In about 1700 gold prospecting
began; 1750 brought the Treaty of Madrid, which sanctioned Portuguese expansion
and superseded Tordesilhas. Between 1700 and 1750 there were more changes
in the Colony than in the two previous centuries: the Brazil that we usually imagine
was defined in this period”. (Arno Wehling)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“ThelateRaymundoFaoroisamongthosethinkerswhoseektointerpretHistorythrough
structuralism. The impact of The Power Holders on our intellectual milieu lies in the fact
thatinsteadoffollowingthethenpredominantMarxistvisioninstructuralisthistoriography,
it does not seek the explanations in the infrastructure or civil society, but rather in the
superstructure or State. The long path through the centuries of Portuguese and Brazilian
historyshowsthatthehaughtyindependenceoftheStatefromthenationisnotanexception
seen in only certain periods, nor a stage, or a step by which to reach another stage. It is
simply the rule, and it has still not been broken.” (Fábio Konder Comparato)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
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“The year 1959 signaled the appearance of the most resonant book of recent
times in the field of social sciences and historiography: The Economic Growth of
Brazil by Celso Furtado. Concise, objective, direct, it summarizes the national
economic trajectory. Without being a historian, without original research, he saw
in historical texts that which the authors themselves did not notice, for lack of
training, thus creating a harmonious and dense book. It is aimed at a highly educated
audience, since it does not explain the history or the theory of economics, assuming
that the reader already understand these. (...) It apprehends the trajectory as a
whole, sometimes in extremely original analyses, reaching broadly into history and
coming out enriched and deepened”. (Francisco Iglésias)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“(...) Amazonia, crossed by legions of scientists, disputed for nearly four centuries,
has still not revealed what it is worth or what it can provide as an economic reality; in
a world submitted to the technical discipline of the 20th century it has not been a
mere subject of interest to science. When we call it disputed, we place it in its exact
history. Because what has been happening is intense greed all around it, greed whose
story we try to tell in this book, which was not written to make a noise, but with the
calm intention of alerting Brazil to the serious problem that the region represents”.
(Artur Cesar Ferreira Reis)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
Ciclo e crise: o movimento recente da economia brasileira [Boom and bust: the recent
movement of the Brazilian economy] (1978);
Acumulação de Capital e Industrialização no Brasil [Accumulation of Capital and
Industrialization in Brazil] (1986);
Aquarela Collorida. A Política Econômica do Governo Collor. [Watercollor. The
Economic Policy of the Collor Government] (1991).
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“If we study the process examined by Alberto Passos Guimarães in his book,
it can be seen in three ways: first he analyzes and understands our four centuries
of large estates as a struggle of the poorer classes to gain land (or a struggle of
the richer classes to hold on to land) (...); secondly, he analyzes our four
centuries of large estates as a historical process in which the great estate
emerges, in which it reaches its apogee and, when the decline starts, what
happens within the mode of production (...); thirdly he analyzes in our four
centuries of great estates the social structure that allowed the estate to subsist
as such”. (Antonio Huais)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“The abolition of slavery, among us, only had a legal meaning. The white world
went on existing in a different world from that of the blacks. This continued to exist
on the edges of history, suffering increasing degradation in its plundered conditions.
(...) Florestan Fernandes’ book teaches us that the price paid for legal liberty
brings the new bitterness of renouncement. The struggle of the black population to
reach a new stage in inter-racial adjustments was terrible and dramatic. (...) The
contribution of this book is notable in three main directions. First, in it we find the
interpretation of the successive but interdependent historical-social constellations
that show how a people emerges in history. (...) Second, (...) it shows the most
daring and successful achievement of Brazilian sociology on the level of interpretation
of our social dilemmas. Third, it includes the viewpoint that apprehends the ongoing
uniformity, in an original way”.
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“This essay intends to survey what has heretofore been largely ignored – the
penetration that Positivism has had among us. (...) It is already the moment to
consider the influence of Positivism in Brazil as a social fact, and one to be faced
and investigated with the historical criterion as put by Tacitus – without either
hatred or love – that is, without grinding our teeth and without apologia. So the
role of this essay is in documenting the facts as objectively as possibly about the
spread of Positivism in Brazil”. (Ivan Lins)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
37 - Geopolitics of Brazil
Golbery do Couto e Silva (1911-1987)
1st Edition: 1967 / Current edition: 2nd, José Olympio, 1981
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“Here Thomas Skidmore presents a report that is far more complete than one
might expect from a Brazilianist and historian. This is the work of a sensitive
political scientist who places the Brazilian situation in an international comparative
light. The case of authoritarianism and the democratic transition gain new and
original focus. The result of thorough research done by one of the most
percipient observers of history and politics in Brazil post 1930, The Politics of
Military Rule in Brazil 1964-1985 is therefore a vital tool for understanding
the authoritarian regime, the Armed Forces, political opening and, most
importantly, future scenarios”. (Mário Salviano Silva)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“Paulo Freire is a thinker committed to life: he does not think ideas, he thinks
existence. He is also an educator: he lives out his thought in a type of pedagogy
where the totalizing force of human praxis is expressed in the “practice of
liberty”…(Ernani Maria Fion)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“The studies in this book show to what extent his thought was original and
penetrating. The publication of his writings, mostly dispersed, will show that he
was one of our most coherent and profound essayists. It will show how he said
things in such a necessary way that not to read him is to be deprived of an
important intellectual experience in the clarification of Brazilian culture. Speaking
nearly always about cinema, Paulo Emílio speaks through this of art, of society,
of mankind – above all, of Brazil”. (Antônio Cândido)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“A summing up of the summaries that some of our intellectuals have made or are
making about Brazil: this seems to me to be the primary objective of the essay of
Carlos Guilherme Mota. (...) His burning question, which permeates the book, is:
what has been the meaning of the expression Brazilian culture, so much used by
intellectuals in the last forty years? But the author’s greatest interest, one might
even say his passion, is to measure the depth of the ideological roots that hide
under the various definitions of Brazilian culture or of the “national consciousness”
that halt the thoughts of so many thinkers inside or outside our universities”. (Alfredo
Bossi)
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44 - Political Development
Helio Jaguaribe (b. 1923)
1st Edition: Perspectiva, 1975
“This deals with an attempt to survey the current state of Political Science in
relation to the great themes that correspond to each of the three parts of the
book, and from this level, construct a broad explanation of the themes. Based
on that, to create susceptible operational models, under certain conditions,
that may promote political and global development of a given society. The
constructions and theories produced in the first two parts of the book are
applied, in the third, to the analysis of the Latin American situation. This book
constitutes, within my work, the most important attempt at a general theory of
society and of the processes of its political and global development. ‘Political
Development’ is in some ways a vast dialogue with Parsons and Marx, leading
to a dialectic functionalism”. (Helio Jaguaribe)
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45 - Colonial Slavery
Jacob Gorender (b. 1923)
1st Edition: Ática, 1978
“There is already much written on slavery (...) This supersedes the study of abolitionist
laws – the previously dominant emphasis – or of the marks left by the African in our
culture, or even of some features seen as exoticism and folklore – as Sérgio Buarque
de Holanda said, the black was seen as a spectacle – arriving at the vigorous
analyses of various authors, notable among them Florestan Fernandes and, above
all, for the scope of his analysis, Jacob Gorender, with O Escravismo Colonial, of
1978, in one of the most consistent books in our native historiography”. (Francisco
Iglésias)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“The history of the Brazilian left is surrounded by mystery and fascination for the
younger generations. Mystery, because it almost always appears fragmented in the
versions of the right, in the enigmatic references made in today’s political battles.
Thus, young militants from unions or other movements often ask their older comrades
what this or that abbreviation stands for, what exactly happened at a given movement
in our history or what the political content of Maoism or Trotskyism or Guevarism is,
etc. As this history is learned in pieces, as if it were a vast jigsaw puzzle, and as it is
often invoked to support or refute political positions, it is normal that it provokes
fascination and stimulates the curiosity of many”. (MarcoAurélio Garcia)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“Today we know Brazil more thoroughly than yesterday, thanks to the splendid
Carnavals, Rogues and Heroes by the anthropologist Roberto DaMatta. The
central theme of the book is the dilemma between the extremely authoritarian,
hierarchical and violent aspects of Brazilian society and the search for a
harmonious, democratic and conflict-free world within this same society. DaMatta
allows us to understand better and more systematically a series of repeated
aspects in our social life, many of which we grasp in a diffuse way, but which are
difficult to apprehend in a coherent manner”. (Simon Schwartzman)
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“This book is an effort to help meet demands for clarity. This is what I tried to do. First,
by analyzing the process of ethnic management that gave birth to the original nuclei,
which, multiplied, came to form the Brazilian people. Next, by studying the lines of
diversification that formed our regional ways of being. And, finally, by means of the
criticism of the institutional system, mostly notably the large estates and the labor
regime – within which arena the Brazilian people arose and grew, constrained and
deformed.” (Darcy Ribeiro)
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UNDERSTANDING BRAZIL: A READER'S GUIDE
“He makes an analysis of the profile of the Brazilian political elites in the 19th
century, of their composition and the relationship they had with imperial political
parties. He analyzes the background against which the action unfolds, the provinces
and the Court, the formal political spaces and that of symbolic representations,
the universe of institutions and of “questiones disputae” relative to slave labor and
land policy. At the same time, he delineates a personal interpretation of the
construction of the slave-owning order and of unity in the Empire”. (Fundação
Joaquim Nabuco)
Os bestializados: o Rio de Janeiro e a República que não foi [The bestialized: Rio
de Janeiro and the Republic that never was] (1987);
Teatro de sombras: a política imperial [Shadow Theater: imperial politics] (1988);
A formação das almas. O imaginário da República [The formation of souls. The
imaginarium of the Republic] (1990).
63
Understanding Brazil: a reader's guide
“The philosopher, teacher and political scientist Wanderley Guilherme dos Santos
supplants the anecdotal limits and vote-pulling twitches of the discussion and, in an
original and objective way, offers coherent and organized information about the
evolution of the Brazilian state. Scientifically rigorous, he traces a numerical portrait
of contemporary bureaucratic Brazil and reveals its importance in the economic and
social development of the country. He describes how state regulatory intervention
and associated organizations appeared and developed, and how the public and
private spheres are related. Backed up by extensive research, the author makes a
comparison with other States, among which the Brazilian is not only smaller in relative
and absolute terms than most of them, but also reveals unusual efficiency in its activities.
The detailed work of research and reflection shows that, throughout Brazilian and
world history, the presence of the State is not only beneficent in most cases, but also
decisive in the wealth of nations”. (Civilização Brasileira)
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Formato 15,5 x 22,5 cm
Mancha gráfica 12 x 18,3cm
Papel pólen soft 75g (miolo), duo design 250g (capa)
Fontes Times New Roman 17/20,4 (títulos),
12/14 (textos)
Impressão e acabamento Gráfica e Editora Brasil